Billionaire's Forbidden Baby: BWWM Interracial Alpha Male Baby Romance Novel (10 page)

But a penthouse was no place to raise kids. Of course, he didn’t admit to himself that the said possibility had anything to do with his current house hunting. He would only publicly admit to considering getting some exclusive real estate because of the rising property values.

I wonder if Kiara would like this,
he thought absently, a tremor running through him as he internalized the thought.

It should have made him worried, he thought, that this perfectly unassuming but sexy and confident woman’s opinion would matter so much to him, so quickly. Somehow, he felt more at ease than he had in a long, long time.

“Close, but not quite it, I think. Let’s keep looking,” he told the realtor, spinning around on his heel and following her out of the bedroom.

He would find the place he was looking for, and when he did, Kiara would be the first one he would show it to. Of that much he was certain.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kiara

Don’t throw up, don’t throw up…
Kiara chanted to herself, her hands balled into fists and her lips pressed tight.

The smell of hot coffee and cream cheese bagels with lox wafted into her nose, and she had to fight hard to keep from gagging. The conference room was buzzing with a small sampling of the highest executives from both Mirrorview and Divinad, with Eliza Whitcomb-Divinad already seated a few chairs down from Kiara and holding a jovial conversation about the joys of golfing with James Abbott.

It was an early morning meeting, and as Kiara had recently discovered, she did not fare well with those.

For weeks now, she’d been getting queasy and sick in the mornings for seemingly no reason at all. While she was feeling mostly fine, if a bit tired, the throwing up was getting
really
old, and it was just about the last thing she needed right now. There was far too much going on in her life to have the time or energy to deal with some odd stomach bug.

Almost every night, she stayed late at the office, working until she could hardly see straight and putting together a comprehensive, and more importantly, a successful marketing campaign for Divinad’s Cadence line. This was supposed to be their first warm-up pitch to Divinad, and all Kiara could think of was how many seconds it would take her to get from the conference room to the bathroom if someone came too close to her with one of those bagels.

“Alright, I think it’s time to start,” Gwyneth said, putting on her best smile as she strolled to the front of the room with a coffee cup still perched in her hand. “Feel free to grab some coffee and food as we get started. I promise we won’t keep you for very long today. This is just an introductory meeting to tell you about our ideas before we really get going, to sort of give you a taste of what we want to offer you.” Gwyneth set down her coffee cup, and the projector hummed to life, showing some charts and numbers Kiara had painstakingly prepared.

“Most of this work has been done by me and Kiara Lockett, one of our most talented employees, so I am confident that what I’m about to tell you has all been dutifully checked and double checked,” Gwyneth said, motioning to Kiara before moving on.

Kiara smiled slightly, beaming with confidence. Yes, she knew the work was good, and even the scorching look that Eliza sent her from a few seats down couldn’t shake her.

Gwyneth was just about to move on when the door flew open and Damien Thatch strolled in, his hair a bit wind-swept and his light shirt curving against the bulge of his chest. The men were about to jump up in greeting but Damien motioned for them to stay seated.

“Don’t mind me. Please continue, Gwyneth,” he said, and Kiara saw the little waiver of joy that went through Gwyneth at the fact that Damien remembered her by name.

Damien strolled around the table and sat down right next to Kiara, though there was an open seat next to Eliza as well. As much as she didn’t want to read into that, Kiara couldn’t help but smile a bit to herself. Take that, icy bitch!

“You look sexy, sugar. What I wouldn’t give to spread you across this conference table and just fuck you right here and now,” Damien said, leaning in and whispering in her ear.

A blush spread on Kiara’s cheeks like wildfire, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. She could feel Damien’s blue eyes rolling over every inch of her, and suddenly she was very glad that she’d worn the emerald green dress that made her breasts look fantastic and that complimented her complexion just right. 

“Shh, someone could hear you,” Kiara murmured, throwing nervous looks around.

Gwyneth was engaged in the presentation, and most everyone’s eyes were on her as well. Save for Eliza’s calculating greens that were glancing at Damien and her.

