“He did what now?”

Charlotte still couldn’t believe it herself. She was out with Lila and Benny for drinks - the first lull in work she’d had since they’d begun to work on the first floor of the Kensley center, and the young woman was recalling what had happened when she took it upon herself to drop off some late-night blueprints. Charlotte was still in shock a week later.

She could still feel the possessive grip of his hands on her waist as he devoured her mouth, the masterful way he shoved between her legs like he belonged there…

It had surprised the hell out of her.

Not that she hadn’t thought that Vladimir was sexual. She hadn’t met a man yet who was asexual, and she hadn’t counted Vladimir among their numbers. It was just that she would never have thought...never had hoped that he’d be interested in her.

Well, that was a lie.

She had hoped. Hoped without any foundation whatsoever. Dreamed of the man touching her in ways he had more than fulfilled that day in his office. Vladimir Kensley, whatever measure she’d made of him, didn’t stop to worry with analytics and what was most efficient when he was absorbed in his task.

And he’d certainly been absorbed in her.

More than she would ever have imagined.

“Lottie. Lottie.” She was jerked from the memory and back to the present to find Lila grinning knowingly at her. “That good, huh?”

Benny, however, looked slightly confused. “Wait, wait. Hold on a second. This is the same Vladimir Kensley we’re talking about, right? Stick-up-the ass Vladimir Kensley? Over analytical Vladimir Kensley who was trying to get you fired?”

“He wasn’t trying to get me fired,” Charlotte corrected him, somewhat embarrassed. She knew it might have been easy to believe such a thing from the way she carried on the first two weeks she was employed, but things were different now. “He was trying to make sure my designs were in the best interests of the company.”

“And if they weren’t, he was going to get you fired.” Benny rebutted dryly, making Charlotte’s cheeks flush.

“Well, probably,” she agreed sullenly, “But not maliciously. This guys is just...obsessed with the wellbeing of his company.”

“He’s not so obsessed that it kept him from trying to do the dirty in his office when push came to shove.” Lila took a sip of her martini. “You say he just came at you? Out of nowhere.”

“That’s not what I said,” Charlotte groaned. “I just took him the blueprints, and when he told me they looked wonderful… I mean…. Jesus, the man has never paid me a real compliment so I was kind of enthusiastic. I hugged him. And then...after the hug…”

“He attacked you and sucked your face off.” Lila was having entirely too much fun with this - that much was evident by her smirk and the way she amended certain events Charlotte told her about.

“He didn’t attack me…”

“My guess…” Ben mused, taking a careful sip of his own beer, “Is that he’s liked you for a while, and that little stunt triggered something.”

For a while? How long was a while!? Charlotte was pretty sure that, when they met, Vladimir couldn’t stand her. In the past few weeks they had just come to a kind of agreement in their lunches together. It was their time to talk about the project, for a bit of playful banter, and a medium through which they could get to know one another.

Never, once, during that time, had she thought that Vladimir might be looking at her with anything other than careful tolerance. Friendly interest, at the most, but nothing that would make him handle her the way he did.

The way she longed for him to.

Charlotte honestly didn’t think she’d ever had a more erotic experience in her thirty years. Sure, she’d been laid. She’d even been laid in some very exotic places - but still, the sex was sex. What Vlad had done to her...it had triggered something carnal. Something she had only, until that encounter, felt when she woke up from a particularly vivid sexual dream.

Only this time, it hadn’t been a dream. Vladimir had really been touching her, really kissing her...and Charlotte had almost lost her mind. Despite his tentativeness with everything else, the man had no hesitancy when it came to his physical needs. It was funny, up until a week ago, Charlotte had spent a good chunk of time wondering what kind of woman Vladimir Kensley liked. He seemed the type to be drawn to high class socialites - prim, pretty little daughters of rich parents who aimed to marry well and produce upper crust brats who would repeat the same process all over again.

She had laughed at the very notion. While Charlotte knew she wanted kids one day, she would make sure that they worked just as hard as she did to get what they wanted. The work was part of the experience. The last thing Charlotte wanted was to be a mother to children who didn’t know the value of hard work. That would be doing her father a disservice - at least, that was the way she saw things.

But she was hardly thinking of having kids just now, and she certainly wasn’t thinking of having them with Vladimir Kensley. She merely thought it was funny that she had been so wrong about the way his interests ran. Or maybe she was right and she was the exception to the rule. She was available, so she was what he went after.

But, somehow, Charlotte didn’t think that was it. Vladimir had touched her as if he’d been wanting to do it for half a lifetime - and once he started, she wasn’t sure he’d stop. She hadn’t wanted him to stop. She would have been quite content if he’d fucked her right there on the desk. She’d even tried to goad him into it.

Which hadn’t worked. Quite the contrary in fact. He had all but turned her own ploys against her and she retreated with her tail between her legs.

