A Billion Little Clues (6 page)

I reached down with one hand, running it ever so gently along this bulge. I was rewarded with a gasp from the man, even from such a light touch. The fire in his eyes doubled in intensity, and he growled at me as if he was about to rip my clothes off with his teeth. Not that I would have minded if he did so...

Inside my head, I had a sudden vision of sitting atop this man, my legs spread wide to straddle him, neither of us wearing a single stitch of clothing. His hands would both be wrapped around my ass this time, sliding me up and down across his hard body. I would have my hair cascading down over my shoulders, my head tilted back in ecstasy.

Screw going home early, doing what Keith wanted me to! I wanted to stay here until dawn, keeping this man awake and extracting every last drop of pleasure from his body. I wanted to stagger out of here, no longer even able to walk straight, needing at least three or four drinks to rehydrate myself after all the sweat I'd lost the night before. I wanted this man to be left in a sex coma, unable to believe his luck in meeting someone as amazing as me.

I really wanted to make this vision a reality. More than anything else in the world, at that one moment.

When we next broke apart, I looked up at the man. I was panting, unable to even find the words to form a coherent sentence, but I was sure that the question was shining in my eyes. And indeed, in his eyes, I could see a similar flame of desire reflecting back. He wanted me just as badly.

And his hands crawled up my back, reaching right now for that zipper to peel my skin-tight dress off of me.

"No," I finally managed to gasp, as I found my voice. His touch had found my zipper, and he was already wiggling it, trying to work it loose. Part of me wanted to help him out, but I wasn't quite ready to let him strip me naked right out here. What if someone came out and caught us? At a party with all of my boss's bosses! I'd literally die of embarrassment. "No, we can't do it out here! We have to find someplace else."

I wasn't quite sure why I didn't want to take this man right out here on the terrace. Maybe I was afraid that someone else would come out at exactly the wrong time, catching us in the throes of passion. Or maybe I just didn't want to have crazy, no-holds-barred sex someplace where I was in danger of losing a toe or two to frostbite.

For just the fraction of a second, frustration flashed across the man's face. But it almost immediately cleared as a new thought bloomed in his mind. "I know a room inside," he breathed out, his hands dancing over me like spiders. "Totally private. Far out of the reach of the rest of the party. No one will find us there."

I tried to grin seductively at him. I wasn't sure if it worked, but his hands didn't stop running over all of my most sensitive spots. "What are we waiting for?" I asked.

He needed no more encouragement. He let go of my ass, his fingers sliding a little reluctantly away from the zipper up by my neck that would have spilled me out of this tight little dress, and instead grabbed my hand. He tugged me in towards the doors leading back into the house, and I eagerly let him tug me along.

We came bursting back inside through the doors in a rush, both of us panting in anticipation of the incredible sex we were going to have. The man led me down the long corridor, turning around corner after corner. I'm pretty sure that at one point we went up another flight of stairs.

"On this floor," the man panted back to me. Both of us were out of breath from running up here, as well as from thinking about all the nastiness that we were about to commit together. "Almost there-"

The man froze, as another sound suddenly cut into our fevered visions. For an instant, I wasn't sure why he was stopping, but then I heard it as well.

Someone had just screamed.

It sounded like a man, confused and panicked. We both froze, the sound snapping us out of our dreamy desires and sexy visions. For a moment, we both hung in the middle of the corridor, listening and waiting in case we heard it again.

For a moment, there was only silence. And then, we heard it again, drifting down the corridor. This time, it built up, but was cut off abruptly, halfway through. It was as if someone or something had slammed the man's mouth shut halfway through the scream. Or something else had happened.

For a fraction of a second longer, my mystery man kept a hold of my hand, but then he let go. "That doesn't sound good," he said, as if he was still working out the thoughts in his head.

I shook my head. My brain might be fogged still with thoughts of wild and incredibly erotic sex, but I knew that something had just gone wrong. "No, it doesn't," I replied. "Is there supposed to be some sort of performance or entertainment at this party?" I couldn't keep a slight hint of hope out of my voice as I asked this.

But the man was already shaking his head. "Nothing that would cause a scream like that," he said. For one last moment, his eyes were running over me, taking in every single inch of my body. And well he should - I didn't know when I would come close to looking this good again.

But then, with regret obvious in every single inch of his body, he turned towards the scream. "I better go see what's going on," he said, wincing as the words came out. "I'll see you at the party, afterwards?"

I nodded. "Oh, for sure," I told him. I hoped that my words sounded more solid to him than they did to me.

With one last glance at my figure, the man turned and sprinted off down the hall, towards the source of the scream. I watched him go - man, you could totally see the lines of his tight ass as he ran in those pants! - and then turned the other direction, heading back down to rejoin the rest of the party.

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I was heading back down through the massive maze of a house towards the rest of the party. I wasn't expecting to run into them all charging up towards me, a flight of stairs and two corridors later.

"Hey!" called out one man at the front of the big group charging towards me as they came around the corner and spotted me hurrying towards them. "What's going on?"

I shrugged back at them. "I don't know!" I replied, shouting back.

"We heard a scream! Is someone hurt?"

"I don't know!" I repeated again, and then they had caught up with me. All of the partygoers were running the opposite direction as me, but they swept me up in their group, spinning me around until I was forced to either start following along in their same direction or end up being trampled into the surely absurdly expensive carpet.

