Lucas – 7. chapter

When the door finally opened, it did so with such force that she wasn’t sure it was still on its hinges. The slam that followed jolted her just as hard, and adrenaline started flooding her bloodstream in massive doses. Lucas walked around her and, with his back to her, hurled some file onto the desk. It landed noisily, but Lucas was still braced against the desk, palms flat on the tabletop, breathing so hard it was impossible not to see it in the rise and fall of his shoulders, and to hear it. She didn’t dare make a sound. Nearly a full minute passed before he turned toward her.

The angry look he gave her caught her off guard. She swallowed and waited. The longer he stared at her, the angrier he looked. His arms hung loosely at his sides, his hands clenched into fists.

“For the last time,” he finally said, his voice icy.

“High-est-com-plet-ed-ed-u-ca-tion.”

He cut the words off sharply, practically barking them. Her gaze ran from him to the desk and the file. She hesitated for a second and tried, “I already…”

He sprang to her in one step. Grabbing her blouse with both hands, he tore it clean in two. The buttons were still skittering loudly across the floor as he roughly ripped the remaining fabric from her shoulders. He freed her hands from the chair, still bound together, kicked the lightweight chair aside, and stood Lucia facing his desk, then leaned against it again. He folded his arms and waited, drilling her with a furious stare.

She finally understood how bad this was. It wasn’t hard to guess what was in that file, but how much? She looked at him for one last second before giving up the fight, or at least this part of it.

“I have a graduate degree in economics from Charles University. Management of medium and large companies in an international environment.”

He stared at her in silence. One second. Two. Then he straightened abruptly, stepped behind her, grabbed her waist, knocked her off balance, and with his free hand caught the edge of her skirt and yanked it down in one hard motion. He ignored her cry, setting her upright again in nothing but her underwear before stepping in front of her. She exhaled in defeat and finished.

“I also have an MBA. And I’m currently preparing for my PhD exams.”

He reached for her bra. She flinched and instinctively stepped back.

“I really don’t have anything else!” she cried defensively.

She regretted it instantly. The shadow of anger that crossed his eyes couldn’t be interpreted in any good way. Very slowly, he straightened. Even more slowly, he moved behind her. He gripped her throat under the chin with the full width of his palm, squeezed, and lifted her until she had to stand on her toes. He pressed her back against himself, pressed his lips to her ear, and whispered, low and hard.

“Do one more thing I didn’t order. Fail to do one thing I want. Or try lying again. And I promise you’ll beg me for mercy. Do we understand each other?”

He guessed at her nod more than he actually saw it, because in that grip she had no chance of moving even a millimeter. Slowly, he released her and waited until she found her balance. Then he grabbed her bra with both hands, and a moment later it, too, was falling to the floor. Lucia jerked, but managed not to take a single step. Before she could recover, Lucas was standing right in front of her.

“What languages do you speak?”

“I… I speak…” her voice faltered, “…English, German, Russian, Spanish, and Polish fluently. I’m a beginner in Hungarian,” she licked her lips.

“Okay,” he said, almost satisfied. “What car do you drive?”

“A 7 Series BMW.”

“Where did you get a car like that?” he frowned.

“It’s borrowed. Registered to a company.”

“A borrowed 7 Series BMW? Well, you must give one hell of a blowjob.”

He didn’t want to hide the sarcasm, and he tried to insult her at least as much as he felt insulted himself.

Lucia stayed silent for a few seconds, thinking. She tried to hide the fact that her gaze slipped toward the file again and said, “I’m not sure how you want me to respond to that.”

He snorted with disgust. “You don’t.”

Silence fell. Lucas ran a hand through his hair, stood there for a moment, then sat down behind his desk. His gaze moved slowly over Lucia from top to bottom and back again. She fidgeted slightly but didn’t move. He smirked with malicious satisfaction.

“Fine,” he said at last. “So the incompetent girl with just high school turns out to be a very smart woman with the highest possible education available here. And for getting to the top, you clearly have other assets too, which I certainly don’t doubt.”

