The Billionaire From Chicago_A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Simply BWWM

  She didn’t think she was ever going to get to sleep that night, as her mind kept spinning at the thought that they were together in the same bed, and that he was that near to her. She finally fell asleep late into the night, but she was the only one.

  Connor could not sleep, though he tried to close his eyes, he tried to count backward, he tried everything he could think of as he laid still there in the bed with his back to her. Nothing could ease the tension in his body, nothing could lessen the magnetic pull he felt to her or the need he had to turn over and reach for her.

  He could not stop the thoughts from returning over and over to his mind; thoughts of touching her, kissing her, and feeling her beneath him. No matter how much he tried to push those thoughts from his mind, nothing kept them away, and he laid awake the whole night, aching for her, hard with desire, and bound in regret and shame over it.

  Chapter3

  Catalina awoke to the scent of coffee the next morning, and when she sat up in bed, she saw that there was a tray filled with breakfast waiting on the desk for her. Connor was in the bathroom getting ready for their day. She climbed out of bed with a smile on her face and walked over to the tray, looking at everything on it.

  She called out to him. “You brought us breakfast?”

  He poked his head out of the bathroom door. His eyes looked a little tired. “Yeah, well, I knew you’d be hungry and we have a long day today, so it’s best to get it started the right way.” He gave her a half-smile and she smiled back before he disappeared into the bathroom again.

  Catalina ate and enjoyed her coffee, and when Connor came out of the bathroom, she looked at him casually, trying not to gaze too long at the sweater he was wearing that clung to his sculpted form. His jeans fit him as well as his sweater did, and she felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of him.

  Connor pulled the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows and she glanced at his bared forearms and wondered what it would be like for those arms to be around her. She cleared her throat and looked at the dresser, walking over to it and pulling a drawer open.

  “Are you finished with the bathroom?” she asked lightly, reminding herself that he was her professor and she had no business thinking of him in the way that she was. She gathered her clothes up out of the drawer, keeping her eyes off him.

  “Yeah, it’s all yours,” he casually, heading for the breakfast tray. “Are you finished eating?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder without really looking at her. He was trying his best not to get a good look at her in her pajamas; he didn’t want to know what she looked like in them, as it would only give him more mental images of her to think about, and he was trying his best not to think of her at all.

  “I am. Thanks for bringing that in.” She walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She was grateful for a space away from him where she didn’t have to concentrate on not looking at him or stop herself from thinking of him with heated thoughts.

  An hour later, they were in the car headed to the first day of the event. Catalina was rigid in her seat, her camera bag in her lap, her eyes wide and staring out of the windshield of the car. Connor looked over at her and a big grin spread across his face. He chuckled and reached over to pat her shoulder.

  “It’s going to be fine, Cat, you’ll be so busy photographing that you won’t have time to be nervous. This first day is the debate, so emotions will be running high and everyone will be trying to be heard. It’s going to be intense, and it’s going to keep you running around all day, so don’t spend any energy or time worrying about it now. Just let it go and focus on what you want in front of your lens today. Be mindful of where you are standing. If the shot doesn’t look good then you’re--”

  She cut him off.

  “Then I’m not close enough.” She finished his sentence for him and they smiled at each other. “Then I need to move my feet, not the lens. I know… I got it. I’m just…” she trailed off as the building they were going to came into view and Connor pulled the car into the parking lot.

  “You’re going to be amazing. Let the nervousness go. This is what you’ve worked so hard for all of these years. This is what you’ve been going after. This is your dream, and you’re going to go do it and do it perfectly.” He gave her an encouraging nod, and she grinned back at him feeling like her stomach was tied in several knots.

  “Let’s go!” he said with a grin, getting out of the car. They trudged through the snow and it crunched beneath their feet. New snow continued to fall around them. Fat flakes landed on her hair and face, like cold little kisses from the sky. She looked around her and smiled, biting her lip. This was going to be the day. This was the day that would change everything she was going to do for the rest of her life, she thought. She took a deep breath and followed Connor into the building.

  Whatever she was prepared for, it wasn’t at all what she saw when she went inside. She couldn’t begin to guess at the number of people who attended the event, her eyes swept over a vast field of them. There were so many more than she had anticipated. As she stood there in amazement, she heard Connor’s soft voice in her ear and felt his warm breath on her neck as he leaned over her shoulder and spoke to her.

  “Everything you are feeling right now should be caught in your camera. Put that lens up and find the images that define the moment right now, and everything that is making it significant for you.”

  She felt breathless at the closeness of him. If he knew what was going through her mind just then, he wouldn’t want it captured on her camera. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, steadying herself, and then she lifted her camera to her eye and began to look for the images that told the story. They were all around her, from the massive crowds of people to the politicians who had begun to take their places at the podiums on the stage.

