Love Or Lust?

Chapter 1

At times, Pero de la Cruz pondered what distinguished a man from a beast. Men did, after all, eat, sleep, fight, and fuck like all other animals. His interest in computers and his appreciation of fine art were his only human traits; otherwise, he was as beastly as they came.

Being human did not really matter to him. In his view, it was overrated.

However, considering what was at his doorstep at this very moment, he was actually quite happy to be human today.

Pero gazed at the enormous array of screens in front of him while leaning back in his enormous black leather chair. While some of them showed feeds from security cameras positioned at key locations throughout New York, others showed feeds from the national news with stock tickers unreeling beneath them. The spreadsheets he had been working on were open on at least two screens, and his email was on a third. At least one of them had a movie playing, and a couple more were focused on social media, primarily Twitter, though he also liked Instagram.

However, at this specific moment, none of those screens had permanently captured his interest.

The screen that provided him with the feed from the security camera on his front door was now the one he was most interested in.

as well as the woman in front of it.

Wearing a simple charcoal skirt and a clean white shirt, she looked immaculate, with her red hair pulled back in a tight bun. Very secretary-like and businesslike in appearance. which, given that she was here for a job interview, was essentially to be expected.

She adjusted her matching charcoal jacket and smoothed her skirt while he watched. She took one quick look behind her before turning back to face his front door.

She had no beauty. He preferred something nice to look at, so it was not ideal that she was not even attractive. However, he had stopped sleeping with his assistants after learning that their performance tended to decline after he put them to bed, so that was not a deal-breaker. On a second glance, her features were not all that bad, but they were too sharp for beauty. Her eyes were pretty, her chin was determined, and her lower lip was nicely full. He could see that it was brown. Despite having red hair, she did not appear to have freckles, and her skin was milky pale.

He looked at the rest of her with a tilt of his head.

She may not have been particularly attractive, but she certainly had the body type he was looking for in a woman. Lots of soft curves, round hips, and full breasts. At least not physically, he disliked having muscles, being skinny, or having any sharp edges. He preferred softness in women, and she was unquestionably soft. Not ugly in a lot of ways.

After giving her some more thought, Pero pressed a button that brought up a second window with her resume and the security feed image.

Vera Swift. Twenty-eight. English. living in the East Village at the moment. had excellent references from every position where they worked as an assistant to high-level executives in Fortune 500 companies. She had a nice figure and seemed capable. A nice mix.

But nothing on her resume mentioned what she had been doing for the past two years, and she had quit her previous job two years prior.

He looked at the woman on his doorstep with narrowed eyes. He occasionally denied entry to prospective employees. Depending on what he decided after giving everyone a quick tour of his home, he occasionally did not even open the door.

However, it was not like he had many options.

He had had at least ten assistants in the last six months alone, and it was now becoming impossible to find someone decent who would genuinely collaborate with him. Even raising the base pay to six figures had not been enough to entice anyone to apply because word had spread about how difficult he was.

There was an issue. He wanted to hire the best, but when the best refused to apply, regardless of how much he offered, he had no choice but to settle for the not-quite-so-good.

Or Vera Swift, whose resume shows a two-year lapse.

After reaching out and pressing the button on the intercom that was resting on his desk, Pero made up his mind. "Show her into the sitting room, John," he ordered.

John, his butler, answered in his typical sulky tones, "Yes, Mr. De la Cruz."

Switching to the entrance hallway, Pero watched as John opened the door, greeted Miss Swift, and led her into the sitting room, where Pero enjoyed entertaining all of the visitors to the house-at least the ones he let in.

After switching feeds once more to the sitting-room cameras, Pero observed her while John led her to a couch before leaving the room and shutting the door.

Her gaze flitted around the room as she clasped her hands in her lap.

It was the most typical room in Pero's enormous home, and he had deliberately designed it to be as opulent and cozy as possible so that he could sit here in his control room and watch people's guards drop.

