He opened his mouth and began to motion for me to go inside. I took a step. Then, I heard gunfire, saw fire coming out of the apartment like fireworks. Shouts, “Get down!” mixing with gunfire overtook my senses and I dropped to the ground.
I put my hands over my head and curled up into a ball, trying to protect myself in the only way I knew how. I winced as the gunfire continued, feeling tears squeeze out of my eyes as I covered my ears with my hands.
A few moments later, the gunfire began to sound more distant.
“Cassie! Go! Go right now! Go!” Julian’s voice was like a spring and I burst forward into the apartment even before my eyes were fully open.
“Antoine!” I whispered loudly. “Antoine! I’m a friend of your dad’s. You’re safe. Antoine! Where are you, honey? I’m a friend of your dad’s. You’re safe.” Julian had told me to keep repeating the same phrases over and over, and that’s what I did. I searched each of the rooms quickly, half expecting Antoine to be standing in the middle of the room waiting to be rescued. I wasn’t thinking.
“Do you have him?” Julian yelled. “We don’t have much more time!”
“He’s not here!” I yelled back.
“Check the closets, Cassie; he’s not going to be having a picnic on the floor!”
I began to fling doors open, every closed door I could see. I entered one of the bedrooms and pulled open the closet door. I gasped.
“You’re here. Antoine. I’m a friend of your dad’s. You’re safe.”
A small boy, far smaller than I knew his age to be, emaciated, bruised, looked at me with huge, white eyes.
“Mr. Brown?” he asked quietly. “Did Mr. Brown send you?”
“No, Antoine,” I said. I dropped down to my knees so I could look into his eyes. “I’m a friend of your daddy. My name is Cassie. Your daddy sent me to bring you to him.”
“Where’s my dad?” he asked.
“Come on, Cassie!” Julian roared. Both Antoine and I looked toward the door, at shadows moving by.
“Come on, Antoine,” I said, scrambling up and grabbing him by the hand. “I’ll answer all of your questions when we get out of here.”
I pulled Antoine so hard I thought I was going to take his arm out of its socket, but he hung with me, catching up whenever his body threatened to hold him back from keeping pace with me. We burst out through the apartment doorway and stood in the brightly lit stairwell. I looked around. Bullet holes riddled the walls, but there was no blood, and there were no bodies. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
Julian rushed to us and took us both into his arms. “Good,” he said. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”
***
I walked into the living room carrying a tray with two bowls of soup, a plate holding two slices of buttered toast, and two tall glasses of milk on it.
“Who’s hungry?” I asked.
“Me!” Antoine said, running to me and almost making me drop the tray as he crashed into my legs.
“Easy there, sport,” Brad said from the couch. He smiled at me. I winked at him, the grin on my face so wide it was almost painful. I set the tray down on the coffee table in front of where Brad was sitting on the couch. Antoine sat next to his dad and they began to eat.
Brad’s condition was improving; he had been home from the hospital for a few weeks, and he was down to just one cast on his arm. Antoine had gained almost fifteen pounds since his rescue, and he was looking more and more like a healthy, normal boy… though the counselor had said that Antoine would need extensive therapeutic treatments.
“Care to join us?” Brad said, holding up a piece of toast. He winked.
“I’m okay, thank you,” I said. “I’ll have my dinner later.” I looked meaningfully at Brad, and he smiled back, understanding exactly what I meant.
We spent the evening quietly together in Brad’s suite. Antoine, for some reason, preferred the suite to Brad’s London home. I thought it was because the suite was smaller. Brad thought that Antoine didn’t like being in houses. Either way, we went wherever Antoine wanted us to go.
After Brad tucked him into bed, he came into the bedroom where I lay in bed, waiting. I’d slipped into a black, silk teddy that I’d gotten earlier that day.
“Surprise,” I said as I watched his eyes drink me in from the tip of my nipples, visible through the fabric, to the apex of my thighs, where my bare labia was covered by a thin layer of mesh.
“I guess I’m having my dessert now,” he said, moving slowly to slip beside me underneath the sheets.
“Eat up, my love,” I said. “You’ve earned it.”
He gently, with his good hand, slipped the straps of the teddy off my shoulders and began to kiss my exposed nipples. I felt a shiver move through me as his tongue flicked over each hard nub. His hands began to massage my stomach and hips as he positioned himself over me.
Brad had never been big into foreplay, but since we’d gotten home with Antoine, he was a different man. He seemed more complete. He seemed like he wanted nothing more than to make time slow down, to luxuriate in everything around him—including me.
He began to kiss his way down my stomach, undoing the front of the teddy and letting it fall to the sides. He slipped a finger under the elastic of the black panties and pulled them gently down my legs.
