A Man Who Knows What He Wants Box Set 5

by Flora Ferrari

  I bound down a couple steps and suddenly Alex comes into view on the couch.

  “Alex?” I say, dropping the box of chocolates on the mahogany wooden stairs.

  “Alex?” he says.

  He. As in male. As in…this can’t be.

  No way!

  Chapter Three

  Alexander

  I feel the art appraise guidebook slide through my fingers. It should drop to the floor and join the coffee I just spilled but it doesn’t because my cock has instantly sprung to life holding it up like a human bookstand.

  It’s her!

  The girl from yesterday.

  The one I snapped at the tour guide about when I found out she hadn’t made her register for the tour. I’ve never lashed out in my line of work ever, but I almost lost it yesterday.

  Logging in our guests is mandatory for security purposes, but our tour guide was new and somehow that girl slipped through the cracks.

  The girl I haven’t been able to stop thinking about and the one I knew I’d get in touch with right away yesterday before I discovered I didn’t have a way to reach her.

  I had Swiss clients waiting for me in the lobby and by a twist of fate they had their eye on that vase…

  Which led me to have an eye on her.

  And my eyes are right back on her now as she’s in my house!

  She’s frozen, standing there in her short shorts she most likely slept in and a form fitting white spaghetti strap tank top that’s more transparent than she probably realizes.

  I can see the outline of her areolas and her nipples poking through the white cotton that looks as pure and virginal I imagine she is.

  And am I ever imaging a lot right now.

  But I’d imagined a boy coming to stay for the summer when her dad, who happens to be my best friend since high school, told me that “Alex” was coming.

  I thought he was referring to his son, Alexander, who he named after Alexander the Great even though I tease him that he named him after me.

  But it’s Alex as in Alexa, his eighteen-year-old daughter.

  And oh my god did she ever grow up these last few years.

  I haven’t seen her since when? Maybe four years ago when her brother graduated high school. I was thinking he was coming out here to look for a job assuming he just finished college and would be looking for full time work.

  So wait a minute then. This means that Alexa is here to…go to college in the city?

  And she’s staying at my place all summer?

  Dressed like that?

  This is going to be absolute torture.

  How in the world did my buddy Oliver’s daughter grow up to be so beautiful?

  The two of us wrestled in high school and after he got slammed so many times he would joke that he looked like his face was beaten in, but it turns out that his daughter is the real knockout!

  At the galleries we get those rich girls who think they deserve VIP everywhere they go because they’re international fashion models on the cover of magazines or kids of the super-rich. Those girls do absolutely nothing for me and their attitudes are the worse.

  This girl has got curves in all the right places, and do I mean all, and she has this fresh face and bright blue eyes that are full of life and energy even first thing in the morning.

  She is literally the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And that’s coming from a guy who deals in art all day long.

  She’s the Mona Lisa of ladies.

  Hips that move like The Louvre.

  And she’s got me like The Thinker wondering how she rode in on her white horse into my life and exactly how I’m going to make her the star of my Starry Night.

  The stars in The Starry Night.

  Chapter Four

  Alexa

  His coffee slides across the floor, but it’s not the light brown cream on the floor I’ve got my eyes on.

  It’s the cappuccino of his skin, sun-kissed from what I’d guess to be the shores of South Beach in Miami if he’s been to Art Basel.

  And the wet mess on the wooden floorboards are suddenly not the only wet mess in this house.

  My white shorts are short and I know before long that my own mess will be very visible.

  Then it hits me just how uncovered I really am.

  My eyes dart from his perfect abs and his masculine but beautiful face to my chest.

  My nipples are so pointy right now they could cut glass. My hand shoots up and covers my chest before I take off running back into my room.

  I shut the door behind me like there’s a monster chasing me or something and press my back to the door.

  “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god,” I say as I’m panting, my chest heaving up and down.

  I lean forward putting my hands on my thighs and try to control my breathing.

  It’s not working one single bit.

  This is the “Alex” my dad was talking about when he said I could stay with Alex in NYC?

  I thought Alexander had moved to Miami full time.

  Apparently not!

  I haven’t seen him since Alexander, my brother, graduated high school four years ago.

  I was fourteen at the time and it was just about that time I realized that Alexander was way hotter than the Justin Bieber and One Direction posters that I still had adorning my walls.

  As a matter of fact that night after the party I’d took them down and called a friend of mine who’d mentioned she really liked them to come over and get them.

  And in their place I had a picture of him.

  A secret picture from the party that I printed out and kept in my drawer while my walls stayed white for the rest of the entire year.

  I used to pull that picture out of my drawer at night and just stare at him.

  He was so perfect. Charismatic. Charming. And beyond hot.

  He’d played ping-pong with me in the backyard and even let me win. He was so good he even made me think I’d beat him.