Wanting more.

“So now what?” Lila asked her, signaling to the waiter for another martini. This place had one of the best happy hour specials in the city, and they were taking full advantage of it. Honestly, Charlotte probably wouldn’t have spilled so much if she wasn’t three drinks in, but with a little buzz, it was good to finally get all this off her chest. “He’s admitted he wants to do you, you know you want to do him, but it probably isn’t a good idea for either of you.”

“Definitely not a good idea,” Charlotte amended, asking for another martini herself. “It would fuck up literally everything.”

“Including you.”

“Lila, for the love of God, grow up.” Benny elbowed her at the comment and Lila elbowed him right back, emboldened by the alcohol.

“What? I’m just looking out for her.”

“I can look out for myself,” Charlotte piped up in her own defense.

Lila merely sighed. “What did you have to eat today?” It was a good question. She hadn’t had the opportunity to meet Vladimir for lunch - their lunches since their little midnight office interlude had been a little awkward anyway, like trying to pretend a bomb hadn’t detonated - so she had worked right through it.

Which meant she was currently drinking on an empty stomach. Sheepishly, she eyed her friend and Lila merely made a knowing sound. “Right. Take care of yourself.”

“Well, let’s get some wings then!” Benny gestured to the waitress who was passing by with a tray of cocktails.

It would be good if she got something into her stomach, but just then, wings were the furthest thing from Charlotte’s mind. What she wanted was to be in Vladimir Kensley’s arms again - kissing him without a care in the world. Ready and willing to see just how much of a control freak he was.

God help her.

 

She worked through the next weekend. Charlotte meant to take a few hours off to see a movie with Lila, but, after starting the Kensley building, she had a sudden influx of inquiries from around LA for designs. Though she had been a rising star before, her popularity had fairly exploded overnight. Of course, she barely had the time to tackle Vladimir’s project with all the demands he was making of her, but Charlotte wasn’t lax enough to ignore her full inbox. She did the best she could to start a few mock-ups, make sure people maintained interest.

The Kensley building might be the beginning, but it certainly wasn’t the end. When she finished here, she would need to keep a steady line of work up if she wanted to open her own firm. She would need to find people that shared the same liberal ideas she did where architecture was concerned - though that hardly seemed to be a problem anymore.

If she could get Vladimir Kensley to come around, everything else should be cake, right? And he was halfway there -or so she liked to think.

There was one e-mail, however, that caught her eye. It was from an oil and fuel subsidiary in Russia that was looking to renovate an office building in St. Petersburg. It was evident from the pictures they sent her that the structure had good bones, and she found herself inexplicably excited. It was one of few international requests she’d gotten, and she was just aching to go abroad - as much to stretch her wings as to see other cities’ architecture first hand.

Of course, she knew she couldn’t just leave in the middle of the project that was her big break. But that didn’t stop her from taking a Saturday afternoon at her drawing table to start some designs. While Charlotte had intended the endeavor to be a simple exercise, she ended up whiling away the afternoon and most of the evening - and before she knew it, she had the bare bones of a complete set of plans.

She couldn’t not send them off.

It wasn’t even a given that she would get a reply. Charlotte knew that she was probably only one of many they’d sent the invitation to, and she’d be lucky if they even responded at all.

But they did.

Shocking the hell out of her, the company replied less than three hours after she’d submitted her rough sketches, and when she read their response, Charlotte almost fell out of her chair.

They wanted her. They wanted her to come to Russia and work on the remodeling of their building.

What the hell kind of dream was she living in? First, she somehow managed to get the Kensley project over several much more qualified and lauded architects in the same city, and then some company in Russia all but streamlined her to the front of the crowd?

Honestly, she expected to wake up at any moment.

But, luckily, a very hard, very painful pinch asserted to her that this was not, in fact, a dream. She was very much awake.

Which meant that if she wanted any chance of tackling this project at all, she was going to have to see how it meshed with the building schedule of Vladimir’s project.

There was no way in hell he would let her go - kiss or not. It was against his code of ethics. If he was taking his time to be at the jobsite almost every day, it was almost certain that he wasn’t about to let her skive off on another project. It was almost enough to make Charlotte wish they were sleeping together. Then, she might have been able to use some of her feminine charm.

After about ten minutes of something bordering on panic, she forced herself to take a seat at her drawing table and really think. There had to be a way for her to handle this. Major architects worked on more than one project at a time almost constantly. She wasn’t quite big leagues yet, but who said that she couldn’t do the same?

All she needed was Vladimir’s approval.

Before she could even begin to come up with any far-fetched plans, her phone buzzed from just beside her, making her jump. It was close to ten in the evening. Who on earth would be calling her at this hour? Everyone was in bed already - she should be in bed.

