We stepped out into an amazing marble and glass hallway. It looked like some sort of futuristic palace.
“This way,” he said, gesturing toward a huge oak door. “My office is in there.”
“Jeez, Sebastian,” I said. “Are you a really big noise in the bank or what? I’ve never even seen this floor of the building.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Haven’t you?”
We reached the door and he opened it for me. I caught a glimpse of the lettering on the door.
SEBASTIAN CHASE
CEO
My jaw dropped open and I almost squealed with shock. The naked man in the hallway… Yes, the super-hot, super-sexy naked man in the elevator… Oh god, no… The unbearably sexy naked man who I just had a crazy sexual encounter with in the elevator… That would be Mr Chase, the boss.
The guy I was supposed to be working for tonight.
He laughed to see my face when I read the words on his door.
“You clearly haven’t seen my head shot on the corporate website,” he teased. “Bad temp. Research your clients in future.”
I was speechless.
“Come on in.” He nodded in the direction of the office. “I promised you a brandy. And I suppose I ought to throw on some clothes.”
He grinned widely now, a wicked, decadent grin that set off a flurry of warmth between my legs again.
This night had been the strangest night ever. And it wasn’t even over yet. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but a much bigger shock was right around the corner.
5
“Let me get you a drink.”
He slipped each bulging arm into shirt sleeves, his stomach muscles undulating as he did so. I couldn’t help but watch the show.
Sebastian, the naked CEO who just gave me probably the best orgasm of my life, was nearly dressed. It was a shame, but I guess those sculpted abs had to be put away sometime.
“You have a closet in your office just for suits and shirts?” I stared past the open door at the orderly array of charcoal, navy and white fabric.
“You never know when you might need a change of clothes,” he grinned, taking cufflinks from his desk drawer and fixing them onto his pristine white shirt. “Clothes maketh the man.”
“Wow. You must find yourself naked at work a lot.” I watched him fasten his pants. “Are you going to explain that? I’m dying to know.”
He shrugged, as though I was asking something minor and irrelevant.
I persisted. “Seriously. Why were you naked?”
“I like getting naked,” he shot back, with a dangerous glint in his eye. “Particularly in company. You?”
I fell silent. Actually, I was never naked in company. I hid my curves under cover of darkness whenever possible. This encounter had been the first one where I hadn’t felt self-conscious about showing my body to someone else.
“You have a lot of company while naked, I’m guessing?”
I cursed myself for being so needy the minute it came out of my mouth. Of course he did. He must play around a lot. Look at him. He must have women falling all over him, all the time. Not to mention the fact that he was a billionaire and his family owned a global banking empire. Yeah. It’s safe to assume he’s quite the playboy, Finola. Who wouldn’t take advantage of that?
He was watching me while all this ran through my head.
“Does it bother you if I say yes?”
I paused for a second, ignoring the sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Honestly? It’s what I’d expect you to say.”
He opened another closet door and took out a decanter of brandy and a glass. The drink he’d promised me.
“This might settle your nerves. And yes, I have done a lot of partying, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s what people do, when we haven’t yet found The One.”
“Right.” I took a slug of my brandy. The alcohol burned my throat as it went down. I shuddered. “Sorry. I’m not used to this.”
“The brandy, or sex with strangers?”
The directness of both his words and his azure gaze was unnerving.
“Either.”
He sat in his chair and watched me take another tentative sip.
“Hey, aren’t you drinking?” I suddenly realized he had only poured one glass.
“Not tonight. I’m driving.”
Driving… Oh my god, my car!
I suddenly remembered what had happened just an hour or so earlier.
“Oh hell, I… My car was stolen too! And the guys who grabbed me had knives, and then there was that escaped tiger… A white tiger! Honest to god! We have to call the police!”
Sebastian stood up and walked to the window. The view was panoramic, right across Canary Wharf on one side and over to the West End on the other. If this was my office, I’d never get any work done. I’d spend all my time staring out of the window at the glittering beauty of the city.
Then again, if I was Sebastian, I’d probably spend all my time staring at the glittering beauty in the mirror.
He turned away from me, hands slipped into his pants pockets. “I’ll take care of it. Please don’t worry.”
“The cops will need me to give a witness statement though, right? I better just…”
“I said I’ll take care of it.” His voice was firm, with a note of warning in it. “Let me handle this. I have overall responsibility for everything that happens in this building. The police can contact you afterwards if they need you.”
I wasn’t sure about this, but I was so tired, I gave in. My bones felt as though they were turning to lead and I was desperate to rest.
“Does the bank have a taxi account? I should call a cab before I crash out on this lovely reclining chair.”
The chair was so comfortable. I could feel myself nodding with tiredness.
“I said I’m not drinking because I’m driving. I meant driving you home.”
I nearly choked on my brandy. The idea of a CEO’s fancy car parked outside our place in grimy Deptford was hilarious.
“Ha ha. I don’t think so. Your Lexus would be keyed to ribbons within a few minutes.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to drive you home in a Lexus. I’ll borrow one of the bank’s less ostentatious vehicles from the parking garage downstairs.”