  If only.

  I watched from my upstairs window hours later that night as he went at it with my dad on the table and it was then I realized just how skilled he really was.

  Everything seemed to come so naturally to him.

  Just like his physique which he promptly put on display around midnight when he casually pulled that white T-shirt up and over his head when he began to break a sweat.

  I watched as his body bent and turned and moved as he chased down that little white ball hitting it back over the net with ease each and every time. It seemed like he didn’t even sweat, but he’d taken his shirt off for some reason.

  And I knew it wasn’t to impress me.

  And he certainly didn’t need to impress any of the other women at the party. He already had them hook, line, and sinker.

  The chitter chatter in the kitchen was fast and furious as all the women wanted to volunteer to wash dishes. I didn’t understand it until the next day when I realized that the window at the kitchen sink provided the best view of where he’d spent most of the afternoon. Whoever washed dishes may have paid for it with dry skin but it was a small price to pay to see what was on display just through the glass.

  But here I was getting a show all to myself. And my window was open to allow some air to come in that hot early summer’s night.

  The one he made even hotter.

  But I was way too young back then to really think of him in more than just a really hot guy my dad knew kind of way. My dad’s best friend who just happened to live this really cool life and visited once in a blue moon.

  But during high school things changed inside me and I started to come into my own as a woman.

  And true to form, I developed a lot quicker than the boys and never really found them that mature or exciting.

  Especially not when I’d heard the stories my dad would tell me about Alexander or the postcards he’d send our family seemingly every month from countries I sometimes couldn’t even pronounce and other’s like France where I’d always dreamed o
f going.

  That Alexander and I was going to spend the summer in his apartment in New York City?

  In a room with a view of Central Park?

  But the only view I wanted was the one I just had.

  The view of him. The man I couldn’t take my eyes off of that early summer’s night four years ago and still couldn’t take my eyes off of less than four minutes ago.

  I had to pry myself away knowing I was about to embarrass myself even more.

  Wait a second?

  No!

  The thought of embarrassment hits me and I realize Alexander isn’t just my dad’s best friend.

  He’s the guy who saved me from breaking that vase yesterday!

  I feel a light vibration in my back muscles and realize those big strong fingers of his which lifted me with ease are now rapping against the wooden door behind me.

  Oh crap!

  He wants to come in and I’m a complete wreck.

  “One second,” I say.

  I lock the door and run over to my suitcase digging for anything to put on over the top of what I’m currently “wearing.” It’s hard to use the word wearing considering how much skin and other stuff I’m currently revealing. I might as well almost be naked.

  I manage to find a thick pink cardigan and some yoga pants and I put them on.

  I probably look like a disaster, but I can’t hide in my room all day.

  I mean his room.

  Oh my I’m staying in a real life Adonis’s apartment and I have to figure out a way not to stare at the sculpture that is his body…for three months.

  “Coming,” I say.

  I run to the door and the words I just said replay in my mind.

  “I’m coming,” I repeat softly as I reach for the handle.

  Oh how I wish I was saying those words under different circumstances right about now.

  Chapter Five

  Alexander

  What has gotten into me?

  I should be acting like a gentleman, giving her a second to gather herself, but instead I’m up the stairs and chasing after her like a lion chasing prey across the African savanna.

  I negotiate art deals for a living. It requires balls of steel, patience and indifferent.

  But with her it’s like I’m a kid in a candy store begging for a treat. I’m tipping my hand. Scratch that. I’m giving away my position, showing her she’s exactly what I want and I’ll pay any price to have her.

  But not the monetary kind because she’s priceless.

  I know how her parents raised her. I know she’s got manners and class and an amazing head on her shoulders.

  I know she’s grounded and I can see she’s beautiful…beyond beautiful.

  There’s something inside me that wants to claim her. A desire from the depths of my stomach that tell me she’s never been with a man before and I have to be her first and her last.

  To make her mine and mine alone forever.

  The thought shoots through my mind again…

  What has gotten into me?

  I have no clue, but I know what I want to get into.

  Everything that has to do with her. Her life. Her mind. Her body.

  The door slides open a crack and I see those beautiful blue eyes again. They’re so striking I can’t even speak at first.

  “Good morning,” I say.

  “Good morning,” she says.

  We both start to smile realizing the funny situation we’re in. Funny as in was her dad trying to play a joke on us?

  But not funny at all in that trying to control myself is going to be no laughing matter starting the immediate moment I saw her this morning.

  I need some fresh air. I have to stretch my legs. And I have to get out of this house before I attack her with the lust that’s building inside of me to a fever pitch.

  “Want to go out for a coffee. I need a new one anyways,” I say.

  I know she saw I spilled the one I had. It makes sense right now when nothing else seems to.

