Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (106 page)

My eyes widened. I looked around at the busy streets, with drivers swerving around each other and pedestrians walking out into crosswalks with no notice. “Here? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He chuckled. “I don’t have a death wish. We’ll wait until we’re home.”

I wished he would stop saying “home”. To me the mansion was still Victor’s, not ours, and now that I was going to visit my old house with Charles, I was even more confused about where home was.

“I have to stop by my office and pick up some paperwork first.” We zoomed down the road with an almost careless speed, weaving around slower traffic. If anyone else were driving—even Oscar—I would have been clinging to the seat with fear, but Victor’s control of his surroundings was reassuring. I laid my head back on the headrest and enjoyed the ride.

Finally, we pulled up to a tall glass building in the heart of downtown. The building was cold and industrial, not at all inviting.

“Wow, this is where you work?” I said in wonder. I couldn’t imagine spending all day in such a stark place. The Lotus Gallery was in a large building, but at least there was some color.

“Were you expecting something different?”

I stared at the building thoughtfully for a moment. “No, I guess I’m not surprised.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure how I should take that.”

We parked in the garage underneath the building, pulling into a spot with a sign above it that I assumed was reserved for him.

“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked as he turned the car off and opened the driver’s side door.

“Sure. This won’t take long.”

Curiosity got the better of me, so I quickly followed after him as he entered the building. After we exited the elevator, we made our way to what appeared to be the secretary’s desk. The woman sitting at the desk spotted us. She had pretty, light brown hair tied back into a bun and dark blue eyes. She ran her hands over her hair and straightened out her skirt before walking over to us.

As she came near, I noticed her face was caked with makeup; her eyes were a dark mass of black mascara and smoky eyeshadow, and her lips were the color of a fire hydrant.  I forced myself not to stare too openly at the spectacle.

“Mr. Draper, how are you doing?” She glanced at me questioningly and I gave her a small smile. I knew she would probably sell her soul to be standing where I was at that instant.

The woman moved closer to Victor, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “Hi, Dolly. I’m not staying long. I came by for the papers from Mr. Marcus.”

Dolly? I hoped that wasn’t a pet name. I looked around for something else to stare at and realized that the office was filled with attractive women and men. As they walked by, they all gave Victor a warm greeting.

I was sure that all the women wanted to get inside Victor’s pants, maybe even some of the men, too. My entire body bristled with jealousy.

“Wait here, Dove,” Victor said. “I just have to finish up some things.” Everyone watched him walk to his office, getting back to work only when he shut his door.

I sat down in a chair near the secretary’s desk. Why couldn’t I have gone into the office with him while he got some work done? What could he be doing in there that he wanted to hide from me? It wasn’t like I was going to spill any big company secrets. At worst I would just sit there quietly, not saying a thing. I just wanted to be close to him.

Damn my insecurities.

About ten minutes later, Victor emerged from his office with a folder stuffed with papers tucked under his arm. He looked tired. He was an owner of a large energy company. That meant he had to be serious about his work every once in awhile.

“Ready?”

“Yes,” I said, getting up from my seat. We walked to the elevator and back to the car.

“Is Dolly her real name?” I asked, once we were settled in.

“Yes, why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.” Although I had brought it up, I was suddenly embarrassed by my self-doubt and quickly changed the topic. “How’s work going?”

“It’s been stressful lately, to be honest. Do you remember meeting a Mr. Monaghan in Paris?” he asked as we pulled out of the garage.

I shook my head.

“Well, his company is failing, somewhat unsurprisingly. I need to see if I can help him out someway without money. There’s a lot to untangle.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Despite our past differences, Monaghan is a good man with good ideas. Unfortunately, he’s not much of a businessman. But I might be able to figure out how to leverage him into something useful.” Victor sighed. “I’ll be busy these next few days trying to figure out what to do. There’s a lot to think about.”

I nodded. I was all too familiar with the feeling.

***

A few minutes later, Victor stopped at the beginning of his long driveway and put the car in park. “This is where we’ll switch seats.”

