I Choose You (The Billionaire Brothers Series) (14 page)

The penthouse was typical, mostly black and stainless steel and floor-to-ceiling-windows with a mile-high view. Justifying the aptness of the complex’s name ‘Cloud High’.

It had Sarah James written all over it. Her designs had a certain signature, but it wasn’t extraordinary. Though Sarah was great, I never understood the hoopla surrounding her. Ninety percent of the designers at The Dean’s Realty design department were better than Sarah. Way better. But sometimes — most times — all the time, hype won out over real talent.

It didn’t matter how talented one was, if there wasn’t a racket surrounding your name, you’d drown. Even when the people hyping that person up knows their shit is average, talent is ignored, and mediocrity is pimped with glowing acclamations, because, at the end of the day, it’s not about appreciating true talent; it’s about money and recognition.

One hand washes the other
,
right?

Trevillo tossed his keys on the kitchen counter and opened the refrigerator, scanning the contents within. “I’m starving,” he muttered.

“Why didn’t you pick something up before you came to get me?”

Turning to face me with a packet of
Sargento
string cheese in his hand, he tore the plastic open and stuffed cheese in his mouth. “I couldn’t,” he said around a mouthful of cheese. “The reason I didn’t come after you sooner is because I was out of state.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the counter. “And on the flight back, I didn’t have an appetite because I was eager to get back and come after you. Straight off the jet, straight to your house. No stops.” He stuffed another piece of cheese in his mouth. “Now that you’re where I want you to be, where I can
see
you, I think I can spare a minute to eat.”

Learning the range of his need for me had me feeling an amalgam of warmth and fuzziness, teenager giddiness, and sexual excitement. “What about on our way here?”

With a leisurely rove down my body, his eyes darkened as he answered, “By then, I had an appetite … but, babe, that appetite wasn’t for food … ”

“I can’t cook,” I blurted.

Trevillo laughed out at my abrupt utterance, while my cheeks reddened from embarrassment. Such ineptness was a major sin in Womandom, but I had no culinary skills whatsoever. Even when I tried to prepare a descent sandwich, I failed. Disastrously. Plus, Jahleel spoiled me rotten by cooking for me or bringing home takeout.

“Guess I’ll have to teach you, then.” He waved me over to the kitchen. “C’mon. Let’s throw down.”

Lame and helpless, I walked around the kitchen island and watched as he started opening cabinets. “Tell me what you want. Anything. We’ll cook it.”

“Do you have ingredients here for ‘anything’?” I inquired, growing suspicious. “I thought you said you were nomadic.”

“Yeah. I hired someone to turn this penthouse into a
home
for me while I was away. Stocked the kitchen and the closets, everything. Now I have a stable abode, instead of bringing you to a hotel and risk pissing you off again.” Glancing at me over his shoulder, he added, “So, yeah, I have a home now. I chose Cloud High because it’s closest to you.”

My heartbeat began an erratic tattoo brought on by panic.

Stable. Home. Closest to you.

The daunting words muted me, had me staring blankly at his broad shoulders as he scanned the cabinets. His intentions seemed to be a lot more serious than I thought. And ‘serious intentions’ wasn’t what I wanted. All the same, I was loath to revisit the horrible feeling I had over the past week, all on account of needing more of him.

Hands clasped behind me, I leaned back against the kitchen island. “You speak as though … you plan on seeing me often … ”

Trevillo paused in his scanning and turned to face me. He tilted his head to the side and studied me for a beat. Then, mirroring me, he leaned back on the kitchen counter behind him so that we were facing each other in the same position: him leaning back on the kitchen counter, and me leaning back on the kitchen island, our hands behind us.

Whenever he donned that severe expression of his, eyes unreadable, face impassive, it tended to intimidate the shit out of me. Yet, in some weird way, it turned me on. These were the times when he resembled danger. But I desired him, all the more.

Gripping the edge of the counter behind him, he pushed himself off and crossed the narrow path towards me in two strides. Now he towered over me with that height, those muscles, that scent of masculinity, new leather, and olive-scented bar soap.

Eyes shuttering down, I inhaled my fill of him, appreciating, savoring, lusting. His nearness sucked up all the space around me, all the air, making me aware of him, making me acknowledge him … he was just
there
. Then the air shifted, the heat was gone, the scent was at a distance, and cool air rushed around me. My eyes snapped open to find Trevillo no longer in front of me. He’d gone back to scanning the cabinets.

