Sleeping With My Boss: A Standalone Novel (An Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story) (A Dirty Office Romance) (25 page)

“Hey,” I said, keeping things as simple as I could.

“Hi. Is everything okay? You sounded like it was an emergency
on the phone.”

“Well, actually, everything is fantastic. I’m sorry if
you were worried. You didn’t really give me a chance to explain on the phone.
But I appreciate that you hurried over.”

“Of course. But, if everything’s okay, what was the
big need for me to come over right away?” he asked.

“I’m glad you asked. I have something you need to see.
Something that is going to change everything.” I said, smiling what I knew
likely appeared to be a little on the unusual side.

“Ooooookay. Let’s see it, then.”

I stepped over to my laptop and swiveled it around so
that Asher had a full view of the screen. And then I pressed play and watched
his expression as he watched the video. At first, annoyance spread over his
face. Clearly the sight of me flirting with Savage irritated him, which made me
smile to myself. He even cut his eyes at me once as if he was questioning why I
was showing him the video in the first place.

But when Brendan started spilling his guts, Asher’s
smile lit up like a Christmas tree. A light of triumph burned brightly in his
eyes.

“Yes,” he whispered, almost to himself. Without
warning, he just began laughing loudly, and then he swept me off my feet and
twirled me around.

“We've got him! We've totally got him!” he shouted,
mad with joy. “All thanks to you! All thanks to you, you brilliant, beautiful
woman!”

 
He ended the
spinning and placed me back on the floor, still laughing with
elation. The moment my feet were steady, his hands
were cupped on each side of my face and he kissed my forehead with a joyful,
solid pressing of his lips. All at once, my head was swimming and heat was
rushing through my body. That’s when our eyes locked.

“I didn't do it for the company,” I suddenly said.

“What?” he asked, confusion in his tome.

“I did it for
you
.”

I stared into his
eyes,
and saw a depth of emotion looking back at me I’d never before seen in any
other person's eyes—even Jacob's in the days when we'd been in love. It was an
intense, soul-piercing gaze.

Asher never said a word. I peered into his dark,
mysterious eyes as his hands gently slid around the small of my back. He drew
me to him with no resistance from me, tilting my head to accept the eager brush
of his lips against mine.

When the kiss was finished, he released me and I
thought that was the end of it. Honestly, it had been spontaneous, romantic and—I
thought—almost sweet enough to give me the closure I needed to put my personal
feelings away and step back into the realm of keeping things strictly business.
I thought wrong.

My heart pounded as his strong, tender fingertips
traced over my forearms and I shivered with delight. I’d never felt a sensation
so vivid or appealing. I trembled under his soft touch. He slid the same
fingertips over, beneath my shoulder and around until he cupped a breast in
each hand, leaving his hands there long enough for the transfer of heat to
exchange from his fiery palm to my already fevered flesh.

Every inch of my body ached to have him take me right
there. Yet, there was something tantalizing about being in the moment, focusing
on the sensation of his touch. The time for speaking was over.

Asher slid his hands from my breasts, running them
down along my sides to gently caress the soft swell of my hips before slipping
around to gently cup my trembling rump. As with my breasts, he was in neither
intent nor apparently interested in kneading or squeezing, pinching or poking,
but only warmly caressing, heightening the sensation all the more.

The softer his caresses and the gentler his stroking
fingers, the more I trembled, ached beneath his touch. He needed only to touch
me and I was putty in his hands. Despite the temperature-controlled room, I
began to swelter from desire. He waited patiently until my entire body was
aglow with perspiration before gently easing his right hand away from my ass,
across my hipbone, and down to gently run the same fingertips through the field
of dampness he had created.

That precise touch brought a gasp to my lips and a
pulse to my loins. The moment the gasp escaped my mouth, his lips covered mine
feverishly. In an instant, his hands were all over me, and my clothes were in a
pile on the floor. I gripped his shirt with both hands and simply ripped with
all my strength. I had to have him. I had to have all of him. Every memory of
our times together came flooding back.

I slid a hand down his sculpted torso, tracing my
fingers over the smooth skin of his rippling muscles, guiding my hand further
down until I felt it, waiting there for me, radiant with heat, throbbing, and
rock hard. I made quick work of removing his belt and undoing the button that
was keeping me from what I wanted at the moment.

