Billionaire On Fire: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Billionaire Romance) (25 page)

“I can’t,” she said between sniffs. “Mrs.
Brian won’t be here until noon and Kevin is sick. I’m the only teller on duty
right now.”

“That’s okay, just take some time. I’ll
man the booth,” I heard myself say.

She looked perplexed, but that made the
crying slow down significantly. “What? You can do that?”

“The thing about owning the company, Aria,
is that I can do whatever I damn well please.”

I must have come across strong because her
expression turned into that of slight fear. I tentatively put a hand on her
shoulder, expecting to feel her muscles relax; instead, I felt them tense.

“It’s okay. Just go for a little bit. It’s
not a request.”

“Alright, alright,” she said, starting to
sniff again. “I’ll just take a walk around the block and be back soon.” She
pointed towards her face. “No more of this after that. I promise.”

The minute she walked out, I felt myself
get angry. What the fuck was I doing? Teller in my own bank? To get into a
girl’s pants. She better be worth it when I finally made it in there. I was
working way too hard for this otherwise.

I even wanted to punch the young guy who
had just materialized in front of me.

“I need to deposit a check,” he said.

I pointed towards the front exit. “There’s
the ATM Machine. They take checks these days. And by these days, I mean the
past ten years.”

He looked terrified and strutted out. I
was lucky I was the CEO of the company and never had to work customer service.

---

When Aria returned a half-hour later, her
make-up was freshly painted on, with no trace of the crying fiasco on her face.

“Thank you so much and I am so sorry!” she
exclaimed.

She should be. It was the worst half hour
of my goddamn life.

“Don’t worry about it! But if you really
feel that bad, you can make it up to me by telling me what’s bothering you.”

I wasn’t sure I cared for the answer, but
that seemed like the right thing to say.

She scrunched her nose like she wasn’t sure
it was a good idea but eventually said: “My request for a loan got turned down.
My mother recently had heart surgery and without insurance she owes the
hospital 60,000 dollars. She can’t apply for a loan herself because my family
is still recovering from a bankruptcy.”

Well that was easy enough. I could take
care of that right away. I didn’t want to make it so easy though.

“Who was the loan officer you spoke to?”

“Wilson. I don’t know his full name.”

“I will talk to him.” I chose my words
very carefully, making sure not to make any promises I couldn’t keep. Or didn’t
want to keep, more like.

Her face visibly changed colors and her
eyes widened. “You can do that?”

“What did I say about owning the company?”

She jumped and for a second it looked like
she was going to hug me but changed her mind.

“Oh my god, thank you so so much! You can
get him to approve the loan!”

“That’s not what I said.” I spoke slowly.
“I said I would talk to him.”

Her face fell. “Oh, of course – I am sorry
I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s okay. Try to cheer up. I’m sure we
can work something out.”

I walked back to my desk and called the
loan office. “Wilson, please.”

“Mr. Sinclair! To what do I owe the
pleasure?” The guy sounded absolutely thrilled to be getting a call from the
CEO of the company. This could be so very easy if I wanted it to be. But a very
different idea was forming in my head altogether. I would rather this be fun
than easy.

“Why did you turn down Aria Roberts’ loan
request?”

There was a short pause. “I’m sorry, sir,
it’s classified-”

“Do you like your job, Wilson?” I spat.
“Do you enjoy having somewhere to go to every day and getting a nice fat
paycheck at the end of the month?”

“Yes, of course! I am sorry, sir. The
situation was completely out of my hand. As you know, we run all loan requests
through a software that processes applications and calculates risks. Aria
Roberts’ risk was almost a 100 percent. She has no savings, spends all her
money from the job paying for college and even though her credit is pretty good
for her age, she simply does not have any assets or any kind of solid
foundation. Not 60,000 worth anyway.”

“I see.”

“However,” he said a little too quickly,
“ultimately I call the shots, and I can change the shots I called if you want.”

Is that what I wanted? No. I wanted this
to be fun. This was going to be too much fun. Aria Roberts had no idea how much
fun we were going to have together.

“What I need you to do is to send Aria an
email letting her know you heard from me today, and that you explained to me
why her loan could not go through.
 
Make
it very clear that I tried to get you to change your mind, but the system
simply did not allow for it, so you were personally writing to apologize to her
for the inconvenience. Copy me in the email.”

“But, sir-“

“You said you liked your job. Is that
right?”

“Of course. Would you like me to add
anything to the email?”

“That will be all for today. Thank you.”

---

I finished drafting up the document and
briefly considered running it by my lawyer, but decided against it, more for
Aria’s sake than my own. If she was going to agree to this deal, I might as
well have her feel comfortable about it. I looked at the bouquet of red roses
that had been returned to my office that morning and grinned. One down,
twenty-nine to go. After today it probably wouldn’t take twenty-nine days
before I got to screw her. After printing the document, I removed a rose from
the bunch and placed it over the pile of papers on my desk.

I picked up the phone to call Aria. It was
game time. I watched her answer the phone, looking somber.

“South National Bank, how may I help you?”

“Come into my office. Mrs. Brian seems to
be doing quite well by herself over there.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to Wil-”

“Come into my office,” I repeated and hung
up.

