Billionaire Boss, M.D.

by Olivia Gates

  But first he had to prove to her he could become a man she could trust and respect for his ability to change, to do the right thing, not only a man she could admire for his abilities or lust after for his body and the unstoppable chemistry they shared.

  Waiting for her verdict as if it would decide his fate, believing it would, he struggled to keep his expression from betraying the upheaval inside him. The last thing he needed was to scare her off with the intensity of his need.

  “Why?”

  After every scenario he’d played out in his head, she managed to surprise him yet again with that one-word question for an answer. She neither jumped on his offer, nor made him grovel some more, nor rejected him outright.

  “You’ll have to help me here, Liliana. Why what exactly?”

  “Why me? Really? Now that the element of my surprise, my novelty, is gone, not to mention my resistance? When I never considered those reasons enough for you to pursue me in the first place?”

  His heart contracted with an emotion he’d never bothered with. Shame. But also wonder, that she was so attuned to him she’d sensed his early ulterior motive. This was his punishment for harboring those intentions, to have them resonate in her psyche, tainting her view of his motives when they no longer existed. When he now just wanted her.

  Those eyes that filled his every waking and sleeping second probed his, filled with the candor and strength and vulnerability he’d become addicted to. “If you don’t have specific reasons why you want me, then just tell me. Tell me what you expect from me, what you wish from being with me. I also want to know all the possible outcomes.”

  His head spinning, he blinked. “Outcomes?”

  “Yes, like what to expect when you lose interest, how you intend to handle the eventual end of whatever we start.” Her shoulders lifted in a self-conscious shrug. “I told you I can’t handle uncertainty or afford upheavals.”

  Her scientific approach to his offer, insisting on analyzing his motives and charting a probable course for their relationship, was at once endearing and stunning. But what oppressed him was her expectation of worst-case scenarios.

  “You mean you’d accept being with me even when you expect it to be a limited and finite liaison?”

  She gave him such a look, as if he’d just said the most ridiculous thing, as if it was impossible for her to expect anything else, either from him or for herself.

  Then she laughed, the sound mirthless. “I think anyone who enters a liaison without such expectation is just courting disaster. But I do want you so intensely that I’d take whatever is being offered, as long as I know what it is. I just need to go in knowing what to expect. That’s all I ask. Total honesty.”

  His heart twisted with another feeling he’d never suffered from. Guilt. Total honesty was the one thing he couldn’t offer her. He couldn’t come clean about his initial plot to use her to get close to the Accardi family. He doubted even her pragmatic nature could forgive that. Even if it did, he feared her spontaneity with him wouldn’t survive the revelation.

  But he couldn’t bear that she thought herself his inferior, that she expected nothing but impermanence and limitations as her due.

  Itching to shake her out of those beliefs, he took her by the shoulders, groaning with the pleasure of her response, of touching her again.

  “I’ll say this once more and never again, Liliana. You are not only absolutely wrong in how you value yourself, but you appallingly underestimate my desire for you. I’ve never wanted anything like I want you. As for why I do, let me enlighten you. I want you because of everything you are. Every single thing about you fascinates me, elates me, inflames me. I adore your candor, and your wit leaves me with the bends. Your mind delights me and everything else about you, every gesture and breath and inch, makes me want to devour you. I’m the one who worries that once you come closer, it might be you who loses interest.”

  To say she looked incredulous was as accurate as saying she was reticent. But those eyes he’d been lost without flared with renewed life with his every word. Now their blaze made him almost give up any pretense of control.

  But it was she who mattered here, and he had to make her feel secure. “All this doesn’t only equalize our positions, Liliana, it makes me the supplicant. As such, I have no expectations. It’s you who’ll state your terms, set your parameters and every other thing you wish for in our intimacies.”

  Growing excitement glinted in her eyes. “What if I make outrageous demands?”

  “I will welcome anything.” His lips twisted as he surveyed the caring and generosity filling her expression, what he knew made up most of her being. “Though I doubt you’d ask for anything. You don’t have a selfish or greedy cell in your body.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I’d never make any demands. I want you free of obligations, for they have no place between us. I want you, and if you want me, for me, I’ll be with you. Until it no longer makes you and therefore me happy.” He started to object, furious that her insecurity about him hadn’t been appeased, but she overrode him. “What I want to renegotiate is our professional situation. As my boss...”

  He groaned his frustration at her evasion. “Will you please forget that? I’m no longer your boss. I gave you back full control over your work.”

  “Did you do that only to please me? To remove the obstacle of the boss/employee dynamic between us?”

  He shook his head. “I do want to please you, Liliana, and remove all barriers between us, but I would have found another way to do so if I didn’t believe your work held more merit than mine, given that you’re so much further ahead in your research. I only attempted to force you to relinquish it initially as a demonstration of dominance. But not only am I now giving you absolute autonomy, I’m here to turn the whole lab over to you.”

