Melody Anne's Billionaire Universe: Her Billionaire's Bargain (Kindle Worlds Novella) (4 page)

“Since we know how staid my life is. Tell me. When you’re not baking creative cupcakes what are you doing?” He wanted to steer away from business talk.

It was her turn to become silent. Setting her tray on the grass on her other side she stared down at her hands playing with the sequin pattern along her dress. “I spend a lot of my free time at parks, zoos and reading children’s books out loud.”

“Ah, I should have figured you would be one of those big sister volunteer types.”

The gaze in her eyes was shadowed and distant when she glanced at him. He wondered at the reason behind the look. Most people enjoyed volunteer work, it was the reason they did it. He wondered if there was something else that drove her to reach out to those children, but he allowed her to keep her secret.

“You’re from a large family, do you want kids of your own?”

Her line of questioning shocked him for a moment. He couldn’t recall the last time someone asked him about his desire to have a family. Most of the women in his life enjoyed the lavish lifestyle they were a part of on his arm and were too into themselves and the glitz and glamour to think about children and settling down.

“I don’t put much thought into it. But, I guess I do. Maybe two or three like my parents raised. Are you from a large family?”

“No.” she picked up the wine bottle and took another drink. “It was just my mother and I from the time I was around one year old when my father died in a train derailment accident, until she remarried several years later.”

“You two are probably very close.”

A dry laugh came out. “You would think. However, when I was fifteen she married a man that had two small children and she liked the complete family package a little better. I was closer to my aunt, my father’s older sister, Joy. She was the one that owned the shop I now have. I spent every summer with her.”

He was beginning to understand this woman a lot better the more time he spent with her. Kourtney’s decision not to sign the contract was very personal to her. Not that the homes and other business owners had given up wasn’t just as important, but to Kourtney he could see that her taking care of this business had a deep significance for her. “It’s a legacy.”

Glancing at him, as if she forgot for a moment he was there, she frowned. “What is?”

“The cupcake store. Your aunt provided some kind of solace for you there and apparently willed it to you when she passed and now you want to keep it just how she left it to you.”

“Still standing with all four walls would be great.” She joked. “Something I can pass on.”

He smiled. “Maybe we can figure something out.”

Her eyes lit up. “Do you mean that?”

Drawn in by the brilliance of joy in her gaze, he swallowed, attempting to moisten his mouth. There was something about this woman. She was infectious to his soul in a way that kept him feeling off kilter. Something that made him feel as if the ground under his feet wasn’t completely steady.

It was easy for him to chalk it up to her beauty. She was gorgeous, lithe and had large eyes and lips that begged to be kissed. However, it was more than that and even more than her intelligence. That mystery was the single thing that had him inviting her to dinner, taking her for a quiet dessert in the gardens and leaning toward those luscious lips of hers.

Even as a bullhorn went off in his head, warning him not to give into his baser desires he didn’t listen. As a businessman, he learned to go by his gut when an opportunity presented itself. He was doing just that.

When his lips met hers a part of him expected her to pull away. Slap him for being forward. He rejoiced as her lips softened and yielded under his. Deepening the kiss he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and drew her closer. When he glided his tongue into her mouth and got his first taste of her, sweet and warm, his body went up in flames. A sense of
deja
vu
rocked his core. As if he’d held her before, tasted her before responded to her with the same level of madness. That’s exactly what it was.

If he’d met Kourtney before now, he’d have remembered. In his past he didn’t have long term girlfriends, but he’d had too many short term ones to count. However, it was something he had always been strategic about. Men that hopped into bed with strange women on a constant bases could find themselves in trouble in multiple ways. Zachary Powers was more meticulous than that. He handled his bedroom liaisons the way he dealt in the boardroom, designed tactics. Since he was twenty in college, every one he slept with provided an advantage to him in some way.

However, he’d been the same for them.

Then Kourtney’s tongue swept the top of his and groaned. Leaning her back, he continued to kiss her. He cradled her head with one hand and her hip with the other. His mouth feasted on hers, drawing more of her passion into the gall storm that was swirling around him.

He heard her moan and felt one of her hands fist in his hair while the other gripped his back. Knowing that she was as carried away into the blazing inferno as he was just ignited his lust greater.

This is insane.
The small corner of his brain still trying to function argued.
This is no way to make a deal, negotiate a contract.

Dragging a hand up passed her narrow waist, he rested it a moment beneath the lush curve of her breast. Her heart thump, thumped hard under his hand. Its frantic beat matched the pace of his own.