“We’ll talk about that later,” he told me in an apathetic tone. “Right now, we cook.”

“What’s there to talk — ”

“
Later,
Krissan,” he interrupted in a manner that invited no counterattack. “Now, what do you want to eat?”

Hunger for food wasn’t what concerned me at the moment, so I just told him the first thing that came to mind. “Um … Shrimp Alfredo?” I had no idea if it was something difficult to cook or not.

“Good. That’s easy.”

Trevillo began gathering the ingredients, completely focused, moving around the kitchen with easy grace. Opening one of the bottom cupboards, he took out a medium-sized pot and a smaller one. As he set the smaller pot aside, he handed me the bigger one. “Fill it with water halfway, then put it on the back burner to boil.”

When I merely glanced down at the pot in my hand and back up at him, he bit his lip as if trying to repress a smile. “Do you know how to turn on a tap, Krissy? How to turn on a stove?”

Chin tilting up, spine growing stiff, I boasted, “Yes, Mr. Asshole.”

I brushed past him and went over to the sink, where I turned on the tap and filled the pot halfway with water as he instructed. When I turned toward the stove, I noticed he was pretending he wasn’t paying attention. But I knew he was watching me from the corner of his eyes as he poured milk into a measuring cup.

Ignoring him, I placed the pot down on one of the three back burners of his six-burner stove and studied the knobs, having absolutely no clue which knob would match the burner the pot was on. The stove was a gourmet-style, top-of-the-line appliance with all sorts of complexities.
Yeah, that’s the excuse I’m sticking with
: the appliance was far too complicated.

I turned the knob reading, ‘
Rear Left’
because, well, the pot was on the rear left burner. But it didn’t work. So, starting from left to right, I began turning all the knobs; one of them had to work. When I turned the last knob on the right and nothing happened, I huffed and spun around to find Trevillo leaning against the kitchen island, arms crossed as he watched me with a ridiculous grin.

I shot him a ‘you’re-an-asshole’ glare, and his shoulders began shaking as he broke into laughter.

Whirling around in anger tinged with mortification, I started to stomp out of the kitchen. “Okay, if you’re gonna laugh at me, I’m done. You’re the one who’s hungry, so
you
do the cooking.”

Trevillo reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me back into the kitchen as he folded his lips in an attempt to quell his laughter. When that didn’t work, he turned his face up to the ceiling, fighting to contain himself.

Still pissed and embarrassed, I tried to peel his fingers from around my arm. “If you wanna laugh, then laugh, Trev. I can’t cook, so what?”

Seizing my hand, he brought his lips down on mine. This kiss wasn’t one of his usual ravenous kisses. This kiss was soft, sweet and careful. “‘Kay, babe. I promise, I’m done laughing.” He lifted me up off the ground and put me on top of the kitchen island.

All calmed down by his palliative kiss, I asked, “Why didn’t any of the knobs work?”

Trevillo’s lips twitched at the corners, but he managed not to laugh again. “Because you have to push the knob inward before you turn it.”

“Oh.” This was embarrassingly embarrassing.
How on earth could I call myself an interior designer when I didn’t know how to operate a high-end stove? One can never stop learning, I guess.
“You’re not gonna drop me from the project now, are you? Please don’t. I promise I will visit an appliance store next week and familiarize myself with every model of stove ever invented.”

Trevillo shook his head with a light chuckle. “Just sit here and watch how it’s done. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll enjoy cooking so much, that you’ll be volunteering for kitchen duties on Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.”

After his tongue traced the outline of my lips, he gave me a quick, sweet, closed-mouth kiss and playfully slapped my bare thigh before going back to cooking.

“Where’d you learn to cook like this?” I asked around a delicious mouthful of Shrimp Alfredo. It was possibly the best Shrimp Alfredo I’d ever tasted.

What was even more surprising, was a man like Trevillo not only knew how to cook, but was an exceptional cook. He moved efficiently around the kitchen with quiet ease and confidence, giving the task at hand his undivided attention, almost seeming passionate about being in the kitchen.

