After the spasms had calmed, I opened my eyes and he withdrew. His dark gaze held mine as he wickedly raised his two fingers to his mouth, touching his tongue to the taste of me. “Honey girl,” he said.
He looked so big, so powerful and dark-eyed. He was still fully clothed. And here I was, boneless and bound, wet and wanton and fully on display, my inner muscles still rippling.
It was the look of him that fired me up. All that tense, lusty, muscular energy. That full mouth, savoring my taste. That thick mane of black hair. My body felt like an overripe fruit that he’d taken a juicy bite of. And I wanted to shift this power. I wanted to use all this overflowing femininity to tame his arrogant composure. Something about this release had freed something in me. Not a cure, but a corner turned. I did not feel sated: I felt wild, and loose.
“Untie me, Wolfe,” I said.
He contemplated me, as though tempted to disobey, but he did as I asked. He seemed to sense a change in me, a fierceness, a freedom. “You okay?”
“Yes. I’m amazing.”
He smiled. “Agreed,” he said.
“But there’s something else I want.”
“What?”
I waited to reply until he had completely untied me. I took the belt from his hands and he watched me as I curled the thick leather around his wrists. “My turn,” I smiled.
He laughed lightly. “No. No way.”
“I get whatever I want. You agreed.” His reticence was palpable, which made me laugh too. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I don’t.” His smile touched his eyes. Alexander didn’t often smile like that. He was drop-dead gorgeous even when he was brooding; like this, he was simply breath-taking. “Of course I do, I should say.”
“That’s better.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to take out all your wrath on me.”
“You’d be right,” I said, and he chuckled again. There was the tiniest edge of reserve in him that was downright irresistible. “You promised.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Let me.”
A hint of his smile remained but his narrowed gaze was midnight-black.
“Trust me,” I said again, unbuttoning his shirt, easing it over his hard shoulders, pulling it off.
“Lila –”
“I love you,” I said, climbing onto his lap, kissing his lips slowly, playfully. “I’ll be nice. Well … sort of nice. Now lie back.”
He didn’t protest again, allowing me exactly what I wanted, letting me manoeuver him into place. He was both wary and aroused as hell. His eyes watched me as I lifted his arms and fastened his bound wrists to a metal loop on the wooden bedhead that, now that I considered it, seemed perfectly placed and designed for this exact purpose.
“There,” I said, pleased. I could do anything to him. Anything. “You are completely at my mercy, Mr. Wolfe.”
“I’ve been completely at your mercy since that second you walked into my office, Mrs. Wolfe.” He went quiet for a few seconds, then he said, “Please marry me.”
“I might,” I whispered, unfastened his pants, pulling them down low on his hips. His erection sprang free, huge and hot, and I grasped him, handling him lovingly, sliding my palms all the way from the root to the tip. I leaned down, lifting his engorged shaft to my mouth. I kissed him in little feather-light nips. “What can I do,” I said, “to teach you that you’re not the king of the whole world and everyone in it?” I eased him into my mouth, gently touching my teeth to him.
“Oh, god,” he groaned.
I let him slide free of my mouth. I cupped him from below, squeezing gently. I kissed him everywhere as I cooed my reprimand. “What will it take …” I gripped him more tightly and nipped him in a very intimate place.
“Oh, fuck.”
“… for you to admit that you are not in complete control of everyone and everything…”
I used my fingers to stroke and explore. He groaned again.
“… all the time?”
I took him deeper into my mouth, feasting on him like I was starved, pulling, kissing, sucking and biting until he was groaning and thrusting into my mouth. I could tell he was getting close to climaxing, so I slowed my pace, then let him slide from my mouth once again. I pulled his pants all the way off and crawled up his body like a cat, rubbing my breasts against his cock, touching my nipple to the gathering moisture at the tip.
“Christ,” he groaned.
I straddled him, fitting the blunt end of his cock to my slippery entrance, using him to swirl my own wetness over my clit. I played, making him wait.
