ALL THAT HE WANTS (Volume 1 The Billionaire's Seduction) (19 page)

I crawled to the edge of the bed and forced myself up into a seated position with my legs off the edge of the bed.

Ugh.

The pounding in my head turned into a full-on, percussion-only symphony.

But the peeing would not be denied.

I stumbled over to the palatial bathroom and turned on the light.

OWWWW.

Too bright, so I turned it back off and stumbled over to the toilet.

I was just about to sit down when I realized the bathroom door was wide open.

I sprinted over to the door, closed it, and shuffled my way back over in the dark. No
way
I was turning the light back on. There was just enough glow from the crack under the door to make sure I didn’t face-plant on the floor – or worse, in the toilet.

While I sat there on the throne, I gave thanks that at least I wasn’t nauseated. I hadn’t drunk
that
much wine… I mean… three glasses, maybe?

But no other water since… four or five o’clock the evening before?

God, no wonder I had a throbbing headache.

After I was finished, I lurched over to the sink, opened the door to let in a little light, and looked at myself in the mirror.

Oh.

My.

GOD.

And
not
in a good way.

My hair looked like a bird’s nest. And the bird was on LSD. My eyes were swollen, my eye makeup was smeared, I had little red lines on my skin from the creases in the sheets…

Please God, I hope he didn’t see me this… way…

Memories from the night before came flooding back:

The boardroom.

Out on the street, him asking me to come with him.

The limo ride.

The Dubai lobby.

The dinner.

The poker game.

Him taking me against the glass window, then carrying me to bed.

Doing it a third time.

And finding out his real last name.

“Oh my God,” I moaned.

I can’t even begin to accurately describe my emotional state at that moment.

There was the amazing flood of hormones from the memories of sex…

…and the disbelief that I had done what I did.

This was
sooooo
not like me.

I’d never had a one-night stand before in my
life.

Not that I wanted this to be a one-night stand. Far from it.

But – I mean – I just don’t meet a guy and fall into bed with him on the first date. That’s not me.

Obviously it is,
a snarky little voice in my head said disapprovingly.
And you didn’t fall into bed with him, you fell onto the boardroom carpet with him.

And it wasn’t exactly a ‘date.’

Yes it was!
I screamed back silently.
It totally was! There was lobster, and filet mignon, and wine, and heavenly dessert…

…just… AFTER the sex…

…the first round of sex, anyway…

Add to that the fact he was CONNOR TEMPLETON.

Billionaire.

I felt like I had somehow stumbled into the pages of a tabloid magazine you see by the checkout in grocery stories.

Ordinary Chick Sleeps With Scorching Hot Billionaire Playboy!

Three times!

There was fear, disbelief, a little bit of guilt – did I really give it up
that
easy? – and the overwhelming feeling that I didn’t belong, that I was out of my league, that I needed to get out of there as fast as I humanly could.

And the horror that the hottest man I’d ever seen in person had seen me like
this.

Whacked-out bedhead, puffy eyes, smeared makeup, little red creases everywhere.

I put my hand in front of my mouth and puffed out, tried to smell it.

I couldn’t tell, but I’m sure it was dragon breath from the pit of hell.

Oh God, oh God, I hope he didn’t try to kiss me while I was asleep…

I tried to talk myself down as I unwrapped a toothbrush on the counter and squeezed out some mint toothpaste from the mini-tube next to it.

One nice thing about this place was they had
everything.
So much better than scrubbing your teeth with a bare finger.

I also drank down about five glasses of water, I was so thirsty.

After I was sure I didn’t smell like a corpse flower anymore (see, super nerdy to the end), I looked at myself in the mirror and decided,
No, this will NOT do.

I locked the door… thought about it for a second… then unlocked it and left it slightly ajar.

Just in case… y’know… somebody wanted to join me…

I was a little disappointed when he didn’t, but the shower was heavenly just the same.

It took me a minute in my addled state to figure out which handle went to which nozzle, but when I did, OH MY GOD.

At first I tried the two heads pointing down from opposite angles.

Then I tried the overhead showerhead, the three-foot diameter one. It was like standing in the middle of a rainforest downpour – but a nice, you-choose-the-temperature, bug-free rainforest downpour.

Then I cranked them all up and let the hot steam billow around me in an orgy of hot water.

And the soaps and shampoos! I had died and gone to spa heaven.

I settled on one that smelled like mango, and lathered my hair with it. After that, I applied a coconut conditioner, and washed all over with a soap that smelled like roses.

As I lathered gingerly ‘down there,’ I couldn’t help smiling. There was a throbbing from the, um, various activities of the previous evening… and (I’m blushing right now) his exceptional size… but it was a good ache. An ache that reminded me of him being inside me.

Without a condom.

And coming inside me.

Cue full-on freakout for about ten seconds.

Then I remembered not only was I on birth control, but he had said he hadn’t been with anybody else for the last eight months. And he’d been tested, and was fine.

Do I trust him?
I asked myself.
That he was telling me the truth?

And after a second’s hesitation, I thought,
Yeah, I do.

I thought about that as I scrubbed all over with the world’s softest washcloth.

How the hell does a man as gorgeous, as rich, and as… um… well-equipped as Connor not have sex for eight months?!

I mean,
me
, yeah. Try a year and a half. That was my longest dry spell since I lost my virginity. And all the non-dry spells were with boyfriends.

But I didn’t exactly have hot guys throwing themselves at me every day. I’m sure Connor did.

Hot girls, I mean. Throwing themselves at him.

Although I’m sure there were hot guys throwing themselves, too, but –

Oh, hell, you know what I mean.

I wondered why he hadn’t slept with anybody in eight months.

Who was the last one?

Had she hurt him?

Was that why?

I got out of the shower feeling – and looking – halfway human.

