BILLIONAIRE (Part 5) Read online

  “Don’t hurt me,” I whispered.

  “I won’t. I’m sorry,” he said again. I could hear the remorse in his voice but also the thrumming voltage of his need. He would go easier on me, but he would not be denied. I almost wondered what would happen if I asked him to stop, now. Would he? I had the distinct feeling that he wouldn’t. That he couldn’t. I wanted him to continue but this edge of doubt fed me a passing note of unease. “You’re just so fucking gorgeous,” he said, kissing and biting my skin. “I want you so much. I want to eat you and drink you and live inside you. I’m going crazy, sweet girl. I can’t handle this. I can’t handle you. Do you want me, Lila? Do you want me?”

  I did want him. So much. Too much.

  He didn’t wait for my answer, and I didn’t expect him to. With measured, potent intention, he slid himself in to the hilt, pressing his hips against me in a tender but very persuasive thrust. As he did, he groaned loudly. Anguished: that’s how he sounded. Like he was lost. This time, the depth of him rubbed a compelling, charged place inside me. He did this again, pulling slowly out, thrusting in, seeking in the last inch of his drive an insanely intimate trigger. And finding it. A zinging flare began to flower deep within me.

  “Lila?” he whispered, thrusting again. His words were near-slurred with lust. “You okay, honey girl?”

  “Yes,” I moaned, not caring anymore about gentleness or boundaries. He was breaking me open, casting light into darknesses, flooding my body and soul with hard beauty. I didn’t care if he couldn’t stop himself. I couldn’t either. If he’d pulled himself away now I would die from his absence. The physicality of our need had taken a turn. “Yes, Alexander. Yes, please, yes.”

  He pulled back again, but not all the way, immediately pushing back in, stoking the fire. With each plunge, he retreated a fraction less, until the cyclical glide was not a withdrawal at all, but one dynamic, rolling thrust that stayed with me, not leaving the stroking contact of that deep, perfect sweetspot. The pleasure grew, inflaming my body, and I was pushing my hips back against him as he played this beautiful rhythm. My arms slid to the bed, giving me leverage to push back against him more strongly, keeping him as deep as he could be. His fingers found my sex and skated across the slippery center of sensation, and his other thumb was wet and sliding just barely into the secret puckered cove of my ass, not entering me there but fondling and prodding gently.

  The pleasure compounded, riding a silky wave, coasting then breaking with a force that sent a flurry of liquid, bliss-laden stars through my brain and my body that I could feel in zapping surges all the way to my fingertips and toes. I might have blacked out for a moment, riding some sweet, ultimate high that ungrounded me. When my awareness returned, I was crying out, moaning and bucking back against him. My pussy was drawing lusciously around his massive, pulsing cock until he groaned and lay his body heavily over mine, coiling and gripping me as his climax racked through him.

  After the beat of his upheaval had calmed, he rolled us to our sides so he was wrapped around me, spooning me, still inside me. I had tears in my eyes and I wasn’t sure why. Was it because he’d been so rough with me at the start? The pain had been overridden by pleasure, but I remembered it. Or was I crying because I felt so close to this remarkable, complicated man that my chest felt heavy with some kind of strange new longing? I didn’t understand my own emotions; they were too raw, too vast. We lay like that for several minutes, catching our breath and recovering from the sheer potency of our lovemaking.

  “What’s my name again?” I whispered.

  “Told you,” he murmured against my hair, stroking the long locks with careful, supplicating tenderness. As though to make amends. “Sweet girl.”

  I didn’t answer him, settling back against him. I’d already forgiven him, if that’s what this required. I wasn’t sure and at that moment I didn’t care. I already knew I was in for a wild ride, physically, emotionally, psychologically, existentially. All of it. Let’s not forget the icing on the cake, I thought. Financially.

  I pushed that thought out of my head. I just wanted to be as close to him as possible.

  We were quiet then, touching, feeling. We dozed for a while, sated and spent, still connected. I woke when I felt Alexander’s semi-softened shaft slide from my body. “Let’s have a bath,” he said, walking into the bathroom to draw one.