Vera Swift certainly seemed to enjoy it, looking around at the artwork on the walls, the fireplace with the cheery spray of fresh flowers on the mantelpiece above it, the thick red-and-blue silk hand-knotted rug on the floor, and the shelves with the horribly pricey little trinkets on them. Her posture relaxed slightly as she sat back on the cozy white couch.

People would typically get off the couch and go exploring if they felt alone. Take one of the trinkets or a book off the shelf. They would occasionally approach the window overlooking his Upper East Side street, close to the Met, or the mirror above the fireplace to play with their appearance.

However, none of these actions were taken by Vera Swift.

She stood with her hands clasped lightly together. She looked around her, occasionally turning her head, but that was the only movement she made. There she sat, motionless.

In spite of himself, he scowled at the screen.

Perhaps it was the stillness, the clasped hands, or just the air of containment and reserve that she exuded, but there was something about her. Whatever it was, he found it fascinating.

He pressed a few keys on his keyboard to get a closer look at her by zooming the camera in. She was now looking at her hands as though they were fascinating, and her focus had shifted to them. Now that he was looking more closely, he could see that her lashes were thick and long, and that there was a faint impression of freckles across her nose, concealed by makeup. She appeared to be whispering a prayer as her lovely mouth moved ever so slightly.

Leaning back in his chair, Pero took another look at her resume.

She looked good on paper, and he definitely thought she was at least acceptable when he first saw her. Perhaps a little too young. Certainly, he'd had better luck with older assistants who didn't melt into a puddle of tears at the first hint of criticism or get incensed by his apparently "outrageous" needs. He'd had one woman-she'd been in her late fifties-who'd managed to stay with him a whole three months without complaint, eventually leaving because he'd asked her to order him a selection of women for the night and she'd refused, saying she hadn't been hired to be the "madam of a brothel."

Pero had fired her on the spot.

He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, and if his assistants either couldn't or wouldn't do their jobs and assist him, then he got rid of them. No second chances.

Be interesting to see what Miss Vera Swift would do with a request like that. Or, in fact, any of the other requests he made of his assistants, some of which had caused a number of them to leave within hours of being hired. Many only lasted a week; rarely did they last a month.

Hiring new people was starting to get old.

Of course, there was the option of being a nicer employer, as one of his earlier assistants had tried to tell him, but he really didn't understand what she meant by that. He suspected it had something to do with changing his behavior. Fuck, like that was ever going to happen. He was the way he was, and he wasn't about to change.

Getting rid of Vera's resume from the screen, Pero brought up another document-the list of other candidates for the position.

It was short.

He scowled at it, irritated. His options were getting narrower and narrower and he didn't like it one bit. Even the temping agencies wouldn't take him on as a client these days, not since he'd blown through five temps in one month, reducing every single one to tears within hours of being hired.

Christ. People were so weak and fragile these days, it was a constant annoyance to him. Still, if the worst came to the worst and this girl ended up only lasting hours or-if he was lucky-a week, he could up the salary again. Money tended to solve most problems in his experience, and it wasn't as if he didn't have plenty of it. Being the illegitimate son of Cesare De la cruz, the owner of DS Corp, one of America's biggest and richest defense and protection companies, wasn't without its perks. Even if his father was one of the biggest pricks on the planet.

Up on the screen, Vera Swift raised her head from her hands and took another look around the room. A small crease had appeared between her brows.

She was probably wondering how long he was going to keep her waiting.

The answer was as long as he fucking well felt like it.

Then again, maybe he should get this interview over and done with as soon as possible. Might as well see if she was as good in person as she looked on paper.

Pero pushed the button on the intercom again. "Take her into my office, John."

"Very good, Mr. De la cruz."

Pero lounged back in his chair, watching as John entered the sitting room, going over to where Vera Swift sat. She gave him a pleasant smile, betraying no sign of impatience, all calm self-possession, as if she could have quite happily sat there for another couple of hours.

