Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (157 page)

The computer screen before me glared bright with the unfinished spreadsheet. The sounds of office conversations in quiet, polite tones filled my ears. My days at college were gone, a memory encased in a picture frame. The girl who blossomed into a woman capable of taking charge was now sitting in an office chair typing out mindless reports. That woman was me now.

I looked at the memories on my cubicle wall. My parent’s smiling faces looking back at me, now just memories encased in cheap plastic frames. I could feel the tears climbing up behind my eyes, daring to fall down my cheeks and ruin my composure. I breathed in slowly, fighting them back to the depths of the sadness where they came from.

I checked my phone for what seemed like the hundredth time since I had sat down. The phone’s clock told me it was only a few minutes past eleven in the morning. I scanned the office, looking for Emily Jones. Emily would be a nice change of pace from the banality of the office. I rose from my desk and spotted Emily in the corner, smiling and running her hand softly through her hair while listening to some young college intern tell some story just out of my earshot. Emily’s hand kept returning to the intern’s shoulder, a flirtatious laugh coupled with her every touch.

I walked up to them, interrupting the young man’s story. “Hey, do you want to grab a girls lunch with me?” I asked, looking at Emily pleadingly.

“Okay, Samantha, I’d love to,” Emily said, her eyes narrowing seductively at the young intern. I noticed him blush before he walked away.

“A new love interest I see?” I asked.

“Oh Dave? The intern? Hardly.” She laughed. “It was just a nice, innocent conversation.”

“You? Innocent?”

“You know, you could go for some more innocent conversations with some of the guys around here. At least for some practice talking to them. It couldn’t hurt!”

We boarded the crowded elevator and Emily pressed the button for the cafeteria. She turned to me and whispered in my ear, almost too loudly, “When was the last time you even talked to a guy, let alone went on a date?”

I elbowed her, giving her a look that I meant to convey
shut up!
but only managed to suppress my approaching laughter. We got off at the cafeteria laughing, my embarrassment all but forgotten.

“And when was the last time you were on a date? Twenty minutes ago?” I asked.

Emily and I sat down in the cafeteria by the window. I picked at an Asian salad with chicken that I barely put any dressing on. Emily took a large bite of a cheeseburger with all the fixings.

Satisfaction spread over her face as ketchup ran down her chin. She wiped it off and put the cheeseburger down to eat a few fries that she greedily slathered with more ketchup. I watched her ravenous eating with a sense of awe.

“I had the best date last night. Maybe of my entire life. First off, he was drop-dead gorgeous. Like a young Marlon Brando mixed with George Clooney. Even through his suit I could tell he was fit, like that crazy driven type who spends too much time at the gym and eats nothing but grilled chicken and kale.” Emily paused and looked up to the ceiling as if savoring another bite of her cheeseburger.

“So he brings me out to this amazing fusion Chinese place downtown where he knows all the waiters and then the chef personally brings us a special entree that he designed for us on the spot! It was incredible! After the restaurant, he throws me in a cab and we bounce from club to club. Not those awful popped-collar ones but these clubs where there aren’t even signs out front. He just knew a whole string of them and brought me dancing all night. And my God, he could dance. I mean, really dance.” A smirk crossed Emily’s face. She finished her cheeseburger with one large bite and sat back in her chair.

“So you really liked him? What was his name again?”

“It was either Roger or Robert, not sure. Either way, he was way too into himself and status-obsessed. Like, he believed he was God’s gift to women. But I can’t deny that there were parts of him that I definitely liked,” Emily said, still chewing.

A man in his late twenties walked by us and nodded to her with a smile. She smiled and tossed her hair back gently. As he walked away, Emily turned back to me.

“Why don’t you go for any of the guys around here? Like that guy, Steven Draven. Handsome, successful, not a bad conversationalist either.”

“I take it you know this from first-hand experience?”

“Little ol’ me? No, I’ve never gone out with him. But Cathy from accounting went out on a couple dates with him and said she had a fantastic time. His dad owns a cabin in the Hamptons and even has a mini-yacht. I mean, come on! What is more perfect for a weekend of fun than that?”