He was hard, and, though I knew he was prepared to take his time with me, I was hungry for him. Hungrier than I’d felt in a long time. He was hard, pulsing, ready, and I brought him to me, spreading my legs and wrapping my calves around his hips.
“Hello there,” he said, a coy smile on his face.
“Hello, Daddy,” I said. “Come on in.” I widened my legs and drew his cock into me, feeling an energetic surge move through me. He began to thrust, and, as we settled into a rhythm, I sighed in pleasure. From Belize to here and everywhere in between, I finally had a place to call home.
The End
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PASSIONATE Weeks
An Alpha Billionaire Romance
Sarah Brooks
Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Brooks
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Becka
I sat outside Dr. Evan’s office waiting while she finished an advisee session with a freshman. I knew she was a freshman because she was in tears. I remembered that feeling, years ago, too far from home, afraid that any grade less than an A would equal flunking out of college, but, even working as hard as I could, had earned a C. In Psychology. My major. That seemed like a lifetime ago.
After another fifteen minutes, Dr. Evans got the student calmed down enough to have a conversation about her classes for next term, then sent her on her way. Walking the student to the door, a blond, waifish creature who didn’t look older than twelve, n
ever mind the age of a college student, Dr. Evans smiled at me and welcomed me into her office.
“Bet you miss those days, huh, Becka?” she asked me, gesturing for me to have a seat in the chair next to her desk.
“Not even for a moment,” I laughed as I dropped my bag at my feet. “I don’t think any year of college was as hard as that first year.”
Dr. Evans nodded. She was my thesis advisor, a younger woman herself, probably in her early thirties, and very beautiful. She had long dirty blond hair that she wore tied back every day at work. She dressed to the nines, suits only, heels, the works. Sitting next to her, I was her virtual opposite. I had jet black hair that was too short for me to wear up; it hung in a bob and cut at angles to just below my chin. Dressing in jeans and a sweater was dressing up for me; my norm was yoga pants and a tank top or a sweatshirt if it was cold outside.
Dr. Evans hadn’t been my advisor in undergrad, but, once I’d entered grad school and declared my thesis, she had been assigned as my thesis advisor. I couldn’t believe my luck; she was on the front lines of research in food science and nutrition, the area I wanted to start with my thesis, continue with my PhD, and, someday, maybe catch the Nobel Prize.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked. She had texted me yesterday and asked if I could come in and speak with her before her class tonight.
“I wanted to see what your thoughts were for possible internships. If you’ve scoped out any companies or research labs.”
It was my turn to feel a little chagrined. “I haven’t had the time to check anything out,” I said, feeling my face turning red. “I will, I have a few I’m interested in.”
Dr. Evans smiled. “Relax, you’re not in trouble, silly. I wanted to give you a heads up about next week. Dr. Oliver Weeks, the CEO of Neuotova, is going to be coming in for a series of guest lectures. I’ll be turning my class over to him for a few nights, and I wanted to invite you to sit in on as many as you can, all of them if you like. I’m hoping that you can connect with him and that he may be able to offer you an internship.”
I tried to keep my mouth from dropping open, and I think I was largely successful, but I couldn’t keep my eyes from opening wide. “Dr. Evans, that’s such an amazing opportunity, thank you!”
“Your academic record is nearly flawless, and you’ve got huge potential, especially in research. I’m going to mention your name when I meet with him this week. I’ll try to introduce you next week, but, if I can’t, don’t feel afraid to go up and meet him yourself. He’ll know your name.” Dr. Evans smiled at my expression.
“I can’t thank you enough for that, Dr. Evans, truly. I’ll definitely be at your class next week; is he there every day?” Dr. Evans taught from 7-10pm, Monday through Thursday.
“Yes, so you’ll have plenty of time.”
“I’m so excited, thank you so much!” I stood up and Dr. Evans stood as well. She hugged me.
“You’ve got a very bright future, Becka; I want to help you out in any way I can.”
I left Dr. Evans’ office on a cloud. I always ride the bus to and from campus, and normally I feel like the ride goes pretty quickly. Today, though, I couldn’t get home fast enough. My roommate, Lisa, would absolutely die when she heard about the opportunity that had basically been just handed to me.
“Not handed to you,” Lisa said when I told her. “You’ve worked your ass off your whole life to get to where you are, and now you’re seeing some of the payoff. No one has ever handed you anything.”
She was right. My parents had divorced before I was old enough to walk. I lived with my mom until she passed away when I was sixteen, at which point the courts decided that I was mature enough and reliant enough to live on my own since no one could locate my dad. I had known for most of my life that, if I wanted to go to college, I was going to have to do it on my own, so I did. I studied, didn’t party, got scholarships, worked out a payment plan to pay my undergrad in installments, all the while working full time to save money to live and to pay for school.
