BILLIONAIRE (Part 2) (4 page)

The restaurant manager was waiting patiently for my answer, interpreting my silence as contemplation over the dinner menu selection.  “I’m very adventurous,” I told him.  “Whatever the usual is, I’m sure it’ll be perfect.”

He bowed slightly once again and walked away.

Growing up as I had, I wasn’t all that accustomed to Japanese food, or ethnic food of any kind.  I had learned to cook for myself from a very young age, out of necessity.  There had been many times when we had gone without food altogether.  I thought of the night I’d eaten plain flour out of the bag with a spoon, huddled by the light of a dying fire as my mother slept with an almost-empty bottle of bourbon clutched in her arms.  I had been seven years old.  I’d decided then and there to teach myself how to cook and bake and how to fend for myself.  I’d made a vow to myself in that cold flickering desperation that I would work and study until I could somehow hoist myself out of the dismal choices I’d been given.  I didn’t want to end up like her.  Drunk and sad and alone.  The very next day I’d asked my teacher for extra books, and extra homework.  When the electricity bill didn’t get paid, I read by candlelight.  I was driven to better my situation.  And I’d done it.  I’d risen, little by little.  I’d skipped a grade.  I’d gotten into Princeton with a partial scholarship.  I’d escaped the confines of my dead-end home town.  And I’d earned my degree in three years.

I didn’t tell them I wasn’t, in fact, old enough to legally drink.  Not quite.

And I didn’t allow myself to think of him that way.  The way I couldn’t help consider as the flashback rolled through me with the kind of dark force it always inflicted. 
That
wasn’t the reason I was so absorbingly attracted to Alexander Wolfe, not at all.  I banished the errant thought.  I was attracted to him because he was beautiful.  Protective.  Surprisingly kind.  I wanted to taste Alexander because I knew it would bring him pleasure, which was the only thing I wanted to do.

Or was it?

Alexander and Jake were talking business.  I leaned into Alexander and let his warm presence settle around me.  That delicious mint-laced edge to his scent touched my still-fresh memory.  Mint.  It had always seemed the foremost flavor of him, but as I considered the intricacies of his scent more carefully and in more detail, I realized there was more to it than that.

Freshly starched cotton.  Expensive soap. 
Minted paper.

Alexander
smelled like money.

Alexander

This
was nothing less than addiction, I knew that.

I was powerless
to slow it, or calm it.  It raged in me like the hellfire that it was.  I’d always been prone to obsessive behavior.  At least when it came to work.  But not women.  Or at least not before
this
woman.  Always before I’d maintained a comfortably noncommittal distance.  I’d dated many women, but always on my own terms.  As soon as they became too needy or too demanding, I’d politely take my leave.  I always made it clear that I wasn’t looking for long-term relationships.  I’d seen very few that worked.  Commitment bound a person in ways I had no intention of ever being bound.  I didn’t aspire to that kind of forced restraint and no one had ever given me reason to feel or believe otherwise.

But
this
.  This was something new.  Something dangerous.  What I needed to do was focus.  I needed to get a fucking grip.

I couldn’t even stand to physically separate myself from her.  Pulling out of her, even after
having one after another of the most phenomenal orgasms of my life – and I’d never felt like anything was lacking until now – I felt a ridiculous but overwhelming need to
stay inside
.  To never, ever leave that blissful state of connection to this soft, nubile
creature
whose every movement and every moan made me want to
occupy
her and possess her and keep her all to myself.

But I was a rational man.  I had
more discipline and control than anyone I knew.

I could handle this.

I had to force myself to allow her to leave my bed.  I had to physically restrain myself from demanding that she stay with me, behind closed doors, until I took her again, and again, to satisfy this savage, carnal beast that had taken up residence inside my body.  It wasn’t just my cock that wanted her, although my cock had become permanently and painfully hard from the minute she’d walked into my life.  Even after spending myself mindlessly inside her, too deeply immersed in a pleasure so enlightening it had shadowed every other consideration, I was almost instantly aroused again.  I couldn’t seem to deflate.  And it wasn’t just that.  My entire
being
wanted to drink her and eat her and feast on her unbearable beauty in every way possible way.  My hands wanted to feel all that creamy white skin, play in her silky hair, tease her cherry-pink nipples into firm little peaks.  My mouth wanted to fix itself onto that sweet honeyed pussy, to delve into the succulent tightness that was so wanting and so responsive.

She was so
perpetually
ready
for me.  Her sex was like a freshly-blooming, nectar-moistened flower.  Ludicrously enticing.  As though she’d walked out of a fantasy and into my life.

And I, Alexander Wolfe, billionaire CEO, was addicted. 
That’s all there was to it.  When she’d threatened to
leave
, to go back to her apartment for the night and see her friends and change her clothes, I’d felt a spearing jab of panic.  There was no other way to describe it.  Just the thought of that little pink pussy, tight and wet and softly aroused, barely covered by her short skirt, vulnerable to any other man who might come along: it was unbearable.  That round little ass.  Those young, uplifted breasts.  Those fuck-me lips.  She’d be
out there
, small and vulnerable and alone, without protection.  People would
see
her.  They might covet her like I did.  They might try to entice her.  To
touch
her.  I simply couldn’t understand how she’d gone twenty-two years, or close to it, without ever being touched.  How all other men who had come into contact with her between then and now had resisted her.  I didn’t care what kind of makeover she’d been given; it simply didn’t make sense.

I’d practically begged her to stay.

I’d tried to roll over, to watch her walk out the door and wait for the habitual relief.  Like I usually did when I’d finished with a woman.  To savor that peaceful, slaked solitude that didn’t require pleasing anyone or putting up with insipid emotions or grating demands.

