Bait: Alpha Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (21 page)

Chapter 10

Charlie

Nolan walked me downstairs and stood beside his limo. He held the door open and stared me down, challenging me to turn my back on him and walk away. He was hardheaded and brave, but vulnerable at the same time. And he’d never looked more beautiful. In his presence, I felt raw and vulnerable.

“I need to go home,” I said and stumbled towards his limo. “Will you take me home? Please?”

I couldn’t process what he’d said now, and it felt imperative that I be alone to digest what just happened. The shocking and illicit revelations of the past hour. I wanted to believe it was true with every fiber of my being, but there was still the slightest chance that it might’ve been a show to soften Robert to The Grant Project. Nolan was so used to manipulating situations and people to get his way, I wasn’t sure if he was capable of transparency.

And that slight tug of doubt had wormed its way into my heart and mind. I couldn’t blindly jump into the deep end of the pool. It wasn’t my way.

I slid into the limo and settled back in the leather seats, breathing in the unique scent of Nolan’s cologne and the richness of the car’s interior. Like coming home. The smell enveloped me and the electrically charged air crackled with sexual tension. All it would take was a glance. A feather soft touch. Anything. And I’d be on his lap.

He slipped in beside me, shut the door, then turned to face me but didn’t do any of those things. He stared out the window behind me. Unmoving. Unseeing.

The limo drove off, the buildings and people flitting by as the bright afternoon sun glanced off store windows.

“You don’t have anything to say?” Nolan asked, finally dropping his gaze to lock with mine. Those mesmerizing eyes seared me with his question. And something else. Something I couldn’t decipher or define.

“I don’t know.” I broke eye contact and looked out the window. The car wasn’t heading in the direction of my apartment. “Wait, where are we going?”

“You said home. Home is my penthouse.”

I gritted my teeth at his audacity. “No, it’s not. Take me to
my
apartment. I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “I hate that you’ve done this again. I hate that you’ve lied to him and made me feel like an idiot. Why do you keep doing this, Nolan? Don’t you have a heart?”

His face went through a series of emotions. Surprise, then fear, then something else I couldn’t identify. “Charlie–”

“No! Don’t try to defend what you’ve done. Don’t you fucking dare.” I pulled myself to my full height, turned my torso, and got as close to his face as I could without touching him. My pulse throbbed with anger that started in the tips of my toes and traveled upward until it turned my brain inside out. I wanted to scream. Lash out. Even more, I wanted to press my lips to his until I didn’t know where I ended and he began. I chose to raise my voice, forcing him to hear me. Really hear me. “I’m tired of having my emotions played by you like some harpist in the New York Philharmonic. I’m not just some poor ragdoll from the wrong side of the tracks. You can’t use me and toss me aside.”

Something came over me, and I couldn’t stop myself. Before I knew it was happening, my hand snaked out as if possessed, and I slapped his handsome face with all the force of a woman scorned. He opened his mouth and then clamped it shut again. Not moving. Not retaliating. A red handprint rose on his flesh instantly.

“I guess I deserved that.”

My hand stung, and I shook it twice before sitting on it. God. What had I reduced myself to? I’d hit someone. For the first time in my life, I had struck another human being in anger. Someone I loved.

Loved.

“You want to know why I can’t handle this anymore? Why I can’t pretend?” I shrieked, not stopping to reflect on what I’d just silently admitted. I chased it away on a wave of renewed anger, but the words tumbled out anyway, refusing to be tempered. “Because I love you. I actually love you too, you arrogant prick. You destroyed me up there. Just like you’ve destroyed me every day since we met. And that’s why I’m not sure I can be with you even if you own my heart.”

Nolan rubbed his forehead with his palm. “I love you too, woman! So stop screaming and flailing. Listen to me.”

The air rushed out of my lungs in a whoosh of surprise. “What did you say?”

“I love you, Charlie,” he said, those eyes looking at me with such earnestness it tugged at something deep inside. “I wasn’t lying back there. I’m in love with you. It’s the only reason I asked you to marry me in the first place. I used the business deal as an excuse because I didn’t think you wanted me.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m not stupid enough not to realize I’m outpunting my coverage here.”

What? I shook my head, trying to clear it of the words that couldn’t be true. Was Nolan Banks uttering some foreign language? In this limo? Saying that he wasn’t good enough for
me
?