Drawing back, he whispered her name over her lips and felt their moist fullness below his. He stared at her, seeing her lids lowered and her mouth swollen from his kisses. Enticing. Cupping her breast, he massaged it and discovered the stiff peak.

He cursed the dress that didn’t allow him to feel the softness of her skin compared to the contrast of the puckered edge of her nipple.

She sighed and arched into his palm.

Dipping lower, he kissed her neck and licked along the curve that led to her shoulder. The taste of her skin had him wanting more. He returned to her mouth as he slipped a knee between her thighs. He pressed higher until the fierce heat of her sex was spreading over the top of his thigh. Flexing and shifting, he increased the pressure on that molten spot.

A shiver raced through her body and she quaked beneath him, grinding into him.

Shit, she was so responsive it elevated his desire for her, turning it into a need he was finding hard to refuse.

The elegant material of her dress was a flimsy barrier to what he wanted at the moment. To feel the warm silk of her skin. He dragged the layers up by fistfuls toward her hips until his fingers could graze the top of her knee.

Breaking the kiss, she gulped in a loud breath. “Zac…wait.”

Staring down at her, he didn’t move his hand any higher, but continued the circles along the center thigh.  “Kourtney.” Her name sounded like music to his own ears. “Tell me you don’t want this.”

She licked her lips.

The sight of the tip of her pink tongue in the dim light, made his hard shaft throb. His mind conjured up images of things he’d like to see her do with it.

“What are we doing here? This.” She waved a hand between them.

His hand went higher toward the apex of her thighs until he was stroking just along the lacy edge of her panties. “Doing what feels right.”

Kourtney whimpered and shifted against him as he teased the sensitive skin at the bend of hip to her sex. “I can’t think…when you touch me.”

“You do something to me, too, baby.” That was the truth. Being around this woman was like no other. The madness to kiss her, touch her, fuck her made him a stranger to himself.

Below the delicate material of her panties he found her wet, swollen and supple. “Damn,” the curse came out on a groan as he captured her mouth in a fierce kiss.

When her hands slipped over his chest and caressed him through his shirt he rejoiced at her touch. He circled her clit and knew she was as drawn as he was by the waves of passion swelling high and crashing down on them.

Her thighs parted wider, giving him freedom to move. Wanting her an equal participant to what was happening between them, he rolled to his back and brought her with him. She was sprawled over him, her legs outside of his. In her wanton position, he had more access to her wet sex. Locating her opening, he pressed two fingers there and glided them up along her tight walls as far as he could reach.

She pulled her lips away and cried out.

Fuck she was tight as she clenched and pulsed around him. He lowered his other hand to her ass, holding her in place as he drew out and thrust back in.

A beautiful sight. He watched her lips part and her head tip back as she rolled her hips on his hand. It wasn’t only his hand that could feel the motion of her pelvis, but his shaft. She was undulating her sweet ass in his hand, proverbially fucking herself with his fingers. He was loving every rocking movement. He gripped her cheeks tight, refusing to miss a single flex of her firm muscles.

“Come for me, baby. I want to see it, feel it, hear it…” Taste it. His mouth salivated as he thought about how the nectar of her sex would coat his tongue. He moved his hand more aggressive, pumping his fingers hard and deeper into her purposely pushing her toward the edge.

She was close. Evidence of her pending orgasm was in the rough pants, the biting of her nails into his shoulders and the choppy thrusts of her hips.

He ventured with his thumb beneath her panties and pressed along her clit with firm circles as he curved his fingers forward inside of her.

The scream she released as her body stilled then shook on top of his reduced him down to a simple-mind Neanderthal man. All he wanted to do was claim her. Roll her under him and bury his hardness into her until she submitted to the demands of his lust in every way.

Limp, she collapsed over him as one quiver after another racked her slim form as her climax ebbed away.

His hand, still gloved between her legs was doing more petting the stroking. Removing his hand from her backside, he brought it up and brushed the loose strands of hair from her face. “I want you, Kourtney.”

Shifting, she looked down at him. Her hazel eyes looked more green than brown in the shadows. “Haven’t we gone far enough? This situation is becoming complicated.”

“Never. I won’t let that happen.” He drew along the bridge of her nose. “I’m too old to be rutting in the grass like a teenager.” He chuckled. “But, I can’t see this night ending without me inside you. Come home with me.”

