Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (24 page)

She tried the handle, discovered what I did. I watched her hurry back to her desk and grab up her phone to call security. Not much time, then. I didn't need much.

I grabbed the other door at the end of the hall, the more ornate one that led to his office, and yanked it open.

I don't know what I expected. Though I knew seeing him with his hands clasped behind his back, standing by the big bay window and staring out across the skyline wasn't it.

"Allison?" he said, first glancing over his shoulder and then turning to face me when he saw who it was.

I closed the door behind me and took a step inside. Now that I was here, some of my resolve decided to call it quits. And doesn't he look so good in that suit?

A quick check also showed me that Georgie was absent. I don't think I could have done it with him there, too. Not with both of them looking at me with those eyes of theirs.

"You can't do it," I said, "Whatever it is. Selling your stocks, resigning, whatever. Don't. I'll never forgive you if you do."

"It's not up to you," he said, moving away from the window. He stopped a few feet away. "Just like it's not up to you how you feel, or how I do."

I don't know how he could look so calm and collected. He watched me, his gaze doing that seeing right through and into me thing again.

"Maybe not. But it is up to me how I react to the way I feel, and to know when to ignore my feelings."

"It is."

"So stop. We can't. It's not right. You know that like I know that."

"No," he said.

We locked stares. Anger roiled and seethed in the pit of my stomach. Or at least a heat I told myself was anger did.

"Then I'll leave. I'll go away so that even you can't find me." It was a ridiculous statement, but I was grasping for straws here. Or perhaps grasping at those dry twigs and roots that I knew couldn't support my weight as I slipped over the cliff but that I tried for anyway.

"Please don't," he said.

It wasn't what I expected. I expected something sappy like,
I'll always find you
or maybe something like,
You won't
or
you can't
.

Then again, he always did surprise me, always managed to escape my expectations. And there was such honesty in his eyes when he said it.

Someone banged on the door behind me. I started. Owen didn't.

"Sir? Are you all right in there?" a gruff voice said. Security, come to collect me.

"Fine, thank you," Owen said, "You can go."

I could sense the owner of that voice on the other side of the door hesitating. Then the presence vanished and we were alone again.

"This is pointless," I said. It was time to go.

I turned and grabbed for the handle. Before I could, Owen grabbed me. He spun me back to face him, shoving me back against the door.

I couldn't be so close to him. It was dangerous. My nerves sang with it.

"Let me go," I said.

He kissed me instead. Another breathless, pulse-pounding one, his mouth as hot and wanton on mine as I remembered in my dreams. He grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head.

I groaned, leaning back against the door. That slippery heat filled me again, starting in my core and slithering through me from there.

I couldn't fight anymore. Not against something like that. We were like two magnets nudged slowly towards each other, the invisible force between us pulling and grabbing until finally it caught and slammed us together.

He pulled his mouth away from mine, his eyes still filling my vision. "Tell me now you want me to go. Tell me now to stop and I will. And look me in the eye when you do it." He kept my wrists pinned against the door, a jailer promising freedom for a confession.

My lips parted, my short breaths so hot as they whispered out between them that I thought for sure they would scorch me.

"No," I said, my turn to use the word. All that other stuff had fallen away from me, getting smaller and less important the farther it dropped.

All I wanted was his mouth on mine again. I grew cold and needy without it. It was a need I'd managed to ignore so far, but now no longer could.

We left a trail of clothes across the floor, starting with my parka. It ended when we reached his desk.

His lips didn't leave me the whole time. Or his hands. They squeezed me, held me against him. I gasped at the pressure of his fingers on my breast, at the way he pushed them down my waistband and grabbed my ass.

His need was powerful. Maybe even strong enough to match mine.

"I need you so much," I said when he set me down on his desk, my now bare back towards that enormous window. The desk was cold on my bottom, but I paid it no mind.

He stood by a pile of his own clothes, that sunlight coming in accentuating his fine body so that I couldn't resist running one hand over his abdominals. The other hand I kept busy supporting myself on the desk.

"I know," he said, his voice and his eyes so confident.

Then neither of us could wait anymore. My hand slid further down, finding him ready for me. The heat coming off him elicited another groan from me, and I quivered for him, inside and out.

I guided him to me. He pushed into me, my body trembling with exultation. It was so good it hurt, and that was good, too. He kissed me as he slid in deeper, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, holding him tight, unable to let him go.

His mouth slipped from mine and went down my neck and shoulder. My own kisses landed on his cheek, or his ear. My fingers moved up into his soft hair and gripped.

He shifted my knees so that he rested the crook of my legs against his arms. Then he slipped deeper into me. So deep. All I could feel was heat, hardness, delicious wetness.

I couldn't tell where he ended and I began and I liked it that way.

It was desperate loving. I could see it in his face and I knew it was on mine. We couldn't control ourselves, not after so long.

He made me come for him quickly and hard. My toes curled up and I squeezed those handfuls of his hair tighter, pulling him closer to me.

His thrusting became ragged. His hot breaths pulsed against the sensitive flesh of my shoulder and neck, his lips grazing my clavicle.

"Don't stop," I told him.

He didn't. He was merciless, and so was I. The heat between us built to incredible levels. Sweat popped out all over my skin, dribbling and slithering down my cheeks, down the curve of my back.

Perspiration dotted Owen too. He glistened with it.

And then he couldn't take it anymore either. His body went rigid. He grabbed me and pulled me closer, burying himself to the hilt inside me so that I gasped. He filled me completely.

And that then heat inside me pulsed and didn't stop pulsing and throbbing. I came for him again, the two of us locked in a shared orgasm.

It took a long time for either of us to release the other. Maybe we thought that if we let go it would be over somehow.

