I Choose You (The Billionaire Brothers Series)

by Cole, S. Ann

  Whenever he donned that severe expression of his, eyes unreadable, face impassive, it tended to intimidate the shit out of me. Yet, in some weird way, it turned me on. These were the times when he resembled danger. But I desired him, all the more.

  Gripping the edge of the counter behind him, he pushed himself off and crossed the narrow path towards me in two strides. Now he towered over me with that height, those muscles, that scent of masculinity, new leather, and olive-scented bar soap.

  Eyes shuttering down, I inhaled my fill of him, appreciating, savoring, lusting. His nearness sucked up all the space around me, all the air, making me aware of him, making me acknowledge him … he was just there. Then the air shifted, the heat was gone, the scent was at a distance, and cool air rushed around me. My eyes snapped open to find Trevillo no longer in front of me. He’d gone back to scanning the cabinets.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” he told me in an apathetic tone. “Right now, we cook.”

  “What’s there to talk — ”

  “Later, Krissan,” he interrupted in a manner that invited no counterattack. “Now, what do you want to eat?”

  Hunger for food wasn’t what concerned me at the moment, so I just told him the first thing that came to mind. “Um … Shrimp Alfredo?” I had no idea if it was something difficult to cook or not.

  “Good. That’s easy.”

  Trevillo began gathering the ingredients, completely focused, moving around the kitchen with easy grace. Opening one of the bottom cupboards, he took out a medium-sized pot and a smaller one. As he set the smaller pot aside, he handed me the bigger one. “Fill it with water halfway, then put it on the back burner to boil.”

  When I merely glanced down at the pot in my hand and back up at him, he bit his lip as if trying to repress a smile. “Do you know how to turn on a tap, Krissy? How to turn on a stove?”

  Chin tilting up, spine growing stiff, I boasted, “Yes, Mr. Asshole.”

  I brushed past him and went over to the sink, where I turned on the tap and filled the pot halfway with water as he instructed. When I turned toward the stove, I noticed he was pretending he wasn’t paying attention. But I knew he was watching me from the corner of his eyes as he poured milk into a measuring cup.

  Ignoring him, I placed the pot down on one of the three back burners of his six-burner stove and studied the knobs, having absolutely no clue which knob would match the burner the pot was on. The stove was a gourmet-style, top-of-the-line appliance with all sorts of complexities. Yeah, that’s the excuse I’m sticking with: the appliance was far too complicated.

  I turned the knob reading, ‘Rear Left’ because, well, the pot was on the rear left burner. But it didn’t work. So, starting from left to right, I began turning all the knobs; one of them had to work. When I turned the last knob on the right and nothing happened, I huffed and spun around to find Trevillo leaning against the kitchen island, arms crossed as he watched me with a ridiculous grin.

  I shot him a ‘you’re-an-asshole’ glare, and his shoulders began shaking as he broke into laughter.

  Whirling around in anger tinged with mortification, I started to stomp out of the kitchen. “Okay, if you’re gonna laugh at me, I’m done. You’re the one who’s hungry, so you do the cooking.”

  Trevillo reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me back into the kitchen as he folded his lips in an attempt to quell his laughter. When that didn’t work, he turned his face up to the ceiling, fighting to contain himself.

  Still pissed and embarrassed, I tried to peel his fingers from around my arm. “If you wanna laugh, then laugh, Trev. I can’t cook, so what?”

  Seizing my hand, he brought his lips down on mine. This kiss wasn’t one of his usual ravenous kisses. This kiss was soft, sweet and careful. “‘Kay, babe. I promise, I’m done laughing.” He lifted me up off the ground and put me on top of the kitchen island.

  All calmed down by his palliative kiss, I asked, “Why didn’t any of the knobs work?”

  Trevillo’s lips twitched at the corners, but he managed not to laugh again. “Because you have to push the knob inward before you turn it.”

  “Oh.” This was embarrassingly embarrassing. How on earth could I call myself an interior designer when I didn’t know how to operate a high-end stove? One can never stop learning, I guess. “You’re not gonna drop me from the project now, are you? Please don’t. I promise I will visit an appliance store next week and familiarize myself with every model of stove ever invented.”