Fuck. Maybe he should let her. Maybe he should have tested her further, the way he did sometimes with people who intrigued him.

Ah, but there was plenty of time for that.

In the privacy of his control room, Pero bared his teeth as Vera disappeared through the sitting-room doorway, on her way to his office.

Looked like his day was just about to get interesting.

* * *

There were two chairs in Pero De la Cruz 's office. A huge black-leather executive chair that sat behind the dark oak monolith of his desk, and a much smaller, much more uncomfortable-looking one that sat in front of it.

Vera didn't need to guess which one was meant for her. She walked straight toward the uncomfortable-looking one as soon as De la cruz's butler showed her into his office.

And, indeed, as she sat down, it was as uncomfortable as it looked.

Then again, she'd spent much of the last two years sitting around in many different sorts of uncomfortable chairs, so it wasn't anything she wasn't used to.

She was used to waiting, too.

The office was deathly silent, not even the noise from the city penetrating from outside.

Vera folded her hands in her lap, resolutely ignoring the flutter of nervousness in her stomach. Just like she resolutely ignored the doubt that was also sitting there.

Before she'd gotten the interview for the job, she'd asked around the few job contacts she had left, trying to get what information she could about New York's most reclusive billionaire and the position she'd seen advertised on an online job site. A position with a salary that seemed almost . . . obscene.

And then her friends had told her why the money was obscene. Because Pero De la Cruz was the biggest bastard to walk the earth and no one wanted to work with him. "Run and run far, far away" had been the opinion of her contacts

Unfortunately, though, Vera was not in a position to run far, far away.

She needed money, and she needed obscene amounts of it. Fast. And the position of Pero De la Cruz 's personal assistant seemed the best and easiest way of getting it. Certainly, much easier than stripping, which had been one brief thought that had occurred to her at 2 A.M. the previous night.

No, she didn't really want to do that, nor did she want to do any of the other seedy-sounding jobs that had also been on that same job website, offering the same kind of money and making Pero De la Cruz 's job offer look like a ticket to paradise.

Vera gave a small inward sigh, resisting the urge to check her phone just in case there had been any updates on Charles. He'd contracted an infection recently, which was worrying since the immune systems of coma patients weren't exactly robust. Then again, the doctors had told her they'd contact her if there was any change in his condition, and they hadn't, so presumably everything was fine.

Didn't stop the worry though, which was not what she needed right now.

Ruthlessly pushing aside her anxiety, Vera looked around the room instead, trying to distract herself.

She'd tried to do some research on Pero De la Cruz , but surprisingly hadn't managed to find much. He was some kind of computer genius and managed the tech arm of DS Corp, one of the U.S.'s biggest weapons companies. He was also reputed to be a recluse, never leaving his Upper East Side mansion, and was infamous for treating his staff very, very poorly indeed.

He'd also clearly designed his office to intimidate anyone sitting in it.

The walls were dark green, half paneled in dark oak, and lined with heavy oak bookshelves, all stuffed full of officious looking leather bound tomes. There was a huge stag's head hung on the wall behind the desk, the antlers gleaming lethally in the dim light coming through the windows, the animal's glass eyes directed on the chair she was currently sitting in, which was unnerving.

The desk itself was massive, looking like it had been carved out of a single tree, the chair behind it as imposing as a throne. There was nothing on desk itself but a slim, black computer screen.

Vera frowned at the room in general. It definitely wasn't comfortable, like the sitting room she'd just left. There was a chill in the air and a dark heaviness to the atmosphere that was . . . oppressive. And it might have gotten to her if she hadn't spent the last two years in different hospital waiting rooms, dealing with officious and self-important medical staff.

But she had. So she didn't feel either oppressed by the atmosphere or intimidated. She only felt irritated at being kept waiting. Though she was starting to think that might be intentional, too, and given what she'd already heard about Pero De la Cruz , she wouldn't be at all surprised.

