But no. That wasn’t right. She was the enchantress tonight, and she couldn’t allow herself to get swept up in the spell she hoped to cast. Just a little more flirting, a little more give-and-take—with a lot less give on her part—and Russian career criminal Vlad Karev would be as malleable as sculptor’s clay in her hands. If the way he was looking at her back at the restaurant was any indication, she was almost there.
“The new exhibit is all set up. We’re unveiling it late next week,” Madison explained as she fished her ring of keys from her purse to unlock the front of the building. Vlad stood off to the side at a polite distance, as if respecting the fact that he was an invited guest. It was a stark contrast to how he had conducted himself around the gallery earlier in the day. It was an even starker contrast to how he had conducted himself only minutes before, with his hand pressed against the dip of her back in an easy, undeniably deliberate signal to anyone who might be watching. She found herself missing the unexpected warmth of his touch and wasn’t sure she stood a chance of succeeding in her plan with the newly-reserved man standing beside her.
She should have known it was all a ruse.
She unlocked the front door and pushed it open. To her surprise, Vlad slid past her and crossed the main room, turning through a doorway leading into one of the back hallways. Madison hastened after him to correct the error.
“Vlad, there aren’t any exhibits this way,” she said as she caught up to him. “Only offices…”
The tall, immaculately dressed man at her side grinned wolfishly.
“Oh, no. No,” Madison said. She wished it didn’t come out sounding so much like a plea.
“Oh yes,” the Russian returned. “I came to see art, Miss O’Connor, and art is what I intend to see. That dress you’re wearing looks good on you, but it’s not the dress we agreed you would wear this evening.”
“First of all, thank you.” The least she could do was express gratitude for the compliment, considering no man had ever spoken its equal to her before. “Second of all, get bent, Karev. I didn’t agree to anything, and I’m definitely not some doll you get to play dress-up with. Just because you’re used to getting your way—”
“You’re right,” Vlad interrupted her, as if they were already in agreement, and not at complete odds with one another. “I am.”
She might have stood a chance of having her own way if she had remembered to lock her office door that afternoon. She even paused to watch him go for the doorknob, a smug smile crossing her lips… before she saw it turn beneath his hand, and her feelings gave way to despair. She followed him inside, heart pounding in her chest, knowing exactly what they would find.
The parcel that had arrived that afternoon was torn open on her desk. Balls of tissue paper were scattered everywhere, and a midnight-black garment that looked too short and too thin to be a dress draped across the back of her office chair, tags still in place.
“Look, I…” She struggled for an excuse, trying not to panic as Vlad moved behind her desk and plucked up the dress. “If you want to see me in it so badly, why don’t you ask me on another date?” She certainly hadn’t meant to ask for another date so early on into her mission, but desperate times called for desperate measures… otherwise she was bound to find herself stuck with measures leaving little to the imagination.
“This one isn’t over yet.” Vlad held the dress out to her, blue eyes flashing like silver scimitars in the low light of her desk lamp.
She didn’t have to take his orders. She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do, especially in her own office… but as her gaze met his, she found herself taking the gift.
Could it be a small part of her actually wanted Vlad to see her in the dress?
It wasn’t as if she looked terrible in it. On the contrary, she’d thought she looked borderline incredible when she tried it on earlier… but the look was so unlike what she was used to that she had hastily stripped it off again. It was too easy to think of herself as another woman inside that dress. A kept woman. A woman who too easily forgot to put family first and allowed herself to be swept away by charming Russian conmen.
“Are you at least going to leave the room?” she pleaded.
“I’ll turn my back.”
Vlad arranged himself in the corner facing the wall. Madison’s heart, which hadn’t been behaving correctly since meeting him that morning, lodged in her throat. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. After reassuring herself that there was no possible way he could observe her from his chosen angle, Madison quickly shed the red dress—her pride and joy, although it had been a part of her wardrobe since college if she was being honest—and started to wriggle herself into the costly, highly-contested black dress. She knew from earlier in the day that trying it on with underwear was out of the question; it would never fit, and it would show lines besides. She dropped her panties and kicked them discreetly beneath her desk as she finished pulling it on.
“Will you zip me up?” Her request was as muted as the whisper of the fabric against her skin.
Vlad turned in the darkness and stepped into the warm glow of the lamp. Madison came around the side of her desk until there was no barrier left between them. Once she was within his easy reach, she stopped and turned to present her back to him. It felt like what she imagined turning her back on a predator in the wild might feel like: stupid. And exciting.
His hand lifted her hair aside; then, she felt the brush of his fingertips, the ice-cold metallic line of the zipper as it pressed firmly along her spine, the tight breathlessness that came as her torso was cinched up inside the bust. She rocked slightly, her eyes falling shut as she savored the feeling. Vlad swept her hair back into place, and she thought it was over. She moved to take a step away from him.
“One moment.” He stooped down beside her, and Madison’s traitorous heart rebounded around her newly-constricted ribcage. She could feel her core heat as he drew level with the curve of her ass.
What was he doing? Did he suspect she had already stripped off her underwear for him? Was he about to find out?
The Russian pressed his face close to the seam running over the swell of her hip. Madison thought she would hit the ceiling. She thought a lot of things were about to happen to her in that moment, but what Vlad actually did was the least expected of all. His hands came up to grasp her thighs through the dress, and he clenched his teeth. He yanked his head to the side.
The dress’s tag came off in his teeth. He stood and extracted it from his mouth. Madison was certain her face must have been as red as her lipstick.
“Give me that. You could have used scissors.” She turned, about to toss the tag in the trash, before thinking better of it. She laid it on her desk. “So you can return it later.”
“I won’t be returning it. It’s yours.”
They stared at each other for a long moment in the low light. Madison had always thought her office was small, but now it was positively claustrophobic. She cleared her throat, and Vlad smiled politely.
“You were going to give me a tour,” he reminded her. “Show me the new exhibit, I believe.”
Oh, right. Art.
“I want to show you the O’Connor Fine Arts Gallery is more than just a cover for the mob’s money laundering scheme,” she explained as she led them both out of her office. “It’s an important public fixture. It benefits everyone, not just my family, or yours. It’s more than another way to get around the feds.”