#valko angst

“Hey! C’mon, little wolf. It’s just a bad dream, wake up.” 

Your eyes snap open as a strangled sob rips from your throat, tears burning and throat tight as you struggle to catch your breath.

“Woah, it’s okay!” Valko, your strong, warm, breathing Valko lays in front of you. Amber eyes glowing even in the darkness of your bedroom, filled with pure concern. 

“It was just a nightmare, it’s okay.” he hadn’t the slightest clue as to what you dreamt of to terrify you in such a way. All he knew is you were shaking, sobbing in your sleep and whimpering out his name loud enough that it woke up.

So, by default, it must have been something utterly horrid. He’s never seen you this shaken before, not even in the depths of battle. 

“V-valko…?” it hiccuped out of you, hands physically shaking as you cupped his warm cheeks. Skin that was warm, alive, blood rushing just beneath. Still circulating. Felt his pulse thrumming under your fingertips, felt his breath ghosting your tear stained face.

“I’m here, little wolf. M’right here.” 

He’s dragging you in, not asking questions, just cradling you to his chest. The chest that had felt so surreal, so cold and still. It sends a renewed wave of tears brimming over your eyes. “Y-you died.” You managed to cry into his chest.

The words were so jagged and bitter that Valko swore he could taste the poison on his own tongue. “I-in my dream, you were dead. It f-felt so r-real, V-val…!” 

You were grieving him, and he was right here. Alive, warm, holding you. Yet you were hysterical. Laying before him, a shaken shell of a woman as you sobbed into his chest over something that never actually happened.

But something that clearly felt so real that it had rattled you to your very core.

It felt as if someone had cracked open his ribcage and wrapped their fist around his heart, as if his own evol were squeezing it in a vice grip. Ready to pop it for all that it was worth. “Hey, hey, look at me. Baby, I need you to look at me.” 

Baby. 

The very pet-name that the two of you always made fun of. Noses scrunching and immediately side eyeing the other when you heard a couple use it in public.

Yet, it was always the first thing to slip past your lips when the other was upset, or hurt, or maybe both. “Baby, take a deep breath, please.” Now, he was begging.

“It wasn’t real, I’m alive. See? You feel this?” 

He shifts, pushing back just enough to grab one of your trembling hands and place it firmly against his bare chest. Right above the steadfast pounding of his very much alive and working heart. “See? It’s beating, it’s pushing my blood through my body as we speak. I’m alive, right here next to you, little wolf.” 

You feel it, strong and real, and slowly you can find the will to even your breathing.

“Good girl, deep breaths.” It’s meant to be encouraging, yet it makes you feel just a little light headed. “Don’t say things like that.” You mumble, using your free hand to wipe away the wetness on your cheeks. 

“I can’t praise you?” A genuine sound of surprise, as if he can’t fathom why he shouldn't be proud of you for overcoming a very obvious panic attack.

“S’not what I was talking about.” Nasally, your nose is annoyingly stuffed from all the tears. “Then wha…oh.” Mildly startled at the realization, but it doesn't stop the toothy grin that suddenly tugs the corners of his lips. 

“You were just sobbing, now you’re getting flustered?” The hand he still had held to his chest now wiggled free from his grasp, lifting slightly to haul off and playfully smack him. “Consider it a successful distraction.” 

You shuffle closer to him, pressing your once wet face into his chest. Inhaling his scent, letting it fully relax the last of the tension still stored within your shoulders.

"You smell good, Val." It's fully muffled into his chest, vibrating his skin and earning a delicate chuckle. "You always ask me what you smell like, why don't you tell me what I smell like, hmm?" Your bodies fit together like puzzle pieces, arms and legs finding their natural home slotted in, on, or around the others'.

"You smell like a man." It's blunt, and you feel rather than hear his laughter. "You smell clean, like all the time. Expensive, too. Like incense and woods, fresh air with a hint of smoke. You also smell a bit like chocolate but I'm pretty sure that's because of your hidden stash." He tenses, how on earth did you find the stash?

"You also smell like my coconut lotion, the one I let you borrow when your regular one ran out but then you liked it so much that you just bought a bottle for yourself."

He smiles at that, one of the earlier memories in your relationship. Also one of his fondest. "Most of all." You yawn into his skin, nuzzling into his chest as if you could truly burrow your way inside of it. "You smell like home, Val."

