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.