“God, Lila. Give it to me. Let me inside you. Let me feel that sweet little pussy gripping me as you come.” I wanted to torture him but I was too eager for exactly that. I loved hearing him talk like that, with all that love and desperation coloring the tones of his lust-rasped voice. I didn’t want to wait. I lowered myself inch by inch onto him, bouncing gently until he was snugly inside me. Then I began to ride him, swivelling my hips in a circling sway, increasing the pace as lifted myself all the way up, then sat onto him again, taking him as deep as I could, keeping him inside as I moved in an arching, pivoting glide.
Something in me had broken open: a long-held fear no longer felt quite so heavy. A piece of my deep-held pain had lifted. Gone, poof, just like that. My lover’s brand of therapy had, miraculously, worked. And this sudden, acute sense of liberation made me feel crazily happy, lustfully wild.
I took it all out on Alexander: this enlightened abandon had given me not only power but also a sexy vigor that seemed to almost undo him. My playful, wriggling swivels and my slick, tight grip as I rode him made his cock so hard he felt like warm, velvet-smooth stone.
“Ah, holy fuck,” he growled, as I increased my pace yet again, finding a perfect, passionate rhythm.
It was the warmth of him as much as the pulsing jets of his release that spun my orgasm out again: that leeching heat that filled me in gushes of sweet, scorching fire. His eyes were squeezed shut, his face pained. He was saying my name, groaning it in a worshipful chant.
I collapsed onto him, spent in body and in soul.
After a few minutes, once he’d recovered, he said, “Untie me so I can hold you.”
I did and he wrapped his arms around me and held me close for a very long time.
Alexander
We were meeting Jake at a restaurant that was within the confines of his ‘zone’. This was a change of plans and Lila had called her friend to let her know where we would be. It was supposed to be a celebration, a ‘rehearsal dinner’ of sorts. We were doing it unconventionally, I guess, without the family-and-friends crowd that most pre-wedding celebrations might have called for. Which was fine. Lila had no family. Her father had abandoned her mother a week before she’d been born. I’d looked into it. I’d had my investigator that dug into stuff like that for me track down information about who the guy was and where he might have disappeared to. Turned out he was as elusive as smoke. There’d been a string of men that had come and gone from Lila’s mother’s life in the few years before Lila’s birth. The one that seemed most likely to be her father had vanished into thin air and I’d let it go. I could have taken it further but it wouldn’t have helped her anyway, I figured; rehashing old mysteries and regrets would bring her more pain than satisfaction. And her mother had died years ago. A foster mother that had taken Lila in at one point, who Lila had mentioned she’d never felt close to, had also died. There’d been friends – and a few not-too-serious boyfriends – in her life along the way but none that had stuck. She was a girl who had spent most of her life hiding, and running, and studying her way to a future that bore no resemblance to her past.
We would keep it small, and intimate. Just us, and Lila’s friend Eva, and Jake. I’d discussed it with the legal team and they’d agreed to allow Jake one visit to the Hamptons this weekend to attend his brother’s wedding. It had been programmed into the high-tech monitoring device they’d fitted him
with, a bracelet that looked sort of like a tight-fitting metal watch. Beyond this one outing, he was allowed nowhere except his home, his office and the direct path between the two, for a period of three months.
He seemed to be taking it seriously, for once. Maybe it had finally sunk in: a breach this time would mean definite and prolonged jail time and they weren’t fucking around. Jake had been subdued in court, uncharacteristically obedient. I could only hope he would finally, at long last, toe the line.
To be honest, the last thing I felt like doing was meeting up with Lila’s friend. I’d met the girl before and she was a little annoyingly over-the-top about the whole money angle. The fact that Lila was dating and was now marrying a billionaire seemed to be a detail she fixated on. There was something a little crass and over-enthusiastic about her that rubbed me the wrong way but I’d just have to put up with. Hardly a major hardship, in the broader scheme of things. I was glad Lila had someone, after all, to be there for her. A female companion to help her primp and prepare for her Big Day.
