Then she visibly strengthened and blew out the breath she’d evidently been holding.
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all. So, what are we having for dessert, boss?”
Chapter 3
Aubrey
I marched up to the sink in the incredibly overdone bathroom, slammed my palms down on the marble countertop, and leaned forward until my nose was only an inch from the mirror, staring at my reflection. Willing that girl in the mirror to be better. Willing her to be braver.
“Girl, it is now or never,” I muttered to my reflection. “This is your chance, and if you don’t take advantage of it, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. You’ve got the speech. You’ve got enough champagne in your blood to fuel an entire rocket. You’ve got him alone and out of the office. Get. It. Together.”
The last three words came out in a growl, and I narrowed my eyes at myself, trying to somehow send energy and bravery and backbone to myself.
Yeah, I know it sounded stupid. But I’d had about twice as much champagne as I should have had—especially with how little I’d been able to eat of my dinner. I hadn’t meant to drink so much, but the fact was that I had, and now I had to deal with that. And this little lecture? It made sense in my head. And it was, surprisingly, actually making me feel better.
Stronger. More ready.
We were finished with dessert, which meant that the night was almost at an end. After that, we’d be going our separate ways. So I only had a small window of time to make my move if I was going to tell Damon how I felt.
I’d spent several hours memorizing the speech earlier today. I knew it was good.
I just had to get up the courage to actually spit it out.
“Get it done,” I told reflection-me, glaring daggers at myself.
The girl in the mirror glared daggers back at me, like she had a major bone to pick, and I took those daggers and injected them right into my spine. Hey, daggers are made of steel, right? So… basically injecting steel into my spine?
Like I said, I’d had a lot of champagne. It made sense at the time.
And that was how I found myself marching back out of the bathroom and heading right for Damon, who was standing next to the exit, waiting for me. He took one look at my face and blanched, and I quickly checked my own expression. Was I still glaring daggers? Because those hadn’t been meant for him.
Shoot. I tried to put the daggers away, wondering how quickly I could rearrange my face—and what excuse I could make for having looked at him that way. After all, it wasn’t exactly the tone I wanted to set.
Hey, sorry I looked like I wanted to kill you, and by the way, I have a huge crush on you and how about we try a relationship?
Yeah, I didn’t think that would work well.
I must have looked sick rather than angry, though, because instead of rearing back and asking me why I was so mad, he reached out a quick hand and grabbed my elbow.
I jerked back into myself then, all my senses focused suddenly on the spot where his hand grasped me. We hardly ever touched each other. Not because we didn’t like each other, but because I was his assistant. It wasn’t professional to touch each other often.
Which meant that I wasn’t used to his hands being on me. In real life. In my mind, I’d dreamt about it more times than I cared to count.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look… I don’t know, off-balance or something.”
“I’m fine,” I said blearily, knowing that I was anything but. “I’ve just had a bit too much to drink, I think.”
Yes, that was the problem. That was why I had that buzzing in my brain, and under my skin. Because that buzzing definitely didn’t come from his hand on my elbow, the heat of his touch burning itself right into my bare skin.
And that buzzing most definitely wasn’t working its way quickly through my body and down into my core, making me feel like I’d swallowed a ball of fire or something.
He did a quick shuffling maneuver that had me preceding him out the door, his hand still on my elbow, and propelled me toward the circular drive in front of the restaurant. I struggled against him, though, remembering vaguely that I had parked in the parking lot to the side of the restaurant.
“I’m parked in the lot, not with the valet,” I said, trying to turn around.
He stopped me without really even trying.
“And you’re in no shape to drive home,” he answered. “You’ve had rather a lot to drink. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
Oh, I’d noticed. I’d had glass after glass of champagne as I tried to work up the bravery to tell him how I felt. And it hadn’t done one whit of good. It had just made my tongue twist up even more.
“I can still drive,” I said. Lied. Because I knew for a fact that I couldn’t. Hell, if one of my friends had been this hammered and then said that they wanted to drive home, I would have physically tied them up, tossed them into the back seat of my truck, and locked the door behind them.
But I also didn’t want him thinking I was so helpless that I couldn’t take care of myself. I’d rather sleep it off in my truck than let him think he needed to take care of me. I knew this area. I’d be perfectly fine.
And if I was locked in my truck, there was less chance of me doing anything drunkenly stupid. I was still sober enough to know how important that was.
I pulled against him again, trying to make my point, and this time he stopped me and turned me around so he could lean close to my face, his dark eyes intense.
“I won’t let you, Aubrey,” he breathed. “You think I’m going to let the most important girl in my life drive home alone when she can barely even stand up by herself?”
I snapped my mouth shut and swallowed heavily, heart racing at those words. The most important girl in his life? What was that supposed to mean? As far as I knew, he barely even thought of me as a girl! And I knew for a fact that there were several other ‘important’ girls that he went out with regularly.
