Billionaire's Forbidden Baby: BWWM Interracial Alpha Male Baby Romance Novel (12 page)

Finally, the door Tasha had disappeared behind opened again. First to let out Tasha, who made a point of slinking off somewhere, while giving an encouraging look over her shoulder, and then followed by Kiara.

Damien watched her somewhat uncertain approach, and it took everything he had to keep from pulling her into his arms and kissing the breath out of her. Even in baggy pants and a worn jersey, no makeup and her hair thrown into a ponytail, she looked spectacular. For a moment, he could clearly envision himself waking up next to her every morning and gazing into her radiant face. Kissing the sleep away and worshipping her rich curves until neither of them could take any more of it.

“Hey,” she said, cutting through his revelry.

“Hey, sugar. I see you didn’t get the memo. Get dressed, we’re going out,” he said, improvising on the spot.

No way in hell was he going to let her disappear into her bedroom again and ignore him. He was going to take charge of the situation, and she was just going to have to roll with it.

“I’m not sure,” she said, a slight stutter to her words.

Damien shook his head, his dirty blonde hair falling on his forehead – never take no for an answer.

“Yes you are. You still work for me, remember? Now get that hot ass of yours in something that’s less comfortable and let’s go. I’ll be downstairs.”

She looked incredibly vulnerable. Like all he should have been doing was pulling her into his arms and making whatever was bothering her go away, by any means necessary. But the way she had her arms around herself kept him back – as if she wasn’t only protecting herself from whatever was getting her so down and out, but from him as well.

Space. He could give her a little bit of that, couldn’t he? As long as she still came with him, that was.

“Well, okay. I need to tell you something anyway. Where are we going?” she finally asked with a sigh and what Damien took to be the beginnings of a smile behind a worried facade.

The little tremor that went through her when she said she needed to talk to him didn’t go unnoticed by him, and he certainly made a note to remember it. Whatever she had to say, it seemed there was plenty of reason for him to not want to hear it. But if there was one thing he had learned in life and in business, then it was that secrets always came back to bite him in the ass. The less he had of them in his life the better.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said. “Now, go get beautiful, gorgeous.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Damien

“I can’t believe you,” Kiara said, her hazel eyes lit with laughter.

She was wearing an absolutely stunning green off the shoulder dress that gave Damien just the barest peek at her cleavage, but that was enough. Her perfect curves were mouthwatering, and again he found himself cursing that he couldn’t just sweep the silverware off the table and have her then and there.

“What do you mean?” he asked casually, kicking back with a whiskey in his hands.

He liked the way it burned as it went down his throat. He needed a bit of fire to fight the one already aflame within him. The stunning, rolling hills of northern California swept around them as far as the eye could see, but his eyes were only on Kiara, and for good reason. The pristine mansion he had brought her to paled next to her. Despite being just about as lavish as Damien could tolerate, it didn’t hold a candle to her. And that, well, should have made him worry.

“The helicopter. The house. The dinner. The pool?” she counted all the things she currently didn’t believe.

Damien smirked and shrugged, taking another mouthful of the intolerably expensive drink. Yeah, okay, so he was throwing his weight around a bit. He knew it probably did nothing for a woman like Kiara – he’d learned as much, considering she still ran from him like an antelope from a ravenous lion. But he had never really tried to sweep her off her feet quite so thoroughly before, and he had to appreciate the fact that she had at least noticed.

“Yes?” he retorted simply.

“It’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

“You think it’s much that I want to give you a perfect evening?”

Kiara sighed, shaking her head and smiling softly. They had had dinner on the porch overlooking his winery, and now, after their stomachs were filled with the most delectable treats Damien’s private chef could manage, Damien’s appetites were turning towards other ventures. More specifically, that scrumptious piece of dessert sitting across from him, bathed in the glow of the candlelight.

“Do you ever turn down the charm?” she queried, her voice quieter.