The nervous look on her face as she
tentatively walked towards my office worried me a bit. What if she didn’t take
the deal? What else could she do, though? I had made it all but impossible for
her to get a loan at this bank, and could repeat the process for every other
bank within a thousand mile radius.

She would have to take the deal.

As she stepped into the office my eyes
were fixated on her skirt. I could offer to give her 60,000 dollars upfront in
exchange for letting me throw her against the glass window, lift that tight
skirt of hers, pull down her panties and fuck her. But that would be no fun.
When I finally felt the sweet warmth of her pussy, it would be because she
asked, because she couldn’t resist me. Nobody was allowed to resist me when I
decided I wanted them. That is what made Aria seem so fascinating, and making
her decide all on her own that she was wrong to ever resist me was going to be
the best part.

“Sit down, Aria,” I ordered.

When she did, the hem of her skirt lifted
a few inches upwards, revealing her toned, smooth thighs. I felt myself
tightening in my pants.

“So did you talk to Wilson?” she asked
again, looking ready to burst into another round of tears.

“I did and it’s not good news. Well, it’s
not the particular piece of good news you were hoping to receive.”

The tears began to fall onto her cheeks. I
would have to get her to stop doing that.

“So I’m not getting the loan?”

“You are just too young with too many
responsibilities,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”

The crying was in full swing now, her
makeup all smeared. Should I wait a little to make my proposition? I decided
against it. Knowing she felt helpless right now made it significantly more
likely that she would accept.

“Thank you for trying,” she said, starting
to get up.

“Wait! Did I say I was done?” I said more
harshly than I had intended. “Sit back down.”

“But you said that-”

“The bank cannot give you a loan right
now, but that does not mean you there aren’t other ways you can make that
money.”

Her eyes widened. “No!”

“You haven’t even heard me out yet.”

She was shaking her head vigorously. “I
can’t sleep with you for money. That’s wrong. And illegal.” She looked
horrified and softly added: “And I’m a virgin.”

Oh fuck. I hadn’t considered that a
possibility at all. A girl so attractive should have caught every guy’s
attention, which meant she was a virgin by choice. Did I really want to go
through with this? Regular girls could be troublesome to get rid of, but
virgins were on a whole other level. But I wasn’t paying her to sleep with me.
The document in front of me mentioned nothing about sexual favors – though I
had assumed that would naturally be the outcome sooner or later, and that she
would initiate it. This changed things. But those damn thighs and that damn
skirt and most importantly, that goddamn restraint of hers.

“That’s not what I was going to propose,”
I said, making the decision to go forward with the plan. “But glad to know you
hold me to such excellent standards.”

That got a laugh out of her. “What? You’re
really going to sit there and act surprised that that’s what I assumed after
relentlessly hitting on me? Even the note on your bouquet said you were
counting down the days until you supposedly convinced me to sleep with you.”

“That is not inaccurate.” Why was she so
bold? It was endearing and it pissed me off. “But hitting on you and paying you
to get naked are two completely different things, I would say.”

I leaned back in my chair with confidence.

“Are they to you?” She looked genuinely
surprised.

“You’re really flattering me here with
your allegations to my character.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to do that. But
you do have quite the reputation.”

“Huh.” I raised my eyebrows. “Tell me
about this reputation that I have.”

“Well, the three tellers that were let go
last month, all of them had this thing in common, you see,” she winked. The
girl actually had the nerve to wink at me. “Well they had two things in common
actually. An apparently mind-blowing night with you, and the ability to tell
tales about it.”

“This is different, Aria.”

“I’m sure they all thought so too,” she
snapped.

“I never made the proposition that I am
going to make to you. Never had to, really. Trust me when I say that this
really, truly is different.”

“Yeah, cause you’re like in love with me
because of the conversations I have with our customers regarding my future as
your wife.” She was laughing hysterically now.

She used the word love. That was a
trigger.

“Look, Aria, I don’t want to mislead you.
I don’t do relationships or romance or any of that bullshit. This is honestly
100 percent about me wanting to take your clothes off and have my fucking way
with you.”

Her face erupted into flames and I could
swear I saw her shiver as she started to speak. “I-”

“No, let me finish,” I stopped her. “There
is no question that I want your body and hope that you will willingly give that
to me at some point. But I am not offering to buy your body. Even I am not that
much of a scumbag, despite this reputation I seem to have accumulated around
here. I don’t need to buy your body when there is plenty of ass that I could
get with the snap of my fingers.”

“Then what are you offering?” She looked
utterly confused.

“I am offering to buy your time.”

“What?” She looked like I had just said
that I was flying out to Mars tomorrow.

I moved the rose to the side and handed
her a copy of the document I had drafted.

“This is my offer: I will pay off your
mother’s hospital bills in six installments, one for every month you spend
dating me.”

Her mouth was open. “What do you mean
dating you?”

“What the hell do you think it means? A
guy and a girl dress up and go places together. Dinners, movies, parties,
whatever they like. At the end of the night there is usually some kissing and
usually something more.”

She rolled her eyes. Damn. She was ballsy
with her own boss. “Thanks for the pop-culture lesson, but I am aware of how
dating works. I may have even experienced it in practice here and there.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her acting
feisty.

“Then does that sound like something
you’re interested in?” Things were starting to look positive on that front.

“Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

What? Fuck no. Why would there be a legal
document in your hand if that was what I was asking? I thought she was smarter
than that.