Bound To Him: Three Dates with a Billionaire

Bound To Him

Three dates with a Hollywood Billionaire, Book One

By

Emma Lyn Wild

In this, the first book in a thrilling new trilogy, a Hollywood star on the ropes meets a woman who only has eyes for archaeology. They burn down the night and want more, but they have many battles before they reach their happy ending...

Working as an unpaid intern at her dream job leaves Cassie little time for herself, since she has to work two other jobs to pay the rent and eat. But when Hollywood bad boy Troy Cooper walks into her gallery at the museum, all she can think about is his gorgeous blue eyes and his beautiful body.

Her roomie introduces her to Madame X, the owner of the most exclusive escort agency in New York. All Cassie has to do is take three dates and she can pay off her worst debts. But the first date is with a sleaze, and she knows she can’t go through with it. Not until Troy shows up. He takes over the date — and takes her to bed. There, Cassie discovers something else about the sexy Hollywood actor, a kink she reluctantly agrees to, and then finds thrilling.

Troy is in New York to act in a play that’s his last chance. Despite being the son of one of Hollywood’s top producers, he’s blotted his copybook one time too many. If he doesn’t make a success of this, he’s finished. But when he meets Cassie, he’s a goner. When he discovers she’s an escort, he knows she could destroy everything he was fighting for.

The hell of it is, he can’t forget her. He still wants her, so badly that giving up his career starts to look like a viable option.

With fans pushing her out of the way, and Troy anxious about the play, Cassie’s caught between her job and his hard body. When the play finishes its run, he’s going back to LA and his role as superhero Foxman. How can they ever make it work?

Maybe she should give up and enjoy what she has while she has it, then let him go with a smile. So why is that so hard?

C
assie

I was concentrating so hard on the mosaic pavement that I didn’t notice the pair of shiny black lace-up shoes standing next to me until someone cleared his throat noisily.
Oh great, my boss has come to watch me
. I never did well when he did that. He’d stand over me and then stare until I started shaking. This job meant so much to me that any mistake was one too many. And I’d worked so hard to get it.

Control yourself, Cassie. Calm down.

I leaned back, prepared to lift my head and smile, but I hit an obstacle that shouldn’t have been there. Caught off balance, I flung out my hand out instinctively to save myself, and the tray of tiny tesserae I was holding went flying. Little bits of mosaic went everywhere, destroying the careful arrangement that had taken me all the previous day.

“Fuck!” My word rang around the walls. People turned their heads, glaring at me, an interloper who didn’t belong here. I closed my eyes in horror.

Strong male hands closed around my shoulders and pulled. I had no option but to straighten. Pushing my glasses up my nose, I turned around to see who had turned my day into such a disaster.

Oookay.
So he was gorgeous. There stood a man with perfectly classical features, one that Phidias would have wept to see. A smile curved his sensuous lips. He held my shoulders and stared down at me, while my hair tangled around my face. I had tied it back with a clip when I’d started work, but the clip had broken. Now it was a tousled mess, clogged with bits of plaster.

I didn’t dare touch him. He looked untouchable. He wore a pair of jeans and a sweater, but with such an air the clothes had to be designer. You didn’t get that kind of perfection without spending a fortune to get it. His dark hair was perfectly cut into a style longer on top, with sides short enough for a girl to run her fingers through, if she had a mind to. His scruff of a beard made me long to touch it.

He looked vaguely familiar, but that was probably because I spent my days surrounded by Classical statues. He could join them, except his face was animated and alive. And he was in color. His eyes were such a startling shade of blue that I wondered if someone had carved them from lapis lazuli.

“Hi,” he said. “Can I help pick up the bits?”

“Cassie, my office in half an hour,” my boss snapped.

I nodded, letting my head hang. “Sure thing. I need to pick up the tesserae.”

“That’s why I said half an hour instead of now,” Steve said. He sighed, as if he was suffering yet another of my messes, which in a way he was. But if that man hadn’t been standing there, I wouldn’t have lost my balance and none of this would have happened. Not that I could say that to him. He’d fire me on the spot.

I hated calling him Steve. I would have preferred Mr. Arbalest, because he was as old as my father and twice as terrifying. ‘Steve’ didn’t sound right. I’d been brought up the old-fashioned way, to treat my elders respectfully and at a distance. Steve sometimes came too close.

Not that anybody in their right mind would want me when so many beautiful people came to the museum. I wore my loose jeans and shapeless top, which had been clean when I started my shift, but were now smeared with the dust of centuries. Normally I’d wear my dust with pride, but this man made me super-aware of my appearance. “N-no, thank you,” I stammered. “I’ll do it. I need to count them.”

I wasn’t quite sure how many pieces I’d had in the tray. I’d put myself into a kind of hypnotic trance carefully placing the pattern and ensuring all the tiles were exactly placed.

“I was going to ask you to tell our guest about the reconstruction, but on second thoughts, I’ll do it myself.” Steve heaved another sigh. I wanted to slap him, or shout at him to leave me alone with this man.

I had seen him somewhere before, I knew it. I frowned, trying to place him. He released my shoulders and it felt as if the lifeline between us was broken. I am so stupid sometimes, I make myself cringe.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, but I didn’t lift my head.

It was the eyes. I knew those eyes, and once I’d got them, I got the rest of him. Hollywood bad boy Troy Cooper, in the news for all the wrong reasons, had touched me. Everybody knew Troy, from his start as a child star to the total hottie he was now. His current hit was playing in the cinemas, and my roomie was still sighing over it. He played Foxman in the latest superhero movie, but he’d died at the end. The media said they’d killed him off because his private life was getting more headlines than the parts he played. Movie fans were still bewailing the loss all over social media. Nobody really knew if Foxman would come back from the dead, or if he did, that Troy Cooper would be playing him.

