Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (149 page)

“I had to wait all day and night to get
you back here,” he growled.
 
His
hands slid up her bare legs and she shrieked with delight and anticipation.

Red began to kiss her feet, slowly,
gently, savoring her skin against his lips.
 
“You taste amazing and I want to learn
every bit of you with my mouth.
 
I
want to feel every curve, every pore of you.
 
I’m going to study you the way Da Vinci
studied the Mona Lisa before he painted her.”

His lips singed her bare skin and she
moaned as he touched her again and again and again.

She was so wet.
 
She was so loved.
 
Her body was open to him to do with as
he pleased.
 
She trusted him
completely and utterly, and she was totally unselfconscious in his presence.

Red took his time with her.
 
He’d always taken his time in bed, but
now more than ever he seemed to be taking pleasure in the waiting, the
savoring.

It made Nicole so hot for him.
 
She wanted him now, and she wanted to
feel him inside of her, filling her completely, pressing down on her and
letting her know that he was never going to leave her.

But she knew that this exquisite torture
of waiting was part of Red’s love for her.
 
He touched and kissed her instep, her ankles, her shins and thighs.
 
He spent a great deal of time licking
and tasting her thighs, and sometimes it tickled and she squealed.

Yes, it tickled, but also it got her that
much more wet because now he was so close to opening her fully and
completely.
 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity
of wanting, Red slowly took down her shorts, beneath which Nicole was completely
bare and slick.
 
Her mound was
swollen with desire.

“God, you’re sexy,” he whispered, as if
in disbelief.

A man who’d been with some of the most
beautiful women on the planet was looking at her body and counting himself
lucky.
 
Nicole didn’t quite know how
that was possible, but she knew it was real.

She wanted him to kiss her down there,
but first he kissed everywhere else.
 
His lips touched her hips, and her belly and then her breasts.
 
He sucked each nipple, insistently, as
they stiffened and she cried out, her hips arching against him.

Finally, he kissed up her neck and then
his mouth was on hers, tasting her tongue, his lips brushing hers as he found
her again and again.

Red looked into her eyes as their tongues
and lips connected with passion.
 
She loved the way he tasted—minty, but also salty from kissing her
skin.
 

His body was on hers now and she loved
how his weight pressed against her, the way his muscular arms encircled her, a
circle of protection from the rest of the world.

Nicole reached up and ran her fingers
through his curly dark hair and smiled.

Red gazed lovingly into her eyes and she
into his.

“Do you know that I’m the luckiest man
alive?
 
I’m even the luckiest man
who ever lived.
 
Even if I die
tomorrow, I’ll have lived a full life because I met you—the woman of my
dreams, my soul mate.”

“I feel the same way,” Nicole said.
 
Her heart was pounding.

“I want to be inside of you all night,”
he said, his eyes searching hers, as if he wanted to possess her, to get even
closer than humanly possible.

“That would be amazing.
 
I’m so ready for you, Red.”

“I want to feel how ready you are,” he
rasped.
 
And then his hand was
working her entrance, opening her, his fingers sliding in.
 

“Oh, God,” she whispered, because she was
already about to come.
 

“Nicole, I want you to be mine and now
you are mine.
 
We said our vows and
now we’re going to be together always.”
 

“Always, you promise?” she said.

“Yes.”
 
He slid himself into her, the hardness
and fullness of him surprising her all over again—as if for the first
time.

“Yes,” she said to him.

His breathing came in short gasps as he
found the rhythm of her body, the movement her hips wanted to make against
him.
 
They began working against
each other’s bodies in the darkness of the bungalow, in the heat of that
tropical night.

Their bodies wrapped around one another,
so close that nothing could come between them, their skin sticky and tacky with
sweat and lust and their mouths joined by kisses.

That night, Red went deeper than she ever
imagined possible.

And he went for a long time inside her,
seeming to bask in the glory of possessing her body and her openness to
him.
 

She came again and again, and eventually
she lost track of how many climaxes, how many minutes they spent together.

Eventually she couldn’t tell where she
ended and he began, but she could feel him giving her endless bursts of
pleasure as he slid in and out, in and out, always finding a way to take her
higher than the moment before.

And when he finally finished, she felt it
go deep inside and she wrapped her legs tightly around him, locking her ankles
and squeezing him deeper still.

“Oh, Nicole,” he whispered.
 
“Nicole, my love, my love.
 
I finally found you.”

***

Had it all been just a dream?

Nicole couldn’t believe how the time had
flown since coming back from Belize.
 
It turned out that there was a price to pay for turning off cell phones
for days and days on end.
 

And both of them were paying a high price
indeed.

As soon as they got home, Red was back at
the agency, working fifteen and even some eighteen-hour days.
 

As it turned out, Erikson Bikes had loved
the pitch and given Red’s company a huge amount of work.
 
