The Billionaire Boss Collection

by Penny Ward

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” Harper told him.

  “It was for the best. They didn't work well together. Just two personalities that didn't click but had gotten together long enough to have a couple kids and figure out that it wasn't worth trying to salvage,” Beau shrugged.

  “Is your brother your only sibling?” Harper asked.

  “Yeah, just the two of us. Complete opposite ends of the spectrum, I guess you could say,” a smile turned Beau's lips when he thought about his little brother.

  “Why do you say that?” she tried to imagine what the opposite of Beau Donovan would be like.

  “Well, I went on to play sports and my brother, Cayden, decided to go into the military. He's been on different deployments for a few years now but I think he's going to be getting settled in somewhere on a base in Maryland in the next year or two. It'll be good having him closer.”

  Harper could see how much he cared about his brother in the way he talked about him. She had always wished she could have had siblings but it never worked out that way.

  “I bet that will make you both happy.”

  “Absolutely,” Beau leaned back into the couch. “He's been gone for too long. I miss the kid sometimes, you know?”

  Harper nodded.

  “So what were you doing driving around out there?” she asked him.

  “Oh, I was actually heading home. I thought I told you that,” Beau said.

  “You live around here?” She was shocked.

  “Don't make it sound that bad,” he laughed at the look on her face.

  “Sorry. I just imagined you would live somewhere... else,” she refrained from using the descriptor that came to mind first.

  “Somewhere nicer?” he laughed when she blushed. “No. I mean I moved into a bigger apartment and I upgraded it, but this neighborhood has always been where I came from and it's kind of grown on me, I suppose. And it’s close to the field – which means I don’t have to drive far for training. Some of the other guys have to drive two hours each way to training.”

  Harper couldn't imagine this neighborhood growing on her any time soon.

  She was looking forward to her lease being up so she could find a new place to live now that she had a job where she could afford a little more than where she was currently.

  “What about you? Family?” Beau asked.

  Talking about her family always made her a little unhappy.

  “Well, I'm an only child, so no brothers or sisters. My parents had one of those relationships that people like to think is perfect. They were so deeply in love with each other and it showed. My dad would bring my mom flowers once a week and she would keep them in the middle of our dining room table. She was the kind of mother that is rare to find these days; a stay at home mom and housewife, the one who took care of everything in the home and made sure her husband and child were well taken care of and well-fed. She loved to bake and my dad loved to eat her baking. He always joked that's what kept them together.”

  Harper smiled at the memories of her parents.

  Beau had picked up on the past tense she was using and was waiting to hear what happened. It felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “My mom passed away when I was seventeen. She got breast cancer when I was a sophomore. She went through chemo and radiation and even had a double mastectomy but nothing the doctors did made any difference. There were times when we thought we were ahead of the cancer and we were finally going to beat it into submission. She fought so hard.” A tear shimmered in her eye, “but we ended up losing her just before Christmas my senior year of high school. It's never really been the same since then.”

  She smiled through the watery eyes and sniffed, wiping them away.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Beau’s tone was low.

  Harper took a long drink of her cider.

  “Sorry. It still gets to me sometimes that she's not here anymore,” Harper explained. “We were really close when I was growing up and it's hard not being able to talk to her or spend time with her.”

  “Don't be sorry about that. It's completely normal to feel a sense of loss when you lose someone important to you,” Beau said, holding out his hand to her. “Come here.”

  Harper got up and sat next to him on the couch.

  His arm wrapped around her and pulled her into a one armed hug holding her against his hard, warm body. She let her head fall back onto his shoulder and turned her face into his chest.

  “You're a whole lot sweeter than you come off originally,” Harper said with a joking tone.

  “Yeah, well... gotta keep the girls at bay somehow,” Beau chuckled.

  “Why are you single anyway? Surely a guy like you wouldn't have any problems getting women. I bet they line up to meet the great Beau Donovan,” she said in her best impression of a game show host.

  “Oh geez, don't say it like that.”

  “Like what?” She laughed.

  “Like I'm the Wizard of Oz or something.”

  Harper almost choked on her drink laughing when he said it.

  “Honestly though. Don't you get a whole gaggle of women chasing after you? Big soccer playing bachelor and all,” Harper looked up at him and smiled.

  “I guess I haven't found a woman who cared more about me than about the money I make yet,” Beau shrugged. “They always tell you that happens but when it happens to you it always comes as a surprise. I guess I don't think of myself as someone who is big enough to have that kind of problem. It gets pretty old real fast.”

  Beau finished off his cider.

  “That’s horrible,” Harper said and leaned up to set her empty bottle on the coffee table.

  “As of yet, any woman who shows interest in me seems to only do so because they think I can give them some extravagant lifestyle and will buy them an island in the Bahamas or something,” Beau shook his head laughing. “Then as soon as they see that I still live in the neighborhood where I grew up and still kick the ball around with the neighborhood kids at the park on East 234th, they seem to vanish.”

