Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (25 page)

He sucked my right nipple into his mouth.

I gasped as his rough tongue worked against the stiff little peak, sliding over and around it until I would have screamed, if I’d had the breath. His lips tasted and kissed, I felt the slightest nibble from his teeth on the sensitive tip, and I was so close to coming, I could feel the surge building deep inside me … and then he pulled his mouth away.

I felt the room’s air cooling against my wet nipple. I groaned and growled all at once, making a sound that wasn’t even close to a word – I just needed him, more than I’d ever needed anything or anyone before.

Then he spoke to me, and although I wasn’t in the mood for talking or listening to him talk, I hung on every word he said anyway – in that moment, this frustrating, compelling, every-kind-of-crazy man was the center of my universe.

“Next time, my Ashley, I will conduct a much more thorough exploration of these sweet breasts – but just now, I simply must fuck you until neither of us can breathe. Would that be quite all right?”

I answered him by lifting my knees and spreading my legs wide apart – I didn’t care that it probably made me look like a slut, I just cared about having him inside me, as soon and as hard as possible.

The man didn’t waste one more second. He leaned over the side of the bed to retrieve a condom from the pocket of his abandoned jeans; when I heard the foil wrapper tear as he ripped it open, I thought about telling him I’d been taking the pill like a religious ritual for years – but I decided between heartbeats that being twice as safe sure couldn’t hurt, not to mention that saying anything might delay what was about to happen for a few seconds, and I knew we’d both had all the waiting we could stand.

He pulled the condom over his hungry, lunging cock and then he crouched between my legs, his body a towering shadow in the darkness of the room. He eased through my wet folds, I felt the head of his massive shaft pressing against my opening … and then with a single powerful buck of his hips, Devon Killane was inside me.

How can I describe what it was like to feel him plunging into me, filling me, stretching me until I thought I might burst wide open? The pleasure of it was incredible – his cock surging back and forth within me, the pressure, the friction, all that raw male power forcing its way deeper into me with every thrust – but the physical pleasure was the least of it.

In that moment, we were a single person. In that moment, as our bodies ran slick with sweat and our hearts raced together in the darkness, we shared something I’d never felt before – I couldn’t begin to put a name on it, but it was something that felt true and warm and safe.

Then he reached up and laced his fingers through mine, he stared down at me as he forged deeper into my body, and I knew he felt it too.

There were so many special moments that night – when we first surged to climax together, when we lay spent and shattered afterward, when we fell asleep in each other’s arms, when he woke me up with a teasing hand between my legs before riding my body to an orgasm that lanced through me like lightning, when I tickled him until he begged for mercy, when I buried my face in his shoulder and called him ‘Devon’ for the first time – but none of them meant as much as that moment of perfect understanding that we shared when he first entered me.

In that moment, I knew he would never leave me.

***

Somewhere in the night, as she slept between one moment of love and the next, I eased away from her side and locked myself in her tiny bathroom.

Beneath the single glaring light bulb, I fought off the familiar rising tide of panic. I gripped either side of the sink with shaking hands, I leaned over the gleaming white porcelain, and I fought for control – but it was useless and laughable, just like every other part of my life that didn’t include her.

She was the only corner of my existence that meant anything at all – but with every hammering beat of my heart, I felt our time together slipping away.

A mirror hung on the wall over the sink. I didn’t want to look, but I had no choice. So I lifted my head and I stared at the monster in the mirror.

I stared at the monster who was going to leave her. I stared at the worthless excuse for a man who was going to abandon her in the worst way possible.

I made the decision years before I met her, I planned it all out down to the final detail – but I didn’t plan for her.

How could I still go through with it?

How could I not?

16. Our Summer

I was good for him – everybody agreed on that.

I’d assumed being both employee and girlfriend to the same guy would be awkward as hell, at least in the workplace – but in the hallways of Killane Corporate Holdings, I was golden.

All those whispers and raised eyebrows? Gone. All those half-hidden leers and sneers? History. All the snotty, sexist remarks that set my blood boiling? Nothing but memories.

Instead, my arrival in an elevator or an office or a meeting was met with polite nods, beaming smiles, handshakes and party invitations, questions and compliments, and relief that I’d somehow brought the erratic Killane temper under control.

I heard a lot of anecdotes about that.

“I couldn’t find my report documenting the quarterly earnings figures for our Korean subsidiaries, but he just shrugged and said to bring it to next week’s meeting instead.”

“I had to cancel yesterday’s interviews for the new sysadmin positions because my daughter was sick and he said he hoped she’d be feeling better soon – he even sent flowers.”

“We won’t be able to close the Emerson deal until next week because the hotel in Toronto was double-booked and he just laughed it off, said Montreal or Ottawa would do just as well.”

“He hasn’t fired anybody in weeks.”

Did they know I was sleeping with him now? I sure hadn’t shouted that fact from the rooftops, and while he’d been more than happy to let the world think we were doing it from Day One, my best guess was that no one in the company had bought it, not after my lecture to the executives assembled in his office that first day.

Now it was different. Now, everyone assumed we were intimate – but why? How could they know?