“Let them,” he said, and his words made heat throb through her veins.

Without missing a beat, Damien put his hand on her thigh, squeezing it just a little. He turned his attention to the screen, leaving Kiara squirming under his touch. His coarse fingertips tracked patterns on her skin, peeking under the edge of her dress just enough to make her want to moan out loud. Her breathing became quicker as she sat there, stewing in his attention, listening to Gwyneth rattle off figures and numbers she knew by heart.

Damien’s hand crept higher, dipping between her thighs. She tried to clench her legs together but he wouldn’t allow her to, and when his fingertips reached the silky fabric of her panties, she couldn’t pretend to deny him any longer. With slow, casual movements, he pulled her panties aside and dipped his fingers into her hot sex, spreading the wet folds and making her have to fight tooth and nail to keep from screaming.

He teased her mercilessly, making Kiara shake, trying to keep control of herself and to make sure that no one noticed what the brazen, bad boy billionaire was doing to her under the table while fifteen other people sat around them. Kiara closed her eyes, her knuckles training as she hung on to the edge of the table. It was too much. He was too fucking much. Kiara willed Gwyneth to finish faster, and when she looked at Damien, his expression betrayed nothing but utter fascination for what Gwyneth was saying – like he wasn’t wrist deep in Kiara’s pussy at the same time.

He pressed two fingers into her, and she had to swallow a whimper that fought hard to come up. His palm grazed against her clit, and she knew that if he rubbed his fingers over it, she wouldn’t be able to control herself any longer. That damnable man. He knew exactly what to do with her, and she couldn’t help but love every second of it.

Just when Kiara thought she couldn’t take any more of it, Gwyneth brought up the last slide of the first presentation, turning towards the listeners with a dazzling smile.

“Okay, I think it is time for a little break before we continue. I hope there are no objections!”

At that, Damien pulled back his hand and shifted Kiara’s panties back into place, like nothing had happened at all. She was left gasping and a bit disoriented by the roaring need that was now living within her, desperate and hungry for his touch.

Her eyes were a bit hazed over as she looked up and was met with Damien’s wicked, predatory grin that she both loved and loathed at the same time. Damn him all the way to hell. But all the heat was immediately sucked out of her blood as she caught sight of Eliza’s pointed and irritated expression. Kiara took a deep breath and straightened her dress a little.

“You can’t do that, Damien,” she whispered, her chest rising and falling heavily.

“I just did,” he replied casually. She almost expected him to lick his fingers clean.

Before she could quip back at him, the sickening smell of cream cheese filled her nostrils again. Damien’s fingers had distracted her from the ominous twisting in her stomach for a moment too long, and suddenly, it became very clear that she wasn’t going to manage to sit through the meeting with a straight face any longer.

Kiara quickly excused herself and jumped up, rushing out of the conference room without another look at Damien. Her eyes watered as she clamped her hand over her lips, half running, half walking to the bathroom. She burst into the tastefully decorated, wood and stone bathroom and picked the first stall she could reach. She barely had time to close the stall door behind her before she knelt down and what little she had in her stomach came rushing out.

A single tear streaked down her cheek as she gagged, paying no heed to the clicking noise of expensive high heels strolling into the bathroom. Kiara wiped her mouth, trying to stop the dry heaving. The floor was cool under her knees, and she had to wonder what on earth she had done to deserve such a dizzying array of happenings.

First, Damien driving her absolutely out of her mind with the way he toyed with her with his fingers, and then having all that pleasure ripped away from her by an upset stomach – it seemed a little unfair. Kiara flushed, throwing her hair over her shoulder as she got up and exited the stall. She felt completely worn out, like someone had punched her in the stomach, so seeing Eliza’s cold eyes staring back at her came as absolutely no surprise whatsoever.

Of course she has to be here. How else could this day go,
Kiara mused darkly.

“Excuse me,” she mumbled, angling past Eliza and getting to one of the sinks.