  He called me in when it was ready, and he was already submerged, leaning back, up to his neck in bubbles, his jet-black hair flicked with frothy suds. Something about this big, CEO sex god taking a bubble bath struck me as not only funny but ridiculously endearing. I smiled at the sight.

  “Come here,” he said.

  I climbed in, getting ready to recline towards the opposite end but he said, “I want you close to me. Come lean against me.”

  The water was almost too hot and felt heavenly against my sorenesses. I lay against Alexander’s chest and he began to soap me, rubbing a soft sea sponge against my skin. Not lustily, for once, but gently, just gliding the softness across my breasts and my body.

  I listened to the light splashing sounds of the water and the muted sounds of the city outside and down below. A European siren in the distance. Laughter. Music. I savored the feel of Alexander’s hard chest and the tender caress of his hands.

  “Where were you born?” he asked quietly.

  So we were back to twenty questions. He’d caught me at a better moment this time. If I wanted to find out more about him, it was only reasonable I begin to open up to him, too. Within reason. “You first,” I said.

  He seemed encouraged by this although there was a reserve in him that I recognized, only because it was mirrored in me. “Texas,” he said.

  “You grew up in Texas? I wouldn’t have picked you for Texas.” Although, come to think of it, strong hints of that cowboy twang surfaced now and then. Mainly when he was lust-drunk. When his guard was completely down.

  “We moved to Florida when I was ten,” he said. “We lived there until I was seventeen.” The comment was laced with all kinds of craziness: anger, regret, matter-of-fact grit. All that layered emotion made me feel for him in a new, unchartered way. I could sense that Alexander’s road had not been at all smooth. Something I could definitely relate to. I was curious but I didn’t want to push him. I waited for him to continue but he said, “Your turn.”

  “Virginia,” I said quietly. “A small town in the foothills of the Shenandoah mountains. I was born in my mother’s house. I arrived so quickly she didn’t have time to drive to the hospital.” I was a little amazed with myself. I’d never told that detail to anyone. Not that it was all that earth-shattering, but still. And then I heard myself say, “She was alone.”

  I waited for the obvious question and it wasn’t long before he asked it. “Where was your father?”

  I was far enough into the story that I figured I might as well answer him. “He was already gone by then. He left a week before I was born. I never met him. He never came back. I never even saw a picture of him. She burned them all.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds, just gliding the sponge over my shoulder and down my arm. “I’m sorry.”

  I suddenly didn’t want to talk about any of this anymore. I didn’t want the darknesses of my past to creep into the beauty of this present time and place. The past was behind me where it belonged. “What’s your favorite color?” I asked him, glad already for the reprieve.

  “Black.”

  “Black?” I said, turning my head to look up at him. “Black’s not a color.”

  “I still like it.”

  “What’s your second favorite color?”

  “Blue,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  “Red. And pink. I have two.”

  “Actually,” he said. “Pink is my favorite color, too.” He touched a wet finger to my lips. “This pink.” His other hand slid lower, over my breast, where he swirled a finger around my soapy nipple. “And this pink.” His touch wandered lower, down my stomach, finding the so
ft petals of my pussy, not with possessive intention but with tender adoration. “And this pink.”

  “What’s your favorite band? What kind of music do you like?”

  “The Rolling Stones. And Mozart.”

  Could this man be any more perfect? I looked up at him and he softly, softly kissed my lips.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to tell you about myself. I’m going to tell you things I’ve never told anyone. Because I want to. I want you to know who I am.”

  “I want to know everything about you,” I whispered.

  “And you’re going to tell me things, too,” he said. “About you. I want to know you. I want to know what makes you tick. I want to know why you smile and what haunts you. I want to share your heartbreak and ease every burden and hardship you’ve ever had. I want you to let me do that.”

  We both had secrets; this was obvious enough. The thought of sharing with him, of opening myself up to him emotionally as well as physically felt less daunting than it had only days ago. Knowing that his scars were as painful for him as mine were for me made me feel like we were on equal footing. It made it feel like this relationship was about more than just sex.

