I feel her stomach lurch and she makes a dry heave. “It was the story, Baby. I’m sorry.”
Grabbing a tissue from a box I keep in the back of my car for occasions other than puking, I wipe her mouth and help her sit up. With a kiss to her cheek, I can feel the heat in it.
“Jason, I really can’t do this with you. I just can’t.” She lays her head on my shoulder and sniffles.
“We can go now, Donovan,” I call out to him.
“Jason, take me home, please.”
I kiss the side of her head. “I am taking you home. To my home and you and I are going to spend the night together. No sex, just holding each other. I think you need to know how much I loved you and still do. I’m sorry for all I’ve done and I’m vowing to right my wrongs, Britt.”
She takes in a deep breath. “Do you have any idea of how it feels, Jason? Has anyone ever hurt you?”
“It hurt me when you left for college and never talked to me again. It hurt like hell. I couldn’t just show up at your house and make you forgive me. You were gone. I had no idea how to even find you. Your parents refused to give me your address or your new phone number. It was pure hell not being able to talk to you.”
She traces small circles on my leg with her fingertip as she says, “I picked up my phone about a hundred and fifty times to call you that first week at school. I missed the sound of your voice. I was mad as hell at you as the entire neighborhood knew what you’d been doing that night. But I missed you anyway, and I wanted to talk to you so damn bad.”
“I wish you would’ve called me. I went off the deep end after that. I screwed anything I could. When my uncle asked me to move to Wisconsin with him, I did and found a whole new crop of women to conquer. Little by little, I expanded my range and as my uncle gained success in the software industry, he taught me things that would eventually allow me to make that app that made me rich.”
“Then my not calling was a blessing to you, Jason.” She sniffles again.
“Maybe. But I still wish you would’ve called.” I kiss the side of her head as we pull up to the building my penthouse is in. “I’ll let us out, Donovan. Thanks.”
I get out and wrap my arm around Britt as she leans into me. She seems very weak, and it makes me feel awful. Only a couple of hours ago she was this vibrant woman with her head held high and looking as if she was on top of the world.
My little story from the past has knocked her back down and I hate myself for that. I will right my wrongs and fix things for her. She’ll see. I’ll make her believe in love again.
I have to.
As we go inside the lobby, I lead her to the elevator that goes up to the penthouse. “I’m going to make you a glass of wine and put you into one of my T-shirts and cuddle you all night long, Baby. Then in the morning, I’m going to make you my famous cheese omelet you used to like so much. Then you and I are going to charter a jet and go to Marina Del Rey and take a sunset cruise.”
“You’re putting too much into one day.” She wraps her arms around me tight. “I’ll give you this night but that’s all I’m giving you.”
My heart stops. “You’ll give me tonight?”
She nods and sighs. “You have me for tonight but then you have to let me go, Jason.”
But I know I can’t do that. “How about I trade this night for an entire week? A week with just me and you.”
The elevator doors open and I step out with her into my penthouse. She lets me go and looks around. “Nice.”
“I had it decorated by one of New York’s best decorators.” I watch her looking around the very expensive place.
“Donna Brosig?” she asks.
Alarm bells ring as she’s right about the woman’s name and that makes me nervous as Donna is one of my New York women.
“You know her?” I ask as I try to act cool and go to get a bottle of wine out of the chiller in the kitchen.
“Yes, I do. She decorated my apartment here too.”
Fuck!
“How coincidental,” I say as I open a bottle and let it breathe but grab a bottle of Scotch and take a swig right out of the bottle.
“She and I get along well and have lunch on occasion.” She’s walking around, running her hands over the expensive leather furniture. “I have at least four of the same pieces she decorated your place with.”
I find my legs are shaking as she stops to look out the window at the skyline. I can see her wheels turning. So I hurry and pour her a glass of wine and take it to her.
“Here, Pumpkin-britches.” She takes the wine and holds it as she looks at me with narrowed eyes.
“Well, she is a very sought after decorator.” I take a sip of the wine I have in my hand and loop my arm through hers, pulling her along with me to the bedroom. “Let’s get you a toothbrush and get ourselves out of these clothes and into something that’s more comfortable.”
“You know she has this very serious boyfriend,” she says as she comes with me. “His name is Kyle, just like your middle name, Jason.”
“Hmm. What do you know about that?” I laugh a little as I don’t want to get into anything about who I’m seeing.
“Yeah, he’s a billionaire too. He’s a software mogul. Similar, isn’t it?”
One and the same! Damn!
This isn’t going to be very easy!
Chapter 6
BRITTANY
“You know her, don’t you?” I ask as I can see the deer in the headlights look in Jason’s eyes as he tries to change the subject off the interior decorator.
“Um, yeah! Duh, she decorated this apartment, Sherlock.” He pulls me along behind him. “I have that minty toothpaste you used to like so much and I have that cinnamon one you liked too. Which one will it be tonight?”
“The minty one. So, I’m probably going to hate myself for asking this, but have you slept with Donna?” I watch his cheek quiver as he clenches his jaw. “Fuck! You have!”