I took a few steps back until my calves met with the
plush sofa behind me. I pulled him onto me, guided him inside, and gasped as I
felt him fill me. He eased the length of his steely hardness into me. I gripped
his chiseled ass and began to force him to move—faster, deeper, and harder,
gasping louder with every pulse of pleasure that each thrust sent pulsing
through my body.

There was no time for
drawn-out
lovemaking sessions; this was
catharsis
,
this was forgiveness, this was the release of bottled-up emotions,
of
raw desire held barely at bay over too many
weeks.

And now, now it was time to finally release all of
that.

Every last drop of it.

***

I stretched and rolled over. For the fourth day in a
row, I woke up next to Asher. It was hard not to marvel at the man lying next
to me, even at such an early hour of the morning.
As we had every night of the vacation, we'd spent most of the previous
evening making love rather than sleeping, and now that we'd come to the end of
the trip and it was time to return to the real world, I wasn’t so sure I was
ready to go back.

Going back meant facing my fears. It
meant that I was going to have to trust that Asher wasn’t going to show me
special treatment at work. It meant I was going to have to let my guard down.

I caressed his cheek softly as he slept, and then
glanced at the clock. We’d barely been asleep three hours, but I woke up
thirsty. So, I quietly got up to head to the kitchen for a glass of water.
That’s when it hit me: a wave nausea. I hurried to the bathroom furthest from
the bedroom and threw up violently. I almost collapsed when I was done.

This had been the second morning of being sick. Yesterday,
we'd chalked it up to a combination of something I'd eaten the night before and
too much sun. But with it happening again, I started to do the math in my head.

My period was overdue—like nearly three weeks overdue.
I'd chalked it up to stress and being
overworked
because that had delayed things in the past. But I’d never been sick.

Now, however, I
was
having
my doubts.

There was only one way to find out. I crept back into
the room, grabbed some clothes, and got dressed in the living room. I called for
a driver to take me into town. If the last few days were any indication, I had
another three hours before Asher woke up.

Once in town, I went to a drugstore and picked up a
pregnancy test. Burning with anxiety and worry, I went to the first public restroom
I came across. I had to know, and I couldn't wait a moment longer than
necessary to get this done.

I waited in suspense to see what the test would
indicate, nearly holding my breath the whole time. When I saw it, I almost
passed out right there in the stall. Was it wrong? Could this thing have made a
mistake? It was rated as 98% accurate. Those were some pretty intense odds.
Still, there was that two percent chance that an error could have been made.

I searched
Google
for a suitable clinic in town. When I found one, I headed there immediately.
Luckily, there wasn't much of a wait, but thirty minutes still seemed like
hours. I did everything in my power to keep myself calm while I sat in the
small, white room waiting for the doctor to return with my results.

“Well, Miss Maxwell,” he said as he reentered the room
with a smile, “it seems congratulations are in order. You're going to be a
mother. If my calculations are right, according to the timeframe you supplied,
I’d say you’re around seven weeks along.”

I didn't know what to say or how to react. All I could
do was to simply nod as he went through the rest of his spiel. When he was
done, I wasn’t even sure what I had said in return to him. I simply thanked
him
quietly, took the paper he handed me and the
prescription for vitamins, and left. What else was there to do?

I walked a little further down the block and called
the driver to take me back to the resort. During the twenty-minute drive, I
tried to make sense of what I had just learned, tried to figure out what to do
next.

I was going to be a mom. And, Asher was the father.
There was no doubt about that. He was the only man I'd been with in over a
year.

That’s when our conversation on the plane ride started
swirling in my head. Asher didn’t want to be a father. He didn’t want children.
He’d said so himself. And knowing what I knew about his family, I wasn’t so
sure I wanted that influence on my child, either. Asher had always been on his
best behavior around me. With the one exception of the time Savage brought me
flowers, I couldn’t say I’d ever seen him in a situation to get angry. There
was no way to know he wouldn’t be like his father. After all, Asher had never
had a serious relationship. And in thirty years, that suddenly seemed a little
odd to me.

