A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (28 page)

He grunted over her, half-burying his lips into her throat as he continued to pump back and forth against her, each stroke seeming to be harder and harder, almost certain to leave a few bruises come morning. Flushed, groaning, she started to tense with a spasm, and then yelped and arched up against him, white-hot pleasure washing over her all at once, nearly blinding her. Distantly, caught up in it and riding her high, she heard Aaron growl as her overheated tunnel tightened around him, then he slammed into her once more and released himself, gasping.

For several long minutes, they lay like that, until he was pulling out of her and rolling over onto his back beside her. Both of their breathing was ragged, but he managed to shift enough to grab the pillow off the floor and tuck it beneath his head before rolling over with his back to her. Tobin closed her eyes and climbed beneath the sheets of her bed, falling asleep next to him.

Her eyes squinted shut tighter as the blaring sound of her alarm clock on the other side of the bed signaled that it was morning. Tobin wrinkled her nose and debated burying her face back into her pillows, but she needed to get to work. Sighing, she forced herself to open her eyes and sit up; she highly doubted that the alarm clock hadn’t woken up Aaron in the process.

“Hey, morning, sorry,” she said as she started to turn over. “I have to get showered and get to work. Last night was amazing, though—Aaron?” She had been fully prepared to reach over him to turn off her alarm clock. But the bed beside her did not hold an attractive naked guy she had had sex with in the middle of the night, but a gray tabby cat who was peering up at her expectantly, clearly wanting breakfast. Tobin blinked and petted her cat before reaching out and turning off the alarm clock. “Aaron?”

She turned her head and looked to the door. It was open, and for a second she wondered if he was looking for the bathroom—that was attached to her bedroom, but he wouldn’t know that waking up groggy—but as she looked, she realized that his clothes weren’t on the floor anymore either. Her throat tightened, and she stood, moving toward the door. Surely he hadn’t. Please don’t let him have done that. She heard the lock on her front door click faintly and hurried toward the sound. “Aaron?”

Tobin stepped into her living room, and based on the expression on his face, she had caught him red-handed like she would have caught a kid trying to steal cookies. Stealing cookies seemed much more benign than that, though, and all her warm, fuzzy feelings from the night before extinguished in a sea of ash.

For a long moment, they stared at each other, Tobin well aware that her blue eyes weren’t in the least bit hiding their glare. “Really?” she asked at last, her voice a mixture of disbelief and annoyed acceptance.

He shut the door, turning back to her with a smile on his face that was trying to be charming, but was honestly just sheepish and ashamed as hell. Tobin was still absolutely naked, but she crossed her arms over her stomach without the slightest care in the world.

“Look, Tobin,” Aaron began at last. “You’re a really nice girl, and last night was great, but I just don’t really think we have all that much in common…”

“Huh. That wasn’t the impression I got when you agreed with every last thing I said last night,” she answered disparagingly. Her calico cat was moving to inspect him as she had been denied the night before, and he instantly took a few steps away when he noticed. Tobin grimaced. “Was your being a cat person the first lie of the night, then?”

“I’m actually allergic.”

“Well, good on you, at least, shelling out for a hundred-dollar dinner for a girl you intended only to sleep with. At least I’m a high-class escort instead of just a corner prostitute.” She turned away, starting to head back to her bedroom.

“Tobin, I’m sorry, I just—”

“Oh, give me a break. You aren’t sorry. You aren’t sorry in the slightest—not for doing it, just for getting caught. Didn’t expect my alarm to go off two minutes after you tried to sneak out, did you? Just tell me one thing—when did you decide, exactly, that we weren’t going to work out? Before the date? During it?” A brow rose at him expectantly, and her cats were starting to pick up on her hostile attitude; her calico spat at him and then snootily turned away.

Her ability to throw insults appeared to be unsettling him; most likely he was used to being able to charm his way out of any situation with a girl he slept with on the fly. “Ah, uhm… when you walked up, I guess.”

“Huh,” she mused, rolling her eyes. “So, you still slept with me even though you weren’t that attracted to me? Yeah, good luck with getting one of your stick-thin hotties who’s worth more than a grain of salt.”