But, instead, she was staring at her phone -and nearly dropping it when she realized that the one calling her was none other than Vladimir Kensley herself.

For a moment, the panic returned. Why would he be calling her? The only other time he’d ever called her had been to ask her where she was when she’d woken up late one morning. She didn’t think Kensley was the type to courtesy call - even if he had admitted to wanting to fuck her.

Tentatively, she answered. “Vladimir?”

“Charlotte.” His reply was crisp - just like he was - with just a hint of that ungodly sexy accent. Charlotte did her best not to remember what he’d sounded like when she wrapped her legs around him...as if it were all he could do to keep himself from eating her alive… “Sorry to contact you so late, but I wanted to talk to you about Russia.”

The young woman’s eyes widened in shock. He wanted to talk to her about Russia? Exactly what did he want to talk about? Had he somehow found out that she was doing some extra designing on the side? Was she in trouble?

“What about Russia?” She tried sounding as innocent as she could.

“They want us to leave in the next two weeks to take a look at the building. They wouldn’t require you to be there for the entire build, of course - they know how important our work is here in LA-”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Charlotte stopped him, her head spinning in confusion. What in the world was he talking about? They? Did that mean that the company in Russia had already informed him that they wanted her for the project and he approved? That was better than anything she could have hoped for.  “What project are you talking about? I’m a little lost.”

When he next spoke, Vladimir sounded somewhat surprised. “Dansk hasn’t yet told you they’ve chosen your design?”

Dansk was the name of the company that had just contacted her! “Well, yeah, they have; but when did they tell you?”

To her surprise a low, amused chuckle came through the receiver. It was enough to send a surge of heat rushing through her belly as her toes curled. “Charlotte, Dansk is a subsidiary of Kensley Enterprises. It appears my father is quite fond of your work.”

For a long moment, Charlotte could only gape. Jackson Kensley was the one who had OK’ed her design for Dansk? She knew that he liked her designs, but two for two...when she wasn’t even finished with the first one? Now she had to wonder…

“I... suppose I certainly can’t complain,” she managed, resolving to talk to her father about this entire scenario. Though she was always grateful for work - especially work from a company as renown as Kensley enterprises, she had to wonder if he wasn’t talking her up to Jackson - trying to make her seem larger than life.

It didn’t sound like him. Though Trevor Gardner was more than happy to brag about his daughter, he never did it unprovoked. He liked to let Charlotte speak for herself under most circumstances.  But it was hard for the redhead to think of any scenario where Jackson Kensley might have pinpointed her for two such important projects, one right after the other.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Vladimir’s crisp reply brought her back to the matter and hand - and that matter would be that, apparently, she was going to be traveling to Russia with him.  She was going to Russia with Vladimir Kensley.

Charlotte found herself muffling the cry of unparalleled delight that rose in her throat. She could only imagine what a plethora of architectural delights St. Petersburg would be - how much inspiration she could draw for her own work. And then there was the project itself. She’d never been the head of a remodel as extensive as the one for Dansk, and they were basically giving her free reign.

If this was a dream, she prayed she wouldn’t wake up. “In any event, I called you to talk about our travel arrangements.” Vladimir’s statement brought to bear another, glaringly important aspect of this trip. It was clear that they were meant to travel together - and Charlotte was going to have to contend with that fact.

“What about them?” She inquired tentatively. She imagined they might take the same plane, or perhaps the company was going to comp her for travel entirely. But Vladimir’s explanation turned out to be neither of those things - and practically blew the top of her head off.

“We’ll be taking the Kensley jet to St. Petersburg next Wednesday. We’re expected to stay in St. Petersburg for about three weeks, so you’ll want to make sure he has everything to make sure the framing goes smoothly in your absence.”

Three weeks. Three weeks!?

Also: a private jet? What the almighty hell!?

“Three whole weeks?” She found herself exclaiming in surprise. “I can’t be away from the project for a month! What if they need me?”

“If there’s an emergency,” Vlad provided almost casually, “We can fly you back to LA. But considering the foundations are done and Charles has literally hundreds of pages of detail on the frame, I think your time would be better served in St. Petersburg - if only for a little while.”

“And...and you?” Charlotte grasped vainly for any other protests that might save her from what promised to be a very dangerous undertaking. “Why do you have to go if Jackson’s overseeing the project?”

“He’s not.” Vladimir returned - he had an answer for everything. “The project actually falls under Toshiro’s jurisdiction, but he doesn’t speak Russian. I do. And I have intimate ties with the country.”

Of course he did. He’d been born there, for Christ sake. How could she imagine he wouldn’t take the opportunity to go to Russia if one presented itself? Or that the company would so much as hesitate for a single second to send him there?

