Lap of Luxury (Love Don't Cost a Thing)

I head into the building past reception, swipe my pass and call the elevator, and I pray that I don’t run into Damir Ravnikar. He’s kind of…weird. Super attractive, in that Ravnikar way. Those brothers have some slick genes. But where Mikhail Ravnikar is soft around the edges when you catch him in a good mood, Damir Ravnikar is as tightly strung as a bowstring and about as soft as granite. I’ve never seen him smile, and you could cut your fingers on his cheekbones and cleanly shaved jaw. His eyes are like gunmetal and as cold as the Grim Reaper’s. I know, because his eyes have landed on me a handful of times at work functions, and I’ve felt frozen to the bone. And kind of hot at the same time.

His corporate staff is always kissing his ass, but he has this other group of men around him, too. Bodyguards, apparently, but to me they look like well-dressed thugs. I hear whispers that he’s neck-deep in arms-dealing and money laundering and isn’t afraid to throw down to get what he wants. With a body like his, big and broad in his expensive suits, and his faintly scarred knuckles, I believe it.

Like I said, in a place like the City of London, he’s weird.

I stick my head into the financial director’s office, but he’s not in there. I wander down the corridor, peering through the glass next to each door as I go. No one’s around. Maybe there’s a big meeting scheduled now. I don’t really want to go back to Mr. Ravnikar’s office without getting these documents signed, so I keep searching. The whole floor is silent, which it shouldn’t be in the middle of the afternoon. Horror-movie silent, the sort that comes right before a jump-scare.

All the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I wonder if I’m about to hear a child whispering a nursery rhyme, or find an Eldritch monstrosity clinging to the ceiling tiles and leering at me with a face full of teeth.

Which is just ridiculous because—

“Are

you looking for someone?”

I yelp and spin around. Damir Ravnikar is looming over me, unnaturally close. His sharp, cold eyes fill my vision. Am I looking for someone? I have to think hard before I stammer out, “Mr., um—the financial director.”

Damir stares down at me. He feels bigger than his brother at this close angle. Under his ferocious gaze, my nipples, just an inch from Damir’s broad chest, start to harden.

Oh, god. Not now.

The thing about me—the super fucked up and secret thing—is that I like horror films. Like like them. As in, some people watch pornos to get off, and I watch slasher flicks and gore-fests. Being scared of Damir Ravnikar has my whole body lighting up like a Christmas tree.

He turns abruptly and walks into his office. “Come in. I’ll call him.”

I take a shuddering breath and follow in the wake of his silky cologne. My heart is still pounding. Other places are pounding, too. I’m too afraid to get too close to him so I loiter in the doorway. The younger Ravnikar brother is in his shirtsleeves and his broad back is to me as he picks up the phone. Bright sunshine is coming through the window and his body is outlined in gold. Most horror films take place in the dark, but I’ve always been extra fond of ones that happen in broad daylight. I like my monsters where I can see them.

Damir punches out the numbers as if in slow motion, my eyes fixated on his every move. I suck my lower lip into my mouth, appreciating the muscular lines of his torso. I shouldn’t be enjoying the fact that he just made me jump out of my skin.

Shouldn’t be. Will stop. Any minute now.

Damir turns to me. “No answer on his phone. I—”

His eyes fasten on something over my shoulder, and his face changes from an expression of bland disinterest to one of fury and hatred. Without looking at me, he lunges for me and pushes me—practically throws me—behind him.

“You,” he snarls at someone in the doorway. I go tumbling to my knees behind Damir’s desk, and when I manage to pull myself up, I see that Damir is tensed in rage.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” says a nervous male voice.

“Friend,” Damir sneers, like he’s tasting something bitter. “I told you the last time I saw you that I would rip your guts out and make you eat them if I ever saw you again.”

I peer a little further around the desk and see a man in his mid-forties, sandy-haired and pretty, in a goggle-eyed and chinless sort of way. I don’t recognize him.

The stranger grimaces. “You Ravnikars can really hold a grudge. It was a horrible mistake. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her.”

Her?

Damir reaches into his desk draw and pulls out a knife. A big, fuck-off hunting knife, incongruous in sanitized, corporate Central London. But not, strangely, incongruous in Damir’s hand.

“I want to burn you alive and hear you screaming,” Damir says softly. “If you’re tired of our agreement, we can try that.”

The stranger visibly swallows. “This has gone on long enough. I came here to tell you that I’m going to be married, and I need your assurance that my wife and I—”

“Georgios,” Damir raps out over him. “You know that’s not allowed.”

Then the man reaches inside his jacket, and somehow I know that he’s going for a weapon. Damir must know too, because he lunges at Georgios, knife-first.

Georgios ducks away and pulls out his own knife, slashing at Damir, his teeth bared. Damir dodges to the side, grabs the man’s wrist and pushes it up, and then punches his assailant in the guts with the hilt of his knife. They grapple with each other, jaws tensed, eyes sparking with fury.