Alek’s face filled with disbelief even as he rose to hug first his friend and then his fiancée. “Congratulations,” he said to them both.
“I can finally wear my ring,” Helena said as she drew a chain from the V-neck of her stylish jumpsuit. She pulled it over her head and unclasped the lock to drop the ring into her palm.
Chance picked it up and reached for her left hand. “Por siempre, mi amor,” he said, using the language of their shared Cuban heritage as he slid the ring onto her slender finger.
Helena rose up on her toes, pressing her hands to his broad shoulders before kissing his lips.
Forever, my love.
Alek frowned at the idea of his friend’s words to his fiancée as he gave Chance one last strong pat on the back before moving away from them to allow the waiting guests to congratulate the couple, as well.
Picking up his glass of champagne from his spot at the table, he pressed a kiss to Kenzay’s temple and moved to walk through one of the four sets of French doors lining the dining room to step out onto the terrace. As he took a deep sip of champagne he instantly recognized as Dom Pérignon, he inhaled the scent of Sicilian honey lilies heavy in the night air.
In the days before sports and girls had drawn his full-time attention, Alek had spent lots of time with his mother as she tended to her gardens. He knew many a flower by scent alone from those hours. In the days right after his father’s tragic death, he had returned to spending time with his mother in her beloved terrace gardens of her apartment on the Upper East Side until she had finally sent him on his way to live life and to let her live hers without a watchdog—albeit a loving one.
Alek smiled. His mother was nothing if not direct.
“Your date looks lonely.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Chance stepping out onto the paved terrace, as well.
“Kenzay is not my date, your girl...eh, fiancée, invited her,” Alek reminded him. “I just needed a moment to let it digest that my friend is getting married.”
Chance nodded as he looked out at the stars in the night sky, which was deepening from a cobalt blue to jet-black. “Just like I had to when you married Kenzay,” he said with a chuckle.
“Not a good example.”
They fell silent.
They were good friends and in many ways closer than Alek was to his own brother. He knew he could fill the silence with warnings of marrying too soon and urgings to make sure she was the one, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not yet.
“Are you that surprised? We’ve been seeing each other for the last six months—and locked it down to just me and her for last three of those months,” Chance said, turning to lean back against the metal railing securing the solid glass that gave him unobstructed views of his landscaped garden below.
“And I’ve been out of the country so I wasn’t aware it was that serious,” Alek offered. “But I am happy for you.”
“Maybe you’re next,” Chance said, bending to pick up a stone that he threw across the wildflowers surrounding his villa-style home.
Alek laughed wholeheartedly at that. “Maybe not,” he assured him. “I’m still recovering from Kenzay, remember?”
It was Chance’s turn to laugh. “There is nothing wrong with having the life your parents had. The love. The kids. The happily-ever-after.”
“Yes, but my mother was home full-time,” Alek reminded him.
“And my mother worked to provide for me alone,” Chance reminded him.
“Wouldn’t you prefer she didn’t have to work?” Alek asked.
“Of course, but it brought her pride that she relied on no one but herself,” Chance said. “I never expected Helena to trade being an attorney for being a full-time homemaker, but that’s her plan.”
Alek gulped his champagne as if it were cheap swill. “Seriously?” he asked, his doubt clear.
Chance nodded with a proud smile. “She surprised me. Helena has always been career-driven, but the ring changed all of that, I suppose.”
Alek turned and leaned against the low metal railing surrounding the terrace. “What if she changes her mind again?”
“I still want her to be the woman I spend the rest of my life loving.”
“Then I am happy for you, my friend,” Alek said with honesty.
Alek wasn’t looking for a lasting love nor a long-term relationship, but he had often thought of having children of his own. For a man in his position of wealth and prominence, he knew to have one without the other was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. Billion-dollar baby mama drama? A straight catastrophe. So the kids would wait until he found the right woman to marry the next time. The only thing he knew for sure was that his wife would be a traditional, stay-at-home mother.
Nothing at all like Alessandra Dalmount.
Alek frowned and shook his head. Thinking of her—even in judgment—
In that moment was an oddity.
Chance looked off into the distance. “Any preliminary votes from the board?”
Alek nodded. “I have three on board. I plan to meet with the others sometime this weekend.”
Chance nodded. “So it’s working?”
“I just need three more for the majority.”
“And?”
“My sources tell me Alessandra hasn’t even made an attempt to reach out to the board in the interim,” he said, remembering a moment in a recent meeting when she absentmindedly stroked her throat as she listened intently to the president of their casino division. That one innocent move led to a vision of him pressing his mouth to the exact same spot as she stroked his bare back and cried out in pleasure.
“Don’t underestimate her, though,” Chance reminded him with the hint of a smile at his lips.
The hot image faded as he focused on his friend.
Unlike Alek, Chance came from humble beginnings, raised by a hardworking Afro-Dominican single mother who worked double shifts as a certified nursing assistant to give her lone son the best life she could. When he turned ten she moved them from the Bronx to the Lower East Side, taking on higher rent, to be closer to the fringes of the Upper East Side and fought hard to pay his annual tuition and fees to attend the Dalton School. It was at the elite Manhattan private school that Chance and Alek met and became the best of friends.