Damien frowned. There it was again, the same uncertainty he had seen when he came to her apartment, and that he had kept sensing throughout the evening. Not all was right, and she was unwilling to open up to him about it. Naturally, it drove him absolutely insane with curiosity. The emotion was only rivaled by his need to feel that soft, silky skin under his touch again.

“Would you like me to?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Well… Yes. Being with you is always like something out of a fairy tale or a movie. The fancy dinners, the big yachts, the fast cars, the perfect man… I guess I wonder if this is all real or if I’ll wake up one minute and discover I’ve been asleep the whole time.”

She bit her lip, her white teeth worrying her lower lip in the most inviting way. Damien exhaled deeply and put the glass down. He looked around himself, studying his reflection in the glass windows that looked into his living room, and then took in the rest of the scenery about them. She wasn’t entirely incorrect.

His life was a bit… farfetched, perhaps. But there was a reason why he hid behind that carefully coiffed, spotlessly kept persona of an impossible letch and a billionaire bad boy extraordinaire. It had been a long time since anyone had been able to bring him out of his bubble enough to really pay any heed to it.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, resting his blue eyes on Kiara.

He didn’t challenge her on it, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to. Damien didn’t mind when he had to fight for something, if anything, it helped him thrive. If this was how Kiara wanted to play it, he was game – at least for now.

“Anything. Something to make you human. Something that isn’t all flash and distraction,” Kiara said, her eyes almost pleading.

She cleaned up damn good, but he could still sense the sadness in her that he had when he’d gone to her apartment. That insecurity he hated to see in her, knowing that she was better than that – far too good to let anything gnaw at her like that.

“Something real… Alright.”

He rolled up his already rolled up sleeve even further, revealing a long gash that ran up his right bicep.

“This I got while I fell down an apple tree in my grandmother’s yard when I was six. Not from base jumping in the Alps.”

She giggled and spurred Damien on.

“I think you remember the scar I have right below my ribs? Emergency surgery, got T-boned by a drunk driver.”

He fell silent for a moment, but continued through the bubbling pit of discomfort that gathered in his gut.

“My older brothers, David and Devon, died in that crash. My father had passed a few years earlier. So, at sixteen, I suddenly became the man of the house.”

Kiara covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes sparkling with compassion.

“Damien, I’m so sorry…”

He raised his hand, hushing her. He knew. Everyone was always sorry, mortified, and he knew she meant it. Still he had to keep his composure when he talked of things that were neither comfortable nor happy for him. His past explained far too much for anyone bright enough to see the connections, so it was something he kept out of the tabloids with the utmost care.

“It’s alright. It was a long time ago. I think it taught me very quickly what kind of man I want to be. The kind of man that is there for his family. The kind of man who can go through tragedy and walk out stronger, if not better. My brothers were good men, and I doubt I’ll ever measure up to them, but I can dedicate my life to trying. Whether I’ll succeed or not remains to be seen.”

He put his glass down, suddenly finding himself without appetite for the soothing alcohol. As always when thinking of that fateful day and his brothers’ passing, the walls he had built around himself threatened to crumble. All that work he had painstakingly put into building himself, his brand… It all teetered on the edge of a dark abyss he had pulled himself out of far too many times.

“I have an addictive personality, Kiara. Sometimes, my addictions are good. They drive me on, spur me to greatness I wouldn’t otherwise achieve.”

He gave her a pointed look, considering her doe-eyed features and the way she almost held her breath as his gaze brushed over her. Even when strong, she was so delicate that he feared a gust of wind would take her away and crumble her to pieces right then and there. It was an almost ethereal softness he hadn’t seen in her before. It made her glow. It made her more beautiful than words could describe.

She was one of those addictions, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to cure himself of her any time soon. Lords know, so far any attempt at that had proven to be nigh impossible.

“Sometimes, they push me down and keep me there. This is not something I admit freely. I don’t pride myself in being what I am, but I want to. Being better than what I am is something that I work towards, that I wish and strive for. If you wanted to know something real, well, I think that’s the best I have.”