In the quiet of your shared bedroom, with the nightmare pushed far behind you, Valko wondered if you could hear how hard his heart was hammering from that statement.

Banner is from @/cafekitsune

Imagine you find your husband but he is no longer the man you remember. There's a coldness in his eyes that you've never seen before and he greets you like an employee. You think this must be some terrible prank but when you try to snuggle up to him and ask him for reassurance, he pushes you back.

Imagine it's then that a sick kind of despair starts to creep into your heart. He no longer has the tattoo on his ring finger that matches yours. In a panic, you glance down and realize yours is gone as well. You begin to spiral.

Imagine he advises you to adjust his schedule because he has a new meeting that needs to be added in as soon as possible. You are no longer his spouse but his Personal Assistant.

Imagine you leave the room and run. You don't know where you are going but you know you can't stay there. You need space to breathe and time to think. You turn your phone off and get on a train, not caring for the final destination. You keep moving all night to get as far away from him as you can from him. You finally fall asleep in a hotel room in an unknown city, hoping that all of this is just a giant nightmare. Tomorrow will be a better day.

Imagine you open your eyes and you are sitting at a desk and MC is in front of you. She's here for her meeting. You want to throw up.

Only that final text from Valko remained, along with the encrypted files he had sent.

Sometimes you caught yourself rereading his message just to reassure yourself that he had been real at all. That you had not imagined the giant nerdy werewolf who had barged into your life, lectured you about spiders and melted into a puddle every time you scratched behind his ears.

But you refused to lose hope.

You found a moon-shaped outdoor lamp and placed it on your balcony, where it stayed lit every hour of every day. He had asked you to keep the light on for him, and that was exactly what you intended to do.

You were living on autopilot now. You worked from home during the day, and in the evenings you kept searching the web for answers, trying to find an explanation of what had happened to him. Since Valko had worried about you staying cooped up in your apartment, you had also developed a habit of taking an hour-long walk in the nearby park each day.

No matter the weather, you went there.

Sometimes you listened to music. Most days, though, you simply walked beneath the trees in silence, hoping against all reason that one day you would catch sight of your giant boyfriend’s figure ahead of you.

Until then, you kept walking.

And every night, when you returned home, the little moon lamp was still there on the balcony, quietly lighting the way.

Just in case Valko came back.

Eventually, you lost track of time. The rigid routine of your days blurred together until they all felt the same. You were returning from your walk one evening and as usual, your gaze lifted toward your balcony, expecting to see the now-familiar glow of the moon lamp.

But your balcony was dark.

Your heart lurched.

For one stunned second you stood frozen on the sidewalk, staring up at the empty darkness where the light should have been.

Then you ran.

You practically barged through the building doors, not even waiting for the elevator. Instead, you sprinted up the stairs, your breath coming fast, your heart hammering in your ears, one thought repeating over and over in your head.

The light must stay on.

You fumbled with your keys as you unlocked the door to your apartment. Barely managing to close it behind you, you rushed straight to the balcony and switched on the lamp.

You bent forward with your hands on your knees, dragging in slow, shaky breaths and trying to calm down your heartbeat. For several long minutes, you stood there in silence, just breathing.

Then, still trembling, you made your way to the bedroom. You did not notice that the door was slightly ajar. You did not turn on the lights either. Too tired, too shaken you simply padded over to the wardrobe to grab a change of clothes.

A sudden noise from the bed made you freeze.

You turned slowly, squinting into the darkness.

And then you saw it.

A giant shadow on your bed.

For one horrible second your mind went completely blank. The only reason you did not scream was because your throat locked so tightly that not a single sound could escape. All coherent thought vanished. Your brain began conjuring every monster, ghost, murderer and nightmare creature you had ever seen in a horror movie, each one worse than the last, until the room itself seemed to shrink around you.

You stood there, unable to move, unable to breathe properly, staring at the enormous shape on your bed and wondering what exactly had found its way into your apartment.

The shadow on your bed moved.

You reacted instantly, lunging for the door. With your eyes squeezed shut, you fumbled for the light switch and slammed it on, hoping the sudden brightness would blind whatever was in your room long enough for you to escape.

The moment the lights came on, you heard a sharp curse behind you, followed by a loud thud, as if something had fallen straight onto the floor.