He made a point of staring directly at her bare breasts.

She looked away.

“Look at me.”

She obeyed.

“By the way,” he added with a sarcastic smirk, “are those real, or is that another sponsored gift?”

She took a deep breath and answered only after exhaling. “I’m also not sure how I’m supposed to respond to that.”

The hostile, angry tone in her voice was impossible to hide.

He stood and, walking toward her, snapped, “You don’t.”

He placed his left hand flat against her back so she couldn’t retreat and dragged his other hand roughly over her breasts. He held her gaze without shame, savoring everything she had in her eyes, shock, anger, helplessness. The rougher he was with her breasts, the more she held her breath. He knew it wasn’t arousal. It was enormous anger. And that pleased him. He pressed harder and harder. When she tried to pull away, he stopped her with the hand on her back and pressed her even closer to himself.

“Lucas, that hurts!” she cried, struggling briefly against her bound hands.

“Great,” he whispered sadistically when she stopped, but to her surprise, he softened. His eyes traced her face, his hand still teasing her breasts, though more gently now. It almost scared her when she realized that his gaze had lingered on her lips for too long. In that moment, he realized it too.

“Really tempting mouth. One might even want to taste it, if one didn’t know what all you shove into it.”

He released her so abruptly that she staggered.

“So, with these gifts of yours,” he continued calmly, as if discussing business across a table, “why are you here? I mean, why make coffee and carry papers all day for laughable pay? You’re clearly capable of being a manager at the very least.”

“I… like my job,” she said vaguely.

He frowned. “I could understand if you went to work because that stud of yours ordered you to. So you wouldn’t bother him all day, he shipped you off for five or six hours. Fine.”

He didn’t let her offended inhale interrupt him. “But why an assistant?”

“Lucas, I don’t know how else to answer. I like this job. Or at least I did until recently.”

She whispered the last sentence, more to herself than to him.

“Let’s try it another way. Did anyone explicitly order you to be an assistant?” he straightened and arched his back tiredly.

She hadn’t expected the movement and flinched slightly. He froze in the middle of it and looked at her in surprise. Then he frowned, very slowly straightened his back, and just as slowly ran his gaze over her whole body. Then once more, before concluding.

“He doesn’t beat you. That would show. So you’re afraid I might? Uh-uh, you’d have to make me very angry. And even then, it would only be a little lesson, on the ass.”

Lucia was less and less sure whether his words shocked her, surprised her, or angered her more. She couldn’t respond verbally, so she stayed silent and listened.

Lucas stepped closer and gently loosened her restraints.

“With me, it’s simple,” he continued as Lucia rubbed her raw wrists. He placed his open palm against her face, then slid it into her hair and stroked it.

“You’ll obey, and I won’t hurt you. Hm?”

She would have snapped at him, but just when it finally seemed like this insane situation might end, she didn’t want to allow herself that. So he went on.

“And if it happened to cross your mind whether I plan to rape you…”

She jerked so violently that he pressed her more firmly against himself with the hand in her hair and lowered his voice.

“…then no. I really don’t need to get into a fight with a man who lets his whore drive a car like that.”

Her pupils widened, she lifted her eyebrows, opened her mouth, and gasped for breath. But he considered his word final, so he released her. He walked to the wardrobe, pulled out one of his shirts, and handed it to Lucia, who needed a few more seconds to collect herself before reaching for the clothing.

“I don’t have a smaller one,” he said almost apologetically. “You’ll have to roll up the sleeves. The skirt is intact.”

Without another glance, he walked around her toward his desk and sat down. He picked up some papers from the desk and started reading intently. She recovered relatively quickly. She slipped into the shirt and skirt and, clutching the buttons, moved toward the door. She stopped in front of it, buttoned herself up, adjusted the sleeves and the much too wide shirt. She lifted her head a little higher, ran her hands over her skirt, took a breath, and opened the door.

Only after it closed behind her did Lucas drop the papers, bury his face in his hands, and slam them down onto the desk.