Billionaire's Pet 3 (5 page)

Seeing the wet mark, Griffin cupped Katelyn’s mound. His other hand tangled in her hair as his mouth demanded another kiss. Through the fabric, he roughly massaged her pussy. The pad of his thumb rubbed a hard line up and down the seam of her pants, bullying her lower body into submission. Her hips pressed forward, her mound thrusting and retreating.

Her palms landed flat against his chest then curled into fists. Gripping his sweater, Katelyn pulled him closer. His fingers knotted more tightly in her hair and the kiss turned to a soft biting of lips and chin and throat as he urged her on.

“So beautiful.” Holding his hand rigid, he let her ride it. “Come back, Kate.”

Fueled by a month of frustrated fantasies and Griffin’s masterful touch, Katelyn’s first climax rolled through her. Her hips bucked twice and then she froze. Finding her trembling against him in obvious release, Griffin worked the line of her clit with his entire hand as he whispered in her ear.

“Don’t forget how you feel right now, baby. How I brought you to this point.”

Forget? Impossible. She had spent a month remembering moments like these, trying unsuccessfully to replicate the hot bolt of climax Griffin could draw from her body with so little effort.

Giving Katelyn no time to think, Griffin unfastened her belt before undoing the button and zipper on her slacks. She knew she should try to stop him, that she didn’t want another replay of their last agreement. But, from her belly button up, nothing worked. Her mind warred with her muscles. She told her hands to push him away, yet her fingers ached to knot in his short hair and pull his mouth to hers for another kiss.

Griffin jerked her slacks and underwear down to her ankles then unzipped his own pants. Out of time, she had to decide. Fuck or fight?

“Fuck-oh-fuck,” she moaned, feeling him enter her so big and hot and hard that a shock wave barreled through her pussy and all the way up her spine. Thrusting to its base, his cock stretched her snug cunt. Her nipples, already small points of need, drew tighter, their movement inside her shirt almost painful from the increased sensitivity caused by her arousal.

“Kiss me.” His gaze hooked hers, compelling her to obey.

She wrapped her hands around his skull. Tilting her head back, she drew him down for a kiss. More moans left her to echo inside his mouth. He held her to him, twin explosions of need running through her when her nipples met the unyielding barrier of his chest.

They moved against one another like manic rabbits. His strong arms lifted her up then drove her back down onto his shaft as his hips pushed up. Her body worked with his, the muscles of her cunt climbing up his cock then drinking it back in as the flexing, rolling muscles grabbed and pulled.

Griffin devoured Katelyn’s mouth through it all. His hands traveled in rough determination over her breasts, against her ass, around her throat to pull and pinch and squeeze until another climax slammed through her.

She froze against him, her body shaking with tension as every muscle in her body worked to hold his throbbing cock captive deep inside her pussy. She felt the hard jerks of his shaft inside her as he came. Groaning, he pressed her head tightly to his chest, his arms crossing over her back and squeezing her to him.

Through flesh and bone and the cashmere sweater Griffin still wore, Katelyn felt the synchronous beating of their hearts, the simultaneous intake of air as they both panted from the fury of their lovemaking.

Slowly, her muscles relaxed. Gently tugging Katelyn’s head back, Griffin kissed her throat. His hands dropped to her hips, kneading her bottom as he continued taking slow, sweet thrusts inside her. Incoherent murmurs dripping with sated pleasure rippled across his lips. His hands moved up her back and then down the sides of her arms as if he needed reassurance that she was real.

Soaking in his touch, Katelyn felt fresh tears coat her eyes. A smile lifted the corners of her mouth as her heart knocked exuberantly inside her chest. A rough start, she admitted, but the absolute perfection of all that had followed still rippled through her cunt.

At least it rippled through her until Griffin pulled away and his gaze dipped south. Feeling him freeze, she looked down.

No condom.

She looked up to find fleeting horror on his face. Right, of course he would be mortified. Griffin wanted to fuck her, not have her bear his child. He undoubtedly intended to have an heir someday, but clearly it would be with some other woman.

