Sasha’s heartbeat was racing. Talking to Thomas now was just like before in the hotel room, like an interrogation, like he was attempting to read her mind and cleave his way into her soul.
“I honestly don’t know,” she replied. “It’s not easy to recover from something like that.” She was lying, and she hoped not too badly. Thomas had already won her over again. He didn’t need to do anything to turn her on to him. But having him try was exciting.
“Why don’t you think about it,” he said. “I told you I don’t like mind games. I like things straight up. I want to know what you think of me, where I stand with you, and what I need to do to make it up to you.”
She gestured to the dining hall, with its carved statues, gold-gilded paintings, and marble floor. “This is a good start.”
Thomas laughed. “Money? That’s the way to your heart? I wasn’t expecting that.”
Sasha frowned. “It’s not the money. It’s the gesture.”
“Because if I’d given you the address of my house instead, you wouldn’t have just as readily come there?”
“You know what,” Sasha said. “Here’s what I think of you. You’re arrogant.”
“True.”
“And demanding. You come on strong then make me feel cheap for falling for it. The question isn’t what you need to do to make it up to me, it’s why you want to in the first place?”
“Why I want to?” Thomas said playfully. “You haven’t looked in a mirror today? Your arse looks fabulous in that dress.”
“We say ass in America,” Sasha said, raising an eyebrow.
Thomas smirked. “Touché.”
“So it’s just my body you want?” Sasha challenged him.
“Isn’t that what we all want, humans, deep down? You want my money, I want your body. We’re all driven by passion and desire. You drive me wild, the look of you, the taste of you.” His eyes flashed with desire. Sasha couldn’t help but feel excitement race between her legs. Then the tone of Thomas’s voice changed, softening slightly. His playful bravado slipped a little, revealing something else beneath. “But it’s not just that. You…you….” He struggled to find the words and gave up. He licked his lips and sighed. “It’s been a hard day. I get grilled by journalists delving into my personal life like they own it. My crazy sister turns up demanding money, making accusations. One good thing happened to me today. And that was meeting you, intern.”
Sasha was so taken aback she didn’t know what to say. An automatic, “Don’t call me that,” left her lips in a breathless whisper.
The waiter came over.
“Can I take your orders, please?” he said.
Sasha broke from her trance. She hadn’t even looked at the menu yet. Her eyes flicked down to the list of posh-sounding food. If she hadn’t felt out of place in Thomas Lloyd’s company before, she certainly did now. She didn’t know what half of these things were, let alone how to pronounce them. Then she realized she wouldn’t have to. Thomas was ordering for the both of them.
The whole time the waiter looked directly at Thomas. It was as though she wasn’t there at all.
“That was rude,” she said as he walked away.
“What was?”
“Ordering for me. You don’t even know what I like to eat, and you’re being presumptuous enough to order for me.”
“Oysters are an aphrodisiac. Trust me when I say I had your best intentions at heart.”
Heat flooded her body.
“He recognized you,” she said, changing the subject.
“Of course he did,” came Thomas’s reply. “Everyone and their cat recognizes me. Apart from…you.” He tipped his eyes up to meet hers.
“And that’s the secret to my appeal...,” Sasha said with a dry laugh. “My cluelessness. If only I’d know in high school.”
Thomas smiled. He seemed to like it when she joked with him. What was it with the English and sarcasm?
“So tell me, intern,” Thomas said. “Where have you been hiding all these years?”
“Really? You want to talk about me?” She shuffled in her seat.
“I want to know how a woman can get to, what, twenty-eight, and not have seen any of my films.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three?” He almost spat out the water he’d taken a sip of. “I thought you were older. You seem more mature.”
“Maybe because I am more mature,” Sasha replied. “I’ve been focused on my career since a young age. I didn’t have time for films.”
“A journalist who doesn’t have time for films. What a contradiction.”
Sasha felt the need to defend herself. “I don’t want to be a popular culture journalist. I’m just working at Atomic because I need an internship on my CV before I can move onto other things.”
“Oh, so films, acting, that’s all beneath you, is it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
There he was again. The Thomas Lloyd that argued with her, challenged her for the sake of making her uncomfortable. He had such a talent for inflaming her, for drawing the passion out of her. It was a tactic, she was sure of it. If he could make her angry, he could make her care. He got a thrill out of riding the rollercoaster of emotion and dragging her along for the ride. And Sasha couldn’t help but fall for it.
“Why are you putting words in my mouth?” she said.
“They’re your words, intern. I’m just highlighting their true intention.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s what you are.”
“What I am. Not who I am.”
“And who are you?”
His eyes bore into her. Her heart raced.
“I don’t know,” she said, finally, defeated. “Just a girl with a dream. Getting sidetracked by glitz and glamour.” She gestured to the room around them.
“That’s not what I see.”
Part of her didn’t want to know how Thomas perceived her, but part of her knew that whatever he said would send lightning rods of desire through her whole body.
“What do you see then?” she questioned him tentatively.