Her lids stretched with his words. He could tell his boldness had shocked her. But he had never been one to play coy. The heat of her sex, still blazed even through her damp panties, where his hand now rested outside of.

Her body tensed and something flashed in her eyes but went away just as quick. His gut tightened as he could feel her struggle, palpable between them, as he wondered if she would tell him no and ask him to take her home.

“Just tonight, Zac. No strings. You won’t sleep a yes out of me.”

Sitting up with her still in his lap, she became a pile of silky dress and beguiling woman in his arms. “Who said anything about sleeping?”

~YH~

What am I doing?
Those words kept replaying in her mind as she sat listening to the low playing jazz music on the car radio. Even as the question tried to get her to think rationally and not travel this road with the man, the stroking of his hand on her thigh pushed it away.

She was no stranger to Zachary Powers’ magnetic appeal. Or rather her attraction to it. This wasn’t the first time she’d gotten swept in by her own mind-boggling desire for the businessman. She should be more immune. It had been years since the last time. But having him walk into her bakery like a ghost from her past brought too many dormant feelings and emotions she had for him to the surface. Maybe that was the problem, she’d never dealt with them, but instead she had stuffed them down and convinced herself they had gone away. Had been a fluke of a moment.

The cloud of confusion as to why she was even in the car with Zac headed to his house in the first place was pressing in on her. This was dangerous ground for her. The fact he didn’t appear to even remember her, them, should have been enough to make her act more sensibly this time.

When his hand moved from her knee to the center of her thigh and stroked her there as he played the silk fabric of her dress against her, she was bulldozed again by her lust.

One night. One more night. She convinced herself. Too many nights, she’d ached for his touch. Believing that she’d imagined the energy between them. This time when it was over, she’d walk away. This time she was blindsided but going into it with her eyes wide open. More importantly, no matter what happened tonight she wasn’t giving up her bakery.

“A penny for your thoughts.” His rich tenor seduced her like aged bourbon, captivating and heady.

“I’d rather worry about the nickel.” They were at a stop light and she used the opportunity to lean in and kiss him.

He met her over the console and deepened the kiss. Once again they were carried away in the moment until several car horns went off behind them.

Drawing back, he winked at her then drove through the light. “If I keep kissing and touching you we’re going to get arrested.”

She smiled at him. It did something to her to know that he was just as blown over by the impact of what was between them.

On the rest of the drive they remained silent. Zac continued to caress her thigh through her skirt but they listened to the music comfortably.

When he pulled into the gates of a house she could only describe as a brick mansion the enormity of the kind of man she was with hit her. She wasn’t insecure or a shamed of being a small business owner or someone raised in a low income environment, but she couldn’t help but question what she was doing with such a man.

“Hey, you still with me?” He cupped her chin and guided her gaze in his direction.

“Um…sure.” Feeling nervous, she licked her lips.

“You still want to do this?” His thumb brushed along her bottom lip, twice, as his shadowed gaze held hers. “As I said before. I won’t force you, but I want you more than anyone I’ve wanted before.”

Hearing the rich, rough timbre of his voice and seeing the need reflected in his eyes, it pushed her over the edge. “I want this.”

His exhale was hard and muffled as it filled her mouth on the hard kiss her gave her. When they were able to drag their lips apart he didn’t waste time in getting them out of the car.

“Let’s go.” He pushed a button on his visor that closed the gates at the end of the drive. Once he was out of the car, he walked over to her door and opened it.

She took the hand he held out, offering her assistance from the vehicle. As they walked up the path to his front door, she liked the way he linked his fingers through her own. It made her feel protected, cared for and brought an intimacy to the evening she didn’t expect.

“Welcome to my home.” He released her hand as he allowed her to step along the cream-colored marble floor.

The place took her breath away. The entrance and formal living room to the right reminded her of a museum with all of its large paintings on the wall and stiff back furnishing but the family room on the left of the foyer was carpeted with plush dark furniture and a fireplace. It practically invited a person to take their shoes off and step into it.

Beyond it, she could see an archway that led into a dining room.

“Would you like a tour?” He whispered in her ear as heat and strength surrounded her as he stepped behind her. Just his lips touched her ear, but his presence still seemed to envelop her.

She leaned back into him. As wonderful as it would have been to let him stroll her through the luxury, taking in the opulence of one room after the other, there was only thing she wanted right now. One reason she’d come there. “No. I want you to finish what you started in the gardens.”