Nicolai Powerful Page 3

  “This does sound a little bit like magic.” I’m thinking more about my own micro-responses. Not that they are at all particularly ‘micro.’

  “It does,” she smiles. That smile lights me up inside. “If you don’t know how it works, you would think it was magic.” She jiggles a little, excited. “The thing is, the user won’t even notice it happening. They never do.”

  “I thought you hadn’t rolled this out. I thought it was completely new.”

  Her eyes flash and her smile is hot. Eager. “It’s new here. This was what my dissertation and thesis were about. It’s a blend of psychometrics with UI, UX, and high-sensitivity CRM.”

  I had no interest in stopping her to find out what the fuck any of that meant. I wanted to listen to her voice, but only because it distracted me from wanting to bury my face in her.

  We have strict rules against that. Across the whole global family of corporations. I know. My father wrote the rules. I have personally endorsed and enforced them.

  Only now, sitting next to this hot, beautiful young woman, I want to rip up the rules as much as I want to tear off her clothes.

  Her eyes roam around my face. And I like the sensation. She has force and independence.

  “My little tricks of code get behind the user’s eyes. Under their skin. The algorithm learns the rhythms and patterns of a user’s reaction and how they respond. It’s a little artificial intelligence all of its own that comes to life only when you first meet it. After that, it follows you. It’s yours. Yours alone. That wonderful little pathway of code dedicates the whole of its lifespan to knowing you. To knowing what you want. And then it serves it up to you, really quickly. It works on the user the way that games on your phone work. Giving you little surprises. It always knows you just a little better than you expect. And, every time you visit, a little better again.”

  She looks back at me, over her shoulder. If she goes on like that, I’ll stretch her out across the desk. Peel and tear off her clothes and plunder her flesh. Lick and devour all of her scents and juices and fill her with the fat pole of my cock.

  I get up, move away, stride around the room. It doesn’t help. All my muscles tingle and sing. The flesh on my palms and my fingers seems to be conjuring, imagining how she would be to touch. To hold. To squeeze. To clasp and clutch.

  The weight of my lengthening cock distracts me. I prowl on the far side of the room. Like if I get any closer to her, I’ll set us both ablaze.

  This is all so far against my nature, I don’t know how to cope. Normally, whenever I see something I want, I take it. I never hold back against my urges, my instincts and impulses. It’s not something that I ever did before. It’s making me buzz inside with frustration.

  My painfully erect cock swells harder with every beat of my pulse. It shouts messages to the remaining functional parts of my ‘Get me IN THERE! She is warm and wet and lovely. GIVE ME!’ It’s madness, and it’s almost all that I can hear.

  She turns, straightens her skirt. Her tits bounce like happy puppies. Her eyes gleam and shine, and her cheeks glow.

  “Come here.” It’s not what I mean to say. It’s what I mean not to say. I say it, even knowing that I shouldn’t.

  How can a thing like that be taking on such importance? How can I be so unsure in my judgement?

  I’m not unsure. I just know that my judgement wants to take me into places I shouldn’t go. Not that it’s ever worried me before, what I should or shouldn’t do.

  The places I’m thinking of are inside Laurel’s clothes. Places inside her. Places between her soft breasts. In the crevice of her ass. Between her wet, thickening lips.

  The price here could be very high.

  But that’s never worried me before either.

  As she walks over my eyes lock with hers. The fire that dances in her eyes reflects the blaze inside me. I’m raising my head just to lift my nose, so I can get more of the full scent of her.

  It’s not possible that she could be the woman for me. That old idea from our ancient Russian family, ‘There is one true woman, do not veer from the path until you find her. And when you find her, do anything, whatever it might take to make her yours.’

  I never felt this way about a woman, not any. But it can’t be her.

  She’s too young, for one thing. It’s so bad the idea is thrilling. She is too… too… American. It can’t be her. It can not be.

  But when she is near, when she stands, defiant, her feet apart, waiting, how could she not be the one?

  “Are you afraid of me, Nicolai?” she asks me. Her voice is soft and tempting.

  She rests a challenging hand on her hip. I would show her. Right now.

  It would be a catastrophe, but I’m so close to doing it. Everything inside me tells me, that’s what I must do. I must take her. I must make her mine. Completely. Perfectly. Forever.