  Connor had been right; emotions were high and the energy around them was tense and vibrant as she moved through the crowd and he followed not far behind her. The politicians took the stand and the debate began. There were four men in suits up on the stage, each of them smiling at the crowd and the cameras and scoffing disdainfully at one another.

  Catalina watched the crowd through her lens, turning and eyeing everything around her. The first subject that was addressed by the moderator was gun control. It was a hot topic and the strain and shadow of antagonism flashed in the eyes of the four men on stage, and was almost immediately reflected in the eyes of the people who were there to see them speak.

  Two of the men were for gun control in the hands of the government and the other two were adamantly against it. Arguments began to build as examples supporting the positions of each side were thrown out like grenades meant to bring their opponents to their knees. The moderator of the debate stepped in several times to remind the politicians of their time limits and to bring them back to the basics of the questions that were being asked.

  On both the left and right sides of the room, microphones were set up and a line of people waited at each of them, anxious to ask their questions and get some answers that were as close to honest as possible.

  Catalina’s lens caught everything, from the whole scope of the event to the smallest detail, such as the emotion registering in the eyes and on the faces of people in attendance. Connor had been right; everyone had an opinion to voice, and all of them wanted to be heard. There was a range of moods so vast that they went from indifferent and complacent to furious and passionate, and Catalina was capturing all of it.

  Connor had also been right about her nervousness; she was far too busy and focused on what she was doing to be nervous. She was also so busy that for the first time since their trip had begun, Connor wasn’t on her mind. The only thing she was thinking about was the crowd and the politicians who seemed to be lighting fires with words all over the room.

  She was standing near a man who was at the edge of his seat, watching one of the politicians closely. Suddenly, he stood up and yelled out, vocalizing his own thoughts and disagreement wit
h what the politician was saying. In doing so, he began to wave his arms around and shout even louder, and then other men around him stood up; some of them arguing with him and telling him off, and some of them agreeing with him and defending him and his right to speak.

  Catalina was nearly knocked over a minute into the men’s arguments, but suddenly there were two strong hands clamped like iron onto her hips and she was pulled backward so swiftly that she lost her balance and instinctively clung to the arms around her. In a moment, she felt herself pulled up against Connor’s chest, her hips held tight against him as his fingers held fast to them, and then she felt his mouth almost against her ear and neck as he spoke to her in the nearly deafening chaos that erupted in the room, centered right where she had been standing.

  “Are you alright?” he breathed into her ear, and everything in her stopped suddenly. It was all that she could do to keep herself standing as everything in her caught fire at the feel of him against her, holding her so tightly, his breath on her skin and his mouth so close to her cheek. She closed her eyes and gasped, sucking a breath in as her whole body went stiff and it felt like gravity had stopped holding her to the ground.

  She steeled herself against the overwhelming urge to turn around right there in his arms and kiss him with everything in her. He held her to him tighter and his voice grew more urgent in her ear.

  “Cat, are you okay?” he asked again. Somehow she made herself nod, though her heart was racing wildly in her and she could hardly move at all.

  “Yes!” she managed to voice, struggling with her self-control. She felt his arms and hands loosen from her body and then fall away, and when he had left the space beside her, she was able to take a deep breath and it felt to her like she was somehow waking up and coming back to the world.

  She steadied herself and made herself pick up her camera and photograph the chaos, arguing, and fighting going on just in front of her, all the while putting all of her focus into the lens and pushing the fiery emotions coursing through her out of her mind.

  Security arrived and separated the instigators of the fighting, removing two of the men from the building while the rest were reprimanded and reseated. Security remained in place as the event continued and Connor touched her shoulder lightly to get her attention and indicate that they should move to another spot.

  Catalina photographed the rest of the event without any further kind of uproarious incident, but at the end of the day, when it was finally over and she and Connor were on their way back to the hotel for dinner, she could only think of one thing that stood far and away above it all.

  The most profound moment of the entire day was when Connor had pulled her away from the fighting and held her so tightly up against him. She felt like she had gone up in flames, and nothing else that happened that entire day could even begin to compare with that feeling.

  When they sat at dinner, he looked at her and gave her a smile, determined to keep it light between them.

  “What did you think of your first day out?” he asked curiously as he studied her eyes and expressions.

  She immediately thought of him holding her and her cheeks warmed as she tried to look nonchalantly at the menu in front of her. “Oh, it was… a lot different than I expected. There were more people there than I thought there would be.”