  Trevillo shook his head with a light chuckle. “Just sit here and watch how it’s done. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll enjoy cooking so much, that you’ll be volunteering for kitchen duties on Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.”

  After his tongue traced the outline of my lips, he gave me a quick, sweet, closed-mouth kiss and playfully slapped my bare thigh before going back to cooking.

  “Where’d you learn to cook like this?” I asked around a delicious mouthful of Shrimp Alfredo. It was possibly the best Shrimp Alfredo I’d ever tasted.

  What was even more surprising, was a man like Trevillo not only knew how to cook, but was an exceptional cook. He moved efficiently around the kitchen with quiet ease and confidence, giving the task at hand his undivided attention, almost seeming passionate about being in the kitchen.

  We were sitting side by side on barstools at the breakfast bar. Somewhere along the cooking process, Trevillo had gotten rid of his shirt and shoes — or maybe they’d just melted off him. I mean, a mouth-watering hot guy in the kitchen playing with fire? That was far too much heat for one room, so something had to give — wearing just his jeans sitting tauntingly low on his hips. To say his bare chest was ‘distracting’ was a major understatement. It was cruel, tantalizing, and treacherously unfair.

  At the question, he glanced at me uncertainly as he looked to be oscillating on whether he should divulge that bit about himself to me or not. “This is novel … ” he mused, with a slight shake of his head.

  “What’s novel? Are you trying to tell me this is the first time you’ve ever cooked?” I asked, raising a distrustful eyebrow. “Because I won’t believe you.”

  Shifting on his barstool, he turned to face me. “No. I mean, this, here, now. It’s new for me. Thing is, I actually want to tell you about me.”

  “Oh,” I murmured, swallowing hard.

  Each time he spoke in a way intimating there would be an ‘us’ that went beyond sex, my heart would launch off like a rocket, and I wasn’t sure why. I was having an internal battle with myself, and it seemed I was losing.

  Taking a sip of his wine, he began, “Let’s just say, becoming a real estate mogul wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned for my future as a child growing up. I wanted to be a chef. While Lovello could be found locked in his room trying to conquer the Internet, and Natalio could be found buried in old electronics trying to create the next new junk, I could be found in the kitchen quarters with the chefs, being an utter nuisance, wanting them to teach me every trick they knew.”

  Wearing a thoughtful expression, he forked a morsel of pasta into his mouth and chewed quietly before continuing. “My father, Marcello Nelson, however, shot that aspiration to hell. No son of his was going to become a ‘chef’. Consequently, I had to choose a different career path.”

  I gawked at him in disbelief. “So you just gave up on what you’re passionate about? Just like that?”

  His eyes narrowed in on nothing for a second, then he shrugged. “With my father, one doesn’t really have a choice. He expects us to make billions, so that’s what we have to do. There’s no room for mediocrity and failure in his family.”

  “I heard he was like that. Now hearing it from you proves the veracity in that gossip.”

  Marcello Nelson was rich, stinking rich, and was one of the most powerful men in this hemisphere. I could understand why he expected his sons to be the same. The legacy had to be perpetuated for generations to come.

  “You’re unbelievabl
y good, though,” I complimented. “You navigate this kitchen like you own it.”

  Trevillo tried to smother a smile. “Um, I kinda do … ”

  Laughing, I slapped his arm. “You know what I mean!”

  “Yeah, well, I watch a lot of Food Network in my spare time,” he informed me. He pulled me off the barstool and yanked me up between his thighs. “Shh, don’t tell anyone.”

  This side of him was so normal. The intimidating man who resembled danger wasn’t present in this room. At the moment, he was just … Trev. Shirtless, shoeless, playful Trev.

  “Also,” he whispered against my neck. “It’s great now that I have someone to cook for.”

  There’s that implication of more again. We seriously needed to have that talk … as soon as he stops licking at my neck like that. Jesus.

  He moaned against my skin. “So soft … so smooth … ”

  In the next instant, I was being lifted off the ground and carried into the living room. He seriously needed to stop doing that!