“I’m a traditionalist,” I told her in the limo on the way to the restaurant. We’d just had some kind of breakthrough. The sex this afternoon had been … crazy-intense. Even moreso than usual and that was saying something. We’d explored a direction that could have easily backfired. Thankfully, it hadn’t backfired. It had broken something open in Lila. She’d worked through a childhood trauma that could now begin to heal and she was different tonight: fragile but at the same time emotionally stronger than I might ever have seen her. She was sitting next to me, sipping a glass of champagne I’d given her. Her green eyes were smoky yet bright and she contemplated me with something that looked almost heart-breakingly like gratitude. I didn’t want her to be grateful to me, not for anything. Her gratitude was a drop in the ocean compared to mine. I was so goddamn grateful just to be sitting here with her, to be able to drink in the colorful glow of her, it was hard to express. She was my oasis. My beacon of stellar beauty in a starless night. Beyond her everything seemed dull, unimportant. With her, I felt more whole and more myself than I ever had. Lila made me feel like the best possible version of myself. Even with all the fuck-ups I kept continually making, in her presence I was more honorable and decent and good than anything I had ever attempted or even imagined. This was only one of the many reasons I was so thoroughly addicted to Lila Carmichael. Soon to be Lila Wolfe. I could hardly believe my luck.
“In what way?” she said, her hand small and warm in mine.
I was so deeply in thought and in love I’d almost forgotten what I’d meant to say.
“In what way are you a traditionalist?” she said again.
“I’ll leave you just before midnight tonight.”
“Why?” she smiled, but not before a glint of almost-alarm flickered. “Will your limo turn into a pumpkin?”
“I thought Eva could stay in our apartment tonight, with you. I’ll go to Jake’s. A driver will pick you both up at eight tomorrow morning and take you to a day-spa in Southampton. Your dress is already at the house in Water Mill, where there’ll be a team of attendants to assist you with anything you need. The ceremony will start at three.”
“You think it’s bad luck to see your bride before the wedding,” she said, understanding. Her smile held, as though she found this unexpected. “I would never had picked you for being superstitious, Alexander Wolfe.”
“I just want everything to be perfect.” I’d never been superstitious before, but here I was, about to marry the girl who was a million times more dazzling than anything my feeble brain could have dreamed up. I didn’t want to take any chances, just in case.
“That must be a difficult compromise for you to make.”
I watched her, mesmerized by color of her lips.
“Considering all your … tendencies.” My over-protective tendencies, she didn’t need to say; we both knew about those all too well.
“Yes, well, I did hire a few bodyguards. I hope you don’t mind. Twenty of them. You’ll travel in a … motorcade.”
She laughed. “A motorcade?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“My god.”
“Don’t be mad.”
She chewed on her plump little pink bottom lip, her white teeth square and neat. Contemplating me. “I’m not mad.”
“You don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind, I guess. It seems a little excessive, though.”
“Think of it as a wedding procession.”
“Are they going to swarm around Eva and me at the spa while we’re getting our manicures?”
“They’ll be outside. The two of you will be exclusive guests.”
Her eyes narrowed. I was struck, once again, by the cat-like shape of her eyes, framed by those naturally long lashes. “You’ve rented out the entire spa.”
“Yes. You’ll get the full treatment. Anything you want.”
She laughed again. “You’re crazy.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by this. “Crazy.”
“Yes. But I love you anyway.”
I was relieved, that she seemed to find it all somewhat amusing. Either she was getting used to my style or she didn’t feel quite so confined by my reluctance to let her out of my sight for a whole day without … insurance. She’d won today, after all. I’d called Mark Faber and apologized while she watched me. I’d offered him his job back at her insistence. He’d been so shocked he went quiet for a few seconds. Then he agreed to come in on Monday, as usual. I may or may not still end up quitting, which I’ll deal with when we get to it. Today I had other things on my mind. Her, mostly.
I kissed her. I simply couldn’t resist. Those pouting pink lips. That wide-eyed look she gave me whenever she couldn’t quite believe what I was willing to do for her. My heroin and my heroine, all rolled into one feisty little innocent who could bring me to my knees with one look, and one kiss.