After I toweled off with the world’s plushest towels, I wrapped up in a robe that was even thicker and softer. I wiped away the condensation and checked myself carefully in the mirror and cringed a little. I was scrubbed pink and clean, and no longer looked like a stoned raven had constructed a bird-townhouse in my hair, but…

I think I look okay without makeup, and I definitely try to keep it light. I mean, that’s the point of makeup, so that they don’t immediately
know
you’re wearing makeup, right? Or at least so they don’t think, “Oh yeah… hooker.”

But I would have
killed
to look as good as I could right now.

I thought about getting my purse –

– and went into full-on, nuclear alert, Defcon Five freak-out mode.

Actually, I think Defcon One is the worst (nerd, nerd, nerd) – but Defcon Five
sounds
worse.

And whatever
sounds
the worst, that’s what I was experiencing.

Times ten.

I’d left my purse back at work.

With my wallet and keys and credit card and twelve dollars cash and cell phone inside.

Where – ?

Next to my still-turned-on computer?

With the report I was supposed to have finished and sent to Klaus, my douchebag boss?

NO.

OH MY GOD, IT WAS EVEN WORSE THAN
THAT.

I’d left it next to the cappuccino machine in the boardroom.

Idiot,
idiot,
IDIOT –

I started pacing back and forth in the bathroom, flapping my hands again in my little freakout ritual.

Why didn’t I take it down with me?!

Why didn’t I REMEMBER IT?!

Well, if we’re going to be fair, I
had
just had my brain turned to jelly by the hottest sex in my life.

(Up to that point. It got even hotter a few hours later.)

And then I’d suffered the worst freakout I’d ever had (again, up to that point) because I had realized I’d just had that mind-blowing sex in the boardroom of the company where I worked.

I had been panicked beyond belief, with my brain already no better than jelly –

– and then super-hot Sex God had requested I walk him downstairs.

Not
‘go with me and have more sex.’

Just ‘walk me downstairs.’

I’d been intending 1000% to go back up and finish my report like a good little corporate drone. At some point I would have realized I didn’t have the purse.

But then he’d kissed my brains out in the elevator –

And
then,
just as we got out on the sidewalk and I was getting all weepy that I’d never see him again, he’d seductively asked me to go with him and have the time of my life.

To be honest, it was no wonder I’d forgotten my purse.

After about five minutes, I calmed down.

Sort of.

The purse and everything in it were safe. Nobody was going to take it, I knew that.

Getting it out of the boardroom… I could do that… I just had to get to work before anybody else.

However, the report was a different matter.

I could imagine my cell phone blowing up
right NOW
as Klaus kept calling me, leaving screaming voicemails about where his report was.

But I had chosen to completely shirk that duty when Connor asked me to get in the limo.

I’d known at the time what I was doing, and what I was potentially risking.

I looked at the freaked-out girl in the mirror and asked her,
Was it worth it?

She relaxed, and a huge smile spread across her face.

It was SOOOOO worth it.

Then I thought of the cell phone again, and my heart stopped cold.

My roommate Anh.

She’d said to call her once I got off work, and she’d leave the club and bring some Haagen Dazs and we’d watch a sappy romantic comedy on DVD.

Not only hadn’t I called her, but I had never come home.

In all the time Anh had known me – five years, going back to my sophomore year in college – I had
never
not come home. Not unless I had a boyfriend and she knew I was staying over at his place.

She was probably worried sick!

She probably thought I was dead, or raped, or lying in a ditch somewhere, or in the hospital!

Oh God, I have to call her!

And that was the state of mind I was in when I bolted out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, into the main room of the penthouse – and into a very strange scene, indeed.

My head was already pounding from moving
waaay
too fast for my hangover.

Then I was caught off guard by what I saw.

Connor was dressed in a white linen shirt and blue jeans. He hadn’t showered or shaved yet; his hair was a rumpled mess and he had dark stubble on his cheeks and jaw.

God, he looked hot.

I immediately wanted to rip off his clothes and drag him back to bed.

But
that
wasn’t going to happen, because he was padding back and forth in his bare feet, shouting into his cell phone.

“You can tell Krebbs he doesn’t have a single working brain cell if he thinks those quarterly numbers are good enough to justify what he’s asking. What? NO, I don’t give a damn about last quarter’s numbers, everyone knows they were inflated – ”

Over by the wall, Johnny was dressed immaculately in a suit and tie. He saw me come in, smiled politely, and jerked his chin up a tiny bit as a greeting, like
whassup.

I blushed in embarrassment and grasped the top of my terrycloth robe together to make sure no more skin was showing than absolutely necessary.

Beside Johnny stood a silver rack of clothes, with wheels on the base so it could move. Little black dresses, skirts, matching bra and panty sets, casual tops… and on the bottom floor of the rack sat an assortment of shoes, from flip flops to elegant heels.

The rack part confused me.

What the hell is THAT for?

Connor had his back to me, but he caught sight of Johnny’s chin nod and looked around.

I don’t know what I was expecting – him dropping the phone? A big, goofy, dumbstruck look of love plastered all over his face?

A smile, maybe?

Didn’t get
any
of that.

His face was totally neutral as he said into the cell, “Sam, hold on a sec.”

Then he covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said to me, “I need you to go down to the pool. Johnny’ll take you.”

Then he turned away and commenced shouting into the phone again.

Well, good morning to YOU, too.

I think I must have looked pretty crestfallen, because Johnny strode over quickly and whispered, “Big business blow-up. Sorry, but we need to give him a little space.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to let my disappointment show. “But I need to call somebody – it’s an emergency – ”

“Down at the pool,” he whispered.

“Hold on, I’ll get dressed,” I said – and then realized all my clothes should have been out here in the main room. Where the strip poker game took place.