  She staggered back. “Holy one-eighty, Antonio.”

  He caught her closer again, needing to convince her. “That’s how you make me feel, Liliana. Like nothing I ever cared about matters anymore. Nothing but you, but us, matters to me now.”

  “Even so, you don’t toss a two hundred-million-dollar lab at me to prove it. I told you I’m not partner material, and you want to make me director?”

  “Even if you lack management skills, your scientific knowledge and your insight into your colleagues make you perfect for the job. I’ll provide you with support staff who’ll deal with the executive and financial issues. But in every other way, you’ll make a far better boss than I can be for this place.”

  “Okay, time-out.” She held her hands in the famous gesture. “You’re clearly suffering from an extreme case of U-turn. So it’s up to me to moderate you until you level out.” He reached out to her hands, but she grabbed his instead. “Now listen, Antonio. I’m not taking this carte blanche or any other offer you come up with. And that’s final. I only wanted to reach a common ground where both my goals and your interests could be met. I wish nothing more than to realize them both in a way that’s the most beneficial for everyone.”

  As he looked into her earnest eyes, it was at this moment that Antonio realized something monumental.

  What he felt for her.

  Exactly what his brothers described they felt for their soul mates.

  Love.

  Seven

  Love.

  The word echoed in Antonio’s mind as he stared at Liliana, who continued to detail how the common professional ground she was suggesting would work.

  It had to be love. It was. This pure, limitless emotion.

  But how? When he’d been in her presence only a handful of times? When he’d lived his life believing he didn’t even have a heart?

  But as he looked into her eyes and saw clear to her soul, saw what had delighted and spellbound him from the first, he knew.

  Time was irrelevant. And he now did
have a heart.

  Liliana had planted one inside him.

  Totally at peace with the discovery of its creation, and ecstatic about its captivity in Liliana’s kind hands, he swept her in his arms and silenced her with everything that was bursting in his newly forged heart.

  She melted into his kiss, not reciprocating, just yielding to him, letting him do whatever he wanted to her. That communicated how much she wanted him to possess her far more than if she’d gone wild in response.

  He tore his lips from hers. “If you don’t want me to take you right now, you’d better stop that.”

  Her long, thick lashes rose languidly, revealing passion-filled eyes that almost made him drag her down on the ground and take her there and then. “I’m not doing anything.”

  Pushing her back against the nearest wall, he pinned her there with his full weight, needing to imprint her with his body. “Exactly. Your surrender is sending me berserk.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Liliana...” Her name erupted from his chest as he hitched her legs around his hips. His tongue plunged inside her open mouth, swallowing her gasps and eliciting more as he drove his hardness against her core through their clothes. “Will you come for me again?”

  “Antonio...” She arched against the wall, making a fuller offer of herself.

  Feeling her precious flesh burning in his hands, he quickened his cadence, the need to see her coming apart for him again riding him harder with each thrust.

  “Do you know what it did to me when I felt you climaxing under me that night?” Her moans fractured, the flush staining her cheeks deepening before she buried her face in his chest. An incredulous laugh escaped him. “Are you shy?”

  Suddenly she wriggled in his arms until she made him put her back on her feet, her eyes downcast. “I thought you were horrified... I thought that was why...”

  A deeper wave of color surged over her face and neck. He cupped her jaw, made her look at him. “Why I stopped? I did that only because feeling you heave and tremble beneath me, realizing that I aroused you so much I drove you to orgasm even before taking you, snapped my control for the first time in my life.”

  She regarded him with a mixture of self-consciousness and disbelief. “You didn’t seem out of control at all.”

  “It must be my surgeon facade. But if I’d remained near you one more minute, I would have taken you. Without protection. And I knew you’d let me.”

  Her eyes widened in realization and admission, proving he’d been right. She would have let him. She wanted him inside her without barriers, branding her with his pleasure. As he would, soon.

  “I had to get away from you since I had no more control and your every touch and breath and glance had me at breaking point.”

  A keen escaped her as she crushed herself to him, silently demanding he stop holding back.

  Unable to even contemplate it anymore, he pressed her to the wall again. He was devouring her whimpers, undulating feverishly against her when a one-note buzz jolted through them both.

  His phone. The line he kept for his brothers.

  Dammit.

  Setting her down but unable to stop caressing her, he gestured an apology as he pulled the phone out.

  It was an integral part of their brotherhood’s pact, to answer a call from a brother at once. They’d depended on one another to survive, then to escape, then to conquer the world. A brother’s call trumped everything. They never called one another on those special lines unless it was something serious. As the group’s doctor, he’d gotten many of those calls.

  Then came the last couple of years. Since then he’d gotten calls that were serious only in his brothers’ eyes. After all, they considered any twinge their wives or children suffered the end of the world.

  But this was Ivan. He wasn’t married and would never be if all remained right with the world. Ivan had never called him on this line. Not once.