He pulls me into the bathroom and opens a drawer with about ten, brand new toothbrushes and pulls out a red one for me. With a smile, he says, “Look, your favorite color.”
I look over the rest of them in the drawer. “Yeah, seeing as you have one of each color, how could you go wrong?”
“That’s a pretty negative way to look at it.” He pulls another drawer open and picks out a small tube of the minty toothpaste and opens everything up and puts some on the brush. “Here you go, Sweetcakes. Brush ‘em up.”
Watching him as he moves around in the bathroom, I can see he’s nervous. As well he should be. If he thinks I’m about to give him another chance to finish annihilating my heart, he has another think coming.
After I brush the puke away, I rinse my mouth and turn to find him coming back in the bathroom with a T-shirt. “Kick those heels off and get into my T-shirt, Baby.”
I do as he’s said to and start to pull my dress off then decide to really put the screws to him. I hold my arms up. “Baby, can you get this off for me?”
He stops and looks at me with a little fear in his eyes. “If I make love to you tonight then that’s all I get, isn’t it? One night?”
I nod and wiggle my body. He shakes his head and places the T-shirt on the counter and turns away from me and leaves the bathroom.
Well, damn!
I take off my bra and panties to so he can have quick access to my goods just in case I get him to take the one night offer I have on the table instead of the week he really wants. The T-shirt feels so soft on my body, I run my hands all over it as I walk into the bedroom, finding him in a T-shirt and PJ bottoms and climbing into the bed.
He pats the side next to him. “Come on, Snuggle-monkey.”
I act as if I’m going to go around the bed to get in then I stop and climb right over him. With a stop mid-straddle, I look down at him and watch his jaw tighten. “You sure, no boom, boom, Baby?”
His hands move up my arms as he looks all over me. “No, I want more than just that.”
“Okay then,” I
say then climb the rest of the way over and climb under the covers with him. “Then this is how it’s going to be. No sex until the end of the week.”
“Ha!” He turns on his side and runs his hand over my shoulder. “You’re really funny, Princess. Since when do you get to be in charge?”
I feel my eyebrows raise up high. “Since you fucked a bunch of women while you were supposed to be my boyfriend.”
“That shit aside,” he says like it’s not a big deal that he did that. “I’m going to show you tonight that sex is not all I’m after with you. Now tomorrow is a different story. The whole next week is a different story. You see, I plan to show you just how much I really do care about and love you. Making love is a must if I’m to show you what you mean to me, Pumpkin-nose.”
“Jason, what’s the real plan? I want to know your real intentions with me. There can be no other women if I’m going to give you another chance. How many women are in your little app as of right now?”
He goes a little pale and makes a whimpering sound. “A few.”
Running my hand through his dark locks, I say, “If you can’t be truthful then this is useless.”
He sits up and picks his phone up off the nightstand. “Look, let me show you how this works and what my personal page shows. And at the end of the week, if you agree to give me a long-term chance, I’ll end it with every one of these women.”
“You look a little green, Jason. You sure about this?”
“I am more positive than I’ve ever been about anything. You see, I’ve felt this odd sensation inside of me since my birthday. I turned thirty, you know.”
“Oh yeah!” I smile at him. “So how is on the other side, old dude?”
With a smirk, he says, “I’m not old. I do have to confess an odd thing has kind of been plaguing me since that day, though. An uneasy feeling. One that had me kind of craving something but no real idea of what it was.”
“Steak probably.” I nod as I think about a nice juicy steak.
He laughs. “Not steak. Not any kind of food. Just an urgent thing that had me on edge with no idea how to fix it. I tried sex, but I’m sure you know that didn’t work. I tried adding in a new chick and that didn’t work. I still felt anxious. All the way until I saw your pretty face in that chair this evening. The feeling went away like magic as soon as I saw you, Peanut butter cup.”
“Me?” I roll my eyes. “You expect me to believe that load of crap?”
“You know what, Britt? You roll the shit out of your eyes now. You never used to do that.”
“I used to believe the words that came out of people’s mouths. You taught me not to. So you can thank yourself for the eye rolling thing.” I blow him a kiss and send him a wink.
“Since I caused it, I will correct it.” He pulls me up and makes me sit up and look at him. “Rules for this coming week. Number one, no rolling of eyes. Number two, you have to believe what I say. Number three, you have to let me love you.”
“Number four,” I say. “You have to not boss me around like I’m a dumb teenager.”
He takes in a deep breath. “Number five, you have to stay here with me every night. Number six, you have to let me take you anywhere I want to.”
“Rule number seven,” I say as I hold up seven fingers. “You need to stop making rules. I’m losing count.”
He laughs. “One more rule. You have to let me kiss you whenever I want to.”
His kiss is a thing I miss and often dream about. Jason used to send me to another world with his kisses. I nod and smile at him. “Agreed.”
I guess he feels like he’s accomplished something and he takes me by the shoulders and pulls me down with him and holds me tight then moves me around to lie on his chest.
His heart makes little muffled beats under his shirt and muscles. His hand runs back and forth over my arm. “You feel like home to me, Britt.”
My eyes start to burn as I recall the last time he held me this way. It was the afternoon before I left for college. We were at his little apartment and we’d made love all morning long and finally fell asleep around noon.