“A woman with fierce ambition and drive. A woman who suppresses her desires because she hasn’t let herself explore them. A woman who has had her eyes opened and her mind expanded by mind-blowing sex and who finally knows that she wants a whole lot more than a high-flying job. A woman who knows she deserves more.”
Sasha drew a breath. Just like when they’d spoken on the phone earlier, his voice aroused her. She licked her parched lips. “Then why do you belittle me by calling me ‘intern’?”
Thomas leaned forward, his hungry gaze fixated on her. “Because I love it when you tell me not to. Intern...”
He was so close she could feel his breath on her. Her whole body throbbed with desire, with want.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice a husky whisper.
This time she noticed the arousal in his eyes, the widening of his pupils, and the longing in his facial features.
Under the table, she slipped her shoe off and raised her foot. She rubbed it up the length of his leg then rested it on the bulge in his pants. His lips parted.
“Intern…,” he murmured again.
She put pressure on his cock with the ball of her foot, then tipped her head forward and made her face expressionless. “Don’t call me that.”
He let out a moan and closed his eyes. “Intern…,”
She felt his cock hardening beneath her foot.
A clatter made them both jerk up in their seats. Waiters were bustling forward with their oysters.
Sasha moved her foot back to the floor and subtly angled it into her shoe. Just like her encounter with Thomas this morning, she was alarmed by her boldness, by the way he drew something out of her she didn’t realize she possessed. She had a power over him, one she didn’t fully understand, but one that she wanted to explore. The last thing she cared about doing now was eating.
“You want to leave already?” Thomas said, as soon as the waiting staff had gone, reading into her expression.
“I just can’t wait to feel you inside of me,” she said, boldly.
Thomas eyebrows shot upwards. “Have you not heard of delaying gratification?”
She folded her arms. “Here we go again. You, the great teacher, me the clueless pupil. Well, go on then. Please tell me more, oh wise one.”
He smirked. “Well, if I recall, this morning we were interrupted before I climaxed. I’ve spent all day thinking about you. About your body. About your taste and smell and the noises you make when you come. I’m ready to pop like a champagne cork. And when I do, it’s going to be incredible. So we stay. We eat. We delay gratification.”
Wow, Sasha thought. He even makes the idea of not having sex sexy.
She tried to focus her attention on eating, but her mind kept wandering. Her nerves were on fire, desperate for his touch. It was made all the worse by the fact that Thomas didn’t take his eyes off her once. It was like he was mentally undressing her.
Finally, she put her fork down and looked up. “You like watching women eat?”
“I was just thinking about how you never answered my question,” he replied. “About where you’ve been hiding all these years?”
The abrupt change in conversation took her aback. She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m asking you about your life. Your childhood. Your upbringing. I want to get to know you, Sasha.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she almost choked on her mouthful. He’d called her Sasha, not intern, and it felt more intimate than anything that had happened in the Honeymoon suite of the Hilton.
“You actually want to get to know me?” she said.
He laughed and threw his arms wide. “Yes! Why is that so hard to understand?”
“I don’t know,” she said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ears. “I thought this was just about sex.”
He stuck his bottom lip out in contemplation. “Can’t it be about both?”
She shrugged. “Can it? How much did you bother getting to know Alicia?”
Thomas sucked air between his teeth. “Ah.”
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said quickly. “I’m bad at this, this whole casual thing.”
Thomas leaned forward and ran his index finger along her arm. The flesh turned goose pimpled beneath his touch. “Alicia is nothing compared to you,” he murmured.
Suddenly, there was a commotion from the entrance of the restaurant. They looked up to see a crowd of people being held back by waiters. Lights flashed.
“That will be the paparazzi,” Thomas said. He stood and threw down his napkin.
“You’re leaving?” Sasha said, alarmed. “Just like that?”
“We both are,” he replied. He held his hand out to her, palm up. Sasha couldn’t help but see it as an invitation. Such a simple gesture but, like a butterfly’s wings causing a tornado a thousand miles away, taking his hand could change everything.
“Come on,” Thomas barked. “Unless you want to be the talk of the internet?”
Sasha clasped his hand and stood. Thomas pulled her after him, and together, they wound their way through the tables of gossiping diners.
“This way,” he called behind him.
They headed for the back of the restaurant and into the steaming kitchens. Smells and heat assaulted Sasha. She couldn’t help but laugh from the exhilaration of it all. It felt so theatrical, to be running from the paps with a dashing action hero.
“Mr. Lloyd,”—a man in a crisp white suit said, startled by the appearance of the actor in his kitchen—“is everything okay?”
Sasha noticed his name tag: Hunter Hill. Manager.
Thomas narrowed his eyes. “There are paps here.”
Hunter Hill blanched. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Lloyd,” he said. “One of the diners must have alerted them.”
“It’s not your patrons who are the problem,” Thomas replied. “It’s your staff.” He pointed to the waiter who’d served them, the one who hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Thomas. “I’d question him first. All it takes is one picture uploaded to Instagram.”
And with that Thomas shoved open the double doors at the back of the kitchen and pulled Sasha after him, leaving the manager standing there flabbergasted.
She emerged, breathless and laughing, into the cold evening air. Thomas, on the other hand, was agitated.