  I’m not accustomed to waiting. I’ve no practice or experience with it. But now I must learn. I must be sure that she is the one, and then, I must take her. Whatever the consequences. Now, I will show her that I’m in charge. I take a step forward.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I say. I can’t help a laugh escaping. “I don’t want to do anything that will cause you harm.” The truth is more that I will do anything to protect her.

  “You shouldn’t worry.” The taste of her breath so tantalizingly near, so sweet, I could take it from her lips. Instinctively, I bow my head closer to hers. It’s a risk. But it’s a taste that I can’t completely deny myself.

  She whispers, “You won’t break me.”

  Don’t be so sure. Her eyes are so confident, yet so innocent. She has no idea what she could be setting off here. I lift her chin with the tip of my finger. The contact, skin on skin sends a beat of electricity through my body. Something primal. Primeval. Ancient. I slide the back of my finger down the curve of her throat. Her hot breath flutters as she takes air in gasps. Her eyes flash as her lips part. I lean closer. Our lips are barely inches apart. I taste her breath. Smell the scent of her body as it rises from inside her shirt. And lower.

  “Don’t be too sure that I won’t break you.”

  She rises, on her toes, brings her mouth nearer to mine. I move my head back.

  “Bastard.”

  I slap her ass for that. The look on her face. She’s shocked, furious, powerfully aroused, all in the same flash of her eyes and baring of her teeth. I’ll remember that look forever. I can’t believe there could ever be a better picture of her.

  It’s impossible. But it’s her. I know it is. And it’s a fucking disaster.

  But, we Russians cope with disaster.

  I tell her, “We have rules. And we have them for a reason.”

  “’We’? Who is ‘we’?”

  “‘We,’ the company. The corporation. We have rules to protect the vulnerable. People like interns, for example.” I can’t suppress all of my grin, but I hold back as much of it as I can. “The rules protect interns from being exploited by, say, senior board members. Owners of the corporation.”

  “Don’t I get to decide whether I want to be exploited or not?”

  “You can decide all you like. The rules are the rules.”

  “Ah well,” she says, “Your feelings can’t run that deep if that’s enough to stop you.”

  “We Russians understand about passion. We’re a nation of poets. We have patience. We are perfectly capable of dying for love.”

  “What’s all the talk of dying all of a sudden?”

  “I notice you didn’t ask, what’s all the talk of love?”

  “Well,” she moves nearer. I feel the heat of her body through my shirt. And through my pants. The heat from between her thighs sends a signal that’s hard to ignore. Maintaining discipline on others seems difficult, until you try maintaining it on yourself.

  “A man like you, I’m sure a thing like love comes and goes. Probably pretty often. More than once a day, I’ll bet.”

  “I’m astonished that you can know so mu
ch yet see so little.”

  Her body sways. She knows this is wrong, just like I do. But I know that’s a powerful stimulant, too.

  “So,” she says, “The man who makes the rules is too afraid to break one.”

  “I won’t be a leader who says one thing and then does another.”

  “Most are,” she says, “you know.”

  She’s moving, turning. And I am, too. I don’t know which of us started it, maybe neither of us. Maybe both of us.

  That’s where dance comes from. Long ago in our ancient history. Two people, two bodies, caught a wave, followed the same motion. The motion of emotion.

  Maybe that’s what people mean when they say, ‘let the dance lead you.’ I can not afford to let this dance lead me. Not now. Not today.

  “Most leaders?” I walk to the window. In perfect step she walks with me.

  “Does it matter?” her question is meant to tease me.

  “It matters a lot. It’s who you are.”

  These feelings are real. They’re deep and powerful. I’ve tried to pretend that they’re not. But they are.

  And I will have to do something about them. I will have to have her.

  We stand by the floor-to-ceiling window, admiring the view of the great city. Her shoulders sway. We could still be dancing.

  She says, “My father says, you do anything for the deal. Anything that takes your business ahead. Whatever it is, whatever it takes.”

  “Your father could not work for me.”

  “Your bank works for him.”

  “We don’t police our clients. Well,” I chuckle, “not their personal morality. If we did that, we really would be out of business. We don’t deal with criminals, money-launderers, drug dealers, people traffickers. Not knowingly. And we do look. I’m doubling the efforts we make to root out clients that could be a risk.”