  He shrugged with disappointment.

  “People can be so shallow,” Harper let her arm rest on his chest.

  “Yes, they can be,” Beau said, looking down at her.

  The way she was cuddling into him made him want to bring her mouth up to his and kiss her deeply and slowly until everything about tonight melted into nothingness in her mind.

  “Harper,” Beau's voice was deep and his intention was clear when she looked up at him and saw the intense look in his eyes.

  His hand went under her chin and he leaned down and brought his lips down on hers.

  The way his mouth moved against hers was like heaven. Her soft lips parted for him and his tongue joined hers.

  The taste of cinnamon and apple cider intensified.

  Beau pulled her up on top of him easily without breaking their kiss and she wrapped her legs around his waist on the couch and her arms around his neck as she deepened the kiss.

  All of the blood was rushing to her core as she felt him getting hard between her legs and under her body.

  Harper wanted him.

  Without a doubt in her mind, she wanted him.

  Right here and right now.

  When she broke the kiss, there was nothing but heated desire in her eyes and her full bottom lip was caught sensually between her teeth while she looked at him with the most heart stopping ‘Come hither’ look he had ever seen in his life.

  Beau ran his hands up her sides from her thighs to her hips and rocked her twice, grinding on his erection with her ever-growing wetness.

  “Yes…” she could feel the passion building.

  The room was alight with chemistry.

  Knock, knock.

  Two heavy knocks rang out from the door.

  Harper was tempted to let it go and ravage him on the couch until she remembered that the police were coming.

  Harper hopped up and sent him an apologetic look as she crossed the room a
nd looked through the peephole to verify it was the police.

  The officer in front held up his badge for her to see and introduced himself as Officer Robinson and his partner as Officer Mingo and she opened the door, letting them in.

  “Thank you for coming,” Harper said as she closed the door behind them.

  It made her feel small to have the police there in her house.

  Two officers came in and it felt surreal to have policemen standing in her living room in the middle of the night.

  They asked her a few questions and then asked her to describe the events of the night as they occurred.

  She explained what had taken place as she walked home from the office, about how the man had grabbed her and dragged her into the dark alley and pressed the knife to her throat.

  Harper showed them the cut on her neck and they took photographs to document everything as evidence.

  “Do you need to go to the hospital for medical assistance, ma'am?” Officer Robinson asked.

  “No. No, I think I'm alright. I'll just take care of it here,” Harper said.

  She hated hospitals and doctor’s offices of any kind and avoided them unless she felt like she was literally going to keel over and die.

  When she told the officers that Beau had been the one to save her and scare the attacker away, they interviewed him about what he had seen and what had taken place.

  Harper agreed to come down to the police station at some point to look at a photo book of potential suspects and if they ended up having a suspect arrested, they would have a line up or another photo identification that they would both be required to comply with.

  The officers wished them both a good night and told Harper they were sorry that she had to go through what happened.

  “Just be careful tonight,” the female officer said. “After an attack like that, emotions can be flooding through your body. You might make some bad decisions, if you’re not careful. It’s best just to rest.”

  Harper smiled her response.

  When the police left Harper leaned on the door behind them and locked it.

  She was ready for this whole thing to just be over already but yet it seemed like it was only just beginning.

  Harper looked over at Beau who was still sitting on the couch where she had left him nearly forty-five minutes ago when they had been interrupted.

  His face had a softness to it that made her want to kiss him and be back in his arms.

  She wondered if the moment had passed.

  “So...” she said, crossing the small room back over to the couch. “Where were we?”

  Beau pulled her back down onto his lap.

  “Let me remind you,” he said, pulling her into a deep kiss that brought her right back to where she had been before the police had arrived…

  Chapter Eight

  Harper couldn't help but feel that being in his arms, wrapped up tight and pressed to his hard body, felt right.

  Her mouth was eager for his as he pulled her forward in his lap bringing his lips to hers again.

  Beau's rough hands dipped under her shirt in the back and held her with his palms flat against her heated skin like he was trying to keep her from floating away.

  He pulled the shirt up over her head and tossed it to the floor in a discarded heap.

  The curve of her waist meeting her hips under his hands he explored her body with his mouth; gentle kisses that trailed from her neck down her collarbone, lazily drifting down to the swell of her breasts in her black bra.

  Heat seemed to be pumping out of his body as she rocked her hips slowly over top of his hardness.

  The kind of arousal and desire that was filling Harper was new.

  Despite her past relationships she had never felt this kind of chemistry with anyone before.

  This desire to be with him, the need to have him inside of her was overwhelmingly strong.

  Beau cupped her breasts and absorbed their weight in his hands.

  His fingers sneaking under the silken fabric to tease her nipples into tight little buds.