She braced herself and swiped at a tear before it could stain her skin and expose her heart. How had she been so stupid to think for even one second that Griffin wanted something other than her body? When it came to commitment, he would choose an equal, not some submissive — spineless — freak who caved to every last thing he could possibly request, who lived for his touch, who clung to him.

“You needn’t concern yourself with conception.” Katelyn slid off the table and jerked her clothes up. “It isn’t an issue and I wouldn’t burden you with it anyway.”

She moved to step past Griffin. He grabbed her again. Nothing gentle remained in his grip. His fingers pressed hard against the flesh of her upper arms to keep her from slipping free.

“You misunderstood.” He swallowed, his head moving with hers so she couldn’t avoid his gaze. “Whatever you think you saw on my face, it was only surprise.

That has never—”

“Yeah, it was a cold, wet slap in the face for me, too.” She rolled her eyes at him then forced a smile. “Like I said, don’t worry yourself over it. I won’t be showing up with a lawyer and a paternity suit.”

“Would you let me finish a fucking sentence for a change, Kate?” Wrapping his arms around her once more, Griffin glared down at her. “Fuck paternity suits and contracts and any other kind of damn agreement. I want you. I want to give you everything you’re entitled to as my equal — as my wife.”

Cold numbness spread through Katelyn’s body. Had Griffin Montgomery just proposed marriage? She tilted her head back, trying to read his expression.

“What are you saying?”

“I love you, Kate. That’s what I’m saying.” Griffin gave a nervous lick of his lip, his entire face contorting with a moment’s anguish. He swayed, closed his eyes and held her more tightly. “And it’s a first for me. Not just the words, but the feeling. I’m crazy about you.”

When he opened his eyes again, he found Katelyn staring up at him in disbelief.

He touched his forehead against hers. “Baby, you’re not saying anything.”

“You don’t know me.” Straining away from him, she shook her head. “I don’t know you — not really.”

She could see him mulling the truth of what she had just said. He nodded. “So get to know me. That was what you wanted before — me opening up, communicating.

Right?”

“How?” She wanted to get to know him, but she had rent to pay, a job to find. He lived in an entirely different world than the distressed one she currently occupied.

“Take the directorship—”

“I can’t!” she blurted.

His arms fell to his sides. She could see him brace against her rejection and the cold creeping chill that slow crawled down his face. He pulled back, only half a step, but it felt like a mile to Katelyn.

“I can’t right now.” Closing the distance between them, she placed her palm against his cheek. She would give almost anything to keep him from retreating, but they couldn’t have a future together when her present was so muddled. “I’m just saying I have to get to know you independently — not with this between us.”

Stopping, she gestured at the table and documents behind her. His expression thawed, but a shadow of wariness remained.

“Trust me.” She turned back, relief flooding through her when his arms closed around her once more. She pressed her cheek against his broad chest and listened to the heart beating beneath. She still had a few resources at her disposal. An hour ago, parting with them would have been unthinkable. Now she understood —

to go forward, she had to shed the past.

All of it.

**********

In her bedroom, pillows filling the space between her back and the headboard, Katelyn pressed the cell phone closer to her ear. Five weeks had passed since she had last seen Griffin Montgomery in the flesh, but his voice filled the other end of the line.

She had just finished telling him the whole sordid deal with her father that had kept her mother out of the asylum and ensured a monthly allowance that had kept Madeline housed and her medical expenses covered. Katelyn had started the story two nights ago, adding more detail the day before. Over the last five weeks, they had exchanged any number of similar calls, hundreds of texts and emails plus a few video calls.

The video calls were hardest on her will power. Griffin grew impossibly sexier between them. Maybe it was because she knew a little more about him each time, had learned all the subtle nuances of his expressions and voice, even knew when his mind drifted into a deliciously dirty thought mid-sentence featuring Katelyn in the starring role.

That little smile, the way he lifted his lashes, the flash of teeth or tongue before he finished his sentence drove her crazy.

“You’re drifting, Kate.”

The tease in his voice traveled a straight line to her pussy. Suppressing the deep responsive purr that wanted to vibrate up her throat, she asked him to repeat what he had said.