Instead,
my hands had involuntarily gripped her hips.  My mouth had sought out her budded nipple as though to draw comfort from her, to drink in some kind of sexual-spiritual nourishment. 
If you leave, I’ll come after you
, I’d thought, and hated myself for my pathetic fixation.

Let her go.  Clear you mind.  You’
ll see her on Monday
, I’d told myself, knowing I’d do no such thing. 
What if she disappears?  What if you can’t find her?  What if another man takes her and keeps her for himself?

Jake would be his usual offbeat charming self but it would be a good test.
  Of my own tolerance.  And I couldn’t really cancel.  There were things we needed to discuss.  The investment company he was running was being audited the following week and had had some issues with insider trading accusations that were still being followed up.  These were issues that began before Jake took the company reins.  I’d sacked the suspects and reshuffled the company, putting Jake in charge.  I knew he was up to the job.  And I could trust him, even if his work history wasn’t exactly squeaky clean.  None of that worried me.  He had a couple of degrees and he’d always had good instincts when it came to business.  But in fact I’d been surprised at how well he was doing with it.  Jake was rising to the challenge.  I knew he wanted to please me and it was another reason I’d offered him the job.  It was a way I could help him.  And protect him.

I’d always been protective of Jake.  Ever since that night.  The night that changed our lives and the entire course of our future.  He’d been eleven years old and I
’d been sixteen. 
Eleven
years old and that bastard had done things to him.  I don’t even know how far it’d gone.  Jake never told me and I never asked.  I’d beaten the fucker to a pulp and nearly killed him.  We’d escaped the little beach shack where we spent the earliest years of our lives, and we never looked back.  The first few years had been a haze of hardship.  Of fear, I’ll admit it.  More than that, of anger.  And most of all, of not understanding why.  I didn’t care what happened to me so much.  But Jake was such a little punk.  So small.  Defenseless and needy of any attention I could give him.  What that kid needed was love.  I don’t know if he ever really got it.  I looked out for him the best I could.  I took odd jobs and worked my way through high school.  I barely looked up.  It was obvious I needed to kill high school and make something of myself or we’d be living under bridges or in some squalid apartment for the rest of our lives.  And I’d done it.  I’d earned a full scholarship to Princeton and I took my little brother with me.  For two years, they never knew he lived in my dorm room with me.  By the time the administrators figured it out, I’d already found a room for him with a family who were looking for a boarder.  A family that just so happened to have a teenage daughter that hand-picked Jake from some line-up and gave him a different kind of education.

So
, somehow, we’d survived.  Some mixture of grit and desperation had pulled us through.  And I’d been so driven to beat the odds that I just kept on going.  I graduated and started a publishing company two months later.  I used work as a refuge.  It was the only thing I knew how to do.  I worked, and I protected my brother.  The two threads were weaved into my fiber.

Because of this,
I had a sixth sense when it came to sensing vulnerability.

And I had sensed it in Lila.  I was beginning to realize that this was
one of the things fueling my obsession.  Aside from the fact that she was a nubile nymph the likes of which I had never before seen or even imagined, she exuded the same underlying fragility as Jake.  An intangible defencelessness that roused every instinct I possessed.  She fired up all the old urges that had driven me to succeed and surpass and secure.

I didn’t mind that Jake was practically drooling.  She was safe
between us.  He could look.  He knew if he touched I would beat him to a pulp.  I could still kick his ass.  He
wanted
to touch, that was obvious.  I didn’t blame him for that.  The girl was innocence and sexuality incarnate, all rolled up into one perfect package.

The way she leaned into me like I was some kind of safe haven only deepened my need to guard her and shield her.
  She was practically on my lap as we ate and talked.  It was all I could do not to roll her onto me and take her right there in that little booth, Jake or no Jake.

My brother
and I talked about what we needed to talk about.  He was meeting friends later anyway to go to a club and a party.  I sometimes forget that he’s only twenty-seven.

We walked out of the restaurant together and Jake kissed Lila on the corner of her mouth.  Some kind of volatility boiled in me but I kept it under control.  My brother caught my eye and laughed.  Then he kissed Lila once more, this time on her other cheek and more chastely, like he was aware that he might be on the receiving end of my fist if he pushed me too far.

“You’ve got my brother by the balls, Lila,” he told her, highly amused.  “And it was nice to meet you.  See you next time.”  Then, to me, “Talk to you Monday, bro.  Have a good night.”  He slapped me on the back.

With that, Jake walked off into the night.  He was a full-grown man now, of course, but there was still that small edge of disquiet as he walked away in the darkness, that latent, long-held, necessary watchfulness.
  Of not wanting to let go.

The limo driver was already there, opening the door.  He was a new one and I co
uldn’t remember his name.  As soon as we got in I told him to cruise for a while and I closed the tinted glass partition window.

Lila
was sitting all demurely beside me, not touching me.  But she had this look in her smoky green eyes that was not even close to demure.  She’d been watching me watch Jake.  Like she was reading me, or attempting to.  She leaned a little closer, lifting her face to mine.  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

Those lips.  Plump and pink and glossy. 
A kind of rounded, youthful plumpness that women pay a fortune for but never come close to achieving.  Lila’s lips were juicy and sweet like she’d just been licking on a virgin-turned-goddess-flavored lollipop.  And they were opened slightly.  Inviting me inside.

I slipped my tongue
into her mouth.  She tasted so good I was literally dizzy from the rush of lust I felt.  I needed more.  To get deeper.  She went pliant in my arms in a way that drove me mad.  Willing and deceptively submissive.  I felt her hand on me.

F
uck.

Both
her small, delicate hands.  Fumbling like she wasn’t sure what to do but didn’t quite care.  She was unfastening my belt buckle, unzipping my pants.