  Laying me back on the sofa, he followed me down and claimed my mouth. Ravished, I returned the kiss, legs wrapped tight around his waist, fingers curling in his hair. On a brief break, he hauled off my blouse, and our mouths melded together again.

  Testing the waters, I caught his lower lip between my teeth and bit down on it, but not too hard. Trevillo groaned out loud against my lips and mumbled, “Harder, babe.”

  I bit down harder on his lip, and his hips jerked forward into me, his dick so hard, I could feel it throbbing through his jeans. He kissed me deeper, fiercer, until I was desperate to have him inside me. “Trev … ”

  Groaning in response, his lips left mine and traveled down my neck toward my breasts. My back arched up when he flicked his tongue over one nipple as his fingers adeptly tweaked the other, leaving me a writhing wreck beneath him. His lips continued their meandering path down my stomach, then he kissed above the waistband of my shorts before dragging both them and my underwear off in one go.

  Lowering his head, he ran his nose up my seam. “Always smell amazing,” he mused, then slid two fingers inside me, working me as he slightly brushed his lips over mine down below.

  My entire body was heated, searing, sensitized, wanting, and needing as I moved in motion with him. He withdrew his fingers and dragged them through my folds and up my stomach, leaving a long trail of wet arousal, up my neck, around my lips, then under my nose. “See what I mean when I say you smell amazing? Even though you left me, this scent hasn’t left my nostrils … ” Slipping his fingers in his mouth, he added, “The taste hasn’t left my tongue either.”

  A moan was all I could afford in response as I bucked my hips upward to find some kind of friction against his bulge. “Trev, please,” I mewled. “Let me feel you … ”

  As a granter of my wishes, he made quick work of lowering his zipper and shoving his jeans and boxers down his hips to free his mighty erection. He produced a condom from his back pocket and swiftly donned it.

  Leaning down, he held my mouth in captivity once again, dancing his tongue around mine. But that was short-lived, as he drew back and up to his knees. He grasped my legs and effortlessly threw them over his shoulders. Then I felt his crown prodding at my entrance, teasing, just lingering there. Clasping my hips, he locked me into his gaze, then, with one swift motion, he surged deep inside me, knocking a cry from my lungs. “Holy shit!!”

  “Don’t swear, Krissan,” he reproved.

  Rearing back, he surged forward again, and I bit hard on my lip to stop from swearing again. But hell, he was hitting me deep.

  He kissed and bit the leg resting on his left shoulder, then he found my eyes again. “Raise your hands above your head and grab on to the sofa handle.” When I did as told without hesitation, he reared back his hips and told me, “I’m going to fuck you hard, fast, and deep, Krissy. So hold fast and don’t let go.”

  Before he even finished his sentence, he plunged into me. There was no pause after that. It was rapid, hard, fast, and faster, hitting me deep, and deeper. Swear to the gods of sex and fornication, I was feeling him in places I didn’t even know a man could reach. With each relentless, stomach-cramping slam, I cried louder.

  This was … no words.

  His fingers tightened around my hips as he hammered into me, until he came down on top of me and started going slow, moaning aloud with his face buried into the crook of my neck. “Christ, babe, you’re so … ah … ”

  Letting go of my hips, he reached up for my hands that gripped the sofa handle. Taking them, he wrapped them around him so they settled on the center of his back. “Mark me,” he commanded.

  Huh?

  Not understanding, I hesitated.

  “Fucking mark me, Krissy!” he growled.

  Tentatively, I raked my nails down his back, testing to see if that’s what he meant. At the movement, he nipped at my neck and groaned, “Deeper. More.”

  My fingernails were grown to a not so decent length, and I filed them almost daily, so there was no doubt I’d draw blood if I went deeper. I was dubious about doing as he asked, until I felt him start to pull away from me.

  “Krissy, if you don’t — Ahhhhh!!”

  I dug my nails deep into his skin and raked them down his back to stop him from pulling away. He growled long and hard, as his hips pumped unrelentingly into me. The sound of his intense shout of pain, the pleasure that filled his voice, the sheer eroticism of it all, sent me spiraling off with an ear-splitting orgasm, and in the throes of it, I inadvertently raked my nails harder down his back.

