Read Billionaire On Fire: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Billionaire Romance) Online
Authors: Claire Adams
"Fuck you, Connor,"
he said throwing the rag to the ground and stepping closer. "You're an
arrogant prick who thinks his shit doesn't stink. I'm sick of watching you walk
around here like you're holier than the rest of us. You're act like some kind
of saint."
"What the hell are you
talking about?" I laughed. "I've never acted like I'm better than
anyone. Jesus, Vangel, who put that bug up your ass?"
"I've been watching you,
Connor," he said menacingly. "You think you're above it all. You're
not, you know. You're just like the rest of us. And one of these days, you're
going to find that out the hard way."
"You're delusional,
Vangel," I said shaking my head as I walked back toward the common room.
"We might have to work together, but I'm going to recommend you stay as
far away from me as you can. We'll both be better for it."
"You're going to pay for
your arrogance, Connor," Victor hissed as I walked away. "One of
these days, you'll get what's coming to you. Just wait and see."
I shook my head and walked
away, even though what I really wanted to do was pound some sense into that
thick skull of his. Instead, I headed to the kitchen and began helping Danny
get dinner started.
Half way through the
preparations, my phone rang; it was Alex, but I was elbow deep in ground beef
and couldn't answer it. I made a mental note to call her back as soon as we'd
put the lasagna in the oven. We'd been apart less than twenty-four hours and I
already missed her. I shook my head as I realized that if I wasn't careful, I
was going to get soft.
And then I smiled at the
thought.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Around
seven
the next morning, we were sitting around the nurse's station talking about the
last patient who had come to the ER seeking treatment for a self-inflicted
branding injury. He'd decided that it would be a good idea to brand his phone
number on the inside of his forearm in case he was incapacitated for some
reason. The heat and the metal had caused a bad burn and he'd let it go for
days without treating it. The burn had developed into a nasty infection that
threatened to turn into gangrene if left untreated.
The resident had nearly
vomited into the trashcan when he'd seen the severity of the burn, but we'd
kept him on track and treated the man. None of us had the heart to tell the
patient that it would have probably been wiser to tattoo the number of someone
other than himself on his arm in case of emergency.
I'd been checking out my
phone waiting for a message from Cam, but when none came, I figured he was busy
and didn't have time to be texting. I wanted to talk to him. We had unfinished
business, and I wanted to discuss it with him. And then there was the constant
ache I felt as I remembered what it had felt like to be curled up in his arms
on the huge sofa in his living room. I'd wanted so much more, but I also knew
that if I wasn't prepared to accept the fact that he had more money than I'd
ever imagined, I couldn't go there with him anymore. I wasn't sure what I
wanted to do. The money scared me, but Cam seemed so level headed about it and
didn't use it to get what he wanted or to pressure me. Maybe there was hope for
us.
The phone at the nurse's
station rang several times before Leslie picked it up. She spoke briefly and
then said, "Alex, phone for you," as she held out the receiver.
"This is Alex
Pierce," I said in as professional a tone as I could.
"Ms. Pierce, is Ms.
Baker down there with you?" Mrs. Rikka asked.
"No, ma'am, she is
not," I said looking at Leslie wide-eyed and worried.
"I see," Mrs. Rikka
said hesitating for a moment before adding, "If you see her, please tell
her to come to my office. This does not bode well for her internship."
"Yes, ma'am, I
will," I replied as my mind started racing. I hung up and looked at Leslie
as I said, "Liz is missing. I have to find her."
"Get changed and
go," Leslie said as she shooed me out of the station.
"But I'm not off shift
for another hour," I said. "I can't leave or Mrs. Rikka will have a
fit!"
"I'll cover for
you," Leslie said. "Go! Go find Liz!"
I made a run for the locker
room where I quickly stripped out of my borrowed scrubs and tossed them in the
laundry. I had just pulled my pants on when Violet, Jessica and Lydia rounded
the corner of the lockers and saw me.
"Oh, hello, Alex,"
Violet said in a voice dripping with distain. "I thought you'd be up in
the ER until nine."
"I...I'm...Leslie told
me to go," I stammered as I tried to avoid talking about what I was doing
down in the locker room. "I'm going home."
"I see," Violet
said raising an eyebrow. "It wouldn't be because your druggie friend is
missing, now would it be?"
"Huh? What are you
talking about, Violet?" I said genuinely surprised that she'd have any
knowledge of Liz or what was going on with her.
"Oh, I know all about
Baker and her nasty little habit," Violet said wrinkling her nose.
"She's such trash. This just proves that you can take the girl out of the
gutter, but you can't take the gutter out of the girl. Right girls?"
Jessica and Lydia giggled
nervously as they nodded and flipped their perfectly coiffed ponytails. I
wanted to punch them all, but I knew better than to invite that mess into my
world.