I glance left and right as the crowd spins me around and recruits me into their own number. "Where are we all running?" I manage to get out to the man beside me, a short and burly man with a face like a bulldog that has just swallowed a lemon.

He glared back at me, as if the answer should be obvious. He had that kind of face, I noticed. The kind of face where he looks perpetually angry, always ready to bite somebody's head off. "Didn't you hear the scream?" he demanded. "We want to know what's going on!"

Sure, that made sense, but he didn't have to yell at me about it! I mean, it wasn't as if the I was the one who had been screaming my head off.

We reached the top of the stairs, once again, the mob temporarily pausing as we glanced around to try and figure out which direction to turn next. I craned my ears, striving to hear any sort of sound to tell me where to go.

In a second between breaths, I caught a quiet sound from off to my right - the direction in which my mystery man had vanished! And I wasn't the only one who heard it. The man with the angry bulldog face also must have heard it, as his whole head swiveled around to stare in that direction.

"Down this way!" the man yelled, and without waiting to see if the rest of us were even following, he bolted in that direction.

I shared a look with some of the other well-dressed party guests as this man went barrelling off, but what could we do? There didn't seem to be any other choice - so we all hurried after him, doing our best to keep up. He might have short little bulldog legs, I thought to myself in consternation, but man, he can move fast!

We rounded another corner, and this time, up ahead, I could see a door standing open. That must be where the scream had come from! The little bulldog man had also spotted this, and he somehow managed to squeeze even more speed out of his little legs. I was half worried that his suit was about to catch fire from the friction.

But when the pugnacious man reached the doorway, he stopped dead. His face, which had previously been permanently fixed in that scowl, seemed to lose all tension and go slack. It almost looked as though he'd just received an invisible sucker-punch to the gut.

And a moment later, as the rest of us caught up with him, I could see why he looked this way.

I was in the front row; I had a clear view of the scene before me. I almost wish that my view had been blocked, that I hadn't been exposed to the horror on the floor before me.

There was a body sprawled out, arms and legs akimbo. At first, I thought that this body must be lying on a brilliantly bold red rug, but after a moment I realized the truth. The carpet below the man was sodden with his blood, stained bright red. There had to be at least half a gallon of blood just on the carpet alone.

My eyes panned upward. Another man was kneeling behind this fallen body, frozen with his eyes wide as he stared back at us. He had lifted his hands up as he reacted to all of us coming around the corner, and his mouth was hanging open.

His hands were also red, dripping with blood. Blood from the man in front of him.

But that wasn't the worst part.

I recognized the kneeling man. I felt my heart give a sickening lurch as it dropped down into the pit of my stomach. I knew who he was.

This was the man who had been keeping me company out on the balcony, just a few minutes previously. This was the man that, on a wild, crazy impulse, I had kissed. This was the man who, up until just a few seconds ago, had been dominating my fantasies.

And now he was on the ground beside the body of someone either dead or soon to be that way, his hands literally dripping with the other man's blood.

The other guests were stacking up behind us, some of them trying to crane forward to see what was going on. No one spoke a word, however. Not the man on the ground, not the bulldog-faced fellow, not any of the other guests. I knew that my mouth was open, but nothing was coming out except shallow breaths. I thought that I might be in shock.

Finally, however, the short little bulldog-faced man beside me managed to get some semblance of thought flowing in his brain. He coughed, licked his lips, tried to clear his throat. "Roman," he gasped, staring at the kneeling man on the floor.

"Roman, what in the world have you done?"

#

At this name, a new shock roared through my body, galvanizing me. Roman? As in Roman Wayland, the billionaire CEO who was in charge of this entire company? No, it couldn't be possible.

It took a few seconds before my brain was even able to wrap around the enormity of this realization. Roman Wayland was the handsome, slightly older man I had met on the balcony. Roman Wayland had complained to me about the flowers of the garden - no, wait, of his garden. I had told Roman Wayland, the billionaire, that I wouldn't tell anyone about his complaints! I had cozied up to a billionaire!

Roman Wayland, the guy famous for totally revitalizing the massive and iconic brand of Panther Worldwide, had kissed me! I had fantasized about having sexytimes with a guy worth more than all of the money I'd ever made in my life, all put together!

And now, he might have killed someone.

I didn't know which was worse. I had made out with a multibillionaire without realizing it, making fun of him for slighting his own house. And now I might have also made out with a murderer.

This certainly hadn't been what I had in mind when I had come to this party. I don't think that I'm properly carrying out Keith's instructions any longer.

Roman was still kneeling on the ground, looking as if he would rather be anywhere but here. His mouth was moving a little, but no sound was coming out - so the bulldog-faced man took control. "Roman, I hope to god that you have some sort of explanation," he barked out (oh god, I couldn't stop thinking of him like that). "Wait a minute - is that Silvers??"

Silvers? Wasn't that the CFO, the silver-haired accountant guy that I had been speaking with earlier? With a twinge of horror, my eyes once again dropped to the prone body. And I felt a new jerk as I recognized the sweater over his shirt, the silver, nearly-white hair that was now pink from the blood. It was Geoffrey Silvers, all right.

Bulldog face spun around, raising one finger like the barrel of a pistol. "You!" he roared, stabbing it forward. The man it pointed to recoiled as if it was a live viper. "Go call 911! Get the medics and the police here!"

The angry little man kept on turning to face the crowd. "A doctor!" he shouted out. "Do we have a doctor here? This man needs immediate help!"