He fell silent, his blue eyes fixed on the late-night scenery. The lights dotted around the vineyard made the lines of grapes look ghostly under the star-dotted sky. Damien wasn’t the kind of man to dwell on things, but when his thoughts were led down those gloomy paths, it was hard to see the joy in life that had just surrounded him moments ago.

“Thank you,” Kiara said softly, reaching her hand over the table and resting it on his.

Her velvety touch made him inhale sharply, and then his hand locked around hers and kept her long fingers in his soft grasp. Damien looked back at her, and the way she smiled made his heart jump. It was the most peculiar thing.

Over the years, he had taken the most beautiful women in the world to his bed and kept them there until he got bored of them, never to see them again. Yet, here was Kiara – elegant, intelligent, a little bit wild, a little bit fragile. And she could keep his attention rooted to her like no one before, shunning any thought of anyone else by his side. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with this sudden shift in his mentality, but what he did know was that he’d do his best to enjoy her company – for as long as she would have him.

“For what?” he asked, tracing a trail up along her arm until he reached the crook of her arm.

He caressed the soft flesh, making slight circles on it ever so gently.

“For… Well, for being you. It’s good to know there’s a man behind the shark that’s been swimming the waters around me.”

She smiled, and he let out a chuckle. A shark? He couldn’t disagree with that. Damien pulled Kiara to her feet and to him, sliding an arm around her waist with trained grace.

“Are you calling me soft?” he asked, his lips intolerably close to hers but not kissing them.

“Ah! No, I don’t think I could call you anything but hard,” she said, biting her lip again as she glanced downward.

He wasn’t even trying to hide how she made him immediately hard when he touched her. It had been far too long. That day on the boat was almost like a distant memory by now – one that was badly in need of rekindling.

But there was still something about her that struck Damien as off that night. A kind of sadness he hated seeing in her and that he didn’t know how to make go away. Even more, he should have been worried that a woman could have that kind of effect on him, but with Kiara, it was the furthest thing from his mind.

He slid his hand down that arching curve of her back, letting his wide palm rest on her round, mouthwatering ass. She shuddered a little, and he liked it. That was how it was meant to be – her on her toes, every glance making her flutter, and him, enjoying the way she reacted to the slightest of touches.

He knew what he had promised her. Without lavishing words, he had agreed to give her something dark, debaucherous and even dangerous. But the way she looked at him that night, almost frail in his arms, he knew he couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t tear her down.

With that, he brushed his darkness aside and let himself enjoy the light for the time being. He cupped her chin with one hand, raising her face to meet his, and kissed her deeply.

For once, he could be gentle, and he wouldn’t worry about the consequences – at least not yet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kiara

Damien’s lips fit hers as if they were made exactly for that purpose – kissing her over and over again. She’d known his kisses to be like the raging tide, rushing in, robbing her blind and then disappearing again. But this time, they were different.

He took his time, slowly and luxuriously exploring the limits of her pleasure. His tongue darted into her mouth, not like the conqueror, but like a snake looking to tease her out of her virtues. Despite her best intentions, she found herself eagerly being carried away by his need.

All night, she had been looking for a way to approach the subject of her possible pregnancy. Tasha was right, she had to tell him. Not only was he the father, but it was the humane thing to do. Even if he didn’t want to have any part in the child’s life, it would be cruel to hide it from him, and Kiara was sure the secret would eat at her until there was nothing left of her but a husk.

But how do you break it to a man like Damien Thatch that you
might
be pregnant with his child? How do you just tell him that this little secret fling has led to consequences neither of them were quite ready for?

So she had waited and bided her time, until she ran out of it. She couldn’t bear to bring Damien any more pain after he’d told her about the loss of his brothers. He’d only let his guard down for a second, but that had been enough to glimpse into the soul of this rock of a man, this giant of commerce and the bad boy, who worked so hard to keep the public seeing him as aloof and jaded.