Your first instinct was to run. Your second was to freeze, because your brain finally caught up to the voice.

It was familiar. Very familiar.

Slowly, cautiously, you turned around and fixed your gaze on the squirming, muttering pile of sheets and blankets lying near your bed. For a second, all you could see was a mess of fabric twisting and shifting. Then a familiar head finally emerged from the chaos. Crimson hair stuck out in every direction, one ear was completely flattened against his head, and the other twitched furiously.

“Val?..” you asked carefully.

The head immediately snapped toward you, amber eyes locking onto yours.

“Hi?..” Valko answered with an awkward, sheepish smile.

For one long, stunned moment, your brain refused to cooperate. It was still scrambling to make sense of the scene in front of you.

Somehow, Valko had managed to untangle himself from the blankets, and now he was sitting on the floor in the middle of the heap, looking far too large and far too embarrassed. His ears twitched once, then twice, while his tail thumped softly against the floor behind him.

He looked less like a terrifying intruder and more like a very guilty puppy who had been caught doing something incredibly stupid.

“I... err...” Valko rubbed the back of his neck, clearly struggling to find the right words. “I underestimated how much I missed you.”

You raised your brows, your brain still refusing to fully process what was happening.

“And?”

You could practically see the red spreading across his face and neck.

“Well,” he said, looking anywhere but at you, “I came here, but you were gone. I wanted to track you down, but...” Valko trailed off and lowered his gaze. “The whole apartment smelled like you, and I...” His face was now almost the same color as his hair.

You looked at him. Then at the pile of blankets. Then back at him.

It finally clicked in your mind.

“Did you roll around on my bed, because you missed my scent?” you asked, amusement creeping into your voice.

The quiet, miserable whine that came from him was answer enough.

Then you burst out laughing. Valko groaned and dropped his face into his hands, his ears flattening even further.

Still giggling, you finally walked over to him and crouched down in front of him. Reaching up, you gently scratched behind both of his ears.

Valko let out another small, utterly pathetic whine before wrapping his arms around you and pulling you close. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, taking one long, shaky breath. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with your familiar scent. Only then did his entire body finally relax. The tension melted out of his shoulders. His ears slowly perked back up beneath your fingers, and you felt his tail give a slow contented thump against the floor before curling around the two of you.

You hugged him just as tightly, resting your cheek against his hair as the fear, worry, and loneliness of the past few weeks finally drained from your own body.

Neither of you said anything for a long moment. There was nothing that needed saying.

He was here.

He was safe.

He had come home.

You smiled softly and tightened your embrace just a little.

"Welcome back, Val."

You’d think that in a fancy building like this one, smack dab in the middle of downtown Linkon’s sparkling financial district, that things would be better maintained than most. Instead, you’d gotten onto the elevator at the thirty-fifth floor, the prestigious executive suite, only to get stuck between floors twenty-eight and twenty-nine just seconds later.

It’s nearly ten o’clock on a Friday night. Almost everyone has already gone home for the night, with the exception of you because a) they say you have a problem, and the word they most often use is “workaholic”, and b) when you’re executive assistant to the chairman to EonCore Tech, there’s rarely ever a day when you leave right at five.

And the Chairman himself?

You look up, the glass surrounding the elevator letting in more than enough moonlight for you to see Valko leaning against the wall. You do your best not to swoon, watching silently as he reaches up to run one large hand through his auburn hair. His suit jacket is unbuttoned, and your eyes cannot help their descent down the length of his tie towards—

“‘Dang bored’, she says,” a small huff of laughter, and then Valko is looking back at you. You try not to squirm under his golden yellow stare, try not to break eye contact too quickly lest he starts getting that look on his face—the one that says he’s worried about you—and your resolve starts to weaken. He stares at you for a second, then two, before he relents and turns away, allowing you to breathe again. “Fine. I’d pick you then.”

“Me?” You blink.

“Yeah, you,” and then he’s smirking.

“…Why?” You ask with narrowed eyes, slowly angling your body away and giving him a dirty look, even though you’re pretty sure your blood’s just turned into lava when he gives you a slow, very deliberate once-over.

“Why do you think?” He’s still smirking. Asshole.

“You—!” You raise your fist threateningly, but Valko just snickers. One of his canines poke out over his plush lower lip, and with the way he side-eyes you with such mirth, it’s a deadly combination.