But those, Charlotte knew, weren’t her real problems. The more pressing issue lie with the heavy air of sexual tension that pervaded every time they were together. Ever since that kiss - if it could even be called that; Vladimir had all but dry-fucked her against the edge of his desk - she could hardly think about anything else when she was with him. Oh, they pretended everything was normal. They carried on with their lunches and made small talk about the project, the weather, and everything in between - but it was obvious what each of them was really thinking about. There were times Charlotte caught him looking at her out of the corner of her eye - and the hunger in his deep blue gaze was enough to make every muscle in her body clench in obscene desire.

But they were, as Vladimir had so poignantly reminded her, adults. Adults who happened to be working together in close quarters, and, as such, would maintain a platonic working relationship, regardless of the heated tension between them.

It helped, of course, that when they met they were almost always in public places. At a street stall or a restaurant for lunch, or else on the job site. When they were surrounded by people, it was easier for her to pretend that she didn’t want to climb the man like a fucking tree.

But she presumed they would be the only ones traveling to Russia in that jet - meaning they would be alone, and all that kept her from giving into her screaming libido was her sensibilities.

And she didn’t know how much she trusted them. “Are you there, Charlotte?” She realized, in a split second, that he was talking to her, and she had missed what he said completely.

“I’m here, sorry.” She recovered quickly. “What did you say?”

“I said pack for cold weather.”

Charlotte arched a brow. “But it’s spring.”

“In LA, it’s perpetually spring,” Vladimir returned dryly. “I’ll e-mail you the details. Until next Wednesday, Charlotte.” With those last words, he hung up the phone, leaving the young woman staring at it, utterly flummoxed.

When they weren’t in the same room, Vladimir was all too adept at pretending he hadn’t all but mauled her in his office. He was just as formal and impersonal as he’d been when they first met - and it was almost enough for her to let her guard down. After all, she too, could pretend, Charlotte reminded herself. She had spent the first few weeks of their acquaintance pretending she wasn’t insanely attracted to the man - should a single kiss really change all of that?

She set her phone back down on her drawing table with a frown. She knew damned well it had - but like hell if she would let Vladimir know it. It might very well kill her, but she wouldn’t touch him on this trip. Just as he’d suggested, she would do the adult thing, and move beyond her impulses. If he could do it, then she certainly could. She wouldn’t let herself be outdone by a man that thought everything boiled down to hard analyses and predictability.

He might even predict that the sexual strain between them would undo her - he could be counting on it. The thought was outlandish, she knew, but no more outlandish than the man kissing her in the first place, and Charlotte planned to prepare for everything to the very best ability.

Dress warm, he said? She’d dress in a fucking furry muumuu every single day. He wouldn’t catch a glimpse of even the tiniest inch of bare skin if she could get away with it.

Certainly, she was excited to be going to Russia, but she was going to pull a Kensley on this one: the job came first. She was going there to work, and she was going to act, at least, that Vlad accompanying her was just convenience.

That, after all, was a lot more likely than him having some crazy plan to get into her pants. He didn’t seem like the type. In fact, she knew he wasn’t.

But it wouldn’t hurt to be on her guard, just in case.

 

Though, when she hung up with Vladimir, Charlotte thought a week was a fairly adequate amount of time to prepare herself for international travel, she was surprised at how quickly the time zipped by. Of course, a large portion of that time was taken up by work.

All at once, Charlotte couldn’t imagine how she might have once feared she wouldn’t have enough to live on. By that same token, she was very quickly learning why architects didn’t usually work on more than one project at a time.

Where she usually didn’t get more than a few hours of sleep on any given night, she now found herself all but run ragged. She woke every morning exhausted to hurry to the job site and make sure that Charlie was adequately preparing for her absence.

Since Vladimir had shut down his questionable comments about her, the man had been nothing but polite. Perhaps even stiffly so, but Charlotte preferred that to assuming that she was some spoiled little brat. However, he was putting her through her paces. He had reacted with genuine shock when it was revealed that both she and Vladimir were leaving the country, and now he scrambled to make sure he could manage the job site efficiently while they were gone. This, of course, meant that he wanted every detail, every single minute piece of paper she had on the framing, and Charlotte struggled to provide.

While she was in the process of organizing reams of notes on the LA building, she was also racing against the clock where her newest project was concerned. They had approved her sketches, but Charlotte knew she would be expected to present detail blueprints by the time they reached Russia. This meant that, whenever she wasn’t at the job site, she was pouring over her drawing table, churning out ideas as fast as they could pop into her head.

Lila popped her head in on her numerous times to make sure she didn’t forget to eat - but it was no use trying to get her to sleep. Charlotte slept so little that she considered it wasted time. There were short periods where she dozed, fitfully, against her desk. In her not quite dreams, Vladimir was there. Only instead of trying to analyze her every move, he was pulling her into his arms and kissing her like he had never needed anyone so badly. He was inside her, whispering her name roughly as he brought her more pleasure than she might have thought existed and doing a whole myriad of things that she shouldn’t have been dreaming about at all.