“I can’t believe this,” I said, shaking my head. “This could be the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Is the opportunity of a lifetime, Becka. This is so exciting! We have to celebrate.”
“Why don’t we wait until I actually meet the man next week and see if he offers me an internship before we start the celebration.” I was always reminding Lisa to not get ahead of herself, and she was good at reminding me to not hold myself back. We were a good team.
“Fine,” she pouted. “We’ll hold off on the champagne until next week. But, I am going to make dinner tonight, and I won’t take no for an answer. I happened to pick up raw pizza dough, cheese, sauce, olives, pepperoni…”
“Okay, okay!” I said, putting my hands up. “Food police, you’ve got me! I’m totally down for some pizza.”
Oliver
“Well, I’ll be honest with you, Dr. Evans, I haven’t sat in a professor’s office in probably twenty years.” I looked around her office and I couldn’t believe how anyone could get anything done in this cramped little space. Barely a window, more like a piece of glass, over the left side of her desk, and the entire back wall was covered with book cases filled with books. It was a far cry from my office at Neuotova, which was on the top level of a skyscraper downtown with floor to ceiling windows on two of the four walls. And, since my order that the company go paperless in 2013, I doubted even a single book could be found on a shelf in my office.
“Please, call me Amy,” Dr. Evans said. She was very cute, though not really my type. I don’t remember the last time I had the time or the inclination to date anyone. Being the CEO of a major corporation takes most of my time, and then, of course, there’s my side business. Between the two, my dates were typically lined up by my personal assistant and began roughly an hour before a public appearance.
I had agreed to guest lecture at Amy’s classes a few times next week partially as a favor to the university, and partially because I fully expected to benefit from it. The university regularly put out some of the best young minds in the field of food science, and I always liked to get my potential friends close and my potential enemies even closer.
“I really appreciate you taking time out of your incredibly busy schedule to lecture,” she was saying. My students are extremely excited to hear what you have to say.”
“Well, I just hope I don’t bore them to tears. Though they are upper level students, so if they’re going to go into the business, they’ll need to be used to a lot of information coming at them quickly.”
“I did want to mention one woman to you, one of my thesis graduate students. She’s not in the class you’re lecturing, but I invited her specifically because I want her to introduce herself to you. Her name is Becka. Right now, she’s slated to graduate first in her class and her thesis is already being sought after for publication even though she’s only got a few chapters written.”
“Oh?” My interest was piqued. “What does she look like? I’ll keep an eye out. What makes you think she’d be a good match for Neuotova?”
“She’s 23, black hair, pretty fair skin. She always wears her hair down. She’s probably about 5’6” or thereabouts. She’s a researcher, with a focus on food chemistry and nutrition. She’s searching for a weight loss method that will actually work without long term harmful side effects of any kind. That’s her thesis. I’ve been trying to get her to expand her ideas to something a little more scientific, but that’s where she’s at right now. She really believes in the cause.”
“I’ll actually let her tell me all about it when I talk to her.” I smiled at Amy. “Thanks for inviting her to the lecture; she sounds like an interesting young woman. Is there anything else I should know or prepare for Monday?”
Amy showed me around the lecture hall where I would be presenting and we talked over the logistics of the presentation. It sounded like I would basically be giving a board room presentation to a bunch of young adults. Didn’t seem
like too much of a problem. I reminded myself to have my assistant prepare my lecture notes this week so I could go over them on the weekend. Then, I said goodbye to Amy.
I walked back out of the building and took a stroll through the quad. My time in college had been cut short, but not unreasonably so; I’d gotten what I’d needed from my classes, and then, when I was offered a job at Neuotova, I took it. Worked my way up through various means. I chuckled. It was a little humorous to be presenting at a college seminar now. I wondered if my twenty year old self would have attended my own lecture. Probably not.
Becka
“Are you really wearing jeans to the lecture tonight?” Lisa stood in my bedroom door as I finished fixing my hair and touched up my make up.
“Of course,” I said. “What else would I wear?”
“A dress? A skirt? Something that isn’t jeans or, God help me, yoga pants? You’re going to be meeting the CEO of a major corporation tonight. This is basically a job interview.”
I stopped and looked at her. She wasn’t wrong. I looked toward my closet.
“I don’t think I have a dress,” I said. “For real.”
“You can borrow one of mine. Come on, come pick something out.”
Lisa and I were hardly the same size, but we made something work. A burgundy cotton jersey dress with tank top sleeves that came in at the waist, then flowed out at the bottom. I felt incredibly awkward, but the look of satisfaction on Lisa’s face suggested I had hit the mark with the dress I picked out.
“You look fabulous. Very professional. Now I’m willing to let you out of the house.”
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