You want to punch him in his stupid, perfect face. Or shove your tongue down his beautiful throat. Or punch him and then shove your tongue down his throat. Oh yes, that sounds delectable—

Nope, dangerous territory. Abort. I said abort!

He doesn’t make it easy for you.

“Mmm… I’d make you do things you never do, sweetheart,” he says, tone dripping with suggestion. You glare and move like you’re going to hit him, but he doesn’t even flinch. He just continues giggling like a giant kid, “Yeah, I’d drink and curse like a sailor. Have you ever even dropped an F-bomb before?”

You kiss your teeth, cheeks growing warm. “Of course I have.”

He obviously doesn’t believe you. “And I’d go out on Friday nights instead of sitting at your desk here in this boring old place. I’ve told you a million times, you don’t need to stay late just because I do.”

You don’t say anything. He thinks you do it because you’re dedicated to your job, and you are, but a larger part of the reason is you’ll take all you can get when it comes to him. That’s what you get for being the world’s biggest cliche, and falling in love with your perfect, stupidly hot, and ultimately unattainable boss.

“I’d also make you splurge on things other than old books and thrift store yarn. I pay you enough, don’t I?” He smiles, and you just roll your eyes.

“Not nearly enough. How about a 500% raise?”

“I know you’re kidding, but I’ve already got the paperwork drafted in my office.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“I’ve left the amount blank,” he shrugs, “you can put in whatever salary you want and I’ll pay it. Show me anyone who says you don’t deserve it and I’ll tell them otherwise.”

“Valko, nobody pays their assistant two hundred thousand—”

“Maybe then you’ll start buying your pantsuits in other colours besides grey.”

You open your mouth to refute that last statement, because of course you have other clothes, but then you look down at your grey dress pants and matching grey jacket.

“This is sexual harassment,” is what you go with instead.

Valko balks, but he’s still smiling. That is not good. Well, actually, it’s downright brilliant, but it’s also absolutely terrible. For your heart, that is. And for the heat that is currently pooling between your legs—

“How is that sexual harassment?”

If only he knew. “What would you rather me wear to work then?”

“That’s not what I meant,” the bastard is laughing now. Actually, it’s more of a chuckle, a sound that makes you want to press your ear to his chest so you can hear it directly from the source. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m rather fond of the pantsuits, actually.”

You try not to hone in on whatever the heck that means. You can spiral about that later, once you’ve been rescued and you’re in the safety of your own home. “What did you mean then?”

He sighs. “Nothing.”

You gasp, clutching at your non-existent pearls. “You want me to wear nothing?!”

Just say the word, boss.

“No!” His eyes go wide while you try not to let the disappointment show, and one of his large hands—which you certainly do not think about at all late at night when you’re in bed, alone and lonely—reaches across the darkness to shove at your shoulder lightly. The contact is so brief, maybe half a second, but it sparks warmth all the way down your arm and across your chest. “Stop doing that.”

You stop doing that.

“Doing what?” You challenge, and his eyes remain bright with amusement, soft with something you might mistake for genuine affection if you were delusional enough. Valko does care about you, you know that, but not in the way you want. Not in the way you need. It makes you ache in all sorts of ways.

“You’re messing with me,” his smile grows wolfish, one of his eyebrows quirking in a way that threatens to turn all the cartilage in your knees into jelly.

“You mess with me all the time,” you turn away to sulk a little, about this and about all the things he doesn’t know about. Subsequently, you don’t notice the way his gaze dips slightly, towards the vicinity of your pouting, flowering lips.

“Yeah,” he slowly looks away, too slowly, as though reluctant… but you don’t catch that either. “But I’m allowed. I’m the boss.”

He doesn’t always act like it though, which is the crux of your problem. You could handle being hopelessly in love with your boss, so long as you could keep a clearly drawn line between the two of you. You could keep your head down and do your job, putting on a mask that you would only take off once you were alone and he was far enough away.

Except the line has now blurred into a giant unrecognizable blob.

You should be grateful. Your boss is reasonable, patient, and never asks too much of you. In fact, sometimes he seems to take it upon himself to assist you, rather than the other way around.

“How many hours did you sleep last night?” Valko would ask you, arms crossed over his chest, glasses slipping down the perfect slope of his nose. He looked like a stern, sexy teacher. You didn’t know you’d be into that until right that very moment.

