Catching Fire: Educating Ellie (Billionaire Romance Series Book 1)

by T. N. King

  Again, he burst into laughter.

  Her eyes widened at him. “And what did I say now? I mean it is important.” She almost wanted to fling the dress back at him and tell him to stuff it.

  He shook his head and stepped close again. “I have my own jet, Sweetness.”

  Her eyes widened. Yes, of course he did! “Oh,” was her pithy response.

  He smiled and stepped close. “I will be back with the limo. Don’t pack anything. You won’t need it.”

  Did he mean to keep her naked in the suite until the ball? This all sounded like another set up and she also battled with the images of him keeping her locked up and naked at his pleasure. She shivered and again, she bit at her lip.

  “Dammit,” Morgan swore and stepped close to pull her lip away with his mouth. He kissed her soundly.

  Again, Ellie’s knees went weak as he delved into her mouth. His tongue just owned hers. Heat spread throughout her body. Another shock to add to the dress, the jet, the suite and the ball.

  Then he pulled away and seemed to have to get himself in order. “It is going to be so hard not to…” His voice trailed away as he stared at her lips. “I love the way your lips look all rosy and swollen after I kiss you.”

  Okay, now she was wet. That tone, those eyes. Dammit. She wasn’t going to be able to hold herself from him. If at this moment, he jumped her, she would latch onto him for dear life.

  He seemed to get his thoughts together and his hungry look dissipated. “What I meant was that everything will be provided for you at the hotel. I will be back in a couple of hours with the car. Be ready, okay?”

  Nodding, she just held the dress to her chest and stared at him. Wide eyed and almost holding her breath.

  He suddenly grinned at her. “Fuck, you are so dammed cute.” Morgan leaned in and gave her a sweet kiss on the forehead. “I will be back to get you.” He then turned and went out.

  After Morgan left, the afternoon went by in a haze. With her new apartment, Ellie had no cleaning to do, no bucket to change under the kitchen sink because of an age old leak the Super never fixed. Then she had a view that could and did keep her infatuated for like a whole hour. Glancing at the clock, she gasped. She needed to shower and decide what outfit to wear for the—the flight on his private JET! Oh, wow. This would be an experience she never thought to have.

  There was one huge problem though and she had been worrying over it all afternoon.

  She had never flown anywhere. EVER.

  Maybe she could fake it? Like aww, this ain’t nuthin’ I done it lots of times. She shuddered. It was the height, she hated heights, though since she met Morgan, that was all she seemed to do…traverse heights. Going up and still, up further and in more ways than flights of stairs and the elevator. She pushed away the memory of the last orgasm she had while with him. Too high, maybe?

  His balcony had been impressive that day when she’d returned his phone and the view magnificent, but she remembered now that she’d had trembled and hung onto the balustrade with white knuckles. The thing that saved her from looking like a freaked out idiot was his close proximity and her nervousness over him. It had actually kept her from completely freaking out. She let out a breath.

  Ellie knew she couldn’t back out and had to keep her part of the deal they’d made. The ball, Cinderella. He’d said when joking. It was true too, even though he was teasing. The waitress Cinderella. She smiled. This was her chance. She also wanted to make good on her promise. To volunteer to one of the charities.

  Her phone rang. Wait? Is that my phone? The ring tone wasn’t familiar.

  It rang again.

  Ellie looked all around. Then she spotted a Smart phone on her glass coffee table. She ran over and picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Hello.”

  It was Morgan!

  She smiled. “How come I have your phone on my coffee table?” she asked.

  He chuckled over the line. “It is not mine this time. It is your new phone. It is the latest and the best out there. I want you to make sure it is with you at all times.”

  Pausing at this, Ellie thought about the directive. “Oh, is that so?” She rolled her eyes at her cleverness. Stupid.

  “Now, sweet Ellie. I want you to be able to call me anytime you need…” His voice faded away.

  A huge smile spread out on her lips. Tease time. “When I need? Need what?” she cooed into the phone.

  Silence reigned on the other end.