He held me just like this. And eight hours later he was getting a blowjob three houses down from mine!
My body tenses up and he feels it. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just remembering the last time you held me like this.”
“That shouldn’t make you tense, Apple fritter.” He laughs a little.
“The thought brought me all the way to when I caught you later with that girl’s head in your lap.”
He groans. “Fuck! One more rule. Leave the past where it belongs. Don’t bring it up anymore. I can’t change it. If I could, I would. I can only change the future. So no more talking about anything that has happened. No talk about the women I’ve been seeing either. The truth is I have been seeing Donna and a couple of other women from New York too.”
“I knew it!” I hiss.
He tightens his arm around me holding me down as I squirm to get up and tell him off. “I’m not going to lie to you, Britt. I’m going to be truthful. And faithful for this week. And if I feel like I can’t be faithful to you, I’ll let you go at the end of the week. I’ll never hurt you again. That I swear to you.”
I lie still and think about what he’s really saying. He’s really offering me himself. “So, you’ll be faithful this entire week? And you swear if you feel like you can’t be faithful to me forever you’ll let me go?”
“I promise.”
“Hmm. That’s kind of a great deal. But that has to go both ways, doesn’t it? If I feel like being with anyone else, then I need to not go past the week too.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to start up something and you start fucking around on me this time. We’re getting too old for that shit.”
“You are, anyway,” I say with a giggle. “I’m only twenty-five.”
He smacks my ass as he laughs. It makes it ache a bit for him to do it more and I have to bite my lip not to ask him to give me five more. I rake my nails over his T-shirt covered chest and wish like hell he’d take it off.
His lips touch the top of my head. “I didn’t realize it until I saw you, Britt. I love you. I always have and I think I always will.”
I hold my breath. It’s so hard to allow myself to believe him. How can you really love someone and continuously mess around on them?
“Do you think you have some kind of a sex addiction?” I ask him.
“I don’t. I have something, though. Women do come to me. I swear that’s true. I lack the thing that tells me to tell them the word, no. I can’t explain it.”
“Do you think you can really learn how to?” I ask as I run my fingers over his abs that are hiding under the dark T-shirt.
I inch my fingers lower and lower until I manage to get them under the hem of the shirt and then I slip my hand under it and feel his warm skin under my palm.
The hills of his defined abs make me wet and I hold in a groan as he says, “With your help, Baby, I think I can. I’m going to need your help, though. I know I can’t do it alone. Not that I’ve tried at all. But I want to now. I want something real and I want it with you.”
“Odd how you decided that so quickly, don’t you think?” I move my hand slowly, relishing the feel of his muscles.
“Odd? No, not really. Not when you take into account our three-year history. Not when you take in the fact, I’ve never felt what I feel with you with any of the other women. And there have been more than plenty to compare that too.”
“Shut up,” I say as I grit my teeth. “No more talk about the other women and the sheer numbers of them. And as a token of respect for that, I won’t talk about all the dick I’ve had in the last six years either.”
“Fuck!” he says and I feel his body quiver. “Deal. I never want to hear you say a thing again about how much dick you’ve had. I threw up a little when you said it. I do want to ask you this, though. And please tell me only the truth. Have you felt anything near with anyone else
what you feel with me, Britt?”
“No, I haven’t. That’s the truth.”
“Good. Maybe you and I were meant to be.”
My brain screams at me to run. It tells me I’m in mortal danger with this man. He cannot be faithful. But I shut it off as my body heats with the touch of his fingers moving over my back.
His lips touch the top of my head again and I utter the words my body wants to tell him but my brain tells me not to, “I love you, Jason.”
The groan he makes vibrates my entire body.
Oh yeah!
Chapter 7
JASON
My entire way of thinking has changed very rapidly. I can’t tell if it’s only my body which craves the woman I’ve managed to get into my bed or my mind too. All I know is I want her right where she is forever.
I’ve loved Brittany Caldwell for as long as I can remember. The way her dark hair falls in waves over her back brings me right back to when we were young. We’d have to sneak in times to actually sleep together since she still lived at home then, but when we did manage it, it was always amazing.
Holding Britt has always been better than any sex I’ve had with any other woman. I don’t know why I fucked around on her. I really don’t.
Brittany always was the whole package and now that she’s grown and has managed to make something great out of herself, well, she’s even more of a fantastic package.
She’s making me so hard for her as she runs her hand over my chest. I can feel her breasts smash into my side and her breathing is rhythmically making them move against me.
Maybe she’ll stop this silly notion of giving me tonight or a week with her. Maybe I can have both. She seems to be getting back into me. Her angry demeanor seems to have gone away.
I’ll test the waters a little. “Baby?”
“Hmm?” she moans.
My insides go all shaky with the sound. I want to hear her moan for the next few hours. But I want to hear her do that every night for a really long time. My patience has never been good.
“Can we start the week right now?” I close my eyes and cross my fingers.
She moves her body up mine and looks down at me. “Jason, do you really think you can do this?”
Quartet Complete Series: Billionaire Romance Box Set (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Page 202