I mean. Technically, he went out with a different girl every week. So maybe that made them all important.
Still. I’d vowed to myself to tell him tonight how I felt about him. Maybe he was giving me the perfect opportunity.
“Okay,” I whispered, unable to come up with anything more elegant than that.
Before I knew it, Damon was ushering me toward the valet stand and telling the valet that his limo was parked in their lot. The valet was nodding and giving Damon a fairly awed look, then telling us that he’d run and let the driver know.
Within moments, Damon was helping me slide into the back of the enormous black car, then sliding in after me. He kept sliding until he was right next to me, his thigh pressed against mine, his hand resting on my arm.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, all concern. “Do you need anything?”
“I… I…”
Need to tell you how I feel about you, my brain supplied. Those were the next words in the speech I’d thought up. Those were the things I needed to say. Right now was when I needed to say them.
Only my tongue had suddenly turned into an enormous cotton ball and some nerve monster had eaten my voice and spit it out on the other side of the parking lot.
I gulped, trying to swallow that cotton, and then opened my mouth.
“Damon, I need to tell you something,” I started. I turned and scooted away from him a little bit to get some air between us. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for about four years now, and I’ve just never had the courage. I…”
I paused, not quite able to get it out, and looked up to see him looking at me like I was the most important woman in the world, like he’d said. He was looking at me like I was the only woman for him—the only woman he had any time for right now.
The only woman that mattered. For once in our entire acquaintance, I was the only woman that mattered. I wasn’t ordering flowers for the girl he’d taken out last night and wasn’t going to call today. I was commanding all of his attention.
And something happene
d. Something that I swear I didn’t think about beforehand or really even control. When I saw him looking at me like that, I took all my courage in my hands, closed my eyes, leaned in, and kissed him.
Chapter 4
Damon
I’d been watching her closely as she started to speak, stuttering and stopping and starting again, because I’d been trying to figure out if she was okay. Now, I was watching her even more closely because she’d jerked away from me like I was burning her or something.
Aubrey never acted like that. She was also one of the most responsible people I’d ever met. She kept my schedule organized and ruled with an iron fist, and made sure that everyone around us was always doing the best thing for the company. She knew how to handle every employee in every one of my companies—and often had to, if I wasn’t around—and knew all of the details of my business dealings. She was more than a marketing assistant. She was my VP in everything but name, and one that I sometimes thought might be able to handle the empire better than I did.
So seeing her so out of sorts about whatever she was trying to say to me, when it was just the two of us here and we weren’t talking money or business… it just didn’t seem right.
I mean, true, she’d had more to drink than she’d obviously meant to. But that didn’t seem like it could possibly be the entire story. I’d seen her with a little booze in her system before. It had never made her act like this.
I was staring at her so hard, trying to untie the knots in her behavior and figure out what was going on, that I actually saw the exact moment when she decided that she was going to kiss me.
And I didn’t do a thing to stop it. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t think, I didn’t stop to wonder whether it was a good idea or not. I didn’t even pause to try to figure out whether I wanted to kiss her back.
Nope. Because it turned out I didn’t need to think about anything like that.
My body already knew the answer.
And that had me leaning toward her, my mouth opening a bit in anticipation, my eyes on hers as they fluttered closed only inches from my face. And then my lips were meeting hers in something that was so soft, so hesitant at first, that I wondered if she was actually going to pull back and chicken out.
And though I wouldn’t have known it before—I never would have even guessed that it was a possibility—I didn’t want her to pull back. I wanted more.
I wanted her.
I put my hands up to her face, cupping her cheeks to keep that very thing from happening, and pressed harder into her, my mouth moving on hers, my hands sliding across her cheeks and then moving back to tangle in her hair and bring her face closer to mine.
Before I could even think about it, I was angling her face so that I had better access to her mouth and was running my tongue over her bottom lip, and then up against her own, starting a dance that was only halfway rational at that moment in time.
Actually, it wasn’t at all rational at that moment in time. I had a split second of realizing that I didn’t know what I was doing—or why—and let my brain run through it for just a slice of a moment. This was my freaking assistant that I was kissing. She was the most important woman in my life, as she knew every square inch of my business, inside and out, and could have run it herself if she’d had to. She was also the only steady person I’d ever had around me—which made me incredibly unwilling to ever do anything that might cause me to lose her.
And kissing her in the back of my limo, while she was drunk, was definitely something that walked a fine line there. In fact, on the list of Ways to Lose Your Assistant, I thought making out with them in the back of your car was… well, probably in the top ten, at least.
But boy, for all that was holy, did kissing her feel good.
So good that I was already starting to lose myself in it. And I didn’t know if I was willing to pull back.
Her hands ran up my chest and around my neck, then through the hair at the base of my skull, and I groaned against her mouth, unable to stop myself. Unable to even think straight anymore. Because my God, those hands. Those talented fingers, which could type about a million words per minute, and were now pressing against the back of my neck, massaging the sensitive skin there…
It was driving me freaking crazy.
