Stay With Me (A BWWM Russian Billionaire Romance Novel) (Imani's Russian Billionaire Series Book 1) Read Free

for Thania. She was dazzled, she could admit it, at least to herself. He was sexy and gorgeous, and he was so famous that most people knew his name. It was beyond flattering that he would seek her out like that.
    But that still didn’t explain her reaction to him. She kept replaying the whole thing over in her head—from the moment she had noticed him to the moment he had left. She was aware enough to do what the photographer and editor asked of her—‘tilt your head, smile slightly, cross your legs’—but she wasn’t really there in her mind.
    In her mind, she was imagining what it would have been like if he had continued talking to her, and it made her cheeks flushed to the point that Len had to come over and powder her up a few times.
    “Something got you hot and bothered, doll?” he said with a laugh the last time he’d come over.
    She rolled her eyes at him. Oddly, she felt as if she had known Len forever, when she had only just met him that day.
    “You did a great job, Thania!” the photographer said with a smile, and Thania was surprised it was over that quickly. It had all gone by in a blur once Vladislav had left.
    “I hope some of them come out alright,” she said, worried now that she hadn’t given it her all, and it would show in the pictures.
    “Oh, they’ll be more than alright,” the editor said. “You look stunning in the photos we’ve already seen.”
    She said goodbye, changed clothes, removed her makeup, and walked out the magazine’s doors onto the sidewalk. She felt like a completely different person than she had when she’d walked through those same doors just a few hours earlier.

2
Vlad
    V lad heard Maks talk , but he didn’t really listen; his mind was back at the photo shoot from yesterday, thinking about the woman he had seen there. It seems that was all he had been doing since first laying eyes on her.
    She was breathtaking. She wore gold bracelets, and they glinted against her skin like bronze in the sunlight. As soon as he saw her, he knew he had to have her. It was really that simple. He was used to getting what he wanted, but he wasn’t sure how to find her.
    “Vlad…Vlad!” Maksim Pelegin tried to get his attention, and Vlad swung his eyes toward the company’s chief counsel.
    “Sorry,” Vlad murmured, still somewhat lost in thought.
    “What has got you so distracted?” Vlad looked across the conference table at the man that asked the question, Mickhail Dvortsov, the heir to the jewelry empire.
    These two men were the people he trusted most in the world, but something held him back from sharing his thoughts with them.
    “We’ve discussed all of our business. In fact, I think it’s time for a cocktail,” Maks said, as he got up and walked over to the cherry wood bar built in to the corner of the conference room.
    There was no need to ask what the other two men would be drinking—Maks reached into the specially designed chiller and pulled out a freezing bottle of Elit by Stolichnaya. He pulled three vintage Dyatkovsky crystal vodka glasses from the shelf and poured a generous amount in each. Careful not to clink the 200-year-old crystal glasses against each other, he carried them back to the table, placing one in front of each of his friends. Finally, he sat down in his seat, pushing the Eames chair back so that he could relax and cross his legs.
    The three men were used to the very best that life had to offer. None of them batted an eye at Maks opening yet another $3,000 bottle of vodka, or drinking it out of $500 crystal glasses made in the oldest factory in Russia.
    “So, what is going on?” Mick asked once they had all pushed back from the table and gotten comfortable after a few sips of the vodka.
    Vlad abruptly stood up and started to pace. Mick and Maks exchanged looks—neither of them had seen Vlad act like this before. Vlad finally stopped pacing and stood facing the floor-to-ceiling windows with his hands in his pockets. He looked at the darkened