"I guess it takes one to
know one, eh Violet?" I said with a wide-eyed innocence that I certainly
did not feel. Violet did a double take before narrowing her eyes and getting
ready to pounce.
"I wouldn't know,
Pierce," she said. "I've never had to deal with street trash
before."
"No, of course you
haven't," I said feeling a little more angry by the minute. How dare she
say such horrible things about Liz! "You've had someone to pick up after
you and wipe your ass your whole life, haven't you?"
"You're so tacky,
Pierce," Violet sniffed, but I could tell I'd gotten to her.
"Of course, I'm the
tacky one," I said as I pulled on my top and grabbed my coat. "There
you go, projecting your insecurities onto the closest target. I'm sure that
when I'm not around, she uses one of you as her target, right?"
Violet's two shadows looked
at me and then at each other before the stared at Violet and waited for her to
tell them what to think.
"You look like you're
doing the walk of shame, Pierce," Violet said, as she looked me up and
down. "Where were you last night? Earning your tuition and rent money
before you clocked in?"
"I'm not going to dignify
that with a response," I said shaking my head, as I looked the three girls
up and down. "God, you all are such mindless robots. Good luck, ladies!
I've got someplace I need to be!"
I grabbed my bag and ran for
the door.
I didn't give a rat's ass what
Violet and her posse thought of me; I had one thing on my mind and that was to
find Liz and make sure she was safe.
I pulled out my phone and
texted Cam asking him to call me before putting it back in my bag and heading
out the door, wondering how I was going to find Liz.
The question was where would
Liz be hanging out, and even more than that, would I find her time to save her
from herself?
Billionaire On Fire Volume 4
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
When
my shift was over the next morning, I called
loaded Tesla in the truck and headed out to help Alex find Liz. Leo was blowing
up my phone trying to get me to commit to the press conference with Metzler.
"Not sure how we're
going to juggle all of this, girl," I said to my canine companion as we
drove toward Alex's apartment. I hadn't said anything about the rent payment
I'd made to her landlord, nor was I going to. I knew that on Monday morning
when the student accounts office opened up, I'd drive over and pay off her
tuition, but I wasn't going to say anything about that, either. It was risky
going behind Alex's back, but I figured that alleviating the financial stress
was the least I could do to help her out, and that when push came to shove,
Alex would understand that I'd had only the best of intentions.
I dialed Alex's number and
waited for her to pick up, but her phone went straight to voicemail.
"Alex, it's Cam, call
me," I said wondering where she was and why she wasn't picking up. I
looked down at Tesla and said, "No one's answering, so I think we need to
go check things out."
Tesla wagged her tail as she
looked out the front window, and I wondered what had happened to Liz. The last
time I'd spoken to Liz, she'd sounded like she was getting herself together,
although there was something strange about the fact that she kept denying her
drug addiction. Anyone who looked at her could see that she was suffering, and
I couldn't really blame her for drowning her sorrows in substances that would
take away the pain.
The problem was that she said
she wasn't addicted to anything. However, in my decade with the fire department,
I'd seen countless addicts declare exactly the same thing when it wasn't true,
so I was inclined to believe that Alex's assessment of the situation was correct.
Liz had an addiction that was eating her up.
My phone rang but when I
looked at the screen and saw it was Leo not Alex, I let it go to voicemail. I'd
get back to Leo as soon as we'd found Liz.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
I'd
searched every place on campus that I could
think of, and by the time Cam arrived at my apartment, I was more than a little
panicked about what had happened to Liz.
"Hey, did you find her
yet?" he asked as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him. I
closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his chest as I wound my arms around
his waist. It felt good to be in his arms again, and as worried as I was about
Liz, there was something calming and reassuring about Cam. Tesla sat quietly at
his feet waiting her turn for some attention, and wagged her tail when I pulled
away and bent down to pat her head.
"You're such a good
girl," I smiled as I knelt down and put my arms around her neck. The next
thing I knew, tears were streaming down my face onto the dog's fur. Tesla sat
quietly for a moment, then pulled her head back and began licking my face.
"Alex, what's
wrong?" Cam asked. There was deep concern in his voice as he reached for
my arm and pulled me back up to him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm worried about Liz,"
I said wiping the tears from my eyes before I looked up at him. "I think
she's in real trouble, Cam. She's in denial about her problem and she won't
accept help, and now she's run off and I can't find her!"
"Hey, hey, we'll find
her," Cam said as he cupped my cheek with his strong hand. "I
promise. We'll look and we'll alert everyone we can think of, and eventually
we'll find her."
"What if we don't find
her in time?" I asked quietly. The reality was that if Liz was using, she
was likely to overdose at some point, and if I didn't know where she was, then
I couldn't bring her back. "What if I can't save my best friend?"