  His heart thudding in mounting trepidation, he pushed the answer button. “Ivan?”

  “Tonio, I’m landing in LA in half an hour. I need you and your best surgical team ready. Code Whiteout.”

  Code Whiteout meant he needed Antonio’s secret surgical facility, where he had a special team on standby and where he treated injuries they needed kept below law enforcement’s radar.

  He gritted his teeth at the agitation he felt cracking his best friend’s usual Siberian composure. “Tell me.”

  “A...friend and his sister. They were gunned down. I have a team stabilizing them. I need you to put them back together.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  Ivan ended the call without another word. Antonio turned to Liliana, found she’d walked away to give him privacy.

  He rushed after her, caught her in a ferocious hug. “I have to go, mi amore. Emergency surgery.”

  She almost jumped at his endearment, her eyes flooding with such exquisite delight. “Of course.”

  “Do you know how I hate leaving you now?”

  “If it’s as much as I hate you leaving, I pity you fiercely.” Her smile wobbled as she caressed his cheek. “But duty calls. To both of us. I’d better get back to work before the bright ideas I was working on evaporate.” He hugged her again as if afraid she somehow would. Seeming to read his paranoia right, she grinned. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”

  “From the preliminary report, I don’t foresee being done for the next twelve hours. If that.”

  “Then I’ll see you whenever you can see me.” She brushed his hair back, her touch soothing and bolstering.

  He got out his keys, pressed them into her hand. “I’ll text you my security codes and Paolo’s number. He’ll pick you up from your house after you get what you need. I want you there when I get home.”

  Her eyes made him this promise, and so many more, all of which he knew she’d keep no matter what. Then she stood on tiptoes and kissed him, giving him a glimpse of the ecstasy they’d share.

  Before he grabbed her again, she stepped out of his arms, turned him around and marched him to the door. “The sooner you’re gone, the sooner you’ll be back to me.”

  As he stepped outside her lab, his heart lurched. Leaving her felt like leaving behind a vital part of himself.

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not rushing a surgery on my account. I’ll be there no matter how late you are. And if you’re not home by tomorrow morning, you know where to find me. Now, shoo.”

  At her grin, he groaned and turned away, forcing himself not to look back. He’d be late if he did, and Ivan would kill him. He’d do his job then rush home to her.

  The anticipation kept him flying high all the way to his secret facility on the fringes of LA. It was only when he was entering it that he realized something.

  When he’d given Liliana his keys, he’d been asking her to move in with him. He’d texted her nonstop on the way, but from her answers it was clear she thought he wanted her there only tonight. Even thinking that, she’d taken the keys happily. It pained him all over again that she didn’t have any expectations, was truly content with anything he offered.

  It made him wonder how such unconditional passion was possible, and how he of all people was on its receiving end.

  But even if he didn’t deserve it yet, he would.

  He would deserve her.

  * * *

  It was 2:00 a.m. by the time he finished the surgeries.

  It would have been much longer if he’d had to perform trauma repair and reconstruction on both patients. But by the time he had them on his table, he’d known one of them would not make it. Ivan’s friend. The sister was critical but could survive with a liver transplant. Her brother was a tissue match for her and Antonio could harvest his liver, which had been one of the few
things remaining intact in him. Ivan, who’d been watching everything in the gallery, had told him to do anything to save her. Which he had.

  Letting his team take her to the ICU now, he tore his bloody scrubs off and stepped out of the OR. Ivan was right at the door, looking like he’d go on a rampage at any moment.

  “Sorry about your...friend.” Antonio wouldn’t ask for details. Ivan would tell him if he wanted him to know. “I trust you know who did this to them?”

  Ivan’s usually forbidding face turned positively demonic. “They’re already dead.”

  That was quick, even for Ivan. But then, no one could hide from him. Ivan had always traced the untraceable. But being the lord of the cyber world wasn’t where his talents ended. His business rivals called him Ivan the Terrible, unsuspecting that Ivan was literally lethal. He was as accomplished an assassin as any of their other brothers.

  “She will be fine, won’t she?”

  Antonio exhaled, rubbing his stiff neck. Ten hours of operating on Ivan’s mystery woman had been extra grueling, mostly because of Ivan’s volcanic agitation. Antonio did everything he could for all his patients, but when one of his brothers was involved, the stakes were almost unmanageable. Something he didn’t relish while having a human life under his scalpel.

  “She will be. But even after I discharge her, it’ll be a long road to recovery. Does she have anyone to take care of her?”

  “She has me.”

  Antonio went still. Coming from Ivan, this was major.

  It could be duty driving him, or a debt he owed his dead friend. But Antonio felt this went far beyond that. Though Ivan had never intimated that he’d ever cared for a woman, Antonio felt this one was important to him. Very important. In a way no woman had ever been.

  This was either a relationship Ivan had chosen not to tell him about, or it was a new development, as intense and life-changing as his situation with Liliana.