To pass the time, she hummed under her breath, a song from Evita, one of her favorite musicals, and went over the last meeting she'd had with the manager of the private hospital Charles was currently staying in. The woman had given Vera a new fee schedule, which was pretty much going to bankrupt her if she wasn't careful. In order to pay for his care, she'd already used up the money she and Charles had saved to buy their own home, and if she wanted to keep him where he was, getting the best treatment he could, she was going to have to find another way to pay for it.

This job in other words.

At that moment, a door behind the desk opened, and she nearly jumped because it had been half-hidden by one of those enormous bookcases, and she hadn't noticed it before.

A man walked through it.

Vera blinked.

She hadn't been able to find any images of Pero De la Cruz , so she had no preconceived ideas of what he looked like. But in some dim region of her brain, she'd constructed the impression of a small, nasty little man, because in her experience the most difficult men were always small and nasty.

Apparently, Pero was neither.

Her first impression was that he was big. Actually, no, not just big, he was giant. He towered over that monolithic desk like Godzilla over a tiny Japanese skyscraper, and she hadn't missed the fact that his head had almost brushed the top of the doorframe as he'd walked through it.

And he wore a suit, which she found confusing since he wasn't built like any businessman she'd ever worked with. In fact, he was built more like a pro-wrestler or heavyweight boxer than some tech genius, the dark gray suit jacket pulling tight over massive shoulders, insanely muscled arms, and a hard, broad chest.

She swallowed, her gaze roving helplessly over his impressive physique, trying to reconcile her hazy idea of small nastiness with the massive, muscled reality, before finally settling on his face.

She felt something kick hard inside her.

His features were rough, but there was a brutal sort of masculine charisma to them that she found almost mesmerizing. A hard blade of a nose, strong jawline, and broad, carved cheekbones. His eyes were as black as his shaggy hair, his gaze holding hers with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs.

He stood there only a minute, staring at her, and then he was moving with the easy, loping stride of a wolf or a panther, coming straight toward her. And she found herself tensing up in her chair, bracing herself as if she was standing in the path of an avalanche and there was nowhere for her to run.

He stopped in front of her, standing between her and his huge desk, looming over her, making her feel like she was the size of an ant.

His eyes glittered and there was something feral in them, something that made her mouth go dry and fear curl up tightly in her chest. She could suddenly see why Mr. Pero De la Cruz had difficulty finding a personal assistant who lasted longer than a week.

"So," he said without any niceties at all. "You want to be my assistant?" His voice was deep, harsh, with a gravelly quality to it that for some reason felt like a velvet cloth rubbed roughly against her skin.

She stiffened, not liking the sensation. In fact, she didn't much like the punch-to-the-gut response to him, full stop. She rarely let people get under her skin, but she had a feeling that if she wasn't careful, he could. It would pay to proceed with caution from here on out.

Controlling her instinctive irritation at his rudeness, Vera met his gaze calmly. "Yes, that's the general idea."

"Why?"

The abruptness of the question caught her off guard. "Why do I want to be your assistant, you mean?"

He folded his arms, the fabric of his jacket pulling tight across his massive shoulders, and stared at her with the same kind of unblinking intensity as a great cat would stare a deer it would quite like to eat. "That's what I asked. Don't make me repeat myself."

She blinked at the roughness of his tone. Okay, so she was starting to get more of an idea of why this man was considered so difficult. He was rude. Then again, she'd dealt with rudeness before, quite frequently. In fact, she'd gotten quite a name for herself as being an assistant who could handle difficult people, so she was pretty sure she could handle Pero De la Cruz , despite whatever rumors there were about him.

"Well," she began carefully, "I'd like this job because it sounds like an exciting opportunity to-"

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"I said bullshit." His arms dropped and suddenly he was walking away from her, going over to the window and glancing out, then coming back over to where she sat and circling her.

He moved with a kind of restless, kinetic energy crackling around him that made her feel unsettled. That made her want to keep her eyes on him in case he did something. Though what, she had no idea.

"Stop talking to me about opportunities and ex-partners."