“Just that I wonder why you didn’t change your last name, given the way you still feel about your father.”

Griffin took a sip of something, causing Katelyn to glance at her nightstand where an alarm clock and cheap lamp crowded the spot her mother’s Nautilus lamp had once graced. She had sold it and the one in the living room to maintain her cushion of independence and keep the pressure off while she discovered just who Griffin Montgomery really was.

He took another sip as he waited for her answer. It was going on ten o’clock and she imagined him relaxing in his penthouse with a snifter of very expensive brandy, something with a subtle and deep flavor that warmed his gut and spread relaxation through his strong limbs.

She shook her head, clearing the image. If she thought too long about Griffin warm, relaxed and potentially in bed, she would not get a wink of sleep that night. Forcing her mind to focus on his question, she released a small sigh.

“My mother wanted me to keep it. It was, literally, her last coherent request.”

Katelyn swallowed, surprised at the power one memory could have after so many years. She repeated Madeline’s words. “Keep the name, love. The wind does not break a tree that bends. Be as strong as iron when you must, but never inflexible.”

She heard a soft, strangled noise from the other end of the phone. When he responded, Griffin’s voice sounded scratched and bleeding. “Your mother was a very wise woman, Kate. I wish

” His voice caught on something again before he finished. “I wish I could have met her.”

An undercurrent of pain came filtered over the line. Griffin had really opened up to her during the last few weeks, revealing small cracks in his armor through which large truths slipped through. He had confided about the stream of nannies and female tutors that populated his childhood, each one beautiful and lasting only as long as his father’s lust or his mother’s forbearance held.

A cold fury shook Katelyn’s body at the memory of what Griffin’s mother had done, plying his last tutor with liquor before sending the woman naked into his room. The woman had done nothing more than pass out next to the still sleeping Griffin — until his mother gleefully told her husband what his newest whore was up to.

Perhaps it had seemed like an excellent way to get rid of a rival at the time, but the senior Montgomery had taken his rage out on his son, not the woman beside him. Griffin had fled the house, almost dying in the woods behind the estate. In recompense, his mother had purchased a dog for him — the bloodhound that had rescued him. His father’s response had been to move permanently into the Chicago penthouse and shun his son until Griffin turned eighteen and left for college.

So much strain and tension from so early an age. The pressure was more than enough to twist and misshape even the strongest of people.

“Still there, Kate?”

His voice went flat, signaling his retreat. That seemed to be the pattern in their conversations. He would take a step forward, show emotion or reveal a truth, then look behind him for the nearest exit.

“Yes.” She brushed a stray tear from her cheek. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

**********

Griffin placed the decanter of scotch on the bar then returned to the fireplace with his freshly filled glass. Holding the drink up, he studied the fire through the deep amber liquid. His mind replayed the conversation with Katelyn he had finished almost an hour before.

She had all but hung up on him — not angry, but decidedly remote. He had no idea what to do or what he had done. He shook his head, then took a sip of the scotch. The flavors melted across his tongue, unfolding from sweet to smoky.

Closing his eyes, he leaned against the leather couch and shifted his hips.

Almost an hour and a half since the start of their call and he still sported a raging hard-on. Of course, she couldn’t have known he had one while they were talking. Like all their talks since they agreed to get to know one another better over the phone, the conversation had danced at a careful distance from anything sexual. He hadn’t said a single unacceptable word. He had genuinely listened to Katelyn talk about her mother, sincerely felt sad that he would never meet the woman and empathized with Katelyn’s freshly stirred grief.

He’d exposed his vulnerabilities to her time and again these last few weeks, almost every single soft spot he had. Even when he desperately wanted to retreat, he hadn’t. So why the hell had she abruptly ended the call?

Taking a larger sip of the scotch, Griffin snorted. The reason was obvious, really. She had ended it so suddenly because he had shown too much vulnerability. Deep down, Katelyn was sexually submissive. That nature drove initial attraction to him, to his power and command. Then she had pulled back because he wouldn’t let her in. By throwing the doors wide open on his feelings, he had weakened his dominance, lessening her attraction to him — particularly since there had been no physical contact for five damn weeks.