The Billionaire's Passion (3 page)

Finally it’s too much, and I’m spent. I pull my hand away from my clit and collapse on top of him, my chest heaving, trying not to make any noise. He holds me like that, his arms wrapped around my back, one hand stroking my hair, as I lie on top of him with him still hard and deep inside me, but neither of us moving.

Afterwards, when I’m lying by his side, it takes me awhile to go to sleep. I can hear by his breathing that he’s nodded off, but dreamland is a lot more elusive for me.

I rewind our conversation from earlier, thinking back to everything we said before.

I’ll get you to safety as soon as I can, and you can go back to your regular life.

You can forget about ditching me. We’re in this together now.

If I can figure out a way to get you out, I will.

Whatever.

There was no question that he really did want me out of danger.

But do I
want
out? That’s the question.

Oh, I want the danger to
stop
. That much is true. I’d had enough excitement over the previous 24 hours to last a couple of decades.

But given the chance, would I jump ship? If I knew I could be safe, would I leave him to fend for himself?

The answer seems to be ‘no,’ that I
wouldn’t
jump ship to save myself.

And that conclusion scares me, because it’s completely illogical.

Hello, class. Today’s pop quiz is this: hot guy gets into your pants. Great sex ensues. Then serial killer comes after hot guy, and by extension, YOU. Assuming you can extricate yourself safely, do you?

The answer should have been a no-brainer.

I’ve dumped guys for a lot of reasons. Bad breath, bad tempers, bad manners. The threshold for Dumpville is not excessively high.

By the way, not a single one of my exes ever had a serial killer on his trail.

Of course, none of them had been as hot as Grant, and the sex was nowhere
near
as incredible as this.

But you can’t have great sex if you’re dead.

Which raises the question: am I sticking with this guy out of some misplaced sense of loyalty, when I should be concerned about myself?

Or am I really falling for him?

Which one is worse, I can’t say.

After all, I’m a hired gun he picked up to help him get rid of a problem. (A very nasty, horrific problem, yes, but a problem nonetheless.) But he’s a billionaire with limitless choices. Once we get out of this –
if
we get out of this – I don’t see myself becoming Mrs. Grant Carlson. I just don’t. No engagement ring, no proposal on bended knee, no Happily Ever After. It’s a fairytale, and fairytales aren’t real. I stopped believing in them when I was five years old and found out that Disney movies were made out of drawings on computers.

So am I staying because I’m doggedly loyal, or because I’m falling in love?

Because the first option is stupid… and the second scares the hell out of me. Almost as much as serial killers.

Okay, not quite as much as serial killers.

…okay, not
nearly
as much.

But if you’d asked me a week ago what my number one fear was, it would have been falling in love with someone who would leave me.

And in this room, lying by his side in the dead of night, it’s just as scary as it was a week ago.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”

I come to with Grant gently shaking my arm. He’s already dressed and sitting on the side of the bed.

It’s still dark out. Technically I guess it could be morning, but not by much.

“…what the hell?” I yawn.

“We’ve got to get a move on. Come on, up and at ‘em.”

“…what time is it?” I mumble.

“Five AM.”

“What?! Couldn’t we have slept a
little
longer?”

“No, we need to get to where we’re going as soon as possible.”

“Where’s that?”

“I need to go see an old friend for some help.”

I start to picture ridiculous caricatures of an underworld criminal: some guy dressed in a black turtleneck, with a pencil mustache and the nickname ‘Slim’ or ‘Fast Charlie.’

“Is that a good idea?” I ask nervously.

“It’s the only way I can think of to go on the offensive.”

“Can you trust this guy?”

“I don’t know. But I know he’s our best shot.”

“Great,” I mumble as I stumble naked out of bed.

“Of course, we could always fool around a little bit before we leave,” he says as he pinches my ass.

I swat him away. “You get me up at 5AM, no fun time for you.”

“Awww…”

“What are we going to do about the sheets and everything?” I ask as I search for my panties in the gloom.

“What do you mean?”

“We just broke into a stranger’s house, ate their food – ”

“Their Chef Boyardee?” Grant asks wryly.

“ – drank their wine, and screwed on their bed.”

“Mmmm. I like that last part,” he murmurs as he touches my thigh.

“Cut that out. I’m serious – that would creep me the hell out.”

“Already taken care of.” He holds up a piece of paper I can’t read in the darkness. “I wrote, ‘Sorry about using your apartment. Hope this takes care of it.’ Then I’m leaving this.”

He fans out a bunch of hundreds.

I stop, dumbfounded. “How much is that?!”

“Two thousand bucks.”

“Huh…”

I calculate in my head just how much money it would take to make me feel better about two strangers breaking into my place and using it as their own personal crash pad/sex palace.

I would probably want to get a new mattress. And these folks had a nice mattress.

“Better make it three,” I suggest.

The most brutal thing of all is that there’s no coffee.

“Please,”
I beg him as we stand in the foyer of the brownstone, ready to go.

“No, we have to get moving.”

“God, I hate you right now.”

“No, you looooove me,” Grant grins, and kisses me hard on the mouth.

My thoughts from the night before come racing back, and I push him away. “You wish.”

The lady doth protest too much.

Grant keeps grinning, but he seems to have sensed my discomfort. “Let’s just say you’re
far
from hating me.”

I’m grateful he’s backed off that particular line of teasing, but I still need to put as much distance as possible between me and the ‘L’ word.

“I hate anybody who gets me up at 5AM. With no coffee. Hint, hint.”

“No coffee.”

“Well, I guess I’m just going to have to keep on hating you, then.”

“I guess I’m just going to have to learn to live with it, then.”

“Will your friend have coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Will he give me some?” I yawn. “Because I’ll love
him
if he does.”

“You’re fickle, you know that?”