  She is in front of me. Her back is to the window. If I move my hand, I can feel the heat of her body. We are so in tune right now, I’m sure that she will feel the heat of my hand. I move my hand near to her thigh. Up by her waist, her breast, her throat. The side of her face.

  She is trembling on the outside, exactly like I’m vibrating on the inside. I haven’t touched her, but I have felt her heat. I know she’s felt mine.

  A loud knock raps at my door. I consider ignoring it.

  I realize that, if I have to, I’ll tear the whole fucking corporation down so I can make her mine.

  Her lips part. Her chin tips up, showing me the milky softness of her throat.

  I bend toward her. Her eyes begin to close.

  A louder knock hammers on the door.

  Furious, I spin around. The door opens. I’m enraged.

  “I did not invite you to open the door. Whoever you are, wait.”

  Helena Martenssen stands in the doorway with sparkling eyes and a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile.

  She sees Laurel and says, “I’ll come back.”

  “I said wait.”

  As I spin back to Laurel, she’s turning to leave. She‘s startled and unbalances. Wrong-footed, she lurches. I catch her.

  Laurel is warm and responsive in my arms, I don’t want to let her go. Even though I know that this could look like a breach of corporate policy. I could be in front of a tribunal if this were to play out the wrong way.

  Helena Martenssen struck me as the kind of woman who would play anything out the wrong way, or any other kind of a way that it might suit her purposes.

  Her eyes shine as she watches me, holding Laurel’s soft body in my arms.

  “Poor girl seems to be overcome,” she says, archly. “Maybe we should call for medical attention.” Her voice purrs with pent-up energy. Low and dangerous. “After all,” she says, “we don’t want the company involved in any awkward legal entanglements, do we.”

  Laurel straightens herself up. As she stands, I immediately feel the loss of her warmth against me.

  She turns to face Helena. “There’s no need for that, Ms. Martenssen. And I’m sure Mr. Stravinski-Romanoff can take perfectly good care of me if there was any need.”

  “Oh,” Helena’s grin is predatory, “I bet he could. We have rules, though. As well as laws.”

  Her eyes swivel back into mine. “I’ll find a more convenient moment for us to meet,” she said, “We can get together later. We’re going to have lots to discuss.”

  She turns smartly on her expensive heel.

  Helena’s appearance seemed to have broken the tension.

  I can’t stay in his office. The heat level is past dangerous and heading for the critical zone. If I stay, I’ll do something disastrous.

  He calls after me, “Come back this afternoon. Bring a briefing on the client roll-out.”

  His voice is not the hard baritone boom of command that I’ve gotten used to. There’s a smoother, dark, liquid quality. I’m doing all that I can to resist the feelings that bubble up inside me, but I can’t help loving the the sensations that erupt inside me whenever he tells me what to do.

  Daddy would not approve. But then, Daddy doesn’t approve of very much of what I do. Since I earned my own, full-pass scholarships to college, worked two, sometimes three jobs to give myself nice places to live on campus as well as covering all my books.

  I took memberships of all the best clubs and societies, too. Again, not the ones that Daddy would have wanted me to join. He would have had me take part in all of the rarified social groups, the political societies, and the so-called ‘art groups,’ all of which were just lunching and drinking clubs for the most privileged of the privileged students.

  I was in math groups, programming clubs, and psych societies. I didn’t want clubs and societies to socialize, I used them as places to accelerate and enhance my studies.

  “It’s not what you know in this world,” Daddy told me, “It’s who you know.” By that, of course, he meant who you were related to, who you were connected to, who you knew who would make you a useful person to know.

  Well, fuck that, I thought. I want to be with the hard workers, the bright people, the innovators and the ground breakers. And they tended not to feature high on the ‘social’ scales.

  Our Algorithm Kitchen was where I cooked up my final year’s presentation. It was a real-world study of an online form for local income taxpayers to make annual submissions. Glamorous, right?

  That was my route to freedom. My escape from Daddy’s controlling schemes.

  Of course, Daddy would have funded me through college without a thought. But then he would have dictated all my choices.

  Now, it seemed like all my efforts to get away from one controlling, overbearing man have just taken me to where I can throw myself at another. Even though every cell in my body wants the dark Russian, every thought in my head tells me that I’m running headfirst into danger.

  Chapter Five