  “Mnnhh!” he groaned in my ear. “Fucking fuck!”

  Then he began pounding unapologetically faster into me, kissing and nipping at my neck and voicing his pleasures. Until his body went rigid on a loud, pleasure-filled growl, and it was just his cock that was pulsating inside me.

  Panting, lips parted, I pulled his spent body down on mine, loving the feel of his heavy weight on top of me and his hot, sweaty skin against mine. Cupping his face, I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe.

  I was falling …

  Chapter 13

  K. Kingston

  Trev’s

  The burning need to empty my bladder dragged me from the depths of sleep. As my eyes fluttered open, I became aware of being part of a tangled heap beneath the sheets in Trevillo’s bed.

  That said man, with his legs and arms twisted over and around me, was sound asleep, emitting soft snores. Careful not to wake him, I gingerly untangled my limbs then slipped out of bed and went to relieve my bladder.

  Aridity attacked my mouth as I emerged from the bathroom, so I changed route and trudged to the kitchen instead of heading back to bed. Pouring some ice-cold water into a Collins glass, I noticed, through the floor-to-ceiling window, the darkness of an old night was long gone, and the brightness of a new day was creeping in. The sun was just peeking its face up over the tops of the surrounding high-rise buildings; its mild glare coloring the cirrus clouds a faint, dusty pink.

  Cold glass of water in hand, I ambled over and gazed out at the view in quiet appreciation of a new day as I drank shorts gulps of the water. That’s when I began thinking about Trevillo’s implications the night before, that there’d be an ‘us’.

  “I want to keep you forever.”

  Last night he’d sleepily whispered those words to me after our third round of orgiastic sex. And, before that, he promised to “talk about that later”.

  Bringing the glass up to my lips, I quaffed the rest of the water in one go. The thought of giving more of myself to someone scared me. The thought of sharing scared me. The thought of caring for anyone scared me. The unusual emotions pervading me each time we had sex scared me. Being scared, scared me all the more.

  Sex with Trevillo was transcendent. Like nothing I’d ever tasted before. Straight up spectacular. He also had a warm touch of normalcy to him whenever he wasn’t exhibiting intimidation or exuding raw, carnal desire. A part of me wanted to know him more. Wan
ted to hear him laugh over and over and over again like he had last night. Because, God, he was beautiful when he laughed — even when it was at my expense. I wanted to hear him cry out in pain, in pleasure, to hear that erotic sound of his deep voice again. So, yes, I did want more. A lot more of him.

  But there was something inside pulling me back, cautioning me. A pusillanimous part of me too afraid of the unforeseeable future.

  Thoughts in a row, next move decided, I turned and went to set the empty glass in the kitchen sink and tiptoed to the bedroom to check whether Trevillo was still asleep. He was lying on his back, cream-colored sheets draped across his lower half, one leg bent and the other straight, both arms crooked above his head on the bunched-up pillows, his breathing even.

  Wrestling with the urge to crawl across the bed, push down the sheets, straddle him, and give him an early morning ride, I absconded to the living area and shuffled around for my accouterments, belatedly remembering I hadn’t brought anything with me the night before. Not even my cellphone. Finding my cotton tee, shorts, and slippers, I threw them on. No money, no cellphone, but I figured I could have the concierge downstairs call a cab for me, and I could make payment when I got home.

  Trekking back to the bathroom, I gurgled a mouthful of burning Listerine and snuck to the elevator. When I pressed the call button, unfortunately, a small rectangular monitor up higher on the wall I hadn’t taken notice of before, blinked:

  Enter Four-Digit Code To Deactivate Immobility.

  What the heck?

  Thinking fast, I punched in a few generic, easy-to-remember codes: 1234 … denied … 5678 … denied … 0000 … denied … 4321 … denied … .1122 … denied …

  Frustrated, I flicked up my middle finger at the monitor and hissed, “Beep, beep, beep, beep. Shut the fuck up!”

  Then I tried again: 1111 … denied … 9876 … denied … 2233 … denied. When nothing worked, I grumbled to myself in defeat, “Who the hell puts a security lock on a frickin’ elevator?”