“Well, maybe I’m not looking for random fun with these executive types. I don’t want to be some random weekend fling for these guys to brag about to each other. And if Cathy had such a fun time, what happened?” I asked, leveling my eyes playfully at her.

“Who knows? She got bored. He got bored. It doesn’t matter. And anyway, it doesn’t matter what these guys think of you. Who said you’re the weekend fling? You have some fun. They have some fun. It’s no attachments all around and no one gets hurt.”

Emily pointed to a group of five guys sitting together. “What about one of those guys? Maybe James?”

“First off, James is very nice. A sweetheart, really. But haven’t you noticed just how nice he dresses all the time. How meticulous he is with his ensembles? Have you ever talked to James at length? You’d probably find the two of you share a lot of the same...interests.”

“James is gay? Well, that explains why he doesn’t respond to me at all. How could any straight man resist this?” she asked, tossing her head back dramatically.

I laughed. “Okay there, Miss Irresistible. Who else could be my possible Casanova?”

“Dave Schuman.”

“Dave Schuman. The same Dave Schuman who is married with two beautiful daughters that he feels compelled to show to every single person who talks to him for more than two minutes?”

“Yes, but he never talks about his wife, now does he?” An evil smirk spread across her face. She winked and tried to suppress her giggles.

“Very funny. You’re terrible, you know that?”

“Oh, lighten up. What about Dennis Malick?”

“The gambling-addict whose wife left him last year after he bankrupted them in one all-out downward spiral of a weekend?”

“Yeah, but just imagine the time in Vegas he could show you!” Emily said.

I laughed with Emily. It felt good to be having lunch with her, talking about some of the men in the office. To be honest, anything beat moping at my computer desk brooding over my life. Each one of the men looked less appealing than the last, but just talking about dating someone was exciting. And who knows, maybe I would start seriously dating again.

Emily was right, it had been too long since my last date. I wasn’t about to lie down and be some “fun time” for some rich-boy, but maybe I could meet a guy worth dating. A good, nice guy.

“All right, so you’re too good for all of these guys, huh? What about Alexander Strauss? Would you be too good for him?” Emily asked.

“Come on! Really? You think I’d want to date that old gauntly looking creep? I just imagine his black eyes staring at me in an attempt to suck out my soul or something,” I said with disgust.

“What are you talking about?! Do you even know who I’m talking about?” She looked shocked.

She took out her phone, her fingers quickly working on the screen. Holding the screen so close to me it was practically touching my face, she let out a dramatic breath of disappointment.

“Does this look like some gauntly creep to you?”

It certainly did not. My heartbeat quickened. The portrait on Emily’s phone showed a man with beautiful, piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare out at me through the screen, not in an attempt to suck out my soul but to melt it. My attraction was immediate in a way that I had never experienced before. His faced showed little emotion; a slight smile that exuded a professionalism necessary to his stature in the company, nothing more. His hair framed his sharp features that commanded my attention. An internal struggle was already developing inside of me. He was beautiful, like a god.

As if in defiance of me, my eyes would not look away from Emily’s screen. I fought against telling Emily that he was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I did not want to reveal how I really felt.

“He’s probably some arrogant prick,” I blurted out loudly. “Inherited daddy’s company and thinks he’s better than the entire world that was handed to him on a silver plate.”

I looked up. At first, I thought Emily had completely lost interest in me. The phone slowly descended as her arm fell. She was ghost-white. Her mouth hung open ever so slightly.

She made no sound. A rush of panic struck at my heart immediately. It began beating so fast that I feared it might explode in my chest. Emily’s eyes were looking at something behind me. Fighting every impulse to stand up and run away, I slowly looked behind me.

Mr. Strauss stood before me, a group of men silently waiting behind him. My mouth ran dry. Not a single word came to my lips to save me. I could only stare, hoping that I at least looked composed. An amused expression adorned his face as he scanned me up and down. Slowly.

