Billionaires in Paris: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (2 page)

“Ian,” she says coolly, the very incarnate of the ice princess the papers love to say she is. I’m swooning, like the biggest sap in the universe. “And… Mr. Monroe.”

They exchange an even icier look. I knew it. They do not like each other. Why would they, when…

Monroe holds out his hand, and to my surprise, Kathryn gently takes it with a glittering smile. “Please. It’s always Damon for you, Kathryn.”

I am not the only man in this room who notices the way she looks away and sputters through another smile. What? No. No way. Monroe is not flirting with my woman in front of me. I know he isn’t. He’s a cocky, arrogant bastard, but he’s not stupid, right?

Furthermore, why is my sweet Katie giving this fucker the time of day?

Tension mounts in the room, although I think Kathryn is the only one not feeling it. She draws her hand back and turns to me again. Her eyes linger on an empty chair next to me. I pull it out, eager to have her near me and
not
him.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Or early. I can’t remember if I was supposed to join you.”

“I think you’re early.”

Monroe chooses now to interrupt, even though his assistants are packing up their things and conferring about the rest of their boss’s schedule for the day. “Is that Martine Collette?” He gestures to Kathryn’s dress. “My, you are on the forefront of fashion, Kathryn. You better wear that to my party next weekend. There are going to be many fashion blogger vultures hanging outside the fence. They’d love the show, I’m sure.”

“Perhaps I will.” Wait, we’re going to his party? We were invited, but Kathryn and I rarely go to parties unless it’s pertinent to business or someone we know really well. Monroe is neither at the moment. Fuuuuck, she’s still flirting! What has gotten into her? “Yes, this is Martine Collette. I was at her boutique before coming here. Do you like it?” She’s asking both Monroe and me.

“You know I love blue,” I say.

Monroe goes on some obnoxious diatribe about fabric, cuts, and Fashion Week. Apparently he goes to those. Kathryn is so flattered that he has noticed these details on a simple blue dress that she’s blushing, and she hasn’t even had a drink of wine. I’m pouring her more than a glass. Not that I think she needs it. If anything, I probably need to get her a cool ice pack to quell these flames.

Hey! Look at me! Pay attention to
me!

I’ve seen Kathryn flirt with other men before. Sometimes it’s to stroke their egos and get her way, and other times she’s just flirting. It usually doesn’t bother me. For some reason this is riling me up, and not in the sexy way.

Okay, a little in the sexy way. My alpha tendencies, which I am usually very good at keeping quiet, are ready to rage. Kathryn desperately needs to be thrown on this table and shown who her damned boyfriend is.

If she’s not calling me Master by the end of tonight…

My hand wraps around her leg beneath her hem. She barely notices.

“Martine Collette is going to explode this next year, mark my words.” Monroe is up, pulling his coat on and shaking more of that cologne in our direction. Gee, sure would be nice if Kathryn would stop grinning at him like a love-sick idiot. My hand goes from her leg to the small of her back, and
then
around her torso. Mine. Mine mine
mine.
I didn’t spend months chasing after her, training her in the world of submission, and convincing her that it was okay for us to be in love for Damon Monroe to come waving his cock around like a rival baboon.

Dear Paris: you’re a bit
too
open-minded for me. Chill on the
ménage a tois
vibes. With other guys, anyway.

“I must be going.” Finally! Monroe nods to us before turning around. “Perhaps I will see you two around The Dark Hour.” His deadly wink slaps me across the face and stabs Kathryn right in the heart and loins. I quit.

Once we’re alone, Kathryn slaps her hands against her legs and flashes me the goofiest grin.

“You like my dress? It’s couture.”

Okay, first of all, we have things to talk about here. Like how you’re hoisting your breasts in some other man’s face… right in front of me! “That’s couture?” I know how to pick my battles. “Looks like a regular dress to me.”

“I didn’t want to buy something
too
ostentatious, but I had to buy something after going through half their racks and sobbing over some of the best craftsmanship you’ve ever seen. Isn’t it crazy that he knew who Martine Collette is? The only reason I know her is because I got to go to that private show two weeks ago.”

Uh huh. That’s nice. “You sure were sweet with Monroe.” A waiter comes in to clear the man’s dishes, but Kathryn stops him and takes the plate for herself. “Are you serious?” She grabs my dirty fork instead of his, at least. “You’re going to eat his scraps?”

“What? Let this food go to waste?” All Kathryn orders is an iced tea. The waiter leaves the room. “Wow. His cologne is all over this plate.” She goes from slightly disgusted to giggling again in two seconds.

“Something you want to share over here?”

“What?”

“What do you mean
what?
” My hand clenches her shoulder as she takes the first bite of Monroe’s leftovers. I know. I’m acting like a possessive caveman dickwad who found his most precious treasure being dragged by the hair to another cave. Monroe is also the kind of shit to start painting pornographic pictures of their encounter on his cave walls, not only for me to suffer through, but for our descendants to rediscover thousands of years later. Facebook trending headline: “Caveman Drawing Depicts Prehistoric Cuckold.”

Kathryn talks with rejected French food in her mouth. “Please don’t act like that. It’s unbecoming.”

“You hang out with my mother too much.”

She chuckles, stabbing more food with my dirty fork. “What’s crawled up your ass? Did he reject your deal and then start talking about Princeton?”

“All right, enough with being coy. I thought Monroe would be a big nemesis of yours. Didn’t his family tear down those low-income housing blocks to gentrify the neighborhood with expensive condos?” I know how to push her buttons, okay? Remind her of the poor and helpless, while she inhales French food in her brand new couture dress. I can admit she’s a hypocrite.

“You need to relax.”

She won’t look me in the eye.

She won’t look me in the eye.

“You slept with him!”