You hesitated to answer, because you knew it’d be one he wouldn’t appreciate. But he’d just wait patiently, until you could no longer stand the silence or the staring. “…Four.”

“Four?!” And then he’d be almost having a meltdown. “Are you—?! Haa… take the rest of the day. No, actually, it’s not negotiable. And I’m watching you, don’t even try to sneak any files home to work on them later. Your laptop stays here, understand?”

He makes you tea.

On your very first day, he brought you to the break room and showed you how to use that fancy espresso machine that probably cost more than your monthly rent. He made you a cup and then slid it across the counter, waiting for you to take a sip. “You’ll never have coffee any other way, I promise.”

You hesitated, but still picked up the tiny little cup and smiled at him. “Thank you, sir.”

“Please, just Valko.”

“Okay. Thank you, Valko.”

“…”

“…”

“You don’t drink coffee, do you?”

“Not even a little, I’m sorry.”

But then boxes of xiangpian and tieguanyin showed up in the cupboards just days later, and he brewed a cup for you every morning ever since.

“Shouldn’t I be doing this for you?” You asked him one day, standing up to take the steaming, perfectly steeped cup from him and placing it onto your desk.

“You’re my executive assistant, not my personal assistant,” was what he’d said before starting the short walk back to his office. “Besides, I’ve got a pair of perfectly good hands and I know how to use ‘em.”

You looked up at his retreating back, startled, but it didn’t seem like he realized what that sounded like. He stopped in his tracks, his ears suddenly turning bright red before he whirled around and stuttered, “Oh shit, th-that’s not what I meant!”

It only endeared him to you further.

He asks you about your cats.

He doesn’t even like cats. You know because he’s mentioned before that he’s more of a dog person, and because he wrinkles his nose in what you can only describe as mild disgust when he sees the cat hairs on your clothes sometimes.

“How are the… felines?” He’d ask, barely able to suppress a shudder, spitting that last word out like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Still licking their own privates?”

You rolled your eyes. “Dogs do that too, you know.”

He ignored you. “Better not choke to death in your apartment. They’d eat your corpse and nobody would ever know what happened to you.”

You just shrugged, having already run a cost-benefit analysis in your head when you first adopted Miso and Mirin, “At least it’d save my family the cost of a cremation.”

Valko burst out laughing, but once the laughter had subsided, he’d said, “I’d look for you.”

“You would?”

“Wouldn’t stop until I found ya.”

“But there’d be nothing to find,” you pointed out for this peculiar little scenario, but when you looked up from the document you were reading, he just nodded and shrugged his shoulders.

You looked away immediately and didn’t say anything after that, because he couldn’t possibly mean what you thought he meant.

If he did, he was just kidding. Valko did that a lot. He was a funny guy.

It’s your job to help him manage his calendar, but there are dates he remembers even without being prompted. March 17, the date you started working at EonCore, is marked on his calendar as your “anniversary”. See? Funny.

Except he makes sure to keep his calendar clear after noon. He orders takeout for dinner, because he knows you don’t like going out to crowded restaurants on weeknights after a long work day. He always orders from your favourite place, the Thai restaurant just a few blocks away.

The two of you have a standing order—cashew fish, mango salad, and panang curry with a generous side of jasmine rice, all made medium spicy.

“Plus a giant cup of iced water,” he would announce proudly before plopping the takeout bags and your water onto your desk. “Because you’re a freak of nature.”

“If you want me to stay hydrated, the water must be iced.” You told him unapologetically.

And then the two of you would sit at your respective desks, the office smelling like coconut and curry paste, everything quiet except for the scraping of utensils, the clicking of your keyboards, and the occasional comment or question about what you were working on.

He’d give you a ride home, waiting until just before you got out to say in a joking manner, “Oh, hey. Happy anniversary.”

What choice would you have but to say it back, smiling even though you wanted to cry, knowing it would never mean the other thing?

And he remembers your birthday. Every single year without fail, even though it’s not on either of his calendars, work or personal. You’ve checked.

What kind of boss breezes into the office on a Thursday morning, looking the way he does, and says loud enough for everyone to hear, “Guess what I got for my favourite assistant for her special day?”

Like, what the heck?

