Billionaire's Love Suite (17 page)

He took her nipple between his teeth and tugged it until she squealed
that excited high squeak that told him she was wet, pliable and ready for
him. His erection throbbed. He unzipped his slacks.

Yes, he was quite proud of himself. He hadn’t missed a meeting. The
construction was moving ahead as planned.

He lifted her skirt to her waist, pulled down her panties in one movement
and placing his hands on her waist he lifted her onto his strong erection,
filling her completely. Bracing her against the wall and balancing her
thighs on top of his muscular thighs, he lifted her with his hands and brought
her down on him again and again.

He’d moved out of the earth plane and entered another dimension that
was only sound and tactile feeling. He heard his heart pounding at ramming
speed. He heard Shana cry out his name. He didn’t know what there was
about how she gushed his name in the way that she always did which was
half breathless and half scream. But each time she did, it made him want
to sink even more deeply into her to a place where he would never have to
leave. It was that place he’d sought all his life. A place of comfort and safety.
A place of warmth and acceptance. A place some people called home.

He felt her hands clutching the sides of his face, her fingers tangled
in his hair. She had nearly collapsed on top of him and there were pearls
of perspiration on her forehead and sliding down the valley between her
breasts.

He suckled her nipple for a long, luscious moment before he untangled
himself from her.

She kissed his face with dozens of tiny, feather light kisses while he
kept his eyes shut. He wasn’t quite ready to re-enter the world. He felt her hands on the nape of his neck as she pulled him toward her for another kiss.
Her lips were moist and quite swollen from his kisses. He marveled that she
wasn’t bruised sometimes from the assault he gave her at times. She was
a marvel like that. No matter how often he wanted her, which, quite oddly,
seemed to be increasing daily as they grew closer to their wedding day, she
was very willing.

Now that he thought about it, he realized that making love to Shana
only at night had increased to both night and in the morning. Yesterday and
today, he’d found that making love to her in his office in the middle of the
day had become quite necessary in order for him to go about his normal
business routine.

There was only one explanation Justin could come up with. He was finally
outgrowing Shana. That had to be it. He was at the level of satiation.

Relief filled him.

His plan would not go awry. Tomorrow they would be married.
Producing an heir to the Yates hotel fortune would only solidify Justin’s
inheritance should the courts question his marriage. Ironclad. Justin’s future
was ironclad and he had Shana to thank for it. After the ceremony he would
talk to Leon about some sort of formal compensation for Shana. He would
want to do the right thing, of course. He would make certain she was always
financially secure. And he would provide handsomely for his child. College.
Yes. And graduate school money. He would make certain he covered all the
facets of his responsibility.

Justin felt Shana ply his lips with her tongue, urging him to open to
her. He complied and as he slaked his tongue against hers, he felt those
devilish fingers of libido-pumping nerves shock him. Shana held his face in
her hands and kissed him deeply with a hunger he thought should have been
assuaged. This woman, his bride, wasn’t through with him.

The clanging sound of blood in his ears was so loud he couldn’t hear
what she was asking him. All he knew was that he didn’t want her to stop.
He thought he nodded his head to answer her, but he wasn’t sure. He felt her
fingers flicking rapidly against the tip of his penis like tiny dancers, tapping,
patting, forcing him to arousal again.

From some deep ancient place within him, he mustered the strength to
enter her again. She was hot, moist and slick. He heard himself groan over and over. He rubbed her bud with his thumb as he plunged himself deeper
inside. Then he heard her call his name again.

He was lost to her.

He covered her mouth with his and took her next screams within his
chest where he would keep them forever. He wrapped his arms around her
and crushed her breasts to his chest. Then he climaxed again. He flung his
head back and groaned a sound he’d never heard a human make. He knew
then he’d been altered, but he didn’t know in what way.

She captured his face and brought his lips to hers.

“We can’t make so much noise,” she said.

He couldn’t speak. He only nodded, still unable to open his eyes. The
effort would probably kill him.

She lifted herself off of him and braced herself against the wall as she
straightened her clothes. She helped him zip his pants and she straightened
his tie.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Blessedly, he opened his eyes and looked at her. She’d just taken him to
nirvana and she looked as cool and calm as a soft summer breeze. He didn’t
know how she did it, unless he didn’t have the same impact upon her as she
had on him.

How was that possible?
He thought. She was under his spell, wasn’t
she? She was the pawn in his plan. That had been his strategy.

“I’m meeting my mother and sister for a last fitting. I’ll see you for dinner.
At seven,” she said and kissed his cheek like nothing had happened.

Justin watched her walk out of his office.

He took a deep breath. Smiled to himself and congratulated himself that
everything was going exactly as he’d planned.

A
summer fog drifted over San Francisco like gauzy linen obscuring
the panoramic view from the hotel balcony and making the idea of
spending the day in bed with Justin all the more appealing.

Shana rolled over to touch Justin and found the space in the king sized
bed vacant. Pulling up the ivory colored sheets to cover her bare breasts,
she looked across the room to find Justin fully dressed and putting on his
shoes.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” he said tying his wing-tipped shoe.

“Where are you going?” Shana asked.

“I have a meeting with Kent Silver in ten. Do you think you could join
us in about an hour? I want you to tour the rooms with me. Give me your
take on what all will be necessary to turn this place around. Our vacancies
are up ten percent since last summer. I want to know if it’s the hotel itself or
if we need better marketing.”