  He frowned. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking of how she had nearly been in danger. It sent him into a sheer panic for her when he’d seen the men in front of her grow angry, and it was an immediate reaction to pull her to him for safety, though he paid for it the rest of the afternoon as he tried to push from his mind the intensity of holding her so close to him.

  “I’m so sorry about that fight. I didn’t think it would be like that at all, let alone on the very first day. I thought that the audience would be a lot tamer. I guess there were a lot of people there who felt pretty strongly about what was going on and you were there, right in the middle of it.” He spoke part of his thoughts, and kept the rest to himself.

  She shrugged and nodded, picking up her ice water to take a long drink from it. “That was something else that I didn’t expect,” she said simply, her eyes on the most minute details of the menu in front of her.

  He hesitated a moment, looking at her from the corner of his eye. “I’m uh…I’m sorry that I had to grab you away from it like I did. I hope I didn’t hurt you at all.” He wondered all afternoon if she was bothered by him pulling her away and holding her so close to him. He realized afterward that someone who wasn’t struggling with desire for her might have pulled her away and let her go, rather than pulling her away and holding her so tightly and protectively in their arms.

  She shook her head and looked up at him for an instant. “No, it was fine. Thanks for saving me. Goodness knows what kind of trouble I might have gotten into if you hadn’t gotten me out of there.” She laughed a little and looked back down at her menu and he guessed that she didn’t want to talk about it any longer, so he gave her one last lingering look and then shifted his attention to the dinner options before him.

  They were polite and friendly during dinner, discussing the finer points of the day and the debates before they went down the hall to their room and each got ready for bed, taking turns for privacy in the bathroom.

  It was almost another sleepless night for Connor as he tried to keep the memory of the feel of her in his arms from his mind, but he was so exhausted from the drive to Springfield in the white out blizzard, the bout of insomnia the night before, and the long arduous day they’d had together, that he finally fell asleep right at the edge of the bed with his back facing her back.

  Catalina closed her eyes, thinking of the heat that had washed over her when he had held her, how tightly he had held her, and how electricity had shot through her and rendered her helpless in his embrace. Her thoughts segued into dreams where she was lost in deep desire all through the night.

  When she woke up the next morning, breakfast was again waiting for her, and she heard Connor getting ready in the bathroom. It baffled her how he was somehow able to get out of the bed without her waking up, but he was a ninja about it, and she slept soundly without any disruption until she woke up on her own.

  She sipped happily at her coffee and ate her breakfast, enjoying the fact that it had been brought to her two days in a row. When it was her turn for the bathroom, she dressed herself in black pants and a silvery gray sweater that brought out her eyes. She wanted to blend into the background of the crowd so that she could take photos without being noticed much.

  Connor heard the bathroom door open and looked up at her without thinking at all about it, only to lose himself in the blue-gray depths of her eyes. He was drawn right to them, and it was a moment before he realized he was staring into them, before he made himself look away and concentrate on the cup of coffee before him.

  “Well, you look nice today. Are you ready to go?” He followed it up with a change of topic so that it would seem as casual as he hoped it sounded.

  She felt her cheeks warming and a small smile touched the corners of her lips as she turned away from him to pick up her coat. “Thanks! Um, yes. I just have to grab the camera batteries off the charger and then we can leave.” She kept her response light; she didn’t want him to know that his compliment thrilled her.

  They drove back through the still falling snow, though the storm had lessened considerably and the flakes had thinned to just flurries. There was more than a foot of packed snow on the roads and side-streets of the town.

  The two of them hiked through it from the parking lot and made it to the building where day two of the event was to be a continuum of the debates the day before, though covering different hot topics.

  Catalina felt more sure of herself the second day, and confidence enabled her to get better shots and move around in the room with ease and focus as she worked. Connor stayed near her and watched over her as she captured much of what was going on.

  It was much the same as the first day; the fo
ur candidates took the stage, but then the moderator came out and made an announcement that there would be controversial topics being discussed and that any manner of uproar from the crowd would not be tolerated and any instigators making a scene would be expelled from the building. Then she took her seat and the debate began.

  Catalina looked around the crowded room and decided that the audience looked to be fairly calm and collected. She saw faces of people who had been there the day before, but none of them had been involved in the disruptive scene that she had almost been caught up in yesterday.

  The moderator began the debate with women’s rights and abortion and the air in the room got hot rapidly. People were mostly still for a while at the beginning of the discussion, but as the debate took an ugly turn between the candidates, Catalina could see how it was beginning to fire up individuals throughout the crowd.

  Just as things began to sound like a low rumble among the people facing the candidates, the moderator called for a thirty-minute break, and everyone got to get up and move about, get some fresh air, and cool down a little before the afternoon session of the debates continued.