The car became a vacuum of space that I felt compelled to fill and the seconds ticked by in agonizing slowness. I was drawn toward him. Wanted him. Needed him. More than that, God help me, I believed him.

I clawed towards him, wrapped my arms around his neck and grasped the back of his head. I couldn’t get close enough. I pressed my nose against his neck and inhaled a trail up to his lips.

Arousal and the bright light of the truth had shattered my inhibitions. He loved me. He’d loved me all along. Could it be possible? Even if it couldn’t, just this once, Charlene de Monaco was going to clamp her conservative eyes shut, ignore sanity and rationality. Take the leap.

I pressed my mouth against his, parted his lips and tasted the sweetness of his tongue. Nolan reared back and stiffened, content to let me guide the kiss. He intoxicated me, moving his tongue against mine, hands slipping down my back, ripping at my blouse. He pulled it up over my head and freed my breasts. He grunted at the sight of my lacy white bra but didn’t speak.

Instead, he peeled the fabric back and took my nipple in his mouth.

Warmth, wetness, and desire spread from my breast, the sensations rocketing through my cells to my heated core before landing on my heart in an iron grip. I arched my back, clinging to him for support, grinding myself against the hardness straining against me.

“Breathe,” he whispered, and I gasped, previously unaware I’d been holding it in anticipation of what would happen next. “Allow me to give you pleasure with all that I am and all that I’ll ever be.”

I melted at his passionate words. I couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. I didn’t want us to.

Mine. Nolan Banks was mine for a moment. A night. Maybe an eternity.

“I’ll never let you go,” I whispered back, trailing a line of kisses along his jaw.

“I’m glad,” he managed, then tipped me back and worked my skirt up to my hips, the flesh of my thighs kissed by the crisp air inside the limo. He reached up, grasped my lace thong and worked it down until he could slip it off my ankles.

I closed my eyes and surrendered as his mouth glided down the apex of my body with aching slowness. Until I thought I might go mad with the riot of sensations, his lips and tongue produced. He seemed determined to taste every inch of my exposed skin. The thought of every spectacular release I’d been gifted by this man’s mouth and hands came back to me in a rush of intimate memories, almost sending me over the precipice before he reached my slick heat.

I wouldn’t last long. I couldn’t. The pleasure was so raw. So right.

“Nolan.” His name slipped out on a rasp of velvety breath.

I moaned softly and turned my head on the headrest as he captured a nipple with his lips and tongue, nipping with the tips of his teeth. An answering tug between my legs coursed through my core.

“So responsive,” he said, the tone vibrating into the softness of my skin. “I wonder how long I can keep you dangling on the edge of the cliff before you let go and fall.”

“Will you be there to catch me?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Always.”

He sucked gently as his mouth moved over the tan flesh of my rounded stomach. Nolan dipped his tongue briefly in the indentation of my belly button. My hips arched like they were reaching. Searching for something that could be found only under the hands and mouth of this one man.

Lower and lower he glided, tasting me like I was a five-course meal for a starving man. An oasis of flesh. Taking his sweet time, almost as if we really did have the rest of our lives to explore each other. To explore these poignant sensations of desire and he wanted to take full advantage of each moment. To savor it.

Even though we both knew that was far from true. But this one stolen moment almost provided me a glimpse of the future. Of forever.

When Nolan finally parted my legs and exposed my blazing hot pussy to the air and his smoldering eyes, I was wet and ready to receive him. He used his fingers to part my folds a few centimeters but didn’t delve deeper. Teasing me until I thought I might explode.

God, Nolan. Touch me now before I die.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the torment of awaiting the moment. The exquisite second when his fingers and mouth would descend and shatter me into a million pieces. And Nolan made me wait. Dragging out the seconds by blowing hot gusts of breath against my sensitive flesh. I twitched and bucked each time he did it, violent reactions to being denied what I needed more than anything.

Only after I’d opened my mouth to beg and plead, did he peel me apart and reveal me fully to his hungry eyes. My own snapped open, and I glanced down at him as he examined me. All the anger and screaming we’d engaged in earlier had faded on the caress of his breath. It seemed like Nolan had changed. For the man who now looked at me, the one whose warm palms now spread my thighs, this new Nolan was like a ravenous predator ready to devour his kill. This man would torment and toy with me until I gave him everything. I no longer thought my love was enough. Nolan Banks wanted my very soul.

