Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance

by Samantha Westlake

  "Now, none of you have any plans to go anywhere for the next couple of days, right?" the officer finally asked, as his partner led Hook outside to the waiting squad car.

  The policeman probably wasn't expecting all of us to speak up. I tried to explain how I needed to get back to the city to write up my story, while Rob insisted that he had to go straight to the SEC and present this new information on how his boss was the true culprit at fault for the case of insider trading. Even Diana added her voice to the hubbub, although she was mainly just complaining about how this better not keep her from missing her weekly bingo nights, or else she'd be talking with her good friend the retired former police commissioner.

  "Enough, enough!" the policeman finally shouted over all of us, holding both his hands up. "Look, all of you are people of interest in whatever happened tonight, and we'll probably have more follow-up questions for all of you. So whatever plans you had for the next couple days? Cancel them."

  We tried to argue, but the man wasn't having any of it. "No exceptions!" he shouted, turning and retreating out through the front door before we could attempt to sway his mind.

  With the hitman and the police officers both gone from the little cottage, the whole place felt smaller, quieter. Diana glanced at the two of us, noting Rob's stony expression and my own look of shell-shocked exhaustion.

  "I think that I'll go turn in to bed," she said, moving past us. "After all, this has been quite the exciting day - and it sounds like the two of you have some more talking to do. I'll leave you to it. There's tea and biscuits in the kitchen, if you'd like."

  And off she bustled, leaving Rob and I alone in the living room.

  Rob didn't seem to know what to say at first, but he took one look at my face and led me by hand over to the couch. "You look like you're about to topple over if you don't sit down," he said, as I dropped down thankfully onto the cushions.

  I nodded. "I can't even take in what just happened," I admitted. "This doesn't even feel like real life! What happened?"

  He took a moment to consider that answer, sitting down next to me. "I think we won," he finally said, glancing up at me, his blue eyes holding my own.

  Next thing that I knew, I was leaning forward, held in his arms as my chest shook, my breathing grew heavy, and he patted me gently on the back. For a long time, Rob just held me. Neither of us spoke, but we took comfort in each other's arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  *

  Finally, after I'd managed to recover to some semblance of normal breathing, I sat up a little, looking up into Rob's face as he sat next to me. "Now what?" I asked, not even sure what the question really addressed.

  He just sat there, looking at me - and then his eyes tracked past me. I turned to see what he was looking at, as he reached forward and picked up his laptop from where it had ended up on the floor.

  "Now, I think we just need to rest and recover," he said, glancing down at the laptop for a minute. I saw his fingers hover over the keys, and I guessed that he wanted to start digging around, to see about investigating everything that Chad Cartmann had been up to on his computer, but he forced himself to close the lid of the laptop instead and set it aside. "We got lucky, and we should take some time to relax."

  "Under house arrest, practically," I pointed out, but he just shrugged.

  "I was being told to stick around here and not go anywhere before you arrived," he pointed out mildly. "Staying a little longer won't make much of a difference. And you can stick around and get started on your story."

  He was right, of course. But Rob kept on looking at me, holding my eyes with his own icy blue ones. I waited, sensing that he wanted to say something else.

  Finally, he spoke up. "Why did you come back?" he asked softly.

  That wasn't the question that I'd been expecting, and I started a little. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, you heard that I was in trouble, that Hook, that hitman, had me captured," he said, gesturing over to where the chair still stood that had held him. "Why didn't you call the police? Why did you risk your life by coming back?"

  I shook my head, not sure how to answer, not even sure what the real answer was. "Because you were in trouble, and I was the only one who could get you out," I said, but he shook his head.

  "You could have called the police. You came rushing into danger for me, and you didn't leave when I told you to get out of here, to go and save yourself. Why?"

  I looked back at him, my fingers twitching, my knees bumping together slightly. I felt an an answer welling up inside of me, carried on the crest of a wave of emotion, but I knew that saying it would be a mistake. If I said the words inside my head, I'd be opening myself up, exposing myself completely, making myself vulnerable.

