Page 30 of Endless Obsession

I also always wonder what she thinks when Dima brings up my birth mother. She can’t have ever expected love or fidelity from him, but I know she resents being forced to raise me. But her face is smooth, impassive as she cuts into her well-cooked steak. If she feels anything at all about all of this, she’s hiding it.

Which is likely the wisest choice she could make.

“I understand the difficulties that the leaks are causing. And I’ll do all I can to uncover the source.” It’s a flat-out lie, of course. But every word I say is like tiptoeing around landmines. My father is greedy and cruel, but he’s not stupid. He’s smarter than I think my brothers give him credit for, especially Lev. It’s difficult to keep the truth from him, and it will continue to be difficult.

“Do better.” His voice is sharp, cutting, and it takes everything in me to nod, to give him deference, and keep my composure. To not tell my father what I really think of him.

It would be so much easier to turn a blind eye, as I have all my life to so much else in my family. I have no desire to be involved with any of their enterprises, not just what involves human flesh. But the rest, I can ignore.

Some things, though, are too evil for me to not do something about, if I can. And I’m uniquely placed to help these women, with talents that allow me to do more than most others could.

I just have to stay alive long enough to cripple this part of my father’s empire entirely. Then, I’ll stay long enough to let any suspicion pass me by—and then I’ll take my money and my car and whatever else I want of my life, and go far away.

I’ll start over. Maybe even as Ivan Vasili, instead of who I am now.

That makes me think of Charlotte. Of the impossibility of any real future with her. It goes beyond the fact that she’s not the kind of woman who would want a criminal. I can’t drag her into this world. I can’t subject her to the kind of life I’ll always live—one where my family will always be a threat, even if they’re only in the background. A life without her friends, without a family of her own, with only me for support.

I’m not the kind of man who can give a woman like her what she needs. The fact that I seem to need her like a drug doesn’t change that.

All it means is that I need to get my fill of her, and then get clean. Teach her all the things that she’s never been shown, make sure I’ve given her all those pleasures that she’s never experienced for the first time, and then get her out of my system. We can give each other what we both want, and then I’ll take off, leaving only good memories for us both.

After all, I tell myself as I finish dinner and say my goodnights impatiently, it’s not as if she’s going to get into a serious relationship with the next man she dates after a bad breakup. I’m already firmly in the rebound position.

It doesn’t matter if there are other men after you. As long as you’re the one she’ll think of every time, long after you’re gone.

That’s what I tell myself to ease the sting of knowing that I won’t be the last man to touch her, only the next. But there’s no world in which I get to keep her. This temporary obsession is going to have to be enough.

When I get back home, I only pause to change into a pair of sweatpants and a loose t-shirt before heading down to the basement. I know my father has another shipment coming in, but I don’t have all of the details, which means I need to be scanning the warehouses, docks, and railyards as often as possible to make sure that I don’t miss any movements. The feds are expecting this information from me, and I’m in a precarious fucking position. Now that I’ve started feeding them some information, they expect a steady drip. If I start to slow down too much, or worse, stop, they’ll turn on me as fast as my family would if they knew what I was doing.

I’m caught between two sides, and neither of them give a fuck about me.

I set my phone down next to the keyboard, keeping an eye out for Charlotte’s movements. So far, all I’ve gotten is that she went grocery shopping at Whole Foods after work, and then went home. She’s stayed there all night, texting her friends, and no one else. She hasn’t downloaded any dating apps onto her phone.

That last is a relief. Both because it means she was interested in me today, and not just the prospect of going out with anyone—and also because it means I won’t have to be distracted right now with figuring out how to place roadblocks in the way of any other dates.

This is already more of a distraction than I should be allowing myself. I know it from the way my thoughts keep drifting to her as I sift through the screens, viewing the various locations my father uses, as I scroll through saved footage of the day, looking for anything that I can pass on as information. I know it from the way I keep looking over at my phone, almost compulsively.

When I do get another ping for her, it’s not from my phone. It’s from one of my computers, one that I set up to monitor her online activity from home. I turn immediately towards the screen, logging on and looking to see what she’s doing.

I feel an instant jolt of arousal. She’s looking at porn sites. OnlyFans. And my lips curve up in a smile as I see her searches. Masked men. Clothed man, naked woman. Masked sex.

She’s still thinking about me. She’s in her apartment, alone, probably in whatever she wears to bed, looking up ways to get off based on thoughts of what we did together at Masquerade. My cock swells, thickening along my leg and tenting my sweatpants as I watch her pulling up videos, lingering on some of them long enough that I know she’s watching. Maybe touching herself. Using her fingers, or a vibrator. She’s wet by now, looking at all of this—just the thought brings back the memory of the sweet scent of her arousal, the way she tasted on my tongue. I feel the insistent throb of my own arousal, and I reach down, adjusting my now fully-hard cock. I squeeze it for a moment, pushing off the urge to slide it out and stroke myself until I come. I need to, badly—and I will. But I want to enjoy the feeling of need for a little while longer. I want to let myself be hard, aching, thinking of what Charlotte is doing by herself in her apartment. The feeling of being this aroused is almost as good as the orgasm that I’ll have eventually—and that release will be made all the better by waiting for it.

The videos disappear, and I feel a swoop of disappointment. Did she finish already? I was hoping she’d draw it out, that I’d get to see more of what she wants. What sort of fantasies that she’s exploring, now that she feels safe to do so.

I’m just about to give up and get myself off so that I can go back to focusing on work, when the monitor pings again. My attention instantly snaps to it, and when I look, I see that she’s pulled up a website and started creating a profile.

It’s a website I’m very familiar with. One that means she has at least a passing knowledge of the darker parts of the web, parts that she wouldn’t be able to access without a VPN, and a bit of nerve.

I’m impressed—and more aroused than I ever thought I could be.

The site that she’s logged onto is a chat site. One where users go to share all kinds of fantasies back and forth. There are forums to post pictures and share stories. And a messenger, for sharing those fantasies one on one. It’s the online version of a place like Masquerade, a place with no real names and no faces allowed—except those are some of the only rules. Here, Charlotte could talk about almost anything she wanted, almost anything she’d be ashamed to admit, and she could find someone willing to listen. Someone to urge those fantasies on, to encourage her to lean into them. To seek pleasure from them. Someone who would get their own pleasure from listening to her describe all of the forbidden things she wants.

Jealousy, hot and thick, burns in my veins at the thought of anyone else reading those fantasies. Of another man stroking himself on the other side of a screen to the things that she wants, another man telling her the things he wants to do to her. Getting her off with those descriptions.

And in the wake of that jealousy, another thought springs to mind.

I have two identities with her. But there’s a third one that’s possible. Not just the masked man at Masquerade, which I might never be for her again, or the man who is taking her out on a date this weekend, the ‘acceptable’ version of myself.

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