I caved. I pleaded. I begged.

“Nolan,” I whispered, my voice cracking under the force of my desire. “Please.”

He glanced up at me, meeting my eyes. His were now smoldering orbs of dark promise. He held my gaze for what seemed like forever, then smirked and lowered his mouth to my quivering flesh. My blood burned as he dragged his tongue over my hot pussy from one end to the other in one languid, lazy stroke. Again and again, he licked me, using just the right amount of pressure against my tingling flesh.

I stifled a deep groan of ecstasy and failed. Holy shit, I saw stars. I fisted my fingers against the leather of the seats but grasped nothing but air. Nolan seemed to enjoy my moans and shrieks of delight. As if he sensed I was holding something back, he increased the tempo of his mouth against my slick heat, forcing me to give him everything. To be vulnerable underneath the weight of his desire.

I began to shake out of control as the wave of pleasure crept toward me. Like a cat burglar clad in head to toe black, it spiraled. Weaving and twisting until it had overtaken every cell in my body. Inching into my heated and flushed skin, making my legs tremble and lift my hips in wild, wanton abandon as he led me into the most intense release of my life.

I cried out, thrashing my head from side to side, tightening my thighs around his shoulders as he drew more pleasure from my core than I ever thought I could give. Leave it to Nolan Banks to demand it all. Even when I thought I was drained and replete, he took even more until I lay weak against the buttery soft leather, tremors fading until all that remained was a flickering burst of weak pleasure.

Nolan pressed one last kiss to my flesh, then slid up my body. I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him down until his lips met mine. He tasted sweet and salty with my flavor coloring his lush lips. I searched for the fly of his pants with my hands and found him, hard and straining under my palms. I unzipped it and freed his erection, my fingers wrapping around his long, thick shaft.

“Fuck me. Now.”

Nolan didn’t need to be asked again, and he guided his hardness to my softness, spearing me with his need and fervor. I lifted my hips to meet him, and he began to thrust. Slow and steady at first and then with more speed and pressure until I felt myself spiraling toward release again.

Nolan seemed just as lost. He groaned as I rocked against him, his body pushing hard against mine, his neck straining.

“Holy God,” he muttered as he broke down and shuddered, seeking and straining until we both came together in a blinding lightning strike of passion.

Chapter 11

Charlie

I hadn’t been this nervous in a long time with my feet grounded to the hard floor to keep my legs from shaking. Sitting in front of rows of the rabid press with their notepads and tablets and glares that could spear through the flesh straight into the soul. Some of them wore massive fake smiles, others frowned, and many wore the blank expressions of studied journalistic professionalism.

Banks Realty had organized a press conference to announce work on the new project and to put aside rumors that there was trouble in paradise between me and Nolan.

I wanted to stand and flee more than anything. But I wouldn’t. Because doing so would jeopardize Grant and that I would not do, no matter how uncomfortable the talking heads made me feel. Time to suck it up.

I had nothing to prove to any of these people and discussing our budding relationship made me sick to my stomach. Nolan hadn’t proposed again, thank god, because I wasn’t ready for that yet and it would send the press into a flurry of motion.

I cleared my throat and took a sip of water as my wrist twisted until I could check my watch for the hundredth time.

“Jeez, still half an hour to sweat it out,” I whispered through my tense lips. “I’m not sure I’ll make it without vomiting.”

“Mumbling isn’t ladylike, dear. Though, I wouldn’t expect you to know that. Or care.” Anne Banks took a seat beside me, wearing a crisp navy blue pants suit and a string of flawless natural pearls.

“What are you doing here?” The question popped out of my mouth due to pure shock. Anne hadn’t taken an interest in the Banks family business when I’d been around. What on earth was she doing here other than to torment me?

She’d left the business to her husband and her son so she could focus on her society functions and philanthropic efforts. And yearly sessions to her cosmetic surgeon.

“I’m attending the conference I organized, silly girl,” Anne said, her lips curled in a cunning smile while keeping her tone low so as not to be overheard. “Someone has to keep this company’s interests at heart, since clearly, neither of you two will.” She tilted her head towards me while her gaze flicked to Nolan, who was at the far end of the room, joking around with a reporter.

A woman rose from a seat close to him and placed her hand on his arm. She leaned in to whisper something, but Nolan detached from her and stepped back. He nodded and walked in the opposite direction.