  "Because you needed me," I said softly, looking back into those eyes, knowing that he would pull the truth out of me, that I couldn't keep up any walls against him.

  Rob looked back at me for another minute, one which felt like it stretched onward into an infinity. He didn't say anything, but I could feel him measuring me, his thoughts examining me, turning me around to make sense of me, seeing where I fit in his mind.

  And then, just as he started to open his mouth to say something, I felt my breath coming faster, more shallowly.

  "Oh god," I gasped out, trying to regain control of my panicking diaphragm.

  Rob straightened up, his eyes full of concern. "What's going on? Are you alright?"

  "I think it's just all hitting me," I gasped out, feeling faint. The room spun crazily around me, and the whole living room suddenly felt too small. Unsteadily, I pushed up to my feet. I needed to get out of here, someplace where there was enough room for me to breathe. "I just need to get someplace more open..."

  As I stood up, Rob rose up with me, supporting my arm. "Here. Outside. The back yard." He led me through the kitchen and out into the cooler night air, where I managed to suck in a deep breath.

  The darkness of the night outside helped calm me down, and I found myself once again at least able to breathe. I kept on walking forward, however, moving away from the house, from where I'd nearly lost fingers, maybe even more. Where Rob had nearly ended up dead at the hands of a crazed hitman.

  Rob just moved along with me, not saying anything or trying to redirect me. His arm on my elbow gently guided me between the tall grassy outcrops, and I recognized that we were following the path to the beach, the same place where he'd first told me about his situation. Yes, the beach would be a good place for me to catch my breath.

  When we arrived, the dirt beneath my feet shifting to softer sand, I only managed to advance a few steps before I dropped down to sit down on the cool, slightly damp sand beneath me. After a moment, Rob plopped down beside me.

  "Better?" he asked after a minute.

  I nodded, focusing just on breathing.

  After a minute or two of silence, however, I cleared my throat. "Do you remember when you first brought me out here?" I asked, turning and looking over at Rob's dark shape, sitting beside me.

  He nodded. "This was where I first told you my side of the story, and you believed me and agreed to help."

  "And then I told you about my life, and you agreed that I could write the story of this whole thing," I continued.

  He chuckled for a moment, deep and amused. "I bet you weren't expecting the story to be quite so thrilling and dangerous, were you?"

  "Not in the slightest," I admitted, shaking my head.

  Leaning over towards me, Rob put his arm around me, and I felt another question welling up inside of me. "And then, you put your arm around me, just like that," I said softly, thinking back. Had it really just been a couple of weeks ago? It felt like it had been an eternity ago, in a whole other life.

  "And you leaned in towards me," Rob said softly, as I did so again. "You turned and looked up at me-"

  "-and then we ended up tumbling back onto the sand, because you weren't expecting me," I finished for him.

  This time, we did
n't tumble backwards. Instead, Rob slowly sank back, letting me come to lay on top of him, his warmth separating me from the cold sand beneath his back. He gazed up at my face, his eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

  "Like this?" he asked, as his arms wrapped around me.

  I nodded, feeling my breath coming shorter again - but this time, it wasn't out of fear or panic. "Just like this. And then we almost did something else-"

  I didn't even get to finish the sentence before Rob slipped his hand around the back of my neck and guided my lips down to meet his.

  For just a moment, I held out against the kiss, but I felt myself immediately melting into his embrace, his lips on mine seeming to drain away all of the stuffed-up fear and panic that had sat in my chest like an iron weight on my lungs. I put my arms around him, little grains of sand sliding through my fingers as I held him.

  "I know why you came back," Rob whispered to me as the kiss ended, although he still held me close. "And that's okay. I knew that you would, somehow. I never doubted it."

  "Rob, I-" I started, once again feeling frustration start to grow, but he kissed me again, briefly, just long enough to silence me.