  I hear her phone ring on the nightstand next to her bed but she doesn’t turn her eyes from mine.

  “Sure,” she says. “Maybe in about thirty minutes after I grab a shower?”

  The thought of her naked with that cool water washing over her skin pops into my head. The visual is strong and my erection is the only thing that’s stronger. I angle my body so she can’t see what’s happening in my groin area through the crack in the door.

  “Deal,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t shut the door. She just stands there staring at me as the phone rings again.

  My mind is still fixated on her. Suddenly my eyebrows raise, my eyes open wider and I shake my head.

  “See you downstairs,” I say.

  “See you,” she says.

  I turn to walk away and just as I do I hear the sound of her father’s voice fill the room. She must have put him on speakerphone.

  “Did you meet Alex?” he asks. I can hear him laughing already. He was always a bit of a prankster, but this takes the cake.

  “Dad!” she says.

  But then I hear her laughter too. It starts off real and I can hear that exuberance again but then it quickly turns into more of a nervous laughter.

  Is she thinking what I’m thinking?

  How in the world are we going to manage this living arrangement the entire summer without the two “Alexes” becoming one?

  Chapter Six

  Alexa

  The Empire State Building catches my eye in the beautiful New York City skyline from my position at Top of the Rock, as it’s called.

  I’d had planned to go to the Empire State Building to view the city but Alexander recommended I go to the observatory on top of Rockefeller Center and see the Empire State Building in all its glory instead of taking the view from it.

  He was right.

  And he is right…in a whole lot of ways.

  We just had a quick coffee this morning, but wow was it ever powerful. And I’m not just talking about the caffeine.

  He gave me some tips and pointers on things to do today and told me he’d see if there were any paid internships available at the Gotham Gallery that might interest me.

  He’s making this summer too perfect already…because he’s too perfect.

  Even in the sea of people on the sidewalks and in the subway he stood out. It sounds crazy, but it was almost like people just moved out of his way wherever we went. It was like the sea parted and he had a clear path, which seems completely illogical in a city of this size and magnitude.

  But that’s his secret as well. His size and his magnitude, as in powerful.

  He just carries himself in such a powerful and dominant way, even when he’s not trying. It’s like he just glides around town and all I have to do is slide in behind him or next to him to enjoy the benefits.

  Being a small girl in a big city is no easy feat. I was reminded of it when he exited the subway at his stop this morning and I continued on. As soon as he was gone people packed into the space where he’d been and I felt like I wanted to call out for my personal protector to come back and spend the entire day with me.

  How nice would that be?

  And how nice would it be to have him next to me here taking in this view together?

  I could imagine holding hands with him or better yet snuggling up next to his body on a crisp autumn day.

  When he grabbed our coffees this morning from the barista and then handed mine to me our fingers touched. It was only slight and just in passing but his eyes shot from our cups to mine and my eyes did the same.

  We had a moment. I felt it and I know he felt it too.

  But am I just imagining things?

  This man is so powerful, masculine, and attractive. Why would he be interested in an eighteen-year-old girl who admittedly knows nothing about the world when he seems to have the world by a string. It’s like the city is his oyster and I just want to jump inside that clamshell with him and share the pearls
of his wisdom all in one moment.

  But those thoughts are absolutely crazy. He’s my dad’s best friend.

  My dad feels so confident and trusts him so much he sent his daughter out here to spend the summer with him.

  Was he crazy?

  Does my dad understand just how attractive he really is to woman or is he blinded just seeing him as his old buddy from high school?

  “Miss, could you please move aside so someone else can have a look? This is the most desirable spot.” I turn and see an attendant and some angry faces behind me.

  “But I just got here,” I say.

  The attendant’s face does some kind of scrunchy thing showing his discomfort. “I’m not sure how they tell time where you’re from, but you’ve been standing here for over half an hour.”

  Ahhh…the bluntness that can be New York City.

  And why is everyone in a hurry in the city that never sleeps?

  Wait? Thirty minutes? Was I really daydreaming about him that long.

  I pull my phone out and look at the time. I look at my ticket’s time of purchase.

  Oh my god, he’s right. Maybe it’s been closer to forty-five minutes.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say stepping aside.

  The other tourists slide into the spot I just occupied.

  The spot where I stood when I realized just how quickly Alexander is sliding into a special spot in my heart.

  This is more than just lust I’m feeling for him.

  This man is the perfect catch. I may be young and not know much about the world but I know a good thing when I see one and he’s so much more than just that.

  And he has a relationship with my family too, which normally would be a good thing.

  But in this case it’s a disaster.

  I shake my head realizing I need to push these thoughts away.

  How in the world can we be together?

  Why would he even want that?

  And why does this man effect me like no other ever has?