Standing so close, I could feel heat radiating from him as though he were the sun on a warm summer’s day. An impulse to stand up and grab him shot through my mind like a bullet tearing through its intended target. The photograph on the phone was nothing in comparison to the man in person. His tall stature loomed over me for what seemed like years. A perfectly tailored suit did not hide his perfectly proportioned physique that a tiny cell-phone could only hint at. If God had animated a Greek statue and covered it in a suit that cost more than I made in a month, it was standing before me now.

My heart skipped a beat painfully in my chest as I realized he was bending down towards my face. Oh my God, is he going to kiss me? I almost closed my eyes in anticipation. Every muscle in my body tensed. Every breath was a struggle to steal from the air. Time itself slowed to a crawl.

His blue eyes grew larger in my own. With every closing inch, I wished more and more that he would swallow me whole, wash away the world with his eyes and drink me like the sea. Every beat of my heart rang out in the silence of the cafeteria, a steady beat of the moment before I knew he would embrace me.

At the last moment, he broke from the path towards my waiting mouth and his lips hung agonizingly close to my ear.

“Four p.m. My office,” he whispered. With that, he turned and led the group out of the cafeteria in silence.

I turned back to Emily slowly. Her mouth still hung open. Neither of us spoke as we rose to leave the cafeteria.

***

Sitting back down at my desk, I tried to look at some spreadsheets before realizing that I had no idea what I had just read. The shock of what had just happened to me was wearing off, giving way to a piercing anxiety over my job. Why would the CEO want to see me if for no other reason than to fire me for the rude comments I made in the cafeteria? Couldn’t he have my supervisor fire me and save himself the trouble? Worse, what if he was so offended that he wished to tell me in person that I was now blacklisted from the corporate world altogether? My professional life would be destroyed. How far was Strauss’s reach?

My mind raced. There were so many questions with no reassuring answers. Yet through the fear, my mind returned to those blue eyes, to the strength of his chin touching my soft skin. Every thought of my destroyed future was dominated by the thought of him.

I imagined my fingers caressing the taut skin on his arms, tracing the veins up the forearm to his rigid bicep. His warm breath is on my neck as his hand slides down the small of my back. The smell of his skin intoxicates me as my eyes remain closed. I taste his lips as I stifle a cry for something more, something indescribable yet so close to me.

Alexander Strauss. His torso is shaped by hours of pain and sweat, leading up to a chest that breathes with mine, moves with mine, leads mine to feel that which it has never known it had yearned for. His skin is soft, stretched over muscle forged into stone. My hands would slide up his legs, slowing as they reach the summit of him. I know that as I wrap my hands around him, his expression will not alter. He will remain perfect in his composure.

I will stand before him naked, without restraint or inhibition. His arms will wrap around me, bringing me close to him. Letting him inside of me, my breath would become his, his breath mine. We would be one. In his perfection, I would know perfection, and we would lie under a sun that hung in a sky as blue as his eyes.

An entire future wasted by a single, stupid comment that I had only said to save face with a friend.

I sat at my desk, lost in thoughts of Alexander Strauss. More than anything, I wanted him. An uncomfortable longing nestled itself between my legs, crying out for my undivided attention. Thoughts of my destructive comment only furthered my lust for him. If not for my crass comments, would he have stopped in the cafeteria to acknowledge me? Would I have had the opportunity to be so close to him to catch the faint hint of his cologne?

The clock on my desk sat before me like a hangman’s noose. As the minutes sped into hours, I tried to calm myself down. Yet as the hour of our meeting grew nearer, I could not decide just how I felt. I covetously looked up pictures of the CEO, drinking them like drops of water from an emptying canteen under a lethal desert sky. With every new picture, I checked my surroundings to make sure my actions went unnoticed. My heartbeat steadied, but my longing only increased. With every picture I looked at, the sense that I was looking at something secret, something private, intensified.

An alarm cut through my silence. It was time.

Chapter Two

I silenced the alarm. The clock read three-thirty. I wanted to be right on time and I had no idea where Strauss’s office was, let alone what part of the building it was even in. Strauss hadn’t told me where to go. It would mean I would have to ask my boss.