“You know the way to my heart, and yet you deny me. If he’ll give me coffee… well…”

“Either that, or he’ll call the cops and get us thrown in jail.”

I look over at Grant sharply. Suddenly it’s not so funny anymore.

“Kidding,” he says. Then adds, “…I think.”

“I really wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Come on, we need to go before the neighbors get up.”

He opens the front door and peeks out into the street. Then he glances down at the ground – and freezes.

“What?” I whisper.

He bends down and picks up a newspaper from the front porch. It’s new – no sign of weathering at all.

Our faces – both Grant’s and mine – are visible on the curved surface of the rolled-up paper.

What the HELL?!

“Why are we on the front page of the news?” I ask, my voice unnaturally high and panicked.

Grant shuts the door and unfolds the paper so we can see.

In the dim glow coming through the closed Venetian blinds, we read the headline:

BILLIONAIRE ART THIEF EXPOSED

Underneath is a picture of Grant at some society gala, and a picture of me that’s probably out of my company’s personnel files. There’s a caption beneath them.

Billionaire architect/construction magnate Grant Carlson and his alleged accomplice, Eve Saunders.

“What the FUCK?!” I gasp, nearly hyperventilating.

“…why don’t you go make some coffee,” Grant says, his eyes never straying from the page.

Not that I need it anymore, since the adrenaline pumping through my blood is ten times more powerful than caffeine.

Here’s the gist of the article, which we read huddled over the kitchen table – with a couple cups of coffee.

A bizarre turn of events has revealed that billionaire architect Grant Carlson, one of the richest men in the US, has a secret art collection probably worth as much as his private fortune. Unfortunately, all the paintings are stolen.

NYPD officers responded to a call on Tuesday afternoon by security staff at Carlson’s private residence. It appears there was a raid by a group of men posing as FBI agents, who presented a warrant to Carlson’s security staff. But the men were not who they said they were.

“Everything looked official – it was like a real raid with the warrant and the body armor and the blue jackets with the yellow letters and everything,” said Jim Kucher, the head of Carlson’s private security detail. “But they weren’t the FBI.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Washington headquarters confirmed Tuesday night that they had not conducted any raid on Carlson’s property, and had not been investigating him.

“Oh no…” Grant mutters.

“Oh my God – oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I whisper.

The faux raiding party detained the security staff and then entered the top floor penthouse. Members of the staff claimed they heard multiple gunshots and automatic weapons fire, although there were no bulletholes at the scene when the NYPD arrived.

“I don’t believe this,” Grant hisses.

“That ASSHOLE…”

Carlson apparently fled the mystery men by rappelling down the side of the 88-story skyscraper – a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that he didn’t do it alone. In his company was Ms. Eve Saunders, an internet security expert Carlson had hired days earlier – and perhaps became romantically involved with.

“Oh God,” I cringe. It pretty much sucks when your ‘business’ gets aired in front of millions of people.

Numerous eyewitnesses confirmed that the couple ended their 1300-foot descent on the sidewalk outside the building, then made their getaway in a taxi.

“Our ‘getaway,’” Grant snarled. “How about the psychopath we were running from, you idiots?”

The fake raiding party vacated the building immediately afterwards, leaving the security staff bewildered. When he could not find Carlson or Saunders, security chief Kucher called the police, who responded immediately.

What the authorities found defied belief.

In a secret room in the penthouse, police discovered a collection of paintings by some of the most famous artists in history. The one thing they had in common: every single one had been stolen over the last 30 years, and never recovered.  Works such as ‘View of the Sea at Scheveningen’ by Vincent van Gogh and ‘Le Pigeon Aux Petits Pois’ by Picasso hung on the walls. The combined worth of the paintings is estimated to exceed $1 billion.

It is alleged that Carlson bought the paintings on the black market and stocked his own private art gallery with them. The extent of Eve Saunders’ involvement in the thefts is unknown, although it appears she is an accomplice in his getaway.

Currently Carlson and Saunders’s location is unknown. They are both wanted for questioning in connection with the stolen artwork.

“Oh no… no, no, no, no, NO,” Grant groans, his head in his hands.

I just sit there, numb.

First chased by a serial killer.

Now chased by a serial killer AND the NYPD.

Out of the frying pan, into the bonfire. With some gasoline thrown in for fun.

I take it as a mark of Grant’s desperation that he turns on the television. With the volume waaaay down low, of course.

Things are just as bad on TV.

Every morning news show in New York – and most of them in the country – are covering it.

Lots and lots of pictures of Grant, and the same cringeworthy photo of me from my company’s personnel files.

There’s cell phone footage of us rappelling down the building.

There’s eyewitness accounts from people who saw us on the sidewalk.

There’s an interview with the cleaning lady from the 70th floor.

Lots of stock footage of paintings by van Gogh and Picasso.

Plenty of shots of the building’s exterior and lobby, but no footage of Grant’s apartment.

And not a single interview with any of his security staff, either.

“I need to call Jim,” Grant says as he stares at the TV.

“Your security guy?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Unh-unh. Bad idea.”

“I need to know some things.”

“They’re all alive. You know that now.”

“I need to know if any of them betrayed me.”

“You’re not going to find that out from talking to them. It’s not like they’re going to say, ‘Oh, by the way, I sold you out.’”

“What if he can give us clues on who the gunmen were?”

I shake my head. “You really think Epicurus left that to chance? Even if we could find out their identities, they probably don’t have any idea who hired them.”

“Then maybe they can tell us what he looks like.”

“You yourself said that he wasn’t there.”

“I could’ve been wrong.”

“I doubt it. He was talking over speakers – he probably hacked into your home entertainment system through the main computer network.”

“I have to know, Eve.”

“But – ”

“I hired you to
help
me.”

His voice is an accusation, a command, a bitter rebuke.