I got out my phone and went to google image search and
typed in Asher's father's name. I had to see what he looked like. Google
immediately brought up press photographs and
mugshots
of his arrest. I clicked on the first clear shot that came up and almost
dropped my phone. Asher was the spitting image of his father, so much so that
they could have been twins.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

It had all been nothing more than
a fairytale,
this whole thing between Asher and
I. Only, the thing was, there was no way that this fairytale could have a happy
ending. It was true to form in my life, just another Grimm Fairytale waiting to
happen.

“Driver,” I said softly, “please wait for me when we
get back. I'm just going to get my suitcases, and then could you please take me
straight to the airport?”

“Sure thing,” he said, glancing at me in the rearview
mirror. “Don't forget your plane ticket, miss.”

“I won't.”

And with that, I went online and bought a ticket home.

Three hours later, I was looking at Hawaii from a
window seat.

CHAPTER 34

Lilah

Nobody knew I was pregnant aside from Ed and Meghan, even
though I was eleven weeks along. It had been over a month since Hawaii and I'd
managed to conceal my growing bump by wearing the right clothes. And since I'd been
curvy anyway, it hadn't
been too
difficult to hide. Pencil skirts and flowy tops became my new best friends.
Still, I was aware that, eventually, it would reach a point that I would no
longer be able to conceal it. Before that day came, I had some big decisions to
make.

I'd already started searching for a new job–in a new
city.

And, I had a tentative offer on the table, all the way
across the continent. They were impressed with my desire to complete the
campaign I was working on and not leave my company in limbo, and so they'd
given me a month to think about it before negotiations regarding the position
would begin in earnest.

And, thinking about it was exactly what I'd been
doing. It would take me away from my beloved brother and my best friend Meg. But
also far from Asher, and I honestly believed that was what I needed.

Walking away from him after the amazing week spent in
Hawaii had been one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do in my life, but I
knew for the sake of my unborn child, I'd had to. Asher’s words played on a
loop in my head. He didn’t want children.

Then there were the images of his psychotic father's
mugshots that kept popping into my dreams…or nightmares, rather. It was just
too much of a risk to take. How could I be sure that he wouldn't treat me like
his father had treated his mistress who he had forced to get an abortion? I
already knew this child would become the center of my life, my world. I simply
wasn't prepared to take any risks that might put my child in harm's way.

So, with my heart ripping itself to shreds every time
I'd seen him, I had cut Asher out of my life romantically. I'd put on my facade
of cold indifference, and had played it cooler than I ever had before. I told
him that Hawaii had been nothing more than a vacation fling.

In the first few days after returning from Hawaii,
he’d pleaded with me to at least talk to him, but I'd remained resolute,
determined to not let him back in—even though my heart was breaking and my soul
was crying out for him.

I endured the pain in silence and forced myself to do
what had to be done.

He had finally seemed to have accepted how things
were. From time to time, I caught brief glimpses of that same longing, that
same desire I'd seen in his eyes when he made love to me in Hawaii, but mostly,
he kept things professional between
us
and communicated with me only when he had to.

I'd nailed campaign after campaign. When it came to
work, I was on fire. Asher had given me another raise, and word around the
office was that I'd get another promotion soon, too. My career had never been
better or more successful.

And yet it felt as if it didn't matter. In fact,
nothing felt as if it mattered much
any more
aside from the life growing inside me
. There were only the memories of
the times Asher and I had shared haunting me like restless ghosts.

As I sat at my desk, lost in a daze of memories, my
phone started buzzing in my pocket. I took it out to see Meghan’s happy smile
plastered on my phone.

“Hey, Meg,” I answer.

“
Hey,
Lilipop!
How's Friday afternoon going for my favorite mommy-to-be?”

“It's a bit
tiring,
to be honest. It's been a crazy busy week, and I'm looking forward to kicking
back and relaxing this weekend.”

“I hear ya. It's been a busy day at the office here,
too. Hey, how would you feel about dinner?”

“Really? You’re asking a pregnant woman if she wants
to eat?” I joked. “That sounds like a great idea.”

“Cool. How do you feel about sushi?”

“Ugh! Yes! You know me so well. I swear this kid is
going to love sushi. Meet you at our usual sushi spot at seven?”