  And the way he was expressing himself was somewhat uncharacteristic of my macho new lover. His sincerity was bringing out his softer, more expressive romantic tendencies. After the force of his lovemaking, the words sounded doubly sweet. First he’d broken me open with his lust and now he was planting little loveseeds in the fresh dirt.

  “I have very eclectic tastes in music,” I said, crossing some sort of divide. A warm, trickling emotion was filling me. In my throat and in the low pit of my stomach. I loved him. Oh my God, I fucking loved him. No, I couldn’t. I barely knew him. I sounded breathless when I continued, babbling now. “I like the blues. I read widely. The goods and the greats, but also the cornerstones of the modern American zeitgeist. I’m fascinated by pop culture.”

  “I sometimes forget that you’re a scholar as well as a supermodel sex kitten,” he said, and he kissed me again.

  As he did, my stomach made a little growling sound.

  “You’re hungry,” he said, as though mildly upset by this. “I haven’t been feeding you enough. Something I intend to take care of immediately. I’m going to take you out to lunch at my favorite restaurant. Then we’ll go to the Louvre, the most outstanding place in Paris. We’ll buy you a new outfit. Then I’ll take you up the Eiffel Tower. We’ll come back here and make love. Then I’ll take you out to dinner. Then we’ll come back here and I’ll make love to you again. And again. And maybe once more.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” I said, ridiculously happy.

  The setting was magical. The food was unbelievable. Over the next few days, we retreated into an intimate bubble with Paris as our backdrop. We kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Alexander bought me a gold watch, new clothes, a pink silk Hermès scarf. We ate and we drank and we made love.

  He was gentle with me, almost entirely, but there were edges to him that, if I wasn’t so immersed in the totality of all the extravagant pleasure he insisted on providing, I might have thought about in more detail. It ghosted at the fringes. Off-hand remarks that could be easily overlooked amid the Moët and the limousine rides and the shopping sprees and the full-body orgasms. You’re not going anywhere alone. You’re mine. I’m never letting you out of my sight.

  It was true that he hadn’t let me out of his sight since the day we’d met. That faraway gilded moment when I’d first seen his exquisite face, and been swept off my feet by his rock-my-world sexuality. I knew his obsession was bordering on the extreme. Yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to worry about this. If I was going to fault him for his sudden and complete dedication to me, I could have been equally critical of my own response. More than not, I basked in his adoration. I welcomed it and encouraged it by teasing him and inviting him at every opportunity I got.

  It was early afternoon of our fifth day in Paris. We were back at the Louvre, where we wandered for several hours each day. Alexander was right: it was the most outstanding place in all of Paris and I couldn’t get enough of the art I’d spent a lifetime admiring from the pages of books. This had become something of a ritual for us during the past few days: spending the morning in bed, satisfying our primal urges so voraciously we might have challenged some sexual frequency world record. Then we’d shower together, an act that usually involved at least one more orgasm, before I would dress for Alexander in an outfit of his choosing. After this, we’d eat at one of Alexander’s favorite cafés or restaurants, shopping as we walked the iconic streets, making our way past the glass pyramid and into the grand, cavernous halls of the Louvre, where the rich, timeless windows of art had a transformative effect on both of us.

  Something happened to us under the paintings’ influence. The oily romance and the brutal tragedy spoke to our inner demons. Our barriers loosened. We talked more freely, like we had nothing to hide. And on this fifth day, holding his hand, high on some perfect cocktail of endorphins and champagne, his questions began to burrow deeper, as every other aspect of him had. I felt giddy and young. Happy and beautiful. Alexander, all male energy and tall, lean, pirate perfection, had never looked more dazzling. His silk-black hair touched the collar of his shirt in glinting flicks, adding to his billionaire rogue appeal.

  “How come you know so much about art?” he asked. “You know all the paintings in here.”