  “Morgan? Are you there?”

  He cleared his throat. “Um, yes. I am, Miss Smart Mouth. I meant should you have any…”Again, his voice drifted away.

  Giggling, Ellie tried to stay serious in tone. “Like if I needed some hot looking guy to save me from a fire? Or from getting smashed by a bus in the street?”

  His laughter rippled over the phone. “Yes, those things are needs where you are concerned.”

  She took a deep breath at his tone. She knew this tone for sure and she could even picture his eyes at this moment. They were a hard steely gray as he tried to calm his beast. Ellie sighed. She loved that beast though. He had brought her to the ultimate pleasure. Brought her into her own sexuality. She shook her head and spoke, “I will take it everywhere I go, okay?”

  His sigh resonated over the connection. “Yes, please do.”

  “Okay, so I need to get ready. There’s a prince coming to pick me up before midnight, you know?”

  His laughter again echoed out. “Yes, and he’d better treat you right.”

  Will he? She questioned silently. “Well, he has promised to be good,” she teased again.

  “Well, if he could restrain his beast long enough to win the beauty, maybe he will…” again, he did not finish.

  Ellie decide to cut him some slack and end the call. “I will be here when the pumpkin arrives.” She hung up. Pumpkin? Dumb, dumb. Whew! Damn, just having a phone conversation with the man tangled her up but good!

  Ellie then spotted the time on the phone. “Oh!” He’d used up my primping time! Dammit!

  She rushed to the shower and tried hard to keep her thoughts from running wild.

  Morgan

  He hung up with Ellie. She’d taken the phone purchase well, though. The way he’d stumbled over his words! What the fuck was that? He’d voted the most smooth talking in high school even. Head of debates and he’d never been shy. If Chance had been in the limo to hear this latest phone conversation from his end, Morgan would never live it down. Chance! Dammit, he was sure to be there tomorrow night at the charity function. Yes, he’d known the man since high school and if there were a man better looking than Morgan, it would be this one. They’d often had standing bets when they met a girl. See who could get her first. They were also notorious in college.

  Shit! When Chance finally caught sight of sweet, little Ellie? Crap. Talk about charm, the man had some to spare. He could give it away to the poor and unmannered and still have enough to charm a nun out of her habit. Then to have to admit to the man that he was hanging up his playboy jacket to get this girl, he would be the one laughed at. If he didn’t let his best friend know this though, Chance would go after her. It was what they both did. He’d have to handle this carefully and keep the jack ass away from his Ellie. He paused and sat the phone down on the seat.

  HIS?

  Yes, dammit. His. Yes, he’d charmed her out of her gold gown and seduced her out of her shell. It had been a beautiful thing to see too. If only he hadn’t flubbed it the next morning. He could have her right now, tied up with her gazing up at him with those sweet baby blues. Looking at him in awe as he played her body like a musical instrument, bringing her to heights she’d only dreamt of. He shook himself. Not yet. Steady, boy steady. He adjusted his slacks as they gotten too tight again.

  Ever since he’d gotten into the limo, he’d been arranging everything and had his exec assistant running all over New York. After first presenting Ellie with the dress and reminding her of the ball, he then had to plan fast. Today, he
’d had his assistant secure the fashion consultant and reserving two suites, which had raised a questioning tone in his assistant’s voice. No, he’d never done that before. He let out a breath. Hell, he’d never done any of this before. Cater to a woman. Well, yes, he had seduced some, but he never had to put in much effort. Not like this. He halted. But this wasn’t for seduction. He’d done that already and it should have been the end of it.

  What was it about this girl? He still couldn’t achieve an answer. He always had an answer, for deals, decisions, plans of his next goal to achieve. He got an image of Ellie with her wide blue eyes as she nodded her head at him before he left her apartment. So innocent in her own way, so guileless. Maybe that was it? All the women in his jet setting world had been very knowing, confidence in their eyes, their body language. At times, it could be sexy and alluring, then by the time he bedded them, the luster wore off quick.

