Billionaire Boss, M.D.

by Olivia Gates

  Tilting her up toward him, he hammered inside her with a force and cadence that rattled the whole world, dismantled her every cell. He breached her to her womb on each plunge until he detonated the coil of desperation in her deepest recess.

  Convulsions tore through her, clamping her inner muscles around him as her insides splintered with pleasure too agonizing to register, then to bear, then to bear having it end.

  But it didn’t end. It went on and on as he gave her more and more, until finally she cried out with his each jarring thrust.

  Then came a moment she’d replay in her memory forever. The sight of him as he climaxed inside her.

  Her orgasm intensified as he threw his head back to bellow his own pleasure. He fed her convulsions with his, his release so fierce she felt it through the barrier, making her sob with the need to feel its hot surges filling her.

  Whimpering as he continued to move within her, completing her pleasure, her domination, she was helpless to do anything but let the enormity of his first possession drag her into oblivion.

  Eight

  An eternity later, Lili surged back into her body, realizing what had brought her back. Antonio was moving, starting to leave her body.

  Unable to bear separation, she clung to him. He pressed soothing kisses to her eyes and lips, murmuring reassurance in that voice that strummed everything in her as he swept her around, careful to remain inside her. Then she was lying on top of him, satiated in ways she couldn’t have imagined, reverberating with the magnitude of the experience and in perfect peace for the first time in her life.

  When her heart stopped thundering enough to let her breathe, she raised a wobbling head. “Is it...always like that?”

  His eyes looked as dazed as she felt, and his lips twitched. “It’s never been like that for me. Everything with you is always a first.”

  “You’re telling me that’s not why people make such a fuss about sex? Because it’s that...that...” No description could do what had happened between them justice.

  “In my experience, ‘sex’ has absolutely nothing in common with what we just had. This was...magic.”

  Her body began to throb all over again. “It was for me.”

  “You have nothing to compare it to, but I do, so I know how magical it was, and what made it so.” Before she could infer the meaning of his confession he added, “It’s because I love you.”

  She bolted upright, gaping down at him.

  He started withdrawing from her depths carefully as he sat up, too. In spite of her paralysis, her moan echoed his groan at the burn of separation. Her gaze remained meshed with his as he looked at her as if she were the one thing he lived for.

  “I realized it yesterday. That all those overwhelming feelings I feel for you are love.”

  She collapsed on the bed in a daze, could do nothing but watch him as he rose to discard the condom. Then he came back to tower over her, godlike, still fully engorged, a frown of uncertainty creeping over his face.

  “I can see this comes as a shock.”

  Her heart stumbling, eyes stinging, she could only choke, “That’s the understatement of our era.”

  “Is it a good or bad shock?”

  He seemed actually worried. Very worried. Really?

  It was the only thing she could say out loud. “Are you for real? Is that even a question?”

  His shoulders rose and fell. “I’ve learned to never assume anything with you. You never react in any way I expect. I also realize this could seem too quick—”

  “You think?” She felt caught in a hurricane of disbelief and jubilation that uprooted her very existence. “It’s been less than a week.”

  “It’s been three weeks.”

  “Two of which you didn’t even see me.”

  “Because I was on a mission to be worthy of you and your trust and respect. And I did see you. I was watching you.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You were?”

  His grin was sheepish. “I practically stalked you. At home, at work. Before you ask how, I...have my ways.”

  She struggled up to her elbow, incredulousness mushrooming inside her. “I’m sure you have. But even so...”

  Lowering himself to the bed, he stretched out beside her, gathering her along his hot, hard body. “I’ve always made life-and-death decisions in seconds. Taking three weeks to conclude that I love you is a glacial pace for me. I took that long only because the decision to love you for the rest of my life is way more weighty than any life-and-death issue I’ve ever dealt with.”

  She shook her head. How could all this be happening?

  His large hand cupped her head. “Do you know why I came back to you when I did?”

  “Because you completed that quest you thought would make you worthy of me?”

  “You think it took me two whole weeks to do that? Everything was in place in two days.”

  She blinked dazedly. “So why?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “To do what? Seek you out?”

  “No, to reach your breakthrough. I knew you were close when I first acquired the lab, and that when you used the resources I put at your disposal, you’d no doubt reach it. I didn’t want to come back before you did. I wanted you to have this achievement you so deserve, before I distracted the hell out of you.”

  That was tremendous. Unbelievable. But... “If you came the next day and explained that I didn’t put you off and you didn’t fear I’d boil your rabbit, I wouldn’t have agonized over you with every breath. I might have even reached that breakthrough sooner.”

  His frown was spectacular. “Dammit. Everything I do because of you or for you backfires right in my face.”

  She caressed his cheek placatingly. “With an end result that’s far better than any plan could have projected. Look at where I am now with my work, how ecstatic everyone is that you bought the lab. Look at me lying here with you, after you’ve given me absolute pleasure and so much more I never dreamed I’d have, and are now telling me that you...you...” A strangled cry escaped her as she buried her face into his chest, tears pouring from the depths of her soul. “This is...you are...too much. Way more than my heart can withstand or contain.”