Cam held me tightly resting
his chin on my head as he stroked my back. I cried harder than I could ever
remember having cried, but it felt good to have him to lean on as I let out all
the emotions from the past week.
"And what if we find her
and they kick her out of the nursing program?" I said, and then more
quietly, "And what if they kick me out, too?"
"They're not going to
kick you out, Alex," Cam said confidently.
"If they conclude that
we cheated, they will," I said shaking my head. "And if they don't
make their decision soon, it won't matter. I'll be out anyway and I won't have
a place to live!"
"Yes you will, don't you
worry about that at all," Cam said as he squeezed me tighter. "You
won't get dropped from the program and you won't get evicted from your
apartment."
"It's nice that you're
so sure about all of this," I said as I tried to focus on the task at
hand. We needed to get out and look for Liz. With every hour that passes, we
were losing the trail from the hospital. "We need to find her, Cam. We
need to find Liz."
"I've put in some calls
to people I know in the fire department and asked them to contact their people
in the police department," he said as he looked at his phone and frowned.
"I need to return a call."
I nodded as I moved to the
kitchen and started a pot of coffee. It was going to be a long day for us both
and we were going to need to keep the caffeine flowing. I could hear the murmur
of Cam's voice as he talked to whomever it was he called. He sounded irritated,
and then suddenly I heard him shouting.
"I'm not going to be
that bastard's lap dog, Leo! Do you understand me?" he shouted into the
phone. "I'll be there for the announcement, but I'm not going to go on
parade for him every time he has an event!"
Tesla came padding into the
kitchen, looked around, and then sat nicely looking up at me. I figured she
probably needed water, so I filled a bowl and put it on a nice placemat on the
floor for her. She quickly lapped it up and then lay down with her chin on her
paws.
"Alright, all
done," Cam said as he came into the kitchen and squatted down next to his
dog.
"Everything okay?"
I asked.
"Yeah, fine," he
said looking at Tesla as he scratched behind her ears. "Just some business
I needed to take care of."
"Is this the security
firm?" I asked. Cam didn't look up he just nodded. "You have to be
there for the announcement tomorrow, don't you?"
"Indeed, I do," he
sighed. "I don't want to do this bullshit, but it's part of the contract,
and if I don't do it, we don't sign. Metzler is a real bastard."
"Like father, like
daughter," I said with a wry grin as I pulled out two coffee mugs and
filled them with the steaming liquid. I handed one to Cam and took the other
into the dining room where I looked at the map I'd constructed of all the
places I knew Liz might hang out. I'd checked both of our classrooms before I
came home and found them empty except for the cleaning crew that was scrubbing
the graffiti off of the desks.
"Where do you think she
might go next?" Cam asked. "Does she have a place that makes her feel
safe and secure? Better yet, do you know any of the people she might be buying
drugs from?"
"Don't you think I'd
have gone there first, if I did?" I asked in an irritated voice. "I
want to go back to her apartment and see if she left any clues there."
"Shouldn't we call in
the police to do that?" Cam asked as he sipped his coffee. "I mean,
what if it ends up being a crime scene and we disturb evidence?"
"Seriously, dude, we
need to find Liz," I said in an exasperated voice. "We don't have
time to sit around and wait for the police to file a report and then send
someone down to go through Liz's apartment. That could take days, and what if
something happens to her in the meantime?"
"Good point, but I still
don't know if her apartment is a good place for us to be," he said.
"Fine, then we'll go and
check it out to make sure she hasn't come home, and we won't touch
anything," I sighed. "Happy now?"
"Very," he nodded
solemnly.
"You're exasperating; you
know that, don't you?" I said.
"So I've been
told," he grinned as I lightly punched his shoulder and motioned for him
to follow me. He grabbed my arm and pulled me around to face him. He had a very
serious look on his face as he said, "Alex, wait. I know this isn't the
time or the place, but after last night, I know you're trying to make a
decision about me. I know you don't like the fact that I have a lot of baggage,
but I promise you that if you give me a shot, I'll be good to you."
"Where is this coming
from?" I asked eyeing him suspiciously. "Do you know something that
you're not telling me?"
"What? No!" he said
letting go of my arm. "I'm just saying that we were in the middle of a
serious discussion last night when we were interrupted and I didn't get to say
what I was feeling at the time. I just wanted to add it in the mix so that you
know."
"Duly noted," I
nodded. "And for the record, I don't object to your baggage at all. We all
have it. What I object to is all the money. I'm not sure I can handle the
adjustments that would be required to live in your world. I just don't
know."
"What adjustments?"
he shot back defensively. "There are no adjustments for you to make! You
like me, I like you and we want to try and figure out how to make this work.
That seems to be the only adjustment needing to be made."
"No, it's really
not," I said shaking my head. "There are all kinds of issues
associated with you and your money, and now that you're signing this contract
to be one of Metzler's guys...it's just all really complicated and I need time
to think it over."