But I knew it could never be over. I knew I never wanted it to be over.

So I clung to him harder. I breathed him in, the cleanness of his perspiration, that heady coconut note of his aftershave. He was so nice and warm against me.

Slowly the world expanded around us. The rest of the desk, his office, Manhattan around it and everything thereafter winked back into existence so that we were no longer the sole occupants of our own tiny universe.

And with it came all the rest. The doubts and fears and worries. And even being there with him like that, the two of us quivering in the aftermath, I couldn't fully banish it all.

"What now?" I said, then kissing his temple and breathing in the clean smell of his hair.

"Does there have to be anything other than now?" he said.

"You tell me."

He sighed. "I think that there must be, I'm afraid," he said.

We parted, washing as much of the evidence of our loving as we could away in the well-appointed ensuite washroom adjoining his office. Gathering up our clothes from that trail we left from his door to his desk made me want him again right away, remembering what that trail actually led to.

"Can we be done with it all, finally?" I said, watching him shrug into his shirt. It gave me a tantalizing glimpse of the muscles of his shoulder blades moving and flexing beneath his skin.

Which still had a nice glow to it, by the way, courtesy of yours truly.

I imagined he'd left me looking similar.

He stiffened at the words, though, his fingers pausing in tucking the tails into his slacks. "You aren't saying...?" he started.

I grasped it right away.
He still thinks I'm trying to end it between us
.

"No, no. I mean I want to end all the doubts, all the resistance. I'm too tired, and I can't stay away from you anymore. No matter how hard I tried. Not after that."

As if to remind me, an ache panged deep inside and I knew it was probably a wise choice not to try for a second round.

He threw his tie around his neck, the two ends hanging about even down his chest. He came over to me, put his hands on my hips and pulled me close so that we touched.

"It's over," he said.

"Good," I replied, "Because I've fallen for you, Owen Ashton. Hard."

This time when I said it he didn't look away. He didn't tell me to get out. He didn't try and escape.

"I'm in love you with," he said, "And I know it's risky. I know it hasn't been long. But I'm going to see it through. I want to see where it, where we, go."

I went up on my tiptoes and kissed him. "I want to see, too."

"Even if it means altering your plans? Doing things you didn't think you'd be doing?"

"Yes," I said. And it scared me to say. In a good way, though. In an excited way. Sometimes you have one plan for life, and it has another for you. You think you're destined for one thing, and then it throws something else at you. In my case, something tall, dark, and handsome.

And I was through trying to dodge.

But there was something else I needed to take care of before all of that could happen.

"Y
ou're not selling still, right?" I said.

We raced down the road in his Corvette. With all the sun out these past few days, the asphalt was bone dry and clear.

We both had our visors down, blocking some of that glare from all the snow around us.

"No, I suppose not," he said.

He was taking me back to the campus.

Before leaving, I'd screwed up my courage and listened to my messages. They were all from Peabody's office, in fact. And not his secretary either, but the man himself. And he didn't sound happy. He told me he wanted to see me right away.

That was hours ago, so I could only imagine his state at that moment.

"Don't worry," Owen said, seeing the look on my face, "He won't be kicking you out. Believe me."

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound confident. I didn't.

After we had finally let all that pressure off in his office, we'd had a nice talk. He wasn't going to sell his company. I wasn't going to leave school or anything crazy like that. Owen said he wanted me to live up to my dreams, to achieve them. Those dreams never included a man before now, and I never thought they could. Not until we'd had that talk, anyway.

The possibilities thrilled me, now that I was open to them.

And I wanted to finish. I had to finish, to prove that I could. And not at a different school, either. I'd worked so hard to get where I was, and I couldn't let all that be for nothing. Which he understood.

But that all still left Peabody. We pulled into the back lot of the administration building. Owen offered to come up with me, but I declined. I had to do this on my own.

His secretary showed me in right away.

"Miss Chambers, how nice to see you. Thank you for deigning to join me," he said, sitting at his massive desk.

"You're welcome," I said. I sat without asking. That got me a pointed look, but he didn't say anything.

"I believe we need to discuss your future at this institution, and the manner in which you've comported yourself."

"It seems pretty bright, doesn't it? I hear I'm back at the top of my class again."

"Be that as it may, I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation. There are certain standards..."

"President Peabody, forgive me, but I'm going to stop you there. You're the one lacking understanding. I'm at the top of my class. I've done nothing but break curfew that one time. My personal life is my own, and let me assure you that if you dismiss me now there are plenty of journalists, magazines, and newspapers out there who would love to run a story about this whole thing. About how you kicked one of your best students out for daring to do well even though she wasn't born into the same circumstances as the rest of the students here."

I said it all in one breath, needing to get it out, running on inertia and knowing I might not be able to continue if I stopped.

"You wouldn't dare," he said, his whole face going red all the way up to his expansive scalp.

I raised an eyebrow at him and his eyes widened in shock. "Do we understand each other?"

He turned his hands over on his desk, unable to speak.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I got a ride over with someone you banned from the campus and I want to get back to him before security comes and catches him."

He frowned, and I nodded towards his window. He looked down and the breath caught in his throat. I knew what he saw: Owen leaning against the fender of that 'vette, waiting for me.

"I guess you won't be able to get him back for another one of those speeches. Although, I think I still might be able to convince him to start up that scholarship. It's up to you, though," I said.

His shoulders hitched, and I wondered which was winning out inside him: disdain or greed. It didn't matter to me. I'd made my point and he'd heard it.

Then I went back down and met Owen. I didn't look up to see if Peabody still stared down at the display in shock.

"Ready?" he said.

"Yes. Definitely."

He smiled. "Finally an answer."

I knew it was the right answer, too.