  “You are impossible for my heart to withstand or contain, too. What I feel for you is so intense, I feel I would go mad if you don’t reciprocate.”

  “Oh God, I do, Antonio. I love you. I think from the first moment I saw you. But I never thought you could love me back.”

  “You captured me from that first moment, too. I know myself, and I can promise you one thing—I’ll love you more every day. I only hope you never think I love you too much.”

  She surged into him, shaking, tears flowing, unable to talk or breathe anymore. Her heart was overflowing. He soothed her, caressed her all over, sucking her lips, her nipples, lavishing the most amazing endearments and praise on her until she wrapped herself around him, undulated against him.

  “Take me again, Antonio.”

  His laugh was distressed as he unclasped her thighs from around his waist. “You might think you’re ready for another round, but trust me, you’re not.” He laid her back gently, his gaze scorching her all over before returning to her eyes, filled such sensual indulgence her core cramped with need. “So...never before, eh?”

  Feeling free to show him everything in her heart and how wanton he made her, she rubbed her nipples against his rock-hard chest. “Apart from...uh...self-help, no. Why bother, when it wasn’t you?”

  His gaze went supernova as he crushed her to him, then her lips beneath his.

  When he let her breathe again, she felt self-conscious again. “So you’re not wondering how I reached this age without having sex? You don’t find it...”

  “Pathetic?” he repeated her earlier descr
iption of her inexperience. “What’s pathetic is how ferociously glad I am that you didn’t.” He pressed into her, his arousal undiminished, his body buzzing with vitality and dominance and lust. “And I don’t find it strange at all, now that I know you. You don’t do anything unless it satisfies your meticulous, exacting mind, and I am only proud and grateful I’m the one who does. After you made me work my ass off for it, of course.”

  He understood. And appreciated. Her heart swelled with thankfulness, even as it still quaked with the enormity of knowing he loved her back.

  She caressed his hewn cheek, letting him see everything inside her. “I never wanted anyone, never considered anyone worth the trouble. But even when I thought you were unattainable and knew you would be trouble of unimaginable magnitude, I wanted you. I craved you, in any way, for any length of time, no matter the price. Or I thought I craved you. After this...cataclysm, I’m addicted to you.”

  After another smothering, devouring kiss, he withdrew. “It’s merciful you are, since I’m beyond addicted to you. It’s also lifesaving for those men you didn’t bother with. If you had, I would have gone hunting them.”

  She burst out laughing. “Now I’ve got an image emblazoned forever in my mind. You in a loincloth, chasing poor, inferior men, clubbing them over the head and throwing them in a pile.”

  His smile was predatory. “Si, amore, laugh at the caveman your love has made of me.”

  Arching with an unbearable surge of delight and desire, she opened for his erection, needing him back inside her. “Go caveman all over me, please.”

  His pupils flared in warning. “I’m barely holding him back, so behave. You’re too sore now.”

  “But I want you to let him loose. Make me almost die of pleasure again, Antonio.”

  Groaning as if in pain, he thrust against her. “From the first time you cut me up with that tongue of yours, I knew. That under the guise of the prim, contentious scientist there was a woman I wanted desperately. But even I wasn’t ambitious enough to hope I’d find this, the most perfect, uninhibited sex goddess. You almost killed me with pleasure, too.”

  “Then take us to the edge of mortality again, please.”

  “Command me, amore. You only have to breathe, to just be, and I would literally die for you.”

  Before her mind could wrap around those earthshaking words, he rose over her, opened her wide around his hips and slid his hardness between the molten lips of her core. He nudged her nub and the world vanished in a burst of pleasure.

  It came so quickly, a boil in her blood, a tightening in depths that now knew exactly how to unfurl and undo her. She opened herself for him, knowing he would only pleasure her this way, undulating faster against him until another orgasm, different yet still magnificent, tore through her.

  He pinned her down as she came, gliding his shaft against her quivering flesh in the exact pressure and rhythm to drain her of every spark her body needed to discharge.

  After she slumped in quivering fulfillment, he rose between her spread legs and pumped himself to a roaring climax.

  Watching him take his pleasure over her trembling body, the body he now owned, was mesmerizing. It was the most flagrantly erotic sight she’d ever witnessed, and the most profoundly fulfilling emotion she’d ever felt.

  Pulling her to his body, he mingled their sweat and pleasure and heartbeats, surrounding her in his love and cherishing, dragging her into a realm of safety and contentment.

  * * *

  When next she woke up, it was to Antonio’s caresses.

  He was wiping her down with something wet and warm. Moaning, she opened her eyes to find him bent over her in dim, golden light, a being out of a fable, cosseting and worshipping her. Joy surged on a tremulous smile as she sought his eyes, only for it to be aborted at the sight of the disturbed expression in their depths.

  That had her scrambling up, her heart shedding its languor, starting to drum painfully. “What’s wrong, Antonio?”