His mother, Esmeralda, was more than proud of her son, who went on to finish at Dalton and graduated from Harvard with a degree in accounting and finance. He was a wealthy man in his own right after selling a project management app for well over $600 million. That plus the dividends from smart investing were rocketing him toward billionaire status.
Chance was the epitome of someone using others’ underestimation of him for motivation to succeed.
Alek nodded. “Never. She’s no idiot.”
“And not hard on the eyes,” Chance offered.
This time he recalled when Alessandra flipped her hair back over her shoulder and exposed the smooth caramel expanse of her delicate neck. It played like a movie in his mind. He had been filled with a desire to press his lips to her pulse and inhale deeply of the subtle scent of her perfume. He wasn’t surprised when he woke up that night from a dream of doing just that and much more to her.
Burying his face against her warm spots. Her cleavage. Her belly. Between her thighs.
Massaging her shoulders.
Teasing her nipples and then sucking them.
Licking a trail from the curve above her buttocks and up her spine.
“The awkward duckling became one hell of a swan,” Alek admitted.
“Perhaps you should give her something more to love than just business,” Chance joked.
“And who is this?”
Both men turned to find Helena and Kenzay joining them on the terrace.
Helena moved to Chance to massage his back. “We caught the end of your conversation
and I need answers, Senor Castillo.”
Kenzay took Alek’s drink from him and finished it as she eyed him over the gold-trimmed rim.
“I was just telling Alek how you volunteered to put your career on hold once were married,” Chance began, wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her body in front of his. She immediately leaned back against him.
“And he joked that was a good way for me to get rid of Alessandra Dalmount,” Alek finished.
Helena made a face as she swatted Chance’s hand in reprimand. “That’s terrible,” she said before smiling and kissing his chin.
“Well, speaking as someone who has experienced Alek, that is not a good way to get rid of any woman,” Kenzay joked with a wink.
Alek took a mock bow.
They all groaned and laughed as they made their way back inside to the party.
For a moment, Alek thought of how much fun wooing and bedding Alessandra could be, but marrying her? Never. She was too firmly entrenched in her role as businesswoman to ever satisfy him as wife.
* * *
“Let me take this off while you watch me...”
Alek lay on the middle of the king-size bed. The moonlight cascaded in through the open ten-foot-tall terrace doors. The sultry sound of Beyoncé’s song “Rocket” filled the air. A breeze filled with the scent of night-blooming jasmine wafted in, caressing the sheer curtains a bit.
He was waiting. And naked.
And anxious.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back on the pillow as his Adam’s apple rose and fell with his deep swallow. He tugged at the ties on his wrists and ankles that secured him to the four-poster bed.
“You ready, Mr. Ansah?”
His eyes opened to find Alessandra standing at the foot, her svelte body barely covered by a sheer black lace bodysuit. Her smile was soft and beguiling as she wrapped her hands around his ankles and climbed up onto the bed, her hands inching up to his thighs to massage the defined contours.
Her touch was ideal. Soft, barely there, but electrifying.
His breath was bated. His pulse soared. And his heart felt right on the edge of a soft explosion.
He felt drugged. He was addicted. He wanted—no, needed—more.
Desire hardened him until it was thicker and longer. Aching. Needing. Wanting...more.
Alessandra dragged her teeth against her bottom lip as she sat back on her knees between his open legs and took him in her hands.
He hissed between clenched teeth at the feel of her warm hands on him, stroking him as she brought her thumb up to graze against the smooth tip.
“Alessandra,” Alek cried out, his hips arching up off the bed.
With her eyes locked on him she lowered her head, bowing to him in a way, before she wet her lips with her tongue and then took his hardness into her mouth. Slowly. Inch by inch.
Sweat coated his body. His thighs trembled. His gut clenched. His bit his own lip to keep from crying out at the feel of her mouth on him until he felt the tip touch the back of her throat.
She swallowed, contracting her throat and causing the base of her tongue to rise up and put sweet pressure on him.
Alek whimpered as he felt a small of bit of release jolt in the back of her throat.
She moaned in pleasure and swallowed again.
“No!” he cried out, straining against the ties with such strength that his entire body bounced up off the bed a bit.
She hummed as she slid her mouth up to the tip. She circled it with the tip of her tongue and then sucked it deeply, again and again, as she pressed her tongue against his hard heat.
“Please,” he begged her, his shame lost amid his abandon.
He dwelled somewhere between pleasure and insanity.
Alessandra gave one last one kiss to the tip before she freed him.
His body relaxed but his heart pounded with a ferocity that frightened him. He closed his eyes and released a long shaky breath. “Damn,” he swore in a whisper.
His respite was brief. Every muscle making up the hard contours of his body tensed in anticipation as she moved her body to straddle his hips. He looked to her as she bit down on her tongue at the corner of her mouth and began milking him with both her hands. Up and down with a soft twist that was slow and deliberate.