It’s even worse because he doesn’t simply throw his money around. He doesn’t toss designer jewelry onto your desk that will just sit in their velvet boxes, tucked away in a drawer because you’re too afraid to damage or lose it. He never bothers with impractical trinkets or fancy gadgets that serve no other purpose than to show off its hefty price tag. He doesn’t just hand over his credit card and say something like, “Buy yourself something nice.”

No. He puts thought into the gifts he buys for people he cares about, and even though you don’t always necessary end up liking the gift, you’re a firm believer of it’s the thought that counts.

“Surprise library?!” You gasped, eyes gleaming, spinning around in your chair and ignoring the way your heart stuttered at the sight of him. You’d gotten pretty good at pretending after all this time.

“What?” Valko faltered slightly, but then placed a very pretty pink box onto your desk. “Uh, no. Not that.”

You deflated and muttered, “It’s never a surprise library.”

“Just open it, ya weirdo.” He tapped the box and urged you to undo the matching pink ribbon, and when you did, you were only further disappointed when you brushed aside the layers of tissue paper and pulled out… a taser?

“What…?” You looked up at him, puzzled, wondering if he’d picked up the wrong box this morning or was just messing with you like he always did. But his facial expression didn’t change, he just leaned forward to take the thing out of the box and show you how to use it.

“You’re a single woman living alone in the city, and you refuse to buy a gun—”

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m normal—”

“This is my solution.”

“Well, it’s a dumb solution.”

“Hey.”

You said that, but it was actually kind of sweet that he cared about your personal safety enough to even dwell on the matter at all. You pictured him at the store purchasing it, all serious in the way that he gets when it comes to stuff like this… all for you.

A swell of affection within you surged up so quickly it almost spilled out from your lips, but you bit down on the inside of your cheek and swallowed it back down.

“And even if someone does break into my place, by the time I get close enough to use this on them, they’d have already shot me in the face and looted my things.”

“And that is why I signed you up for self-defence lessons last year,” Valko sighed, still holding the taser because you refused to take it from him. You weren’t really a weapons kind of girl. “You never went, did you?”

“No,” you admitted easily, not because you didn’t think they were worth it, but because when would you even have time to go? You’re either here burning the midnight oil, or you’re at home trying to get some sleep. “But thank you, sir.”

Valko smiled, even though he didn’t really like it when you called him that. “Oh. Well, you’re welcome—”

“For the useless, useless gift.”

But it got worse. Because that was yesterday.

Today, you stepped out of the elevator and just stood there, mouth slightly agape when you saw a brand new triple wide bookshelf anchored to the wall behind your desk. It was painted a beautiful sage green, complete with elegantly arched baffles and intricate gold detailing, all eighteen of its shelves bursting with genres of all sorts.

When your brain started working again, you approached your desk to find a single book lying on top of the box that still held your brand new taser. You picked it up and turned it over to read the cover—The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence by Gavin de Becker—and rolled your eyes, but also smiled so wide that you thought your cheeks might tear.

You were still holding the book when the thought occurred to you, wiping the smile from your face. This was no longer working. You might have been able to pretend up until this point, but now that he’d gone and done the nicest and most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for you, it is the last straw.

How are you supposed to keep things professional now? You don’t think you can go another full day without dissolving into a sad weeping mess, without him running over to ask you what was wrong, and then all the words you’re not allowed to say and feelings you’re not supposed to have come spilling out and you’ll have to stand there and listen as he tells you sorry.

Because you’re not his type. Yes, Valko flirts. You don’t think he realizes he’s doing it, sometimes. Yes, he calls you his “work wife” and then people started talking—as they inevitably do when a successful and powerful businessman has a good relationship with his female assistant—and he’d winked at you and said, “Well, since everyone already thinks we’re sleeping together, I might as well drop the ‘work’ and just call you ‘wife’.”

You thought you’d burst into flames, but he was just trying to lighten the mood. It was his way of telling you not to mind the rumours, because he could stand up to defend your honour and integrity, deny it until he was blue in the face, but people would still whisper behind closed doors. So as long as the two of you had a clear conscience, nothing else mattered.

And you’d seen the women who come in here, with their expensive designer dresses and stiletto heels, curves in all the right places. They lean against his desk and smile coquettishly, batting their eyelashes and laughing a bit too loud whenever he says something even remotely amusing. He’d smile back, that smirk that is both infuriating and tantalizing, his head tilting playfully to the side and you’d have to force yourself to look away.