But when had Charlotte Gardner ever been able to control the depths of her dreams?

She worked feverishly as the window of time she had continued to shrink. There were four days, then two, then one...then less than twelve hours. When she fell asleep at her desk this time, even her insomnia didn’t keep her from rousing.

Charlotte fell into a slumber so deep it was mercifully dreamless as her body forced her to recharge. Lila looked in on her around eleven in the evening and paused for only long enough to drape a blanket over her friend. She was surprised Lottie had been able to keep going for as long as she had. With the workload on her shoulders, a crash was inevitable. Better now than when she couldn’t afford one.

She tiptoed from the room, leaving Charlotte as comfortable as she was going to get - and the redhead slept - long, deep and blissful.

 

**

Though Vlad knew that Charlotte wasn’t known for keeping in contact as well as she should, it worried him when she hadn’t called him the next morning. By the time ten o’clock rolled around -and their flight was set to take off in an hour and a half - he found himself slightly irked. He didn’t like to be late - even if the plane couldn’t really leave without them.

They had a schedule to keep in Russia - Vladimir was so wound up about it that he found none of the usual anticipation of a trip back to his mother country within him.

At first, he chalked it up to irritation - to stress, perhaps.

But after a moment of careful reflection, he realized that there was something else in the mix here. He excelled under stress, and he wasn’t the type of man who lost his temper quickly or easily.

Charlotte was the reason he was so bent out of shape.

He was worried about her.

That alone was unsettling enough - though Vladimir had slept with his fair share of women, even contemplated relationships with them, he couldn’t ever recall worrying about a woman so much that it affected his temperament.

But he would have to be blind to ignore how tired she seemed. She insisted to him - almost constantly, really - that she was a night owl. That she didn’t need more than a few hours of sleep every night to keep herself going. Vladimir didn’t know how much sleep she was getting as their trip to Russia loomed large before them, but he was willing to bet it was precious little. When he saw her on the job site, dark circles sagged beneath her eyes and she’d lost the usual pep in her step.

However, that didn’t mean that she had lost her drive. Charlotte still worked like a madman. When Charles called hourly meetings with her on the job site to look over blueprints, she indulged him. When she needed to explain things to the construction workers with his help, she did. She even went out of her way to continue to take him to new and innovating places for lunch, even if it seemed she sometimes forgot the food on her plate.

It was obvious that she was exhausted - and that thought weighed on him.

She was trying to build a firm -trying to make her way up in the world. This he knew. The question was: did she have to run herself half ragged to do it?

Ten thirty rolled around, and she still hadn’t called. By this time, he was almost fidgeting with impatience.

And Vladimir Kensley did not fidget.

He called her twice in the space of five minutes and she didn’t pick up. At this point, a little pinprick of anxiety began to work its way between her shoulder blades. God forbid she had passed out somewhere, overworked, and someone had taken advantage of her. Or she had gotten mugged the previous night on her way home.

Charlotte didn’t occur to him as the type of women to be a damsel in distress - at least, no distress that wasn’t her own making - but the scenarios weren’t impossible. And once they were planted in his head, his stomach twisted uncomfortably.

So he switched his tactics. From his hotel room, Vladimir called the office and spoke to the secretary, asking her for Charlotte’s address. Once he had it in hand, he called a car to take him to her apartment complex - a mere twenty minutes away.

It was absolutely no time at all - or, at least, it shouldn’t have been. Instead, Vladimir found every moment creeping along at a snail’s pace as he reminded himself how unlike her this was. She had only been late to work one morning, and she had answered the phone the moment he’d called her. This...he didn’t like this.

When he finally reached her apartment block, he all but yanked the door open, taking the steps two at a time. Vladimir rang the doorbell, hearing the tinny ding of the bell as it echoed through the apartment.

But no one came to answer it. He rang it again, giving it barely a moment before he knocked brusquely - loudly - on the door. “Charlotte!” He barked, anxiety adding an edge to his voice. “Open the door!”

Another ridiculously long moment passed before finally, finally he registered the sounds of someone moving around beyond the door. There came the dull snap of the lock being turned back a moment before an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway.

An unfamiliar male face.

For the briefest moment, Vladimir was struck dumb. He thought he must have the wrong apartment, but a cursory glance at the number told him that he was, indeed, in the right place.

Which led him to draw other, worse conclusions.

The man stood a head shorter than him, and it was clear that he’d gotten up from bed to answer the door - though whose bed, Vlad didn’t want to think about. He ran a hand through his thick, dark brown waves before staring up at Vladimir blearily. “Looking for Lottie?”