The thought of that place made me shiver. He read my mind.
“We don’t have to go down there. I’ll have the car brought round to the street.”
I guess when you’re the CEO, you can have people do whatever you like, even in the middle of the night. Like having a car brought up to you in the street so you don’t have to go to the effort of walking to it.
Like calling an office temp in to work through to dawn, just because you got an urge for some nocturnal spreadsheet action.
“Okay,” I said, yawning.
There was a soft bleeping sound. Sebastian reached into his desk drawer and answered his cellphone.
He was silent for a moment. Then he exhaled sharply.
“When? Where was he?” He rubbed his eyes.
I could feel new tension rising in him, radiating out from his muscles.
“I’m not going to,” he was saying. “No. Don’t worry. But I have something to take care of tonight. Let me call you tomorrow.”
I watched a frown pinch his forehead into lines before he recovered his composure and turned to me.
“Excuse me for taking that call. Very rude, I know. I’m afraid the bank has a lot going on at present. Let’s get you home before the sun comes up.”
The sky was already tinged with pink. I followed him obediently through the door, which he held open without really looking at me. He seemed wired and distracted since the phone call. I was too sleepy even to ask about it.
We rode the elevator down to the street level and crossed the huge glass and marble foyer together. Back to my place, then. I hoped my roommate Dahlia was out so I didn’t have to answer any questions. To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to find any answers.
I could barely think straight.
Tomorrow, I could deal with reality. Tonight, I was just going to step into a car with some rich guy I hardly knew and let him take me home. Things could hardly get weirder, I thought. How little I knew, back then.
6
The doors to the solid German car swung shut with a deep clunk. I sank into the seat and rested my head on the soft leather headrest.
The junior employee who brought the car round to the street gave me a long, hard look as Sebastian opened the passenger side door for me. Probably wondering what on earth the CEO was doing with the lowly temp. On the bright side, there’s no way he’d believe Sebastian was interested in me, so our secret would be safe whatever else he thought.
Once again, I marveled at what just happened between us in the elevator. Sitting in his car together, crossing Tower Bridge, it almost seemed as though it had been a dream. And now the handsome billionaire CEO was driving me - me - home.
Sebastian drove with a frown on his face. I guessed he was thinking about the phone conversation he had just had, but I didn’t ask. His expression was too intimidating. I could imagine senior staff at the bank trembling when they saw the determined set of his jaw over the boardroom table.
“Right. So you live south of the river. Whereabouts in south London are we headed?”
“Deptford. Surely you must have better things to do than ferry waifs and strays around London?”
“Deptford?” He spat out the word like it tasted bad.
“Yeah, not the best neighborhood. I know. We don’t all earn eight figure salary packages and live in Regent’s Park,” I snapped.
“I don’t live in Regent’s Park,” he said, swinging a sharp right turn through the winding city roads.
“That’s beside the point,” I said. “I know you must think where I live is terrible. Yeah, I often wish I lived somewhere smarter.”
“Then why don’t you move?”
I stared at him. He looked ahead at the road.
“Do you have any idea what ordinary people earn and how much housing costs?”
“It’s doubtful. I have no experience of being ordinary.” He said this in a matter-of-fact way, steering the car round a winding one-way street.
It was honest, if nothing else.
“Would you like me to do the math for you? So you can understand the general public and their odd decisions?”
“Please do.”
He was humoring me, but I wanted him to understand. I wanted him to understand me. I wasn’t sure why it even mattered, but somehow it really did.
“All right then. To buy a 3-bedroomed house in your kind of neighborhood in London - say, Holland Park? That would cost around 200 times what I’d earn in a year at the bank.”
His head whipped round towards me for a second, then back to the road.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. And renting a place anywhere nice is impossible on little people salaries. People like me have no choice but to live in the scruffy parts of London. Places that people with more, uh, privilege, can avoid.”
He stopped at a red light and turned to me. We were on the Old Kent Road now, a long and dingy road from the bright lights of the financial district down to some of the poorest and least desirable neighborhoods of south London.
“I apologize if you thought I was insulting you or your home. That wasn’t my intention.”
“You can insult it all you like. Hey, my flat is a dump. I just want you to realize that not everybody has unlimited choices in life.”
We drove on in silence. I was suddenly aware just how desperately I needed a hot shower and a long, long sleep.
“Sometimes being born into privilege takes away choices too,” he said, softly.
“It does? Like what?”
He sighed. “You don’t have the choice to work outside the family business. You don’t have the option to fade into the background and be a regular Joe. You never have the chance to mix with the people you want to know, because you’re always in the so-called best places, not the most interesting places.”
I watched him as he said all this. A furrow had appeared between his eyebrows.
“Those negative points sound pretty okay to me,” I admitted. “Having a lot of money would make that sort of inconvenience A-OK, I think.” Flashing signs outside a burger bar lit the interior of the car in primary colors. “Even having a family would be a start. I wouldn’t mind so much if they were overbearing, just as long as they were in my life.”