  "You don't need to say anything," he murmured. "Just stay here with me. We've still got a few more days together."

  I kissed him back, feeling his body respond under me, arching up to press in against me. I met him, pushing back down, my legs sliding apart so that I could straddle him. His hand slid up my back, feeling where the strap of my bra formed a little ridge across the regular little bumps of my spine.

  "What happens after those days are up?" I asked, still trying to fight against what my body wanted.

  He just smiled up at me. "Then, we can decide on whatever we want to do next. Together, maybe, if you want."

  I sensed him leaving it open, offering the choice up to me. For just an instant, I smiled down at him, almost laughing - the Bad Boy of Wall Street, this hard man, was offering himself up to me! Now, he was putting himself directly in a position of vulnerability, letting me make the choice.

  I didn't need to stop and think about what I wanted. For once in my life, all the voices in my head were in agreement.

  Take him.

  I leaned in once again, pushing him down into the sand beneath his back as our bodies came together. This time, when our lips met, I pushed down so that his parted, letting me get the slightest little taste of him.

  Rob immediately responded, one of his hands tightening around the back of my neck as he held me down against him. His other hand slid up from where it rested against my hip, and I felt the stir of cool night air across my bare skin as he pushed up my shirt. His hand slid up along my back until it found that little ridge of my bra strap - but that mountain ridge put up only an instant's resistance before his nimble fingers parted it, and I felt a sudden loosening of straps on my shoulders.

  "Naughty," I whispered down to him, trying - and failing - to keep the aroused delight out of my voice.

  "What else do you expect from the Bad Boy of Wall Street?" he whispered back, and I saw the sparkle in his eyes. His voice was husky, and I could feel his body aching beneath me.

  More of our clothes fell away, ending up half-buried in the sand around us as we stripped away at each other. Cute little kisses turned into something more intense, more powerful, as we scrabbled at each other's clothes and pulled them away from skin that was suddenly too hot and flushed to be contained. Soon, we lay on the cool sand with nothing separating us but an inch of air, as I knelt above him and looked down at the shadows of his muscles, his tall and broad figure, his strength and arousal for me.

  Rob slowly ran a finger along me, stroking down from my neckline to trace a circle with his thumb around one of my nipples, and I nearly passed out on top of him with pleasure. "Don't tease me like that," I warned him, trying to fight my smile.

  "Or what?" he responded, challenging me with raised eyebrows. "You'll stop me?"

  "I'll fight back," I answered, reaching down to run my own fingers into some very naughty and taboo areas. I felt the man's whole body stiffen as I wrapped my hand around his hard thickness, hard and warm against my palm.

  I slowly guided him to my entrance - but paused, just letting him rub back and forth, not letting him enter. I grinned at Rob as he grunted with the effort of resisting, and then finally reached out for me when he realized that I was teasing him.

  "Come here," he growled, and he pulled me down, taking me.

  Oh god. It really had been far too long, and I wasn't prepared for this. At first, for a moment, I felt pain lancing out through me, sharp and splintering and piercing. I cried out a little, a soft wordless cry that I buried in his neck as I bent forward against him.

  But Rob moved gently against me, rocking in time with me as his hands slid over me, so warm, moving across my breasts, my bare skin, over my back and running down my spine to leave little tingles behind in their wake. Soon, the pain drifted away, instead replaced with pleasure, breathless and building, growing ever closer to that plunging release that I both wanted to arrive and wanted to delay for as long as possible.

  I kissed Rob again, seeking to distract myself with his body, with how he moved so assuredly against me. I couldn't deny it, however, couldn't hold it off for more than a few moments.

  "Oh god, yes," I groaned into his ear as he sat up, pulling me against him, letting gravity rock my hips back and forth as he slid in and out of me, just inches above the cool sand. "God, Rob, I'm going to-"

  "Do it," he whispered to me, commanding as he took me, and I couldn't fight it any longer.