  “I minored in Art History at Princeton,” I said. “I’ve always loved looking at the pictures. The colors and the scenes always seemed so faraway and decadent and so …” I balked at using the word, but blurted it out anyway, “… rich. I used to spend a lot of time at the library in my hometown. It was quiet and clean. And warm. Warmer than …”

  He looked at me, corraling his surprise at my spontaneous offering. After a brief pause, he repeated, “Warmer than …?”

  “My house. We couldn’t afford electricity sometimes. It used to get cold. So, so cold.”

  He paused before saying, “We couldn’t either. But in Florida, and it didn’t get cold. I used to hate having to read with a weak flashlight all the time, though. Jake and I didn’t have baths for about two years. We just swam in the sea.”

  And so it began. A surrender of sorts. An admission that we were growing closer. That we were beginning to trust.

  “What about your parents?” I asked, even though I suspected he wouldn’t go there. Already, we were treading into unusually personal territory.

  But there, under the painted, bloody agony of a Delacroix, Alexander shocked me with his raw honesty. “My mother died when I was eight. Jake was two. He doesn’t remember her. My father was a millionaire businessman with interests in both oil and insider trading. He made a couple of bad deals and big mistakes that completely ruined him. He killed himself when he lost his fortune. Shot himself with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. I was ten years old. I found him.”

  My hand fluttered to my mouth, covering it unsteadily. I sat on a green couch in the middle of the huge room, and he sat with me. “Alexander,” I finally said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “We got sent to my uncle’s place in Florida,” he continued matter-of-factly. “He lived alone. He had a small practically-derelict house with an even smaller cabin out the back of it. Jake and I moved in and lived in that cabin for six years. It was on low stilts and when the storms hit, it used to flood us out now and then. But we had nothing worth saving except the clothes on our backs and a couple of surfboards.”

  His hands were on his knees, gripping lightly. His black hair framed his face artfully, touched by the reflected purple shade of the painted walls. And he kept talking. “Our uncle was a lowlife. A real fucking scumbag. A drunk. He worked odd jobs but he didn’t have enough money to feed us. So we stole, to begin with. I got a job in a surf shop waxing boards, which I could do after school and on the weekends. I kept Jake with me a lot of the time but he was so little. He was a hell-rai
ser even then. I tried my hardest to keep him out of trouble. The job brought in enough to keep us from starving, but only just. Not even close to enough to get the electricity hooked up. Just enough for batteries, sometimes, so we could read, and I could help Jake with his homework. I knew school was our only out. So I was cutthroat about it. We had a few off years at the beginning. Jake never cared for the academics much, but I forced him through it. And I forced myself. I worked my way up. It took a while, but by high school, I started hitting the honor roll. I kept working, blind to everything except the drive of getting us out of there.”

  “I used to read in the dark, too,” I said softly, amazed at our common ground. “By candlelight.” He waited, and I could sense he was eager to hear whatever I would give him. “I told you my father left the week before I was born, and we never saw him again. My mother never recovered from that. She loved him. She was completely heartbroken, and scared, I guess. All alone with a baby like that. My grandmother moved in with us and she took care of me. My mother was … it was like she was broken. She started drinking and never stopped. When my grandmother died, I was seven years old. By then my mama was … pretty far gone. She just couldn’t cope. It was like he took part of her along with him when he left us. Everything about her just drifted away, or got drowned in that bottle.”

  Here, I faltered. There were people around us, so far outside our scope they might as well have been characters milling around in the rococo gardens or the dusky painted slave-trading halls, or clinging helplessly to the sinking raft on a framed and windswept sea. We were on a roll now, and Alexander spoke again. His fists were clenched now. “It was only a few weeks into my junior year that I came home after work one day. My uncle … he was in our cabin. With Jake. Doing God knows what to my little brother. I completely lost my shit. I went crazy. I nearly killed the fucker. I thought I did kill the fucker. I meant to. I took Jake and the two hundred dollars I’d saved and got us the hell out of there. We went to Houston because I knew a guy there, and we ended up staying for a few years. I worked and worked and studied my ass off and got a full scholarship to Princeton. Just like you did.”