In that instant, Vladimir was struck by a wild, completely unwelcome sensation: black, hot discomfort twisted up inside him as he imagined the man before him sharing a bed with Charlotte - whom he felt comfortable enough with to call by a nickname. It shouldn’t have mattered to him - it wasn’t supposed to - but he had just kissed her two short weeks ago.

There were times when he imagined he could still taste her on her lips; and despite the stoic exterior he struggled to keep in place, he certainly hadn’t forgotten it. Or stopped wanting a repeat performance any time she was within a ten-foot radius of him.

That was, perhaps, why the sight of this man sent something startlingly like rage coursing through him. It was the first time in his life Vlad had to fight to keep his temper under control. There was a large part of him - more than half, perhaps, that wanted to choke the life out of this skinny man. Who wanted to trod over his unconscious body and find where Charlotte lie beyond to claim her for his own.

Luckily, before that rash impulse could be betrayed in any fatal way, another head poked from the doorframe. A blonde, female head that looked first at the man, then up at Vladimir’s impeccable, suit-clad form in sleepy surprise. The only thing she wore was an oversized t-shirt, and it was clear that he’d woken her too. “Fuck.” She blinked, her eyes widening and her posture straightening somewhat as realization lit in her eyes. “Shit. Charlotte. Charlotte’s still asleep. Fuck.”

This, he pieced together quickly, could be none other than the roommate Charlotte had told him about - Lila. Her mouth was almost as foul as the redhead’s, and he wondered which of them had taught the other. “Babe,” Lila elbowed the man beside her in the ribs so he winced. “Make him some coffee or something. I have to get Charlotte up.”

Vlad heard every word she said, but his mind lingered gratefully - almost ecstatically - on the first.

Babe.

The stranger was her lover, not Charlotte’s - and the wave of warm relief that washed over him was almost enough to make him smile outright.

Almost.

After all, he’d come all this way - worried first about her, and then about who was sharing her bed, and now he came to find, after all that worrying, that she had just overslept? He opened his mouth to say something, only to have Lila beat him to the punch with a sheepish smile. “I am so sorry, Mr. Kensley. I was supposed to be waking her up...I know you guys have a flight to catch. But she hasn’t slept in days and she finally knocked out, so I-”

“Days?” Vladimir interrupted her sharply, taken aback. “Did you say days?”

Lila winced at the bite in his tone. “Well, she usually doesn’t sleep much, but she’s been trying to prepare for the trip and make sure everything on the site runs smoothly...don’t blame her. Really. I’ll have her up in a minute.”

But, by that point, all Vladimir’s irritation had bled away.

So he had been right to worry. She hadn’t really been sleeping at all. As exhausted as she looked, she must have felt even more tired...especially if she was still sleeping on a morning this important.

Lila, he noticed, was anxious to take all the blame onto herself. He had to wonder, for a moment, what stories Charlotte told her roommate to make her so skittish around him; but the thought passed quickly. He was much more concerned with the matter at hand: Charlotte, and how she’d so obviously overworked herself.

She needed rest. And its seemed almost petty, really, to wake her for something as trivial as a trip across town to the airport when they were going to be taking a private plane.

He exhaled a long breath, straightening his tie. “Lila, I presume?”

At his inquiry, the blonde girl flushed slightly. “Yeah, sorry.” She stuck her hand out and he shook it automatically. “We’re not usually early risers - not like Lottie, at least. This is my boyfriend, Benjamin.” Vlad shook Benjamin’s hand too, even though only moments before he had been on the cusp of disemboweling him. “Do you want to come in for some coffee or something while I wake her?”

Vlad took only a moment to consider. Though she might be sleeping now, Charlotte never neglected her work when it needed to be done. She was a character - a brash, impulsive, totally uncontainable force of nature who he still couldn’t even begin to understand, but he respected the hell out of her. At least, that was the only emotion he dared to put at the forefront of his mind at that particular moment.  She deserved this little reprieve after a hard week. “Is she packed already?” He finally inquired contemplatively.

“Oh, she’s been packed for the whole week. She’s over the moon.” Lila provided, her expression fond. In that moment, Vlad found himself slightly envious of her. It was obvious that she understood the way Charlotte ticked - knew it intimately, even. What must it be like to be like her, or his brother Lucas, and understand people so damn effortlessly?

“Blueprints and everything she’ll need for the trip?”

“Yep,” Lila confirmed, jerking a thumb backwards towards the dim interior of the apartment. “Bags are in the living room.”

“Alright then. You bring those out. Leave Charlotte to me.”

It was a bold statement - and Vlad realized, the moment he said it, that he was about to cross several boundaries that he’d set for himself. He tried to argue for function over anything else: Charlotte needed rest, he didn’t want to wake her, and it didn’t look like Benjamin could lift half as much as he himself. He moved past the shorter man and into the surprisingly tidy living space. “Where is she?”