“We need to talk about a honeymoon,” I said. “We’ll probably have to wait a month or so, just because I’ve been away –”
“We can count Paris as our honeymoon.”
I stared at her, mildly affronted. “No. Paris was our … getting-to-know-each-other trip. A honeymoon comes after a wedding,” I reminded her. “Name it. Wherever you want to go.”
She smiled again. “Crazy.”
“Think about it,” I said. “And get back to me.”
The limo pulled up outside a small restaurant where we’d booked our table for four. It was a relatively new place I’d seen written up recently. According to the write-up it had a ‘superb New World menu’ and ‘the best apple pie in New York City’. Apple pie just happened to be Jake’s favorite food. And the restaurant was just around the corner from his apartment. I was hoping it would be good, so he could have a place to go that was in the zone. There weren’t all that many restaurants on this street. It was mainly retail and offices.
Eva was already there and she rushed up to Lila, hugging her in that over-excitable way girls have. “Oh my god!” she gushed to Lila. “You look more and more gorgeous every time I see you! The lifestyle of the rich and famous totally agrees with you!”
Yawn.
I smiled and kissed Eva’s cheek. She smelled like smoke and cheap perfume. “Hi, Eva. You look lovely tonight.”
“Hi, Alexander,” Eva beamed. “I wish I looked half as good as the two of you!”
“Is Jake here yet?” Lila asked.
“I wouldn’t know! I mean, I looked for someone resembling his handsome billionaire brother but no one fit that description.” Eva giggled.
I was relieved to see Jake walk in just then. He’d ditched the suit and was back in his usual garb: leather jacket and jeans. He looked tired, as he had earlier, but he’d lost a degree of that quiet dread that had clung to him lately. Nothing like dodging a three-year sentence in a maximum-security prison to lighten the mood. I gave him a hug.
“Thanks for venturing into my jurisdiction,” he said sardonically. “Sorry
to mess up the plan.”
Lila kissed his cheek. “Jake, this is Eva Collins. Eva, Jake Wolfe.”
Eva’s eyes lit up. “It’s nice to meet you, Jake.”
Jake nodded politely, delivering a light peck to her overly-bronzed cheek. “Eva. The pleasure’s mine.”
It was easy enough to read the dynamic. Near-convict or not – and I had no doubt Eva had either been filled in on the recent drama by Lila or read about it in the papers – Jake never failed to get the ladies’ attention. They practically threw themselves at him, and always had. He was tall, dark and mysterious with a twist: a hint of renegade angel edged with the sincerity of a white knight. Eva was practically drooling.
Jake, on the other hand, looked mildly bored. I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t go for the easy lay, which it was pretty clear was already on offer. I didn’t want Lila to have any emotional melodramas to have to deal with on her wedding day. Because I knew Jake would never stick with a girl like Eva beyond one carefree night; she’d drive him mad almost before he’d even vacated her bed: this was obvious. So I was already spinning a plan about how we could draw this dinner out until midnight, at which time Lila would leave with Eva and I’d drag my brother back to his place. Secretly, I’d hoped Lila and I might have a few minutes alone together … for one last pre-wedding lovemaking fest. But I was just being greedy again. It wasn’t like we hadn’t just spent the entire afternoon in bed, immersing ourselves in simultaneous orgasms like it was going out of style.
“This place is so cute,” Lila said, looking around the restaurant.
I guess it was. It had round tables with comfortable-looking chairs and leather booths. Lots of windows and mirrors gave it a spacious, interesting feel. Thousands of fairy lights had been attached in draping strings from the ceiling, creating the illusion of a starry night. And if the aromas from the kitchen were anything to go by, the food would be as good as the write-up had suggested. I was ravenous, I realized. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Neither had Lila. I’d interrupted her coffee/lunch break. My throat tightened at the echoing memory of seeing her sitting there with Mark Faber. But it was easing: the quiet, lingering rage. I trusted her. Not him, but her. I had no other choice.
HONEY GIRL: BILLIONAIRE (Book 2) Page 14
