Page 12 of Pucking Snowed In with the Enemy

I gripped the rail in the elevator as it seemed to shoot up like a rocket and left my stomach behind.

“This is not good,” I mumbled, my body breaking out in a sweat as I watched the numbers and braced myself for the sudden stop. “Oh God,” I said, gripping my stomach. The woosh was worse than I imagined, and I stumbled out, grabbing the wall and focusing to keep from puking up the little bit of water I’d managed to drink before leaving.

“Are you okay?”

Turning my head, I stared at a pretty brunette sitting behind a large reception desk.

“Yes, sorry. I’m not a fan of small spaces and hate elevators,” I lied as I walked over to the counter. “I have an appointment with Mr. Mikhailov. My name is Savannah.”

“Very good, he is expecting you,” she turned to look up at the tall man, who I figured was a guard standing near the wall. “Can you please show Mr. Mikhailov’s guest to his office?”

The guard, who seemed like a giant, nodded and stepped away. He didn’t speak but held out his hand in the direction he wanted me to walk. My heels clicked on the shiny black floor. Looking into a few of the other offices as we passed, I could see the landscape and a hint of water in the distance. It was a great view.

Mountain man stuck out his arm, and I almost clotheslined myself on it as he came to a sudden halt.

“Mr. Mikhailov, you have a guest,” the man said, his Russian accent thick, which made all my earlier research seem more plausible.

I didn’t hear a reply, but the mountain moved out of the way, and I stepped into the room before the door closed behind me. I glanced at the door as it clicked like I’d just been locked in. What the?

The office was large with a pair of matching black couches and a fancy espresso machine that made me lick my lips, but the main focus was the large desk near the windows and the man standing looking out the glass, with his back to me.

“Mr. Mikhailov?”

Very slowly, he turned, and my heart jumped into my throat as my mouth fell open. No amount of FBI training could’ve prepared me to stare into Grigoriy’s dark eyes.

“Hello, Agent Savannah Freeborn. I understand you’ve been looking for me,” he said, and I ran through everything I said and talked about last night.

“Grigoriy, I…I don’t understand. I was to meet a Nathaniel today.”

He smirked as he walked to his desk and sat down, looking right at home behind the large, expensive piece.

“Let me re-introduce myself. My name is Nathaniel Grigoriy Mikhailov, but my friends call me Nathan.” His eyes roamed over my body, and I shifted under his intense stare. No one had ever intimidated me like he did, and I didn’t like it, not one bit. “You seem…out of sorts. Did you not find your evening satisfying? Or did you not sleep well?”

If I had my gun, I would’ve pulled it and shot all three of him since I was still seeing triple of everything. Fucking prick. I looked at the photo on my phone and looked at it again.

“Were you watching me? Was it your plan all along to seduce me?” He snorted and picked up the pen on his desk.

“Seduce you? I didn’t need to seduce you, Savannah. You were crying for someone to wipe away the pain of your ex cheating on you,” he said, his eyes flicking up to mine, and I marched toward him, my hand balling into a fist. I was going to leap across the desk and throttle him.

“Ah, ah, you don’t want to be sidelined any longer than you already are. Do you?” He sat back in his fancy chair, a smug expression written in every feature. How much did he know about me, and how the hell did he find all that out so fast?

“You bastard. You’ve been stalking me?”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I have an aversion to people snooping into my life, and I feel that I should give the same courtesy in return. Only seems fair to me.” He tapped a folder on his desk. “I do my homework. Do you do yours?”

“I swear I’m going to….”

“To what? Beg me to fuck you again?”

I sucked in a ragged breath and wondered if kicking his ass was worth loosing my job over. “If you’re the CEO, who is this?” I held out my phone with the image.

“First off, I’m the CMO, and that is my father Demitri Mikhailov.” He smirked, his eyes filled with humor that I wanted to smack off his face. “Sloppy police work if you ask me.”

He stood from his desk, and my stomach churned with embarrassment. He had seen me at my most vulnerable and had guided me into a trap of my own making. “I do love the fire in your eyes. It’s sexy.”

He walked around the desk, but I stood my ground, glaring up at him and cursing my body as it heated. Even though I was sore, my stomach clenched tight, and my heart pounded harder. Fucker. “You’re an asshole. What you did was…despicable.”

“Despicable? Ha, I was doing nothing more than observing the person who was stalking me. I never even asked you one question about your investigation or searched your room, which I easily could’ve done. Call it stalking or whatever other word you want, but at the end of the day, you were poking into my business and personal life. How does it feel, Agent? Do you like the intrusion into your life?”