I had said I wanted to drive, hadn’t I? I gulped and hopped out of the car, brushing by Victor as I made my way to the driver’s seat. I sat down and marveled at how far away I was from the steering wheel.

“You might want to move the seat closer,” he said as he put on his seat belt. “And buckle up.”

I buckled my seatbelt and adjusted my seat into a more comfortable position. I looked at Victor expectantly. “Now what?”

“Ease your foot onto the break. Yes, like that. Now put your hand on the gear shift.” As I did so, Victor’s large hand covered mine. My heart flip flopped at the touch of his rough and calloused hands. I shook my head and tried to focus on what he was telling me. “Move it down to take it out of park and into drive.” He moved the lever down along with me. “Now, very carefully lift your foot away from the break and press on the gas.”

I licked my lips in concentration as I switched my foot over to the gas pedal and pressed down. The car roared to life and lurched forward. I panicked and hit the brake again. We jerked to a stop. “Oh my god. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Dove,” he replied calmly, although I saw that he was bracing himself against the door and the armrest. “You just need to be a little lighter on the gas. This car can really go.”

I let out a deep breath. “I need to relax.” I took my foot off the brake and lightly pressed on the gas. The car rolled forward effortlessly.

“Better. Now try steering back and forth a little bit. Be careful, though, just a slight turn of the wheel will be enough.”

I tried swerving back and forth a couple times and then did the same thing with the car in reverse. Keeping track of my progress in the mirror was difficult, but the driveway was long enough that I wasn’t in any danger of hitting anything harder than grass. After a while of going back and forth, Victor went over general rules of the road. I tried hard to remember them, but I knew I would have to ask him again.

A thought came over me. Had I already learned how to do this before my accident? It was strange realizing that I was probably learning how to drive for the second time in my life. Would anything other than my art knowledge come back?

We practiced basic handling in the car for a while longer, then switched again so Victor could park the car in the garage. “I want to get my license,” I said, as he finished off an expert parking job. “And maybe drive myself to work.”

Victor leaned over and kissed me softly on my cheek. I closed my eyes and breathed in his lovely cologne. I would never be able to tire of how wonderful he smelled.

“We can work toward that, Dove,” he whispered. I froze as he unlatched his seat belt and leaned over towards me, taking my chin in his hand and kissing me lush on my lips. I hesitated, but it was too much, and I reached up and grabbed the back of his hair, pulling him closer. I threw my head back and smiled as he moved from my lips to my neck, feeling the hard stubble scratching gently against my skin.

Each kiss caused pleasure to swell in the center of me. After the past several days of confusion, my body responded to Victor eagerly. Slowly my skin was waking up to his touch, standing on end. I felt the familiar warmth gathering between my legs, although it hadn’t been familiar enough in the past few days.

I reached with both hands under his chin to bring his face up to mine. “I missed this.”

He smiled against my hands, flashing his bright, predatory teeth before diving back down toward my neck. His hand started down my blouse, unbuttoning it nimbly. I sighed and brought his face back up.

“Did you miss me?” I asked.

He leaned down toward my neck again but I pulled him back up after a kiss and looked into his eyes. They were a startling blue-gray confusion—a dimmer version of the eyes I had seen that night in Paris.

“What does it look like?”

“I want you to say it. I’ve missed you.”

Victor leaned back into the driver’s seat, breaking all contact with me. I reached out in surprise. He looked at me steadily before speaking in a measured tone. “Did you call Charles?” he asked.

Shit
. “Yes.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“He’s going to show me my parents’ house.”

Victor sighed and stared ahead. “And I have to ask you,” he said quietly. He locked eyes with me, then pointed back and forth at the space between us. “You think this is my fault, don’t you?”

I said nothing. He’d caught me. As the heat between my legs began to dissipate all I wanted was a punishment to reignite my lust.

