You Don't Know Me (The Russian Don 3)

One

Noah Abramovich

“Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats,

and women must not expect miracles.”

– Little Women, 1869

Tasha Evanoff! Blonde, blue eyes, plump mouth, and skin so white, it’s almost blue, until summer comes, then, it turns wheat-gold.

What the fuck is she doing at the door of my office?

For a fraction of a second I actually think I must be dreaming. How can I not be? In that frozen instant I hear babushka’s throaty old voice again.

‘Listen carefully to me, Noah. The moment a newborn baby emerges into the harsh light of this world, it loses its magic. It adjusts and plays the game of life, but the powerful desire for the return of its magic never goes away. The urge sits beyond the reach of memory and waits, because sometimes if a man is very, very lucky, his magic will cross paths with him again.’

Tasha Evanoff is my magic.

Not a living soul knows this, but I have secretly lusted after her for years. I forced my eyes not to follow her around her father’s magnificent living rooms, or stare at her beautiful bikini-clad body lying on the sun lounger by the pool because I knew our worlds were never meant to collide.

Today she has wandered unbidden into mine.

Closing the door, she leans seductively against it, her sexual energy radiating across the room. She is dressed exactly the way I expect the daughter of an obscenely rich and corrupt man to dress. A flawlessly cut, knee-length white dress teamed with a soft-pink cardigan, and low heeled, round-toed, immaculately white pumps. Her only adornments are a subtle string of dusky white pearls grazing her throat, and velvet black clips holding her shining curtain of shoulder-length hair back from her face.

The intention behind her choice of attire is obviously not erotic. Virginal even, but the sexual tension coming from her fizzes between us like a bottle of shaken champagne. It puts my nerves on high alert.

I stand.

‘Hello, Noah,’ she drawls. Her father is a Russian bastard, but her mother comes from British blue-blood stock and her accent is pure upper class.

‘Why are you here, Tasha?’ I ask. My body is taut and hormones are buzzing all over the place, but my voice comes out flat and devoid of all expression.

‘Surely, you’re going to allow me to sit first,’ she says with a hint of irritation.

‘Of course.’ I wave towards the chairs opposite my desk.

She walks towards the chair on the left, slips into it, and puts her knees firmly together. Her eyes are beautiful blue stars, the pupils, dark pits of nothing.

Would you like a drink?’ I offer politely.

‘Thank you, no,’ she refuses, then she thinks better of it. ‘Actually, yes, I will have one.’

‘What can I get you?’

Her gaze flickers over me. ‘Um … cognac if you have it.’ And after a slight pause, ‘Make it a double.’

I walk to the bar and feel her eyes burning into my back as I automatically pull a glass from the cabinet. My mind is churning. I grab the cognac bottle and uncap it. One thing is for sure: She didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood.

I tilt the bottle and pour out a generous measure.

I try to think why she is here and I cannot imagine any reason she could possibly have for coming to my office at this time of the night. I wipe the frown from my forehead and turn around. Casually, I walk up to her and hold out the drink.

She lets her fingers brush mine as she takes it. Of course, they are as befits the pampered daughter of a dangerous man, silky soft.

‘Aren’t you having one?’ she asks, one eyebrow arched.

‘No.’ My voice sounds thick and strange.

‘Oh,’ she exclaims, gazing up at me.

It’s like looking down at an angel or an apparition. It has a hypnotizing almost paralyzing effect on me, probably because I’ve never been this close to her before. I struggle with the crazy urge to grab her and devour her sulky mouth.

Fuck! I need to put something between us. I walk around my desk and sit down. Silently, I watch her drain the glass. The way her white throat moves as she swallows, the movement so erotic my cock stirs. She clasps the empty glass loosely in her lap and looks at it. The silence stretches between us.

Odd. Tight. Strained.

But I hold my tongue. Let her break it.

Finally, she looks up. ‘I’m … getting … married in six months,’ she says quietly.

I already knew that little fact, Tasha. You’re marrying the good-for-nothing son of a psychopathic billionaire. It’s a marriage brokered in hell by her fat fuck father, a thoroughly ugly and detestable man. If he knew she was here it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. Blood on the floor would be the least of it.