Whatever hint of jealousy I’d felt at the sight of the reporter in her tight skirt disappeared.

He was truly mine. My Nolan. My everything. With each action he took that matched his words, a little more of my wall crumbled to the ground.

“I would welcome you back to the team with open arms, but that would be a cruel lie,” Anne said. “Because I don’t want to.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’m not technically on the payroll right now, Mrs. Banks.” I still wanted to establish myself as a lawyer on my own terms. I didn’t need anyone’s name to advance my career. I’d get there on my own hard work and merit.

“That’s good to know. I’ll have to check that with the accounts department,” Mrs. Banks replied. “We wouldn’t want a mix up, now would we?”

I had no idea that Anne was this involved with the business, and frankly, it was unbelievable that Nolan’s father had allowed her to infiltrate the realty business without a business degree and experience. Billions of dollars were on the line daily. From what Nolan had told me, his parents were hardly on good – or trusting – terms. Both of them never passing on an opportunity to dig at the other.

“Excuse me a moment,” I said and rose from my seat, not even worrying about appearances or who might be watching my rude behavior. A flashbulb flashed in my tragic face, but Anne had made the atmosphere at the top table claustrophobic. My lungs fought for air, and I felt as if her mere presence could suffocate me. I squished past the back of her chair, because, of course, she didn’t move it forward to give me passage, smiling for the clicking cameras.

I walked down the row of chairs, heading for the door to the left, which led out of the hall and to the bathrooms. A few splashes of water on my face would help calm my frayed nerves. I’d made it clear that I would be supporting Banks Realty for the project but leave any questions about my employment open for interpretation. It would be a subtle balance, but the right thing to do. And it was long past the time to stay true to my personal beliefs and not be led astray by a pretty face and a flashy lifestyle.

I hurried into the hall, my heels clicking on the tiles and entered the bathroom. The line of mirrors above the sink cast my outfit in a harsh light. Hair pulled back into a professional bun, a black skirt and tailored Anne Klein jacket, buttons fastened over a cotton blouse. Black heeled pumps to match. Professional, understated. Hoseless.

One final fuck you to Jasmine St. James.

I walked to the sink and ran my hands underneath the water, closing my eyes for a second to allow the cold liquid to flow over my heated flesh. The past few days had been confusing. A whirlwind of romance tempered with determination. I’d made it clear that succeeding in a professional capacity was important to me. I couldn’t allow myself to revolve around Nolan Banks or even The Grant Project.

I had to–

The bathroom door slapped open behind me, and I opened my eyes.

Jasmine stood there, her hands on her hips, staring down her sharp nose. “The conference is about to start,” she said in nasal tones. “And I see you opted for bare legs like a common tramp.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked and reached for a paper towel. I snatched it from the dispenser and turned on my old boss. “And my attire is no longer your concern. Frankly,
I
am no longer your concern.”

She chuckled. “I’m here to make sure that you’re where you’re supposed to be, de Monaco. Banks Realty can’t afford another slip-up thanks to your ineptitude. If someone didn’t know better, they’d never think you graduated from Harvard. If I hadn’t seen your degree with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe you even stepped through the doors of law school at all.”

She was such a raging bitch. And I refused to be bullied by her.

Never again.

“I take it you’re back on the payroll, Jasmine, though I have no idea why. Everyone at Banks Realty hated you.” I paused and tapped my lip with my finger. “Oh wait, that’s not right. I know Grantham liked you. Or, at least he liked your mouth when it was sealed closed.”

Jasmine’s cheeks went bright red. “You shut up and get your ass in gear, you white trash loser. The conference is about to start. If you think I’m a pain, wait until you irritate Mrs. Banks to the point she gets angry. You’ll wish you were never born.”

“I don’t think anyone’s told you, but I’m not on the Banks payroll. You can’t tell me to do anything, Ms. St. James.” I leaned against the marble counter and folded my arms. “In fact, I’ll miss the whole conference if I want to. I might sleep here tonight, just because you told me I needed to leave.”

That was bullshit, of course. Nolan needed me up there, and I’d go in a second, but not before I’d riled this skinny, mean tyrant. She’d made my life hell in the beginning of my career at Banks Realty just out of spite. But karma was a vicious bitch, so I didn’t have to be.

“We good here?” I asked and smiled broadly.