Lila appeared for a moment as if she might protest, but then she merely raised a hand to point down a single hallway. “Study. Last door on the left.”

Vladimir went, making his way quietly down the corridor until he found himself before the closed door. It opened smoothly - soundlessly; and though he had expected to find a sleeping Charlotte inside, the sight of her momentarily stole his breath.

She was slumped over a large drawing table in the far corner of the room, breathing softly, a thick blanket draped over her. It looked as if she had still been working when she’d fallen asleep, as a charcoal pencil was clutched loosely in her hands. Her bright auburn curls spilled over her shoulder in a single braid coming half undone.

The usually brash and outspoken woman looked surprisingly vulnerable like this, her full lips slightly parted, lashes vivid on her freckled cheeks. All the fanfare and frantic speed had fled from her and here, now, she was just a sleeping woman. An exhausted woman who had been doing her job right up until the moment her body had given out on her.

Vlad found himself loathe to move her, but there was nothing to be had for it. They were already late, and the most he could grant her was a few more hours of sleep.

Soundlessly - almost tentatively - he moved across the room. When he tugged Charlotte’s wheeled chair ever so slightly back from the desk, she didn’t stir. Lila was right - she was, for lack of better words, completely knocked out. Beneath the blanket, he noticed that, thankfully, she was fully dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. He had still yet to meet a woman that could make the casual garb look as good as she did. In a smooth movement, he bent slightly to haul her, bridal style, into his arms, blanket and all. He was surprised by how little she weighed - but then again, she hadn’t been eating much lately either.

When she woke, he was going to have to have a stern conversation with her about how she’d been pushing herself. It was all well and good to stay on a schedule, but she was going to make herself ill.

And he certainly couldn’t have that.

Vladimir told himself that it was out of pure necessity for her talents that he needed her healthy, but the way his body had begun to react to her nearness was quite contradictory to that line of thought. She smelled so damned good...and the moment he picked her up, she shifted slightly in his arms with a soft, sleepy sound that had him swallowing thickly as her body pressed up against his.

It was best he get her to the car quickly - before he did something he’d regret. 

Shifting her higher against his chest, Vladimir carried her from the study. When he entered the living room, both Benjamin and Lila were clutching what he presumed to be Charlotte’s bags. At the sight of him carrying her in his arms, Lila’s eyes widened slightly. She opened her mouth as if she might be about to say something, and then shut it just as quickly. “Um...where should we take her bags?” Those were the words she eventually settled on, but Vlad wasn’t idiotic enough to ignore there was something left unsaid.

And it probably had to do with the fact that he was carrying his sleeping colleague down to the car rather than waking her and marching her on her own two feet like any normal superior would do.

He was unmistakably soft in places he shouldn’t be where Charlotte Gardner was concerned, and if anyone would be able to tell, it would certainly be her best friend and roommate. But he wasn’t about to stop and have a discussion about it now. There was, he insisted firmly to himself, nothing to discuss. Charlotte needed sleep and he was making sure she got it. That was all.

“There’s a car outside - downstairs at the curb. Just load the bags in the trunk there.”

Lila led the way, Benjamin following in her wake with - to his merit - only a single glance back in Vladimir’s direction. The dark-haired man followed them outside to the gleaming Mercedes at the curb where they loaded the bags. With infinitely more care, Vladimir settled his cargo in the back seat of the car. It was strange - he had thought that maybe the jarring of the staircase - or even being moved - would be enough to wake her. But Charlotte slept on.

When Vlad straightened, it was to the sight of both Benjamin and Lila standing on the curb, peering over in his direction. When he caught them looking, Benjamin quickly transferred his gaze elsewhere, but Lila merely stared at him, uncowed.

“Take good care of her.” Those five words were all he needed to hear to know what would happen if he didn’t. They were, Vlad knew, words designed for a boyfriend. A lover that was spiriting her away to lands unknown. He was her boss, and they were merely working on a few projects together.

Nonetheless, he nodded solemnly. “Of course.”

With that, he slid into the car before things could get any more awkward between them. Inside a minute, the driver was off towards the airport, leaving the still drowsy and bewildered couple standing on the curb. Vlad wondered, absently, if Charlotte had told Lila about the incident between them in his office...or rather, how she had told her. If what Lucas told him about women was any indication, there was no chance she hadn’t told her.

But now was hardly the time to be contemplating all that.

Vlad knew he could hardly afford to get himself worked up when he would be with Charlotte in Russia for the next few weeks. It was a boon, really, that they would be meeting up with Toshiro there. His brother’s presence would remind him that he was only really in Russia for work, and Charlotte happened to be a necessary evil.