We were sitting side by side on barstools at the breakfast bar. Somewhere along the cooking process, Trevillo had gotten rid of his shirt and shoes — or maybe they’d just melted off him. I mean, a mouth-watering hot guy in the kitchen playing with fire? That was far too much heat for one room, so something had to give — wearing just his jeans sitting tauntingly low on his hips. To say his bare chest was ‘distracting’ was a major understatement. It was cruel, tantalizing, and treacherously unfair.

At the question, he glanced at me uncertainly as he looked to be oscillating on whether he should divulge that bit about himself to me or not. “This is novel … ” he mused, with a slight shake of his head.

“What’s novel? Are you trying to tell me this is the first time you’ve ever cooked?” I asked, raising a distrustful eyebrow. “Because I won’t believe you.”

Shifting on his barstool, he turned to face me. “No. I mean, this, here, now. It’s new for me. Thing is, I actually
want
to tell you about me.”

“Oh,” I murmured, swallowing hard.

Each time he spoke in a way intimating there would be an ‘us’ that went beyond sex, my heart would launch off like a rocket, and I wasn’t sure why. I was having an internal battle with myself, and it seemed I was losing.

Taking a sip of his wine, he began, “Let’s just say, becoming a real estate mogul wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned for my future as a child growing up. I wanted to be a chef. While Lovello could be found locked in his room trying to conquer the Internet, and Natalio could be found buried in old electronics trying to create the next new junk, I could be found in the kitchen quarters with the chefs, being an utter nuisance, wanting them to teach me every trick they knew.”

Wearing a thoughtful expression, he forked a morsel of pasta into his mouth and chewed quietly before continuing. “My father, Marcello Nelson, however, shot that aspiration to hell. No son of his was going to become a ‘chef’. Consequently, I had to choose a different career path.”

I gawked at him in disbelief. “So you just gave up on what you’re passionate about? Just like that?”

His eyes narrowed in on nothing for a second, then he shrugged. “With
my
father, one doesn’t really have a choice. He expects us to make billions, so that’s what we
have
to do. There’s no room for mediocrity and failure in his family.”

“I heard he was like that. Now hearing it from you proves the veracity in that gossip.”

Marcello Nelson was rich, stinking rich, and was one of the most powerful men in this hemisphere. I could understand why he expected his sons to be the same. The legacy had to be perpetuated for generations to come.

“You’re unbelievably good, though,” I complimented. “You navigate this kitchen like you own it.”

Trevillo tried to smother a smile. “Um, I kinda do … ”

Laughing, I slapped his arm. “You know what I mean!”

“Yeah, well, I watch a lot of
Food Network
in my spare time,” he informed me. He pulled me off the barstool and yanked me up between his thighs. “Shh, don’t tell anyone.”

This side of him was so normal. The intimidating man who resembled danger wasn’t present in this room. At the moment, he was just … Trev. Shirtless, shoeless, playful Trev.

“Also,” he whispered against my neck. “It’s great now that I have someone to cook for.”

There’s that implication of
more
again. We seriously needed to have that talk … as soon as he stops licking at my neck like that.
Jesus.

He moaned against my skin. “So soft … so smooth … ”

In the next instant, I was being lifted off the ground and carried into the living room. He seriously needed to stop doing that!

Laying me back on the sofa, he followed me down and claimed my mouth. Ravished, I returned the kiss, legs wrapped tight around his waist, fingers curling in his hair. On a brief break, he hauled off my blouse, and our mouths melded together again.

Testing the waters, I caught his lower lip between my teeth and bit down on it, but not too hard. Trevillo groaned out loud against my lips and mumbled, “Harder, babe.”

I bit down harder on his lip, and his hips jerked forward into me, his dick so hard, I could feel it throbbing through his jeans. He kissed me deeper, fiercer, until I was desperate to have him inside me. “Trev … ”

Groaning in response, his lips left mine and traveled down my neck toward my breasts. My back arched up when he flicked his tongue over one nipple as his fingers adeptly tweaked the other, leaving me a writhing wreck beneath him. His lips continued their meandering path down my stomach, then he kissed above the waistband of my shorts before dragging both them and my underwear off in one go.

Lowering his head, he ran his nose up my seam. “Always smell amazing,” he mused, then slid two fingers inside me, working me as he slightly brushed his lips over mine down below.