They wanted him to help them roll out an
entire new line of bikes and it meant print ads and TV ads and web
advertising.
 

After a week of barely seeing her new
husband, Nicole had come back to work as his executive assistant, and she’d
been right by his side for many of those eighteen-hour days.
 
It wasn’t easy, but it was exciting.
 
They were, after all, building something
together.

The days blended together and then became
weeks.
 
She hardly had time to
return Danielle’s calls, let alone see her for lunch.
 
Nicole didn’t see anyone, except for her
co-workers and Red.

Eventually, she knew, things would slow
down.
 
Something would have to
give.
 
And finally it did.

On a day like any other, everything
changed yet again.

It was perhaps six or seven weeks after
their wedding that Nicole got a very strange email.

It came in at just after seven in the
morning, when she’d barely even managed to open her eyes.
 
She was in the office, of course,
because Red was coming in so early and he demanded it of everyone else.
 
Besides, she was his assistant and his
wife.

Still, at the moment in question, she was
cursing the day he’d started this company.

Sipping her coffee and wishing the
caffeine would hurry up and kick in, Nicole saw an email appear in her inbox
with a familiar name attached.

Opening the email, Nicole found that her
heart was now racing and she had an uneasy feeling in her stomach.

Dear
Nicole,

I
know you are probably surprised (and likely not in a pleasant way) to hear from
me in this fashion.
 
Not a day has
gone by since my visit that I haven’t thought about my poor treatment of you.
 

And
of course, I’m not proud of the way I treated my son, either.

The
truth is that I was scared.
 
I was
scared because for the first time in Red’s life, he’d found a woman that he
cared about more than me.
 
I know
that sounds silly and perhaps even sick.
 

But
it’s the God’s honest truth and I feel I owe it to you to be honest.

I
miss having my son in my life, Nicole.
 
And I miss getting to know the daughter that I could have had, if I’d
only been able to see past my own selfishness and insecurity.

I
hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me and perhaps allow for the
possibility of me returning, in some small way, to play a part in your new
family.

Hopefully
this email finds you well.
 
I am so
happy to know that the two of you are married and starting your lives together.

I
will wait to hear from you.

Love,

Erica

Nicole closed the email and turned away
from the computer, suddenly aware that her stomach was churning and bubbling in
a most unpleasant way.
 

“Oh, God,” she muttered, before leaning
over and throwing up into her wastebasket beside her desk.

She quickly grabbed a tissue and wiped
her mouth, crumpled it, and threw it in the basket.

Was it possible that reading that email
from Red’s mother could have so upset her?

Nicole didn’t think so.
 
In fact, as she considered it further,
she realized that it had been too long since her last period.
 
And this upset stomach was incredibly
similar to what she’d experienced the last time…

She shook her head.
 
No, she couldn’t allow herself to get
her hopes up again.

But
what if?

Nicole thought back to the wedding.
 
It had been just about seven weeks now,
and so it made sense from that perspective as well.

Heart pounding again—but this time
for a different reason—she got up and ran from the office.

She went down the stairs two at a time,
jogged about a block and a half to the nearest CVS, and bought a pregnancy
test.

Even doing it, Nicole thought it was
impossible.
 
It was a coincidence,
it had to be.

A few minutes later, she was in a stall
in the office ladies room, peeing onto a stick and then sitting there, watching
to see what came up.
 

Her forehead and armpits were sweaty from
running down the street and back, and she was basically a mess at this
point.
 
But Nicole didn’t care about
any of that—all she wanted to know was the answer to this one question.

Minutes later still, she was walking into
Red’s office and closing the door behind her.

Red looked up from his computer,
distracted.
 
“Hey, what’s going on?”

Nicole was holding the pregnancy test in
her hand, and she was shaking.
 
“I
threw up this morning,” she said.

“You—what?”
 
His eyes suddenly took in what she was
holding.
 
Red stood up and pointed
at the test.
 
“Is that what I think
it is?”

Nicole nodded slowly.
 
“Red, I can’t believe it.
 
I just can’t believe this happened.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Look for yourself.”

He came around the desk and took the
pregnancy test out of her hand, and looked at it, his mouth forming a smile,
his eyes lighting up.
 
“Oh my
God.
 
Nicole!”

“We’re pregnant,” she cried.

And then Red hugged her so tightly, and
both of them were holding each other so tight, and laughing.
 
There were some tears too, but they were
tears of joy and relief.

“We’re going to have a baby,” she said,
unable to believe the words were coming from her own mouth.
 
“It’s happening.”

And Red squeezed her even tighter, and
she knew that this was how it was supposed to be.
 
But still, a tiny part of her wondered
if she would be hurt again—if somehow, something would steal this
happiness from her…

For His
Forever (For His Pleasure,
Book 6
)