“You don’t have a family?” He glanced across at me again, then back to the road.
“Nope. I was adopted as a toddler. No idea what happened to my birth mother. She’s Irish. My adoptive parents are Irish too, but lived here for years. I may have already said all this…”. I faltered, tears prickling my eyes. “My adoptive parents are great, but we don’t have a lot of contact now.”
Please don’t ask me why not, I pleaded silently.
Sebastian didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure he was even that interested. There I was, giving extra information to someone who hadn’t actually expressed any interest beyond “You don’t have a family?”. I clammed up at once.
He pulled into New Cross just as a wild-eyed man ran into the road, shrieking. Sebastian’s lip curled in disdain.
“Hey,” I said. “Maybe he’s dealing with mental health problems. Or just some really bad luck.”
Sebastian’s mouth set in a firm line. “Maybe he’s made his own bad luck.”
I looked out of my window, irritated. Apparently he really couldn’t imagine life for the other 99.9% of the population. Why did I think I could relate to this person? He’s not in my world at all.
We reached Deptford a few minutes later and I directed Sebastian to my apartment.
“This is it,” I said, bracing myself for a scathing comment. My block was an ugly 1970s monolith. It belonged to the local council and was in severe need of refurbishment.
He parked the car on the street outside and looked up at it. “Is your place at the top?”
“No. More like halfway. I’m good from here, thanks. Thank you for the ride home. I really appreciate it.”
I reached over to open the door but he clicked the central locking on.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not letting you walk out of here at this time of night by yourself. I’ll take you into your flat.”
“There’s no need, really. It’s going to be light soon. You get home. You have to get to Cornwall tomorrow, right?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “How do you know that?”
I was about to tell him that the employment agency had mentioned it, when they booked me for tonight’s overtime at work. But then my phone rang again. It was Dahlia.
“Excuse me a second,” I said to Sebastian. “It’s my roommate. Hey, Dahlia. I’m right outside.”
“Thank god,” came Dahlia’s broad London accent. “The place is a bomb site. I almost thought we’d been burgled. Get your arse up here and we’ll tidy it together.”
“Um…” - how could I put this? - “Actually, D, I sorta have company.”
There was a brief silence.
“Company? Like, a bloke?”
I suppressed a smile at haughty, rich Sebastian being called ‘a bloke’.
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Not Wayne?” She sounded thrilled about this.
“N… no. Are you on your own? Are we okay to come up?”
“I am now. Akash just went home. He has a ton of work and I just wanna veg in front of some awful TV. Looks like I’ll be watching it on my own in my room though, if you got lucky.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I blustered. But what was it like? I wasn’t sure.
“See you in a sec, babe,” she trilled. The phone clicked off.
I turned back to Sebastian. “Guess I’ll go on up now then. My roommate is there, so there’s no need to worry about me. She’ll make sure I get in safely. Thanks so much once again
for your kindness in driving me home.”
I tried the car door again, but it was still locked.
“Nice try. I’m taking you to the door. You’re not going on your own. Not after the experience you’ve had tonight.”
“It’s not necessary,” I said. But he was already out of the car, opening my door.
It was pretty obvious Sebastian Chase wasn’t used to hearing no for an answer.
* * *
I led Sebastian through the paved courtyard to the communal front door.
“There’s no working elevator,” I said. “So no chance of a repeat performance, I’m afraid.”
A tiny smile played on his lips, but he didn’t respond.
We walked through my front door to the soothing tones of Billie Holiday. Dahlia emerged, dressed in an indie band T-shirt and skin-tight wet-look leggings.
“Hey, you guys. I put this on for some atmosphere.” She took a long look at Sebastian, sizing him up. I guessed she approved, because she beamed like a maniac at me and hurriedly decided to leave the room. “Right, I’ve been up way too long. See you at a more civilized hour, Fin. Have fun, you two.”
Then she winked exaggeratedly at me and Sebastian pretended not to notice.
“I apologize for my theatrical roommate,” I stuttered, ushering Sebastian through to the living room.
“She seems to think you’ve picked me up for a one-night stand,” he said, fixing me with those sapphire eyes again. I couldn’t tell if they were sparkling with amusement or irritation.
“Does she?” I replied, weakly. If Dahlia seriously thought I was capable of picking up guys like this, she was paying me an enormous compliment.
Then again, what was the encounter in the elevator all about? I mean, I totally picked him up then. Didn’t I?
“Yeah, she does. She thinks I’m your sex toy for the night.” Sebastian pushed the living room door closed behind him. “Is that what you think?”
He walked towards me, looking… I don’t know, dangerous. Like a wild animal closing in on his prey. I was mesmerized by his height, his strength and the air of danger that surrounded him. It was also completely jarring to see him in his perfect tailored suit, against the backdrop of my landlord’s late-eighties floral wallpaper horror show.
Tiger Billionaire: The Whole Story (BBW Paranormal Tiger Shifter Romance Box Set) Page 3