My fork clatters on Monroe’s plate. Kathryn chokes on a piece of fish as the waiter returns with her iced tea. He offers to help her, but she brushes him away and sucks enough tea through a straw to drown that damned fish.

The fabric of her dress crinkles beneath my fingers. “It all makes sense now,” I grunt. “You were doe-eyed the moment you walked in here and saw him. When did it happen? How soon before we started dating?”

“You’re acting like a pig,” she reprimands me. Her chair scoots farther away, and I’m forced to let go of her.

“So you’re not denying it?”

“Why would I deny it?”

My face must be absolutely priceless, because she’s dithering between laughing and hastily explaining herself.

“Yes, Ian, I slept with him.
Before
we started dating. A few months, at least. We had a one-night stand after bumping into each other at The Dark Hour. It’s not a big deal. Get over it.”

“You must’ve bumped into him so hard you fell on his dick…” My mumbles are otherworldly. “Last I checked, he’s not your type.”

“You’re jealous because he’s a Dom.”

This is France, so I imagine a guillotine sliding down from the ceiling and attempting to decapitate me. It misses and grazes my dick instead.

Kathryn has touched on something beyond my comprehension. See, when we started going out, she was a legendary, ball-busting Domme who ate subs alive and regurgitated their souls. Okay, so she’s still a Domme, even if she doesn’t go out as such that often. Turns out she’s a natural switch, even if she had a lot of apprehension associated with it. Those first few months of our relationship was exploring how far she wanted to go. Now she’s regularly tied up in bed begging her Master to take his sexual aggression out on her. (That’s me, by the way.)

It took a long,
long
time and a shitton of patience on my part to help her reach the point where she could confidently ask for what she wants with me. She’s made it clear that she would never be comfortable doing it with another man. While she’s told me that she’s slept with other Doms before me, there’s no way it was kinky.
No way.

I’m aghast because Damon Monroe is 24/7 kink with his sex life. This is a guy who will show up at the opera with his latest pet wearing nothing but a negligee and sporting a crystal collar around her throat – and a leash attached to his hand. So not only have I believed that Kathryn would greatly dislike this guy for
many
reasons, but the thought of them… having sex…

I’m not just jealous. I’m really, really confused.

“Excuse me for thinking I know you so well that a fuckfest between you and that bastard is beyond my comprehension.”

Kathryn dabs her mouth with my napkin but does not look at me. “I was having an exceptionally pissy night full of blustering hormones and he offered to buy me a drink. I went from thinking that I wanted to make a guy call me Mistress to full-blown get my cunt pounded until I couldn’t walk for a week. Guess who offered that to me?”

“Thank you
so
much for those images.” I need a lobotomy. Instead of me screwing my girlfriend on this table, I’m seeing Monroe shove aside his submissive assistants and tossing a moaning Kathryn Alison this way and that as he splits her in two. Which is my job.

No, no, no, I am
not
seeing that ball-busting Domme grin on her face. “He was fantastic, by the way.” She nips more food, eyes never breaking contact from mine. “Thought I had died and been blasted through time to the Garden of Eden. Didn’t stay the night though, don’t worry.”

Don’t. Worry. She. Says.

“Oh my God, you’re so pissed.”

“I’m not pissed,” I say through gritted teeth. “Surprised, that’s all, sweetie.”

Why the fuck is she laughing?

“You’re ridiculous. Do you need me to say that we have way more fulfilling sex?”

‘No.” What I
need
her to say is that I have the biggest dick in the universe and nobody has fucked her like I have. That I am the best lover she has taken to bed, and even if I died today, there would never be another man who could satisfy her like I can. That’s what I
need.
Not exactly something I can ask for, now is it? “What was he talking about… seeing us at The Dark Hour…”

“Oh, Lord.” Kathryn shoves aside the plate and buries her face in her hand. “He owns half of it! Of course he wants to see us there. That means money in his pocket.”

“We’re never going there again.”

“For fuck’s sake, Ian, you’re such a guy sometimes.”

I don’t deny it.

“Forget about him.” She leans against me, her hand snaking its French-tipped way toward my insulted friend. I take out my phone and pretend to be far more interested in it than her. Two can play this game. “I came to Paris with
you.
I want to spend these next few days doing absolutely nothing but hanging out in this beautiful city and making love to you. I hadn’t even thought of that guy in months.”

“Just months, huh?”

“I can’t tell if you’re this jealous or being a dick.”

“You underestimate my ability to be both.”

“Typical. You find out that some other alpha male got to me before you and now act like a petulant teenager. Now I know what I missed out on in school.”

Have I mentioned yet that we went to Winchester together? That we had crushes on one another that culminated in a botched attempt at sex, ending with me all over her before I could even see her pussy? It was years before we tried again, and by then we had drastically changed anyway. Imagine that. People are different between 17 and 29.

Kathryn has drastically changed in the past year alone. She’s turning thirty next year, and by then she might be yet another person I don’t know. Me? I’m ignoring the fact I have turned thirty already.

“You didn’t think of him, but you remembered him the moment you saw him.”

Still smirking as if she’s got some big secret to share, Kathryn leans in and grazes her teeth against my earlobe. So much for being insulted – now my cock is acting like we’re getting some in the French restaurant. I pull a napkin over my lap even though we’re the only ones in here. “To be fair,” she hisses in my ear, “I instantly compared him to you. You know who I would rather be with?”

“His name better start with
I.
”

Her fingers pry away the napkin and push against my straining member. I’m not flustered. Never. “Of course it does. Now are we going to enjoy the rest of our day, or do I have to give you a blowjob beneath the table first?”

I’m not saying she has to give me a blowjob, but I’m not saying she
doesn’t
either. Depends on if she’s asking me or my way too-easy-to-forgive companion between my legs. I’m the mouth, but he’s the one in control around here.