I pulled her hands down from around my head and put them in her lap, then pulled back to stare at her, my breath coming hard and fast as I tried to figure out what on earth was going on.
God, I was trying to remember my name. Remember whether this was supposed to be a good idea—or if I was just going to go with it, regardless.
And that was exactly the opposite of what I needed to be thinking right now. I had to at least pretend to be a responsible adult. Maybe even try to be the man she’d always thought I was.
“You… had something you wanted to tell me?” I asked, trying like crazy to get my manners to kick in again.
She nodded, her lips pink and her eyes even darker with emotion. Then she bit her lip, and I completely lost it.
I pulled her right into my lap, threaded my arms around her waist to get her as close as possible, and claimed her mouth again. She moaned against me and squirmed a little, and that was all I needed to feel. I didn’t realize that she’d had this in her—but I also hadn’t realized that I’d evidently wanted it so badly, myself.
In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever even thought of her as anything more than just my assistant.
Or rather… well, it seemed like my body had. Maybe I just hadn’t been paying enough attention.
I broke off the kiss for one moment, my entire body screaming with frustration at the action.
“Are you sure?” I asked her hoarsely. “Because if you’re not, now’s the time to tell me. I don’t want you doing anything that you’re not absolutely positive that you want.”
She reached up and ran one fingertip along my bottom lip, sending sparks right through my body. “This is exactly what I want,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Like, sure, sure?”
“Sure, sure,” she said, nodding and looking a whole lot more sober than she had a minute ago.
And that was good enough for me. I leaned forward to press the button on the speaker that would communicate to my driver.
“John, forget her place. Take us home,” I said quickly, knowing that my voice was husky with the need to be closer to this girl.
Knowing that he would know that—if not because of my voice, then certainly because I’d changed routes and was now taking her to my home.
And I didn’t give one hot hoot about what he thought. At that moment, I only cared about getting Aubrey Simons, the most important girl in my life, back to my house and into my bed.
Chapter 5
Aubrey
When my eyes opened again, it took me at least thirty seconds to decide whether I was even alive or if I’d somehow died and woken up in Hell.
Wherever I was, it was hot. And bright. And my head was pounding so hard that I thought it might have become detached at some point—but kept its connection to the rest of my nerves, so it could keep sending those pain signals to the rest of my body.
All three of those things seemed to signify Hell, honestly. Immense pain, check. Total confusion, check. Hot and bright, check. Flames of eternity, wasn’t it?
Still. It seemed odd that Hell would only give me a headache. Wasn’t eternal damnation supposed to be way worse than that? My understanding was that it was supposed to be more like torture. Like… something that made you regret every bad thing you’d done during your lifetime.
And this didn’t really match that description. My head hurt, yeah, and now that I thought about it, my stomach didn’t feel so great, either, but this didn’t seem like eternal-torture-level pain.
This seemed like—
Oh God. Oh God, oh God! I remembered exactly what this seemed like. And at the thought, I sat straight up—both too straight, and too quickly.
The world tilted around me and
I leaned over to the side, trying desperately not to throw up at the sudden movement—or the memory of where this hangover had come from.
Dinner. Dinner with Damon. And after that, him saying that I was too drunk to drive by myself—which had definitely been true, but also hadn’t been welcome advice—and that he was going to take me home. I remembered getting into his limo.
But this wasn’t my home. This wasn’t my bed or my room or my house or the view I saw through my own windows. And that view—of the beach, a more expensive beach than I could afford—meant that this also wasn’t my side of town.
This was the rich side of town… and therefore, I was guessing I was in one of the sprawling mansions that sat on this side of town. Each with their own huge estate and a whole crew of people taking care of them and multiple-car garages and enormous swimming pools and—
Get. It. Together, a voice in my head snapped, evidently finished with the panicked babbling of my subconscious.
I gulped, trying to do what that voice told me to, and sat up again more slowly, opening my eyes as I did. And seeing the most beautiful room I’d ever seen. Not that I hadn’t seen it before—no, I’d been in here hundreds of times over the last few years. I’d been in here to help Damon pack his bags and do meetings with him when he didn’t have time to come into the office. I’d been in here to drop his dry cleaning off when he couldn’t get it himself.
I’d even been in here to take care of him when he was sick, on occasion. I’d just never actually slept here. And I’d definitely never slept in his bed. With him.
Which I had definitely done last night.
I remembered that part now. I remembered the kiss. The way he’d pushed me back and stared at me and asked me whether I was sure.
I’d said yes. And he hadn’t asked again.
And that had seen us landing here in his bed, hands clawing at each other, teeth biting, nails scratching like we’d both wanted this for years…
The Billionaire's Lockdown Baby Page 2