  I shattered with pleasure, the entire world going white as I clung to the one man who still existed, who filled me and marked me as his own and for whom I'd come back and risked death and dismemberment, just to save him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  *

  "Wow," I breathed out, as I gazed up at the stars overhead. There wasn't a single cloud in the night sky, and out here, away from the lights of the city, I could pick out innumerable numbers of twinkling stars far above me.

  "That about sums it up," Rob murmured next to me, his arm tightening a little around my shoulders as he pulled me in close. By the time that he finally groaned and let himself release, hitting his own orgasm and giving up control, I was practically senseless, definitely speechless, from what he'd already managed to do to me.

  For a long time afterward, he'd just held me in his arms, both of us silent as we waited for our breathing to return to normal, looking into each other's eyes, exploring the lines and curves of each other's bodies.

  I shivered, as much from the cold creeping into my muscles through my skin as from the sky above us. "We should probably go back, shouldn't we?"

  He shrugged; I felt the muscles of his shoulders moving against my own bare skin. "If we go back, the moment ends," he said simply.

  I'd been thinking along the same lines, although I couldn't have put it so clearly, so plainly. A part of me wanted to stay here forever, ignore the cold and hope that this moment could remain frozen and perfect. But I knew that it couldn't happen.

  Finally, the cold won out over my temptation to snuggle up close to Rob and never move again. With a groan, I hauled myself up, reaching out and feeling around on the sand around us to locate my scattered clothes.

  After a minute, Rob got up and joined me in the hunt. We found a couple items belonging to the other person, but managed to get most of the right clothes back on the right bodies after a couple minutes of fumbling around in the dark.

  I gratefully accepted his hand as we headed back to the house. We slipped in through the kitchen door in the back of the little cottage, doing our best to keep quiet in case Diana was still awake. We didn't see any lights on in the house, however, so I guessed that she had gone to sleep already.

  I started to head off to my bed, upstairs, but Rob held onto my hand, tugging me back. "Not up there," he whispered gently to me, moving towards his bedroom, off the main hallway on
the first floor. "In here."

  I thought of protesting - I felt worn out and exhausted, a little sweaty from the trek back to the house, and I had sand in my hair, as well as in several other areas that I really didn't want to mention to him. But Rob smiled at me, gently tugging at my hand, and all of my protests faded away into nothing but background noise.

  I followed him into his room.

  This time, undressing wasn't a sexy, hungry, needy act. I cast plenty of glances over at Rob's body, of course, and I felt his eyes lingering on me - but they were looks of softer, less hungry attraction. I wasn't focusing just on his muscles any longer, but on how he looked strong, able to protect me, confident and sure of himself.

  We crawled into bed together. I thought for sure that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, that I'd be up for hours thinking about everything that had happened to me today - but I was wrong. As soon as my head hit the pillow and my eyes closed in the darkness, I was out like a light.

  I woke up the next morning and stretched out my arms, frowning when they bumped against something. Frowning a little, I turned to look over at this lump next to me, sitting on my bed and taking up half of my space.

  "Morning," Rob murmured to me without opening his eyes, reaching over to drape one arm across me.

  Oh yeah, that's right. I turned to look at him, and had to smile. Even just waking up, his hair mussy from the pillow and a little bit of stubble showing on his unshaven face, the man still looked amazing, like he belonged in a movie. I reached out and ran my fingers across his slightly rough cheek, just to confirm that he was real.

  Rob opened his eyes at my touch, those deep blue irises focusing on me as he smiled. Had I really thought that they looked icy and cold when we first met? Now, although they were still light blue, they seemed full of warmth, like gazing into the calm shallows of the tropical ocean.

  "Good morning," I replied, turning in the tangled sheets so that I faced him. His hand was draped over my shoulders and he tightened his grip, pulling me in closer against him. I wiggled my way in through the sheets against him, only remembering as our bodies came together that we'd both stripped off our dirty, sandy clothing last night before crawling into the bed.