"I'm not one of Richard
Metzler's goddamn lap dogs!" Cam shouted causing Tesla to come running
into the dining room barking. Cam looked down at her and said, “Quiet,
girl."
"I didn't say you were a
lap dog," I replied calmly. "I said that there are compromises that
will have to be made in order to live the kind of life you live. I just don't
know if I'm willing to make them or not, and I don't want to go too far down
this road if I'm not going to make them. I'm trying to protect you, too."
"I don't need protecting!"
Cam shouted. "Stop trying to protect me! I'm fine the way I am, I've got
everything under control!"
"Obviously," I said
sarcastically. "Okay, fine. You don't need protection, but I need to
decide for myself what I'm willing to do."
"You're just
scared," he shot back. "Well, I've got news for you, sunshine, we're
all scared."
"Don't get snippy with
me, Cam," I said narrowing my eyes and crossing my arms over my chest.
"I'm just trying to make a good decision for myself. I've got a lot going
on and I don't want to screw it all up by falling for a guy who...."
"Who what?" he
asked. "Who isn't going to be there when things get tough? I'm here aren't
I?"
"No, I just...." I
began and then looked away.
"What is it, Alex?"
he asked as he pulled me close and tipped my chin up so I had to look at him.
"What is stopping you from letting go and seeing where we wind up? What
are you running from?"
I looked into his smoldering
green eyes and knew exactly what it was that I was afraid of. Cam Connor was a
magnetic force and I knew that once I was pulled into his orbit, it would be
impossible for me to get out of it.
"I'm...I...I..." I
stammered as I held his gaze and felt my body responding to his touch.
"Tell me, Alex," he
whispered as he leaned down holding his lips only millimeters from my own.
"Tell me why you're holding back."
"Cam..." I moaned
softly knowing that the sound of my voice was going to push him over the edge
and that he'd take me with him.
Cam's lips crushed mine as he
kissed me hard and yanked me against his body. For a moment, I thought about
fighting the attraction, and then I gave up and gave in. There was no use in
fighting it. We were drawn to each other and the only way to stop it would be
to leave and never look back, and I wasn't prepared to do that.
His hands roamed my body as
he pushed my shirt and then my bra up over my breasts. I could feel him
breathing hard as he kissed me more deeply and his hands cupped my breasts as
he squeezed my nipples into erect points. I moaned louder as he quickly pushed
my pants down over my hips. My panties quickly followed and he lifted me up off
the floor and set me on the table, spreading my legs as he unzipped his jeans
and slid them down over his hips.
Seconds later he had rolled a
condom over his engorged shaft and I felt him pushing inside me as I spread my
legs wider, pulling him deeper into me. He groaned as he sank all the way into
me and I felt the need rise in a way that I'd never felt with anyone before. I
wanted Cam. No, I needed him. And he knew this.
He pulled back as he began
the steady familiar rhythm I'd already come to want. I broke away from the kiss
and put my hands flat on the table behind me so that I could meet his thrusts
with an equal force. Soon we were slamming against one another as we drove each
other closer and closer to the edge. Cam's eyes never left mine as our rhythm
pounded out our need for each other. I could feel him swelling inside me, and
when he reached down and slipped his thumb between my lips so that he could
stroke me to orgasm, I moaned loudly and let go.
The force of the climax hit
me hard and fast as I pushed myself forward and clung to him. Cam wrapped his
arms around me and thrust harder and faster and soon he reached the edge, too.
He groaned as he came and I looked up to see him looking down at me as the wave
of pleasure washed over him.
"Oh, God, Alex," he
groaned as he held tightly to me his hips still thrusting as he rode the
orgasm. He kissed me, softer this time, as he ran his fingers through my hair
and held my head in his strong hands. He breathed into my lips, "What you
do to me, woman."
"Cam...I...oh God,"
I whispered as I kissed him again. I could my desire beginning to build again,
but I knew that if we didn't stop now, we'd never get out and look for Liz.
"We have to stop."
"I know, I know,"
he groaned as he pulled back and stepped away. The room felt colder without him
holding me and I wanted to beg him to come back, but I didn't. He walked to the
bathroom, shut the door and a few minutes later emerged with his pants pulled
up and his shirt tucked in.
I, however, was still sitting
where he'd left me; half naked on the dining table wanting him.
"You'd better get
dressed," he grinned. "I can't be held responsible for what I do if
you don't."
"Nice, Connor," I
laughed as I hopped down off the table and almost stepped on Tesla. "Your
dog is incredibly well behaved."
"She knows when I've got
something good," he said pointedly. "Go get ready, Alex. We need to
find Liz."
I nodded and headed to the
bathroom to wash up and then to my bedroom for fresh clothes. By the time I
returned to the dining table, Cam had mapped out a search area for us to cover
beginning with Liz's apartment.