  He sat back in his limo seat and rested his head against the seat. Go slow. The mantra kept repeating in his head. How? Not grab her up and plant her right onto his cock where she dammed well belonged? With his eyes closed, the images came easier. Her riding him as she knelt on his king sized bed. Her obeying his every command as if it were natural. Her beautiful face as she came on his cock. His body shuddered and he was hard as a diamond. He let out a shaky breath.

  I will have that again, I just need to take it easy with this particular deal. Hell, I have put together deals that took months to deliver. This deal was more important than any of those. Ellie had the potential to be the perfect submissive. He knew this from almost the first moment his eyes met hers. The kicker was…She did not even know this about herself. The beauty of her natural way of giving over all control had been like discovering some rare jewel in a sea of fake gems. The submission was something other women had faked with him. Playing at being a submissive to please him. An act. He’d hated it. It had been like a pretending game, playing at the real thing.

  Ellie was the real thing. Genuine, like a raw diamond, uncut by the world.

  He now chuckled a bit at her thinking it had been rhinestones on the dress. He laughed aloud. It had been so dammed cute. If she only knew, the dress was worth about 200,000 dollars. Morgan pulled in a deep, unsteady breath as his chuckling stopped. He knew at the time that he probably shouldn’t tell her the price.

  Then had she insinuated that he was trying to buy her? The call girl line. Yes, she had said that. Well, shit. Too late now. A dress, a jet ride, a hotel suite and all the things she would need, all supplied. Then the apartment, car and college. He suddenly felt uneasy when at the time, it had been to help her, even when the possibility had been that she would refuse to date him again, after his seduction night blew up in his face! He gave a cold laugh. Yes, that did blow up into something he couldn’t fathom. No, he wasn’t buying a piece of ass. He was trying to capture fire.

  Morgan sat up in his seat. The fire. Yes, the one between them. The blaze he felt just being near to her. The inferno she’d unleashed when they had their night together at his suite. It had burned him so well, that he up and ran, like a god dammed coward.

  Well, he found his courage and he would not lose her again. Funny, how he’d pulled her from a fire. Then ever since, it had been burning him up. This would be the deal of his lifetime, trying to catch fire and hold it in his hands. He needed to make sure everything went perfectly. Show her he was serious about her, wanted her to be with him all the time. No one and nothing better get in his way either.

  Morgan picked up his phone to call his pilot and make sure his plane was ready to go.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ellie

  Ellie finally felt ready. She’d talked to Joanna and told her she was going to a ball. That she would not be available to work for about three days. The woman had actually squealed over the phone. Never…never in the year she’d worked at the diner had that woman ever squealed. Joanna had gushed about being invited to the wedding. Ellie had rolled her eyes and told her it was far too early for that kind of thinking. Joanna had just kept gushing and told her to have fun at the ball, and to be careful.

  Be careful? Like condoms? Her breath had caught. They hadn’t used any the night she’d been with him! She knew she was clean seeing as it had been more than a year for her and he would be, knowing the type of perfectionist he was. But—damn. She had really jumped into that fire, hadn’t she? If and when the time came, and knowing that sexy charming beast of a man and her true weakness for him—it would come, she needed to see about birth control. In the days after she’d been with him, she had her time of the month and so, she’d gotten away with it once. But twice burned, wasn’t something she felt ready to face. It was like a bad Cosmo article, titled: How to trap a Billionaire? Sleep with him, unprotected! Shame washed over her. No, she didn’t have that in her mind at all. In fact, it appears that she’d hadn’t had much of a mind period, the night she had dinner with him in his suite.

  Now, here she was, waiting for her prince to arrive, to whisk her off to New York! She trembled and held the smartphone in her hand. She could do this. First challenge would be to hide the terror she knew would rise in her at the thought of getting on that jet. Next, her fear of arriving at that ball, with all those sophisticated people. The type she saw at The Hunt Hotel, here in Philly. How could she pull this off? Just smile and say nothing! It was the best she could come up with.