Shana was stunned and wounded. Her only reaction was to gape at
him.

Justin walked over to the bed where they’d spent hours making love
only the night before after their exhausting cross country plane trip and
kissed her on the top of her head. “I’ll meet you in the executive offices.”

“Sure,” was all she could manage to say.

Still groggy from sleep, Shana was unable to devise a protest before
Justin was out the door.

Staring at the closed door, Shana realized that Justin had never intended
for them to have a real honeymoon. This hurried trip after their very quick
ceremony and their two hour reception and wedding dinner the night of
their wedding, was about business.

Shana had barely had any private time with her mother, sisters and
brothers at all. Justin had courteously provided Shana’s family with a private limousine tour of Manhattan the day after the wedding. He took care
of their meals, their transportation to the airport and their plane trip back to
Arizona but there was nothing “personal” about his contact with them at all.
Now that she looked back on it all, he had done what had been “expected”
that a groom would do for his new in-laws but that was all. Justin had shown
no desire to get to know her mother other than their superficial exchanges
at the dinner. Justin had been mannerly and respectful. Shana realized
she’d expected too much to hope that he would be openly caring about her
family.

Shana had hoped he would have fallen in love with her gregarious
family, but that hadn’t happened.

“How could it, you blockhead?” she chided herself as she pounded her
fist on the bed. “He’s not in love with you.”

Shana had only herself to blame. She purposefully had not demanded
an answer from Justin as to why he wanted to marry her because she didn’t
want to hear the truth from his lips. She knew the truth. He wanted to give
his child his name. When he’d proposed, she had immediately accepted.
There had been no discussion and as long as she kept it that way, she could
still fan the glimmer of hope that somehow, someway, she could make Justin
love her.

No doubt that through the ages, countless women had put their faith in
just such a hope and lost. However, Shana’s intuition cried out to her to try.
She believed deep in her heart that because she loved him so much, all that
love would not be wasted. She would love him enough for both of them.

Contemporary psychology and numerous relationship studies had
proved that such thinking was not healthy, Shana knew. It was impossible
to make someone love a person. Love just happened. There was no logic
about love. She could be steering herself toward heartbreak.

Still, Shana had based her entire life on believing that decaying properties
could be fixed and brought to life. She trusted in her ability to re-structure
management teams and re-train staff. Her vision had transformed hotels
and villas. She made “temporary homes” out of hotel rooms. She put her
love and light into every project she’d ever undertaken.

As Shana looked back on her private times with Justin she had seen a
lonely little boy inside the man crying out for love. Justin was a good man. He was not abusive or dysfunctional. She believed with all her heart that
she simply had to show him how to love. When that happened she knew she
would have the marriage she’d always dreamed for herself. She deserved
to be happy.

If she were patient, she believed that love would conquer all.

*****

The Fourth of July festivities in New York had booked every hotel room
in the city. Despite the on-going construction, the Lux Hotel opened its
rooms to the wave of vacationers. The new speakeasy opened on July third
to a long queue line that snaked around the block and made the late night
news cast.

The publicity brought more attention to the hotel, which prompted
Justin to pay the tile layers and painters time and a half to work through the
weekend to continue working on the lobby and the mezzanine area. At least
the areas would be passable, though far from finished. It was Justin’s hope
that they could move their target date up by a month or more. Shana agreed
with Justin that if they could schedule their re-opening in early November
for the entire Christmas season, their revenues should increase by thirty-five percent. Justin felt the gamble was worth it and hired double teams of
painters and carpenters.

With the activity at the hotel buzzing like a well-ordered hive, Shana
used her spare time to move her things out of the apartment she shared with
Cate and into Justin’s penthouse.

Cate had already started packing Shana’s clothes into wardrobe boxes
prior to the wedding. She also took it upon herself to hire two movers and a
moving truck upon Shana’s return from her honeymoon.

Shana stood in the apartment living room watching two extremely buff,
handsome, dark haired men in their early thirties lift heavy boxes like they
were feathers.

“Where did you find these guys?” Shana asked.

Cate’s eyes peered over the top of the pear she was eating at the dark
eyed Gypsy looking man dressed in a tight sleeveless tee shirt and painted-on
black jeans. “At the gym.”

“I’ve never seen guys like this at our health club,” Shana replied looking
at the man named Gabe whose biceps rippled and twitched when he so
much as breathed. “Believe me, I would have noticed.”

Cate nodded slightly and swallowed a huge hunk of pear. “I quit going
there. This is a new gym. Very Rocky-ish.”

“These guys are boxers?”

“Yeah,” Cate sighed.

“And just what are you doing there?” Shana gasped.

Cate’s eyes scoured the back end of Gypsy man as he bent over and
picked up one of Shana’s upholstered French chairs single handedly and
lifted it over his head. “Observing.”

“Good decision.”

The two men had filled the freight elevator and were making the last run
to the truck, which left Shana and Cate alone.

“So, how goes it?” Cate said tossing the pear core into the trash can.

“Great. Wonderful. I highly recommend married life,” Shana said,
mindful of Cate scrutinizing gaze. “So are you hoping to date the Gypsy
king there?”

“He’s gay. I just like looking. And don’t change the subject. Are you
happy?”

“Yes.”

Cate peered more deeply into Shana’s face. “Damn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t tell if you’re telling me the truth or not.”