Though...it was certainly strange for his father to be enamored of a single architect. He usually liked to work with architecture firms - picking two or three individuals from the same company and then consulting with both them and their superiors to construct the building. Not only was his choosing Charlotte a huge departure from the usual building style he preferred, but the process he took in construction as well.

Leaning back against the plush leather seat, Vladimir eyed the woman still sleeping against the opposite window. What was it about her that so caught his father’s eye? And moreover, whatever it was, was it contagious? Because his judgement was certainly compromised where Charlotte was concerned.

He knew that he was going to have to be on his best behavior for the next three weeks - the question was: Would he last that long? They would be in separate hotel rooms, they probably wouldn’t be eating together like they had been...but they would still be working together. Would that be enough? Somehow, Vladimir was inclined to believe that whenever Charlotte was in the same city as him, he wouldn’t be able to forget how she tasted…. the intoxicating way she had arched against him - as if she wanted him inside her just as desperately as he wanted to be inside of her…

Vlad realized, with a start, that his hand was resting heavily on Charlotte’s thigh.

For at least a full minute, he stared at it, simultaneously shocked and alarmed.

He wasn’t even aware that he had shifted at all. Of course, now he could feel the soft smoothness of Charlotte’s leg beneath the leggings she wore, and Vladimir found himself loathe to pull away. It would be quite easy, he knew, to become addicted to touching Charlotte - but doing it while she slept was nothing short of reprehensible.

With no small amount of effort, he withdrew his hand, swallowing thickly.

In that moment, it was clear to him: Shiro or not, this trip was going to be a special brand of torture.

 

Thankfully, Charlotte slept all the way to the airport. She even slept through his lifting her from the car once more to carry her through the airport - to a bevy of strange looks, but, mercifully, no reporters - and to the waiting jet. She only began to stir once the engines started to hum and they were halfway on their way to takeoff.

Vlad was sitting across from her, trying not to be aware of her with every spare cell in his body that wasn’t needed for brain power as he stolidly read the same line in his paper over and over again.

But the moment she shifted with a drowsy sound and her eyes began to open, he knew it. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her sit up slowly, staring blearily around at her surroundings. Her eyes widened as they took in the mahogany and cream interior of the private plane - from the leather sofa she was strapped into to the four or five more seats and the bar, along with the long hallway that led off towards a small bedroom in the rear and an even smaller washroom. He estimated that it took her about fifteen seconds to process that they were on a plane, and then another fifteen for her to realize what that must mean.

Her expression became briefly panicked as she searched for him, only to find him seated across from her. Then, her eyes narrowed. She worked her way out from under the blanket - her blanket- glaring pointedly until it was obvious that she wanted a reaction from him. Vlad gave it - as carefully as he could, lowering his paper to give her a mild once over. “Good morning.”

Charlotte looked as if she were trying to reign in her temper and Vlad was caught between how lovely she looked with her cheeks flushed in irritation and how much he’d liked to avoid an upset just now. “Did you take me from my house?”

“You were exhausted,” he returned neutrally, her irate tone rolling off him like water. “Lila told me you haven’t slept in days. I wanted to make sure you were thoroughly rested before we started the new project.”

“What about my stuff?” She countered almost immediately. “My blueprints. My pencils, my supplies, my clothes-”

“Your roommate was helpful enough to point them out to me.” He cut her off smoothly. “Everything’s been packed. I even made sure to grab the drawing you fell asleep on. It’s in my case, just there.” He indicated with a nod of his head at the leather briefcase leaning against the sofa she sat on.

He watched with no small amount of satisfaction as the anger drained from her face almost instantly to be replaced with slight embarrassment. “Oh.” He seemed to have taken the wind completely from her sails and watched as she suddenly turned her gaze from him, looking everywhere but in his direction sleepily as she tried to regain her steam. “This thing is huge.” She muttered under her breath, sweeping a few messy strands of red hair from her brow as the plane began to taxi towards the runway.

“We could have flown commercial, but this was a bit short notice,” he provided, folding his paper as he gave up on his charade and looked her directly in the eye with a teasing smirk. “So enjoy the luxury while it lasts.”

Charlotte merely rolled her eyes. “I’m going back to sleep. Wake me when we get there.” He almost asked her not to - but that, he knew, would be selfish. It wouldn’t be right to keep her awake just because he was anxious about his hands wandering while she was asleep.

Vladimir told himself that, as soon as they were airborne, he’d take her to the bedroom and that would be that. He wouldn’t even have to look at her for the rest of the flight, and he could finally relax.

He seemed to be lying to himself more and more lately - and he had to wonder: Was it Charlotte Gardner who brought out this new trait in him, or had it been there all along, and was just choosing now to rear its ugly head? He watched her settle on the sofa, wrapped in her blanket, and Vladimir wondered if he had ever been so jealous of an inanimate object in his entire life.