That mystery was solved after I had a little talk with his receptionist, Dana – standing up to her abusive asshole of a boyfriend Danny had made me something of a hero in her eyes, so I figured she’d be good for a straight answer. It took some prodding and persuasion, but she finally advised me with a shy smile that I had in fact been ‘glowing.’

That settled it – there’s no mistaking the happy glow of a satisfied big girl.

While I was busy being all glowy and satisfied, I also settled on a method for handling my double life with Devon Killane.

When other people were around, I addressed him only as ‘Mr. Killane,’ while staying as reserved and professional as my loud personality could manage.

In private, whether at work or on a date or in my four-poster bed – I hadn’t been to his home yet to see his bed, which I assumed had to be about the size of a football field – he was just ‘Devon,’ although he could also be ‘Dev,’ or ‘you asshole’ if he was making me crazy or promising to do weird, perverted things involving my breasts and sushi.

Meanwhile, in between business meetings and trips and conferences, Devon did his game best to figure out how ‘regular guy’ dates worked. He forced himself to buy some casual, non-four-figure suits and go without a tie while wearing them, he learned that street vendors usually can’t break a hundred dollar bill, and he came to accept that if you stand in front of the orangutan exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo and lecture the apes about the illusion of freedom as discussed in the works of Steiner and Sartre, other zoo patrons will indeed stare at you.

Those months meant everything to us – the endless long days between our first date and what came later were our own personal summer, and it lasted until well into the fall.

Me and my weird, complicated, adorable guy walked everywhere, hand in hand, through neighborhoods ranging from quaint and historic to dodgy and dark. We took each other’s pictures in front of the titanic dinosaur skeletons at the Field Museum. We argued politics over the world’s worst pancakes at an alleged restaurant wedged between a thrift store and a bowling alley. We took turns falling on our asses at roller skating rinks, we rode the ferris wheel at Navy Pier, and we went on boat tours around Lake Michigan. Jazz concerts, food festivals, Cubs games, the Shedd Aquarium – we went everywhere, and did pretty much everything.

Photographers and celebrity-watchers tailed us now and again, but not too often –the world had moved on to other amusements, and most days we got to be just two regular people enjoying each other’s company.

Most nights, we binge-watched Netflix movies in my microscopic apartment. Nestled in Devon’s arms in the dark, I’d yell helpful comments and advice at the screen, throw popcorn at characters who attained new levels of stupidity, and sometimes … sometimes I saw that haunted, distant look steal across his face, the look I’d first seen on the bridge in San Francisco.

It was just for a minute or two, here and there when he thought I wasn’t looking, but there was no mistaking the heartbreaking emptiness in those strange, luminous eyes – and then he’d hug me closer, he’d whisper something disgusting into my ear as his skillful hands cupped my breasts and slipped between my legs, and I could almost convince myself I’d been imagining things … almost.

What came later was the apocalypse, and it began the day I met the other half of the Killane equation and learned what was going on with ‘the special project.’

17. The Apocalypse

Saturday morning meetings sucked, but they were part of life on The Amazing Killane Rollercoaster – I found out about this one at 7:00 goddamn a.m., when my favorite enigmatic bastard called, informed me I was needed in his office no later than now, and then hung up.

I was left half-awake and mildly pissed off about the prospect of emerging from my toasty cubbyhole of an apartment into the cold October morning lurking outside. But duty called, so I showered up, bundled up, and drove downtown, fiddling with the unfamiliar multimedia buttons on the dash of my new car while telling myself that nobody loves a whiny asshole who complains about early hours on a $100,000 babysitting job.

Yeah, about that new car … turns out that after his first ride in my elderly clunker, Devon made the command decision that I needed a new vehicle. He avoided any please-do-not-blow-so-much-money-on-me objections by simply having the Honda towed one night and leaving a new Mercedes-Benz SL 550 Roadster in its space at my apartment building – I just hoped none of the neighbors would get around to keying my sleek new German speed machine or slashing its tires before I moved out.

I arrived on the 103
^rd
floor of corporate headquarters to find suits milling around outside Devon’s office, suits who parted like a river of silk when I stepped off the elevator. They didn’t speak to me, not this time – careful glances, polite nods, and nervous sighs were offered, but not a single word.

I had no idea what was going on, so I pasted a relaxed I-know-exactly-what’s-going-on smile on my face and strolled into the outer office where Dana fidgeted at her desk.

“Dana, what’s up? Did we all get sold to China while I was asleep?”

Dana shook her head in all seriousness, as if our lives being outsourced to the Far East was a legitimate possibility.

“No, Ms. Daniels – it’s my understanding this meeting relates to the special project, but I’m sure Mr. Killane will fill you in on the details. Please head right in, he’s waiting for you.”

She nodded at the door to the big guy’s inner sanctum and then returned to gnawing at her lip, examining her fingernails with a singular intensity, and avoiding my eyes.

The moment I set foot inside my guy’s office, I knew something was wrong.

On the surface, everything looked normal, or at least as normal as things ever got when the infamous ‘special project’ was on the agenda.

A gaggle of senior suits stood on the far side of the office, silhouetted against the dim morning light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling window. They whispered to each other, they nodded, they consulted figures and charts displayed on the sleekest new HD tablets, they made notes, and they traded shrugs and comments and did their mysterious business-fu thing: check.