“These bloody kids with their phones,” he said. “My every movement is documented. One tweet here, another picture uploaded there, and the world and his dog are chasing me down the streets.” He began punching numbers into his cell phone. “Pick us up from the back entrance,” Thomas said, and Sasha assumed he was talking to his driver.
They were in an alleyway at the back of the restaurants and shops. It was lined with dumpsters, a far cry from the glamour of a moment earlier.
“I’m sorry about this,” Thomas said.
Sasha leaned against the wall to catch her breath. “Don’t be. I’m having fun.”
“You might not be so jovial when your face makes it into the magazines.”
She reached out a hand and set it on his arm. “I can handle it, Thomas,” she said. “I’m not as fragile as you think I am.”
He looked at her hand then drew his face up level with hers. He moved forward at lightning speed and planted a deep, hungry kiss on her lips. Sasha’s mouth opened, inviting him in instantly. She arched her back against the bricks as ripples of excitement washed through her. She pulled him closer and closer, reveling in the sensation of his strong body against hers. Her fingers explored his back, his broad shoulders, before winding into his hair.
Thomas ran his hand down from her hip to her thigh then hitched her leg up in one fluid movement. Sasha let her legs open for him and breathed heavily as his body moved into the space between them.
Thomas reciprocated her intensifying passion by widening her mouth with his, deepening their kiss. His hand moved from her thigh to her ass, his fingers squeezing the flesh and causing spasms of excitement to course through her. She couldn’t help but let a small moan escape from her throat. She was rewarded by the sensation of Thomas’s erection hardening between her legs.
Thomas pulled away. His eyes were bright. “Here’s my prediction,” he panted. “I’ll be waking up tomorrow morning in your arms.”
“Why?” Sasha said coquettishly. “Because when you want something, you don’t stop until you get it?”
Thomas shook his head. “No. Because when you want something, you don’t stop until you get it.”
A sudden flash of light made them both turn their heads. The paparazzi had found their way to the back of the building and were advancing en masse. At the same time, a black car rounded the corner. It had tinted windows.
“There’s our ride,” Thomas said. “Come on.”
He grabbed Sasha’s hand and led her to the awaiting car. With a tremble of anticipation, Sasha entered it willingly.
Chapter Four
It turned out that Thomas had an apartment in Gold Coast—a swanky part of Chicago—overlooking the lake.
“I have houses all over the place. I hate hotels,” he’d said in the car as an explanation. He went on to say that he hadn’t actually been to this specific house in over two years until his film promotional schedule had brought him here. “Two years?” Sasha had exclaimed. Turned out that was nothing compared to his Kolkata apartment. He hadn’t been there for a decade. He’d bought it when he was filming a movie on location in India but had never had a chance to return. It was the sort of flippant thing a man like Thomas Lloyd could do.
His Gold Coast house was everything Sasha would expect from a multi-millionaire—lavish decorations, sweeping staircases, and far too many bathrooms. Sasha briefly wondered how many women he’d showered with here, how many of the guest bedrooms he’d made love in, whether he’d ever done it on the sparkling
-clean, granite-topped kitchen work surfaces.
“Drink?” Thomas said.
“Don’t you have a servant to do that for you?” she mocked.
Thomas smirked and set a couple of wine glasses onto the kitchen island. “I think you’ll find I’m actually very humble.”
Sasha laughed and picked up the freshly poured glass of wine. “Oh really? How many houses do you have precisely…?”
Thomas chinked his glass against hers. “How about I take you to them all and you can do the maths?”
“The math,” Sasha corrected, finding that humor was the only way to cope with a situation that was quickly making molten hot lava pump round her body.
Thomas took a sip of wine then set his glass down. He reached into his pocket. Sasha was half expecting him to pull out a pair of handcuffs or something else kinky. Instead, he produced his phone.
“Here,” he said, holding it out to her.
“What’s this for?”
“Google. You can see if you’ve had any impact on the internet.”
Sasha frowned, as she took the phone from him and went online. She tapped in Thomas Lloyd’s name and got a million hits. It took her less than a minute to find a photograph of them together in the restaurant from earlier. The image was grainy but clearly taken from inside by the waiter.
“He could’ve sold that for a couple of hundred dollars,” Thomas said.
Sasha raised an eyebrow. “That much for a photo? I’ll remember that....”
Her joke faded into the ether, as she scrolled through the pages. She saw there were already articles speculating about her identity. One said she was an extra on his last film. Another said she was a crew member. A third even claimed she was his long lost daughter suing him for lost child support payments and emotional damage.
“Wow. There’s so much garbage written about you.”
“This is my life,” Thomas said a little sadly. “Maybe you can understand now why meeting someone like you is such a big deal to someone like me?”
Sasha nodded, her gaze transfixed with the seemingly endless streams of speculation. She made the mistake of reading the first comment on one of the articles. ‘Whoever that bitch is, I’m going to cut her head off with a rusty chainsaw. Thomas is mine.’ The comment was signed off ‘Mrs. Lloyd’.
CHASED (A Standalone Billionaire Romance Novel) Page 22