“I have work to do.” He got out of the car and walked to the door without looking back, entering the mansion. As I sat there in the passenger seat of his sports car in his garage, my blouse half-unbuttoned by his fingers, I wondered what to do next.

Chapter Twenty-three

The morning after my driving lesson with Victor, I sat hunched over the kitchen table, staring into my breakfast wordlessly. My stomach was tied in knots as I became increasingly nervous about visiting my old house with Charles, and things were only worse now that I didn’t have Victor’s support.  

“What’s wrong, Dove?” Karen’s voice trailed in behind me as she entered the kitchen with a bucket of cleaning supplies. I sighed into my food. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Leaving? For good?” I could tell there was a bit of concern in her voice and I smiled in spite of my despair.

“Not if I can help it. Charles is going to take me to our parents’ house to see if it’ll help me remember anything, and Victor isn’t very happy about it.”

“That can’t be true. I’m sure Victor wants you to get your memory back. Besides, it’s not like you’re leaving forever, right?”

I looked up at her desperately. “I have no idea what’s going to happen, honestly.”

“Oh, Dove.” Karen pulled up a chair next to me and took my hands in hers. Her skin was covered in wrinkles and so much softer than Victor’s. She gave me a motherly smile. “You two might not think it, but you’re both young, and young people often get confused about their emotions. It might be a good thing to get away from each other for a while; that way you can have time to think about what you really mean to each other. You can’t force Victor to change the way he acts. He’s going to have to learn to do that himself.” She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the top of my head, then went back to her duties.

Karen made a good point, maybe if I spent some time away from the mansion, Victor would realize that he missed me and wanted me in his life. I decided to invite him to a picnic dinner out in the far end of the pasture. I still had feelings for him, and I didn’t want to end things on a bad note before I left.

That afternoon, Betty helped me make turkey sandwiches and cranberry salad for a picnic. I packed it into a wicker basket along with a bottle of wine and a red gingham tablecloth that we could sit on while we ate.

It was a Tuesday, and Victor had some work to do at his office, but fortunately it was still light by the time he came home. I waited patiently for him outside the front door as his car pulled up the driveway. As he got out and walked towards me, he looked at the the basket in my hands and the casual t-shirt and jeans I was wearing; not the usual dressy skirt and blouse I wore to work.

“What’s this about? Didn’t you go to work today?”

“I’m taking a few days off,” I told him. “I thought we could go on a picnic.”

“A picnic?”

I put my hand on my hip and cocked my head. “What? You’ve never been on one before?”

“Well, of course but…” He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the bundle of paperwork in his hands. “I just wasn’t expecting this.”

I loved seeing Victor speechless; it was something I didn’t see often.
Please don’t let this ruin everything
, I thought, looking down at his messy hair, stern face, and gentle lips. For a second I thought about cancelling my trip to Sausalito and continuing my life here with Victor instead. We could pretend that Charles had never shown up at the mansion. For all that, though, I knew that this was something I had to do for both of us. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what the rest of my life had been.

“Come on,” I urged, “before it starts to get dark.”

After setting his briefcase down in the foyer, he followed me out to the stables where Butterscotch and his black stallion stood saddled and waiting for us.

“You must’ve spent a while planning this,” he remarked before he mounted his stallion with ease. I couldn’t help but notice the way his biceps flexed as he pulled himself onto the horse, the way he leaned his taut, muscled torso forward as he found his balance. He was devilishly sexy even when he didn’t know it.

“Maybe,” I replied, shaking the thought of a shirtless Victor from my mind. “Here, hold this.” I gave him the basket, then mounted Butterscotch with a bit less grace than him.

We rode for about ten minutes at a slow pace to the far end of his estate. There were no houses or any signs of civilization, just a small creek and a heavy copse of redwood trees. “Here’s a good spot,” I said, dismounting my horse. Victor did likewise as I took the tablecloth from my basket and spread it out over the patchy grass.

“I haven’t been out here in a while.” He gazed at the trees and the small, bubbling stream just yards away. “I like being in a place so untouched by humans.”