Eliza was wearing a white dress that showed off her impeccable figure and those long, long legs of hers. She was leaning against the counter, her arms crossed over her chest and a severe look on her face. Kiara paid her no heed as she pooled water in her cupped palms and drank, swishing the water around in her mouth before spitting it out. Eliza simply stood there, staring at Kiara with a look on her face that read both disgust and mortification. It was the last thing that Kiara needed –
that
bitch standing there, judging here.

“Can I help you?” she finally asked, irritation ripe in her words.

“You’ve got some nerve,” Eliza said, her brows furrowing.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“If you think you can just
use
him like that, you’ve got another thing coming. I’ve seen gold diggers like you before, and I hope that you understand that I won’t let you do that to Damien. Not while I’m around.”

Eliza almost spat the words out. Her tone was chilling, almost sharp enough to peel meat from bone. Kiara stood up, noting how ridiculous the two of them looked together – Eliza with her rich perfection and Kiara with her hair disheveled and her eyes red from throwing up. It was almost comically sad, in a way. She steeled herself, her eyes narrowing.

“I have no idea what you’re on about, Eliza, but I don’t appreciate your tone. The last thing I care about is Damien’s money, and even if I was a gold-digger, I doubt you could do anything about it.” Kiara crossed her arms over her chest, subconsciously mirroring Eliza’s agitated pose.

She wasn’t going to back down. The day had been awkward enough without having to deal with another crying fit brought on by little Miss Perfect here.

Kiara scrunched her nose a little. She knew that getting into a screaming match with one of the top executives of the company she was trying to woo wasn’t exactly the smartest thing she could do, but dammit, Eliza could go to hell if she thought that the right time to come and pick on Kiara was when she had just been gagging over the toilet bowl.

Eliza huffed, pushing herself away from the stone counter top and facing Kiara head on. She looked like a pissed off snake, but for once, Kiara didn’t feel like a scared fluffy bunny when confronted with her. Fine, maybe she was a little bit intimidated, but she definitely wasn’t going to take Eliza’s shit as easily as last time.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Only a whore like you could trick Damien into getting her pregnant for his money. I know women like you and, believe me when I tell you, he’s only going to
hate
you for getting knocked up. If you think you have him twisted around your little finger, just wait until I get through with you. Does he know?”

Kiara couldn’t hear a word Eliza said after the word ‘pregnant’. Her vision blurred and her ears hummed as the world grinded to a halt around her, only Eliza’s spiteful words and angry scowl penetrating the haze.

Pregnant? PREGNANT!? No, I can’t be! We used protection. Every time! Unless…
Kiara blanched, putting one hand on the counter to support herself.

That first night, when she thought she remembered the condom coming off or breaking once. Could it be?

No… Oh god, what have I done?!

Eliza’s frustrated sigh shook her from her revelry, and Kiara looked at Eliza, her hazel eyes welling with tears in earnest now.

“Don’t give me that doe-eyed look. You don’t fool me. So he doesn’t know yet?” Eliza demanded.

Kiara wasn’t sure why she was responding at all, her actions more reactions than calculated moves. She shook her head dumbly. Eliza visibly relaxed.

“Good, then we can clean this mess up. Mark my words, if he finds out that you’re pregnant, he won’t want to have anything to do with you.

You’ll just be that black woman who had his bastard baby. He’ll destroy you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep this to yourself.
Don’t
tell him. I’ll fix this.” Eliza’s words turned buttery now, speaking as if she was a concerned friend. Kiara half-expected Eliza to hug her.

She wanted to ask what the other woman meant by ‘I’ll fix this’, but she couldn’t form the words. Instead, Eliza rattled off a few more threats before heading out of the bathroom, leaving Kiara standing there, stiff as a board and looking ahead blankly, completely dazed. She turned to face her reflection in the mirror. She looked scared, completely and utterly terrified. Kiara put a hand to her stomach, looking down.

This can’t be happening to me,
she thought.

A part of her wanted to scream while the other half wanted to collapse to the floor crying. She wasn’t yet sure which side was going to win, but she did know that she was entirely unprepared for everything that was about to follow.