  His touch made a honey-sweet moan escape from her throat as she offered herself to him.

  The urge to taste her was too much to handle anymore and Beau unhooked her bra, letting it fall to the front and releasing her heavy breasts with her hard as diamond nipples.

  His mouth closed over one tan bud and his tongue circled around it while he pressed her body closer.

  Devouring her right now was entirely an option.

  There wasn't enough of him to touch her, taste her, feel her and please her.

  He needed more.

  Harper's body was intoxicating and his arousal was her aphrodisiac.

  Seeing his lust filled hunger for her drove her onward into a spiraling frenzy of desire that she wasn't sure she was going to be able to control and knew in her heart that she didn't want to try.

  Thighs wrapping tightly around his waist she brought her mouth to his neck, kissing it and then gently biting it before running her tongue up to his earlobe and watching as goose bumps broke out over his skin.

  She loved knowing what she was doing to him.

  The hardness pressing against her ass was deliciously tempting.

  “I want the rest of you,” Beau said, helping her get up from the couch so he could take off the rest of her clothes.

  He needed her naked.

  He needed to be inside her.

  The rest of her body was calling to him and his own was responding with intensity that boarded on madness.

  Harper gave him a slow and teasing view of her body while she twirled before inching the zipper down the side of her skirt and letting it slide down her thick thighs to the floor and pool around her ankles.

  All that stood between Beau and her wet heat was a little black thong with pink hearts doodled on it.

  He wanted them off of her so badly the image of himself biting through the fabric with his teeth and tearing the panties off of her crossed his mind.

  His mouth went to them and kissed her body through the fabric. The heat of his breath on her sensitive core, making her explode into goose bumps and the wetness between her legs grow.

  When his tongue dipped under the fabric and found her she moaned and her hands ran through his hair and down his collar.

  She wanted him naked too.

  The fact that he was still fully dressed while she stood in a little swatch of black cotton was both incredibly erotic and sexually frustrating.

  Harper needed to feel the heat of his bare skin on her body.

  She wanted to taste him and feel the smoothness of his chest pressed on top of her own.

  She wanted to know what it was like to be taken by such as strong man and to give herself to him.

  Her fingers went to the buttons of his dress shirt and freed them one by one down his broad chest.

  Each loosened button revealing a little more of his sun kissed skin and the muscles that flexed in anticipation and arousal.

  Harper made an approving sound as she reached the bottom and he leaned back, exposing the throbbing erection that was tenting his suit pants.

  Her fingers wrapped around his shaft and stroking him upwards until she reached the tip and rubbed her fingers over it one by one.

  Beau sucked in a deep breath and let it rush out of his lungs as her hands worked his erection and he tried to control the desire inside of him.

  Harper could see him struggling to keep himself under control. She wanted to know what it would feel like when he let that control break a little.

  Slowly, she moved up and unfastened his leather belt, pulling it free.

  “Oh yes, Harper,” he said in a low voice. “I need you.”

  She dropped the belt and unzipped his pants.

  His hardness throbbed as she took him in her hands through his boxers and rubbed him against the swell of her breasts, teasing his sensitive tip against her hard nipple and bending over slightly to kiss his cock, letting her lips wrap around it through
the fabric barrier.

  “You're teasing me,” he growled keeping his eyes focused on every movement she made.

  “I am,” she admitted with a devious look in her eyes.

  She uncovered his cock and pulled his pants off.

  Kneeling down between his powerful legs, she stroked him, running her hands over his cock and tickling his balls with her fingernails, making them creep up closer to his body and tighten while his cock twitched under her touch.

  Beau leaned up and pulled her panties down, revealing her beautiful, clean shaven wetness that was glistening in the low light.

  His mouth lowered to her core and heat washed through her body.

  She shivered in pleasure when his tongue parted her lips and found her clitoris, lapping at it slowly in circles that made her shudder and her legs feel weak.

  “You're beautiful, Harper,” he told her when he finally pulled himself away.

  He pulled her down onto the couch, laying her flat on her back before him.

  His lips kissing up her thighs until they returned to her wet heat.

  His tongue plunging into her as her legs shook.

  “Oh!” a high pitched noise escape her lips.

  Moving his mouth up to focus on her clitoris, Beau's fingers slipped into her.

  Pumping faster as he licked and sucked her.

  “Yes,” Harper’s head eyes almost popped out of her head. “That’s it. Yes.”

  Harper no longer had control over her body – she was his.

  Harper's fingers pinched the tight bud of her nipple as her head fell back.

  The frenzied way he was pleasing her was overtaking her body and her mind.

  She couldn't think of anything but how he was making her feel and the power of his touch.

  Her hips rocked and her back arched slightly as she came moaning loudly as the orgasm ripped through her body like a current in the ocean, pulling her under.

  Beau couldn't wait anymore.