Up to the hot, swollen tip and down to the thick, rock-hard base. Again and again.
“Alessandra,” he moaned, wishing his hands were free to touch her.
“Alek,” she said in return.
Up. Down. Again and again.
“Don’t make me come,” he begged, biting on the side of his tongue.
Up. Down. Again and again.
“Yet?” she asked, pausing her actions.
He agreed. “Yet.”
She rose to her feet, her hair swinging forward as she looked down at him. “Am I everything you thought I would be?” she asked, twisting her body this way and that seductively.
Alek was transfixed by the sight of her. The moonlight framed her body, and the sight of her nipples and the plump mound pressed against the sheer material was mesmerizing. He grunted as he tried to tear free of his restraints.
“Am I everything you want?” she asked, turning and bringing her hands up her thighs to caress her exposed derriere as she looked back over her shoulder. “Everything you need?”
Her teasing made him hungry for her.
“Everything you desire?” she asked, turning again to cup her breasts and tease her hard nipples through the barely-there material.
“Come and get it,” she taunted, using the arch of her bare foot to stroke his stiff inches.
He roared, his muscles tense as he brought his arms and legs up off the bed, futilely straining against the cotton ties holding him captive to the bed...
“Alessandra!”
Alek awakened, raising his head from the pillow to look down the length of his body at his hardness tenting the sheets. Still somewhere between fully awake and asleep, his face was bewildered as he looked left and right to find his arms open wide across his pillow, but free of any ties like his all-too-real vision.
Relaxing his body, he closed his eyes and released a heavy breath. His dream had been vivid. And in those moments as he waited for his erection to ease and his pulse to diminish, he wished like hell that he hadn’t awakened.
Chapter 5
Simply amazing.
“Pull over for a second, Roje,” Alessandra said, sitting up in her seat of the back of the Jaguar.
“Yes, ma’am.” He pulled the car to a stop on the curving road seemingly carved out of the mountain looming beside it.
As soon the vehicle stopped she climbed out and moved to stand at the metal railing lining the winding road. The smell of trees and earth was heavy as she looked in the distance at the view of the Lake House, seemingly nestled inside the towering trees and mountains of the Catskills with its reflection mirrored on the surrounding lake. Over the years since ADG acquired the once-small resort, the property had increased in size with more than three hundred guest rooms and suites. The additions maintained the original aesthetic of the stone castle with its pointed forest green rooftops referencing its surroundings.
It was picture-perfect.
Looking at it, for a moment, all her nerves about her presentation to the board that morning eased a bit.
“Are we having a moment, Alessandra? Please don’t jump, sweetheart. There are way less messy ways to go.”
Poof. The moment was gone with the same finality of a popped balloon.
She released a little moan of annoyance before looking over her shoulder at her aunt Leonora’s head peeking out the rear window of one of the two Rolls-Royce Phantoms following behind her car. She wasn’t surprised by the platinum flask clutched in her hand. Aunt Leonora enjoyed a good cocktail, and the alcohol mad
e her tongue straight reckless.
Her father had been all about family, and his financial support of them had passed on to Alessandra upon his death. She loved them all, but they were quite a handful. She walked back to the car, careful not to trip on an errant rock or crack in the country road as she bent to look in the rear of the Phantom.
There was her aunt Brunela, her father’s sister whom Alessandra recently put on a spending budget. She had made it clear that if she had been a man that the family business would have been hers to inherit and not her younger brother. And she seemed intent on spending as much as she could. The purchase of a five-million-dollar antique car had been a bit much, particularly when Brunela had never acquired a driver’s license. As if spending the family fortune would replace never being put in control of it.
And Aunt Leonora, her father’s younger sister who never married or had children. She had become Alessandra’s mother figure in the years after her passing. Leonora’s opinion and personality were much bigger than her petite stature, but she gave good advice and was a soft place for Alessandra to land when the world felt tough and unrelenting. Even if her honesty sometimes stings.
Alessandra eyed her cousin Marisa, lightly snoring in the corner with earphones plugged in, undoubtedly sleeping off another late night of partying and manhunting. She and Brunela’s daughter were the same age but so completely different. Marisa had never been given the same responsibility and it was clear that her mother’s overindulgence had not prepared her for adulthood. She has the freedom to mess up. Lucky girl.
Her father’s first cousin, Victor, and his sixth wife, Elisabetta, and their toddler twins were in the last car. Although he was quite experienced at getting married, he was the worst possible candidate for a husband. Elisabetta was thirty years his junior and loved being his wife, so much so that she couldn’t seem to be bothered to discipline their twin toddlers who were as bad as the day was long. They were quite a little family and Alessandra wished them well. Although Victor was employed by ADG and received a hefty salary, he had yet to make an appearance in his office in the last twenty years. God help him the day Elisabetta realizes he spends his days test-driving wife number seven.
A Billionaire Affair Page 6