“Perfect! See you at seven!”

“Sweet. Bye, Meg.”

***

I checked the time on my cellphone again. It was only
ten past seven, but it was very unusual for Meghan to be late for anything. I
considered calling
her,
but decided to
wait another five minutes, just in case. Traffic had, after all, been
particularly bad on the way here.

I tapped the screen on my phone and reached for my
water just as a familiar voice sounded behind me. A chill ran down my spine.

“Well, well, well… Lilah Maxwell. Fancy meeting you
here.”

I turned around to find Brendan Savage leering down at
me, a stunning woman hanging on his arm. Her eyes were glazed over; she looked
as if she was high on something. She probably had to be to put up with this
creep. He whispered something in her
ear,
and she sauntered away.

Without asking, he sat down in the empty seat across
from me at my table.

“What do you want?” I snapped. “I didn't say you could
sit there.”

“Aw, come on now, is that how you treat an old, dear
friend?”

“You aren't my friend, and you never were.”

“An old lover, then?”

I rolled my eyes. “Please. I never let you touch me
even once, and with good reason. Now, I'm waiting for an actual friend; go
away. I'll gladly call the manager if you don't.”

“Oh, is that a threat?” he smirked.

“Not at all,” I assured him. “I fully intend to follow
through.”

“You think you're so much better than me, don't you?
You and that prick boss of yours. Well, even though you two thought you got me,
like the little Nancy Drew you thought you were, look at me. I'm walking around
a free man with my reputation, intact despite your attempts to smear me in the
press.”

“I’d say that reputation is a matter of opinion. But
what you do have left is only because you bought off a journalist and got him to
write a spin piece. And let’s not forget, I know how much you had to pay Asher
in that out of court settlement. How does it feel to lose your billionaire
status? What are driving now, anyway? I heard you had to sell your precious
Bugatti to cover some of the expenses.”

He snarled, his facade of indifference broken.

“You're one stone-cold bitch, Lilah,” he hissed. “And
you will get what’s coming to you. Don't think you're going to get away with
what you did to me. You'd better sleep with one eye
open
.”

I stared at him with cold contempt in my eyes. “You're
pathetic, Brendan. Get up now and leave.”

“I'll get up when-”

I grabbed the sleeve of a passing waiter who happened
to be a tall, burly young man whose heavy arms were covered with biker-style
tattoos.

“Excuse me, but this man has just sat down at my table
uninvited, and he's harassing me and refusing to leave. Could you please call
the manager?”

The burly waiter glared aggressively at Brendan.

“Do we have a problem here…
sir?”
he growled.
“Is that true; are you harassing this woman?”

Rage was burning red across Brendan's face, but he
knew that he couldn’t afford to get into any more legal trouble. He stood, his
hands clenched in anger.

“No,” he hissed through tightly-drawn lips. “We don't
have a problem. I was just leaving.”

“See you around, Lilah,” he snarled.

I didn't bother to respond.

The waiter watched him go with a steely gaze, but his
expression softened as soon as Brendan had left. “I'm so
sorry,
miss,” he said. “Are you all right? I'll
bring you a free cocktail, on me, if you'd like.”

I smiled. “Aw, aren't you sweet! No, but, thanks,
dear, I'm fine. No alcohol for me anyway. Thank you for helping me out there.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I was a bouncer at a bar
before this. I left that job because I got so sick of dealing with asses like
that. I didn't think I'd have to deal with it here.”

“I'm sure it was an isolated incident,” I commented.
“Just a bit of bad
luck,
is all.”

The waiter nodded, smiled, and walked off just as
Meghan arrived. She had a strange expression on her face.

“Hey, there,” she said, glancing at the waiter. “Did I
miss something?”

“Hey, Megs, you're a bit late.”

“Yeah. Uh, you didn't see anyone you know here,
right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know… Someone from your office. Someone from
Sinclair.”

“Nope. I did run into someone–but he wasn't from
Sinclair. A certain sleazy ex-billionaire and I'd rather not think about him,
if ya don’t mind.”

“Hmm, all right.” She seemed almost disappointed,
although I wasn't sure why. “Never mind,” she said. “Let's eat some sushi.”