“Tobin—”

“Just get the hell out, Aaron. And lose my number. And Lisa’s. I guarantee she will not be setting you up with any more of her friends after hearing about this.” She turned away and started back to her bedroom to take a shower, listening for the sound of the door opening. It took him a long moment to recover, it seemed, before he was hastily opening the door as wide as he needed to in order to slip out, and quickly pulling the door shut behind her.

Tobin stopped walking at the sound and let out a deflated, defeated sigh, leaning against the door frame and sliding to the floor. Her gray tabby—Misty—was still expecting breakfast, clearly, but as she padded up, she nuzzled her head comfortingly against Tobin’s arm. “I’m better off sticking to cats, aren’t I?”

“Mow.”

Normally she didn’t feel the need to shower for longer than ten or fifteen minutes when she was getting ready for work. Tobin hated waking up early in the morning, so she generally slept for as long as she possibly could. Today, however, even knowing she would probably be a good half hour late, she stayed in the shower for an extra forty minutes after she had given her cats breakfast. She doubted that even that long of a shower, under the hottest water as she could stand, would make her truly believe she had washed all of the filth left behind by Aaron’s hands and mouth. It was only when she heard her phone ringing through the shower fan—knowing full well that it was the pet clinic—did she climb out of the water and towel herself off.

Tobin dressed in her usual comfortable, not exactly flattering vet’s attire, then bade her cats goodbye and headed downstairs. The traffic didn’t look too terrible as she pulled her car out of the parking lot across the street and headed to the clinic. She was starting to feel how many glasses of wine she had had the night before, and how late she had been awake besides. Not to mention, of course, the sex itself, which had as she had predicted left a couple of bruises on the insides of her thighs. Barring the events of this morning, it wasn’t like sex with Aaron had been unpleasant—but she had never quite understood why guys thought they had to thrust so damn hard. Then again, a guy like that probably didn’t care whether she had had actually had an orgasm herself as long as he did. Her nails tightened on her steering wheel, and she took a deep, calming breath.

At the very least, as she pulled up to the vet’s office, it didn’t look like more than one or two pets and owners had come yet—they were never very busy in the middle of the week, of course. Tobin pulled into her parking spot near the front door and climbed out, stuffing her cell phone into her purse to lock it in her office in the back. As she opened the front door, an excited black-and-white Boston terrier looked up and barked, tail wagging. Tobin smiled.

“Hi there, Oreo, good to see you too.” She knelt down and rubbed the dog’s ears, looking up at his owner. “Hi, Amy. Everything going okay?”

“Oh, yeah, Dr. Emerson, everything’s good. Oreo just has this rash I want to make sure is nothing.”

“You got it. Give me a couple of minutes to put my stuff away and get a cup of coffee and I’ll check it out. I can get him some antibiotics if it’s anything serious.”

“Sure thing, thanks,” Amy said with a smile, and Tobin straightened and moved toward the reception desk. Lisa was typing something on the computer—probably finalizing someone’s appointment or cancellation—but when Tobin approached, she looked up and smiled.

“Heeey, you’re getting in late! I told you a date on a Monday night was a good idea. No one even noticed you were late. So, how’d it go?” she asked excitedly, brushing her short black bangs out of her face.

“Oh, just peachy, if you ignore the fact that he tried to sneak out of my apartment this morning,” she answered despondently as she shuffled through some mail and messages left on the counter.

Lisa immediately deflated. “He tried to sneak out, really? Did he say why?”

“Well, his excuse was that he didn’t think we had a future together, although that didn’t stop him from coming over in the first place. Once I gave him my usual lecture on the subject, the real reason was painfully obvious. I almost let Autumn scratch him. I wanted to punch him.”

Her receptionist winced. “Geez, I’m sorry. He seemed like a really nice guy when I met him through one of T.J.’s friends.”

“You know what I’ve come to accept? Nice guys don’t exist. As far as I’m concerned, he was really just using you to find the easiest way possible to get into some girl’s pants. All he had to do was pay for dinner and lie through his pretty, uncaring teeth.” Tobin sighed and headed toward the door that led to the back of the clinic, knowing Lisa was looking after her sympathetically. She really didn’t want sympathy, though. Sympathy was why she had agreed to go out on a blind date in the first place, an experience she could have clearly done without, in this case.