  He exhaled, continued to rub her stomach. “I was watching you sleeping so trustingly in my arms...and I kept wondering how you feel the same for me. Or how you’d continue to.”

  She stopped his hand. “Where is this coming from?”

  Extricating his hand from her grip, he threw the hand towel aside squeezed his eyes shut briefly. “Apart from my...partners, I never had any relationship of any sort with anyone.”

  This was all? She poked her elbow in his side, inviting him to grin back at her. “Same here.”

  “You’re nowhere near the same, mi amore.”

  “Of course I’m not. You’re unique.”

  He shook his head. “It’s you who are. While having more money and power than almost anyone doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near your level.”

  “I already told you I don’t factor your money and power in your uniqueness. The man you are beneath the trappings, the force of nature who achieved such success, who saves lives and puts bodies back together like no one else can, who turns everything he touches into the best it can be...that’s the man I love.”

  “Dio mio, dea mia. You’re far more than I ever imagined anyone could be. You’re far better than I deserve.”

  She scrambled up to her knees, caught his hot face in trembling hands. “Why, my love? Why do you feel that way? When you said you feared I’d be the one to lose interest, I thought you were being gallant. But you meant it, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “It scares me like nothing has before, that one day you’ll look inside me and hate what you see.”

  This was more serious than she’d first imagined. And it needed to be resolved, at once.

  She sat back on her heels, feeling it was the most natural thing to be naked with him in every sense of the word.

  “When you told me you grew up without your father, too, I thought I saw scars beyond your perfect, placid facade and I hoped they’d been long healed. But now I feel this goes far deeper than growing up fatherless like me, that you suffered way more hardships and injustices and abuse than anything I can imagine. And it makes me even more proud of you and in awe of what you attained in spite of it all.”

  “What if you’re right, and there’s way more to me that you can dream of in your worst nightmares? What if it’s so terrible that if you knew, it would send you away screaming?”

  “You’re not hypothesizing, are you? You’re really afraid I can’t handle the truth.” His eyes went bleak, overwhelming her with the need to unburden him. She pressed her hands to his heart, needing to absorb his pain. “This damage I feel inside you...it goes beyond a physical or psychological ordeal. You’ve...done things. Ugly things.” His gaze faltered, and it felt as if his last reluctance gave way, letting her plunge deep. And she felt she was reading everything inside him, dragging out every festering darkness. Her voice shook as she put what she saw into words. “You were involved in...violence. You used your skills in cold-blooded and lethal ways. Even to...kill.”

  She bated her breath as his eyes widened, stunned.

  Then all the fire that had ever been there was extinguished and he only said, “Yes.”

  * * *

  Ever since Antonio had realized he wanted Liliana, he’d broken out in cold sweat just thinking how it would hurt her if she ever learned she’d initially been a tool in his plan of revenge, even if he hadn’t and would never act on it.

  Though he couldn’t come clean about it, ever, he needed to be honest with her any other way he could. He’d already started by opening up about his feelings. Now he needed to go further, all the way, and open up about himself.

  His surface was as perfect and placid as she’d said. But he was anything but inside. Not even his brothers knew of the wreckage inside him. But she’d seen it. She’d said it made her proud of him that he’d become what he was in spite of what he’d been through. But
though she’d somehow seen what no one else had even guessed at, she still couldn’t even guess at the specifics.

  What if he told her all the things he’d done as a slave of The Organization, what he’d had to do to gain his freedom, and it horrified her? What if she thought him too damaged, beyond redemption, and ran for her life?

  But he owed her the whole truth. He’d keep from her only what might hurt her feelings or damage her trust in him. What didn’t apply to them anymore anyway, and never would.

  More than anything he wanted to make her promise she’d never leave him no matter what she learned, but he couldn’t do that. She’d give him her pledge, and she’d keep it, even if she hated it and him. She was that noble, that kind. No, she had to have total freedom to act in her own best interests. Even if it meant leaving him behind. Even if he couldn’t survive without her.

  Needing to put some distance between them so he wouldn’t weaken, he pulled away from her, rose to fetch his pants.

  As he came back to stand over her, she pulled the sheet over herself, as if she feared she couldn’t face whatever he’d say in the vulnerability of nakedness. It made him hate himself more for causing her even a moment’s uncertainty or anxiety.

  Holding her suddenly fragile gaze, praying she wouldn’t end up hating him, he said, “Though I’d give anything for you not to know, you need to know. What I am, what I’ve done. I’ll abide by whatever decision you make once you know everything.”

  And he exposed all the horrors of his past, what not even his brothers knew. The only thing he left out was the identity of the family who’d discarded him.

  All through his confession, what most agonized him were the brutal emotions that ravaged her, from shock to horror to denial to desolation. He couldn’t stop to analyze each one so he could go on.

  When he was done, he stood before her, unable to believe he’d finally unburdened himself, shaking with the discharge of a lifetime of torment and rage that he’d suppressed under layers of steely discipline. But what truly shook him was dreading the reason behind her weeping.