But the worst is when she comes in. Unlike the others, this woman doesn’t sneer down at you when she asks if Valko’s in. If he’s busy, she sits down in one of the chairs in the lounge while she waits and makes friendly small talk. “If he ever gives you any trouble, let me know and I’ll beat him up for you. Us girlies gotta stick together.”

You’d smile, because she really is so darn nice. But when she comes in, Valko suddenly becomes shut off. They go into his office and he tells you they aren’t to be disturbed. When you try to ask for details after, he doesn’t tell you. You don’t even know her name. She is only known to you as Miss Hunter, and she is the only part of Valko’s life that you are not privy to.

It’s fine, though. You’re fine. You’ll be fine.

There are lots of jobs out there. Maybe not one that pays as good as this one or one that you enjoy nearly as much, but at the very least you can hope that your next boss won’t be a walking romantic hazard, sex on impossibly long legs.

Maybe he’ll even be a married balding man in his fifties, happily married for decades with grown children, who doesn’t give you butterflies or filthy, unspeakable ideas that you fantasize about in the privacy of your own mind.

Yes, it is fine.

You will email him your resignation letter over the weekend. You’ll make up some excuse as to why you can’t give him the standard two weeks’ notice and beg for a reference letter, so you don’t have to look him in the eye when he demands to know why. So that he can’t try to talk you out of it, because he will succeed.

Oh, god. The Surprise Library. You won’t even get to enjoy it. He just bought it too. It probably cost a lot. Well, for you. For him it was probably just a drop in the bucket.

You won’t give him the chance though. This is for your own good. In a few short months, he’ll have forgotten all about you and you’ll be moving on instead of spending every waking moment thinking about how badly you want his mouth on yours, or precisely what those hands are capable of, or that you want him pressed so close up against you that it makes tears spring to your eyes—

“What about you?” Valko suddenly asks.

“Huh?” You blink, only now realizing it’s been quiet for a bit too long, prompting him to break the silence.

“Who’d you pick? If you could switch bodies.”

You compose yourself. Security should be doing their rounds around the building soon, so it’s only a matter of time before someone realizes the elevator isn’t working and Valko’s car hasn’t left the parking lot. You just need to get through this final stretch and then you can go home and spend the weekend crying over a broken heart he knows nothing about, like you do most weekends.

“You, of course,” you say as nonchalantly as you can. Valko smirks, all cocky and smug, but before he can start cracking wise, you beat him to the punch. “For one, I’d steal all your money. Nobody can do anything about it because on paper, you’re just giving it to me.”

This doesn’t seem to rattle him nearly as much as it should though, because he just grins like he’s actually entertaining the idea. You try a different approach.

“And all that time you spend at the gym? All in vain, my friend. I’d eat everything and do, like, negative exercise. You know I hate working out.”

Now his smile drops. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I most definitely would,” you double down, starting to laugh at the mental image. “I’d sit under a conveyer belt of food. I’m not burning one calorie for you.”

“Aw, sweetheart, that’s not funny!” He stands up straight now, gesturing at his immaculate body. “I’ve worked hard for this!”

Yes, he obviously has, and it has clearly paid off, but you’re not going there right now. “I’d eat until you grow moobs that touch the floor.”

His hands immediately fly up to cover his pecs, and you pretend like you aren’t looking at the way his broad shoulders, sculpted chest, and bulging arms are absolutely stuffed into that white dress shirt.

God, he’s huge.

Your mind wanders, imagining just how huge he’d feel towering over you, your hands on the wide expanse of his back as he leans down to kiss you—

Well, so much for not going there.

You clear your throat. “Oh, and I’d throw away all your protein powder.”

That gets the biggest reaction yet. He’s absolutely aghast now. “You actually can’t. Protein powder is expensive!”

“You’re not a bodybuilder, Valko, or a professional athlete—”

“What do you actually know? I could be training—”

“You don’t need to add protein to everything!”

See, this is good. You won’t think about how angry and disappointed he’ll be come Monday morning. That’s a problem for another day.

“Says the woman with the noodle arms.”

You gasp. “Take that back!”

He snickers again. “Quick, drop and give me twenty.”

For tonight, you’ll just enjoy what you have while you still can.