  Her phone buzzed in her hand and she jumped a little. She tapped the screen. “Hello, Morgan.”

  “Yes, Sweetness. We are waiting down at the front.”

  Bolting up, she grabbed her small bag that held her dress. “Okay, I’m coming,” she stated breathlessly.

  There was an odd silence on the other end.

  “Morgan?” she asked.

  “Huh…Oh yes, I will be waiting for you to…come.” His voice held steel in it.

  Her body flushed as she let out a giggle.

  “It is not funny from where I am sitting,” he seethed.

  “I’m sorry!” Ellie shut her door and locked it. Then tapped her security alarm with the code, just like Morgan had shown her to do. Then she turned and tapped the phone to end the call. Better to let him and her off the hook, so to speak. She rushed to the elevator. They couldn’t even have a normal phone conversation without thinking of the sex they had and could be having. How was she to get through this date, the suite and him, without wanting to just throw herself at him? She took a deep breath and raised her eyes up.

  No impulsiveness, Ellie.

  When she got out front, she halted.

  There Morgan stood, leaned up against the limo, wearing probably Armani, again. The man looked like a god, as she’d first concluded.

  His head rose up when he spotted her and he stepped away from the car.

  The driver came rushing around the front.

  Morgan shook his head and said something.

  The driver then rushed back around and got into the driver’s seat.

  Morgan flashed that beaming smile of his and stepped forward to open the limo door for her.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Oh, he was on top of his P’s & Q’s. Being the gentleman and opening the door for her, himself.

  Striding forward with all the grace she could, she then accidentally dropped the bag with the dress, then panicked about it and stumbled over it, falling right into Morgan’s grasping arms.

  “Whoa there!” he exclaimed as he pulled her up from her almost cement-face-plant.

  Ellie gasped as his hard body met with her soft one.

  He held her to his chest and stared into her startled gaze. He then lowered his lips to hers. “You need to be more careful, love,” he whispered a hair’s breadth from her lips.

  Trembling at the feel of his body heat, at the look in his steel colored eyes and at his tone, she gulped heavily. “M-my dress. I just got scared that I would ruin it.”

  He gazed at her mouth as she spoke. “The driver already has it and it is in the front seat.�
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  Blinking her eyes, she did the hardest thing ever—she pulled away from that sexy bod of his. “O-oh, okay.”

  He then seemed to snap out of whatever mood he’d been in and gave her a smile as he bowed and motioned his arm to the open car door. “Your carriage awaits, my lady.”

  For a moment, all she could do was stare. The Greek god in an expensive and probably hand tailored suit, bowing in front of his limo for her to get inside? Pinch yourself, Ellie. She cleared her throat and still didn’t move.

  He stared at her. “Are you okay?”

  She wasn’t. No, she wasn’t. What had she been thinking? To get into a limo, then on a jet, then to a five star hotel in New York, then to an actual ball? Suddenly, it all hit her.

  “Maybe that stumble shook you up a bit?” Morgan looked concerned as if he saw the sudden panic in her eyes.

  Ellie swallowed heavily and fought not to turn and run away—screaming.

  He took her arm and propelled her into the car, then got in beside her.

  When his hip touched hers, she realized she needed to scoot over and did so. Well, at least she had control over her body again! That was a pure panic attack just now. She took a deep breath and let it out as the car started to move.

  “Ellie?”

  She turned to look at Morgan. “Yes?” Her voice trembled.

  He grasped her hand. “What is it? You look like you were getting on the death roller coaster there for a minute.”

  She tried to smile, but it failed. “I don’t know if I can do this?”

  His smile faded and he sat forward towards her. “What?”

  She shook her head.

  “Was it something I did?” he asked in almost a whisper while still holding her hand.

  She gazed at his face, his concerned gaze and down at his hand holding hers so tenderly. He thinks I am backing out of the whole thing! Shit! She fought to control her fear. A fear of failing. She was never good at determining her own steps, deciding what to do. Except that day when she returned his phone. “I-I’m sorry. It was just a moment, okay? I am fine now.”