She grabbed her keys and unlocked her office, flipping on the light switch and glancing around. Tobin had never really been one to take a lot of pictures—unless it came to animals. She had way too many pictures of her cats, including several of a tuxedo-colored tomcat who had unfortunately died the year prior, pictures of her family only if they included their dog, and pictures of some of her patients and their owners. But Tobin had long since decided that pets often made better company than people, for a lot of different reasons. This latest reason would definitely be enough to take her off the dating market for a while.

Upon seeing that there were no messages left on her office phone, she draped her purse’s straps over a notch on her coatrack and picked up her name tag from beside her computer. She clipped it to the front of her clothes, rubbing away a smudge from one of her patients the day before, and smiling slightly as “Dr. Emerson” stood out clearly against the white background. With her work attire complete, though, she turned, closing her door part of the way, and continued to the break room, where, thankfully, a pot of coffee was brewing. Not that it wasn’t usually doing that; she just really needed a cup of coffee this morning. She grabbed a mug off a shelf and poured the steaming, dark liquid into it, its pungent scent filling the air.

“Hey, morning,” someone called from the doorway, and Tobin looked up with a tired smile. “Just finished up giving Mrs. Wayland’s three Chihuahuas shots. Man, those are yippy little dogs. It’s a good thing she’s as deaf as a doornail.”

“Hi, Kate.”

Kate had been her best friend through undergrad and grad school, and they had gotten their doctorates of veterinary medicine together. She was a pretty, slender woman with long blond hair swirled up into a delicate bun on the back of her head, and blue eyes that were a few shades lighter than Tobin’s. Where those eyes had been chipper and cheerful a moment ago, upon looking at her, they clouded a bit. “You okay? You look absolutely beat.”

She sighed a bit, not wanting to go through it again, but… “Oh, yeah, I’m great. Had that blind date with the guy Lisa set me up with last night. Woke up to him trying to sneak out of my apartment with the intent never to call me or answer my calls again.”

Kate winced. “Geez, that bad?”

“Yeah. It’s bad enough that his excuse was the same one I get from a lot of guys, but it was an excuse that didn’t stop him from sleeping with me before offering it. I’m a bit annoyed, and I’m a bit done with dating.” Tobin pulled out a bottle of French vanilla creamer from the mini fridge and poured it into her coffee, watching as it turned all pale and milky. Kate came over and hugged her shoulders.

“C’mon, you’ll find a good guy. When we were at Michigan State, you had a bunch of guys all over you once they got to know you in classes.”

“This guy spent over a hundred bucks on me, plying me with good alcohol and good food in at least a four-star restaurant, just so he could go back to my apartment.”

Kate lifted a brow. “You are an expensive hooker.”

“That’s what I said!” Tobin couldn’t help but laugh, which made her friend smile. Still, she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t think this city is the one where I’m going to be finding any sort of real relationship. All the guys are shallow and ridiculous. He got to know me over the course of several hours, but he still wasn’t interested even a little bit when all was said and done.”

“Oh, please, a guy who does that wasn’t interested from the get-go—like you said, it was an excuse, Tobin! He just wanted an easy lay and he wasn’t going to be interested in you if you were model-thin and drop-dead gorgeous. You know that perfectly well and you don’t need me telling you,” Kate protested matter-of-factly. “And once you wade through all the ridiculous assholes this city has to offer, you’re going to find an absolutely fantastic guy who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”

Tobin lifted a brow skeptically. “And how do you know that?”

“Because I know you. And I know you are smarter than to get down about some asshole guy who gave you a lame excuse. I mean, seriously, how big of a new one did you tear this guy?”

“A pretty good size,” she admitted. “I just wish I had been able to do it before I slept with him. It would have been so much more satisfying to blue-ball him.”

“Was the sex good, at least? I don’t remember the last time you had sex on a first date.”

She considered a moment. “Yeah, the sex was pretty good.”

“Then revel in your status as an expensive hooker with the knowledge that you still probably gave him a good kick in the balls. Probably expected you to fawn all over him and whatever excuse he gave you.” Kate kissed her temple lightly. “Now, was that Oreo I saw out there? Amy’s been here for a bit. You should probably go and see to him.”