Now here he was, looking very alive, standing in front of me. Smelling gorgeous, like only wealthy people could. I bet he had that cologne made for him. How could he have blown everything so spectacularly? His latest scandal had sent him here, to New York, trying to redeem himself by playing Antony in Shakespeare’s play.

“Why are you here?” I blurted out.

“I’m opening in Antony and Cleopatra soon,” he said. His voice rumbled through me and I could easily imagine the power of it booming over a packed theater. “I’m looking at the Roman side. We’re doing this in togas, so I need to get with the program. I heard you had a special pavement.” I flicked a glance at the closed door. We weren’t opening that part just yet.

“Plus, Mr. Cooper has kindly agreed to speak at the gala on Wednesday night,” Steve added.

A fundraiser I wouldn’t be attending. Only the wealthiest people and their dates would be there, despite us grunts having done all the work. As long as they raised the money to finish this project, I wouldn’t mind. The pavement had been in storage for years. The room was finally going on display. If I could pick up all the pieces I’d just dropped, of course.

I bent to pick up the tesserae, feeling stupid as they watched me. Steven told Troy Cooper all about the pavement and the room, the work we’d done and tried to kid ourselves about. We said it didn’t matter that somebody else got the credit, that all that mattered was the work, but we were definitely lying. I’d have loved to see my name on the plaque that would explain the room to visitors in the future.

This end of the gallery was roped off, so after making sure I’d found all the pieces, I wiped my hand on my jeans and stepped over the rope, stumbling a little but recovering my balance. I took the tray back downstairs to lock up. Tomorrow I’d have to sort it again. If I was still here.

Steve smiled at Troy. “Shall we go through?”

Troy flicked a glance at me. “I don’t want to take up any more of your time. Can Ms-er- show me?”

Steve glared at me, but since Troy’s father was a big donor to the restoration of both pavements, there was little he could do. “I set aside some time to show you these.”

“Nevertheless, I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure she can answer any questions I have. You’ve explained it all very well.”

Steve’s chest moved in a heavy sigh. He grimaced. “Very well.” He deigned me with a glance, his pale blue eyes boring into me. “Come to my office when you’ve done. Make sure you look after Mr. Cooper.”

I nodded, then switched on a smile for Troy. It wasn’t difficult. “Shall we?”

Reluctantly, Steve handed me the key for the private room. “Lock up when you’ve done.”

I took the tesserae with me. Visitors to the museum would grab them all as souvenirs if I left them. Sighing, Steve held out his hand and I put the tray in it.

He beamed at Troy. “Once you’ve done here, I would be delighted to show you the rest of the museum.”

Troy gave him a tight-lipped smile in return. “I can find my own way out. I’ll see you this evening.”

I unlocked the door and waved him in. As he passed, his cologne tickled my nostrils. I’d never forget that smell.

So here I was, with the hottest actor in Hollywood — in the world! — in a private, dimly lit room with the most salacious piece of art the museum owned. Soft lights washed the surface of the tiles as I began my speech. “This came from the same house as the one outside. At first we thought the house was a b-brothel, but only this piece was like, well—” I waved my hands helplessly then finished, “So we think it was privately installed for one of the owners.”

“Where he could get his fun?”

I swallowed. “Exactly.”

This dim light was far too intimate for my liking. As was the pavement. “It probably decorated the bathhouse.”

“Where people regularly got naked.” He moved closer and peered at the figures depicted on the mosaic. My, but he had a great butt, filling his jeans perfectly, inviting the onlooker, me, to touch. Not that I did, though I wanted to.

“Yes,” I said faintly, still staring at his rear end.

“They knew how to do it doggy style even then?”

Oh, fuck, he wanted to discuss what they were doing? The tiles showed couples in various sexual positions, and this was no sex manual; they were enjoying the hell out of it. “It seems a natural way of doing things.”

He turned his attention to a woman lying on a couch, her legs splayed wide for her lover. “They were the kind of couches people used when they ate,” I said.

“And for fucking.” He said the word calmly. It sent a jolt of heat to my crotch.

“Yes.”

Unfortunately he turned just as I was licking my lips. His gaze lingered on them, then moved up to my eyes.

Oh, fuck, they were even more beautiful in real life. A pure, clear blue, just the kind I liked, as long as they belonged to the face of a hot man. Specifically him. I stared at him for a fraught moment. “We’re doing the play straight, with a touch of nudity,” he said.

“Yours?” I shouldn’t have said that, but it was out now.

He shrugged. “A flash of ass. Mine.”

I was going to have to scrape up the money to see that play. Maybe I knew somebody who worked at the theater, or I could get a temporary job. No, these days there were lines for working anywhere. And I wasn’t exactly flush with cash.

“Do you like Shakespeare?”

Only when he was playing in it. I tried to smile and failed dismally. “Sometimes.”

“Antony and Cleopatra is one of the sexiest plays he ever wrote.”

Mercy.

Thankfully, he turned back to the pavement. “This goes on show next week, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” I sounded like a complete idiot. I tried to talk like an adult. “So you want to study Roman sexual practices?”

He turned his back on the exhibit and leaned against the rail meant to keep the public at a safe distance. “Not particularly. The play opens next week and we already have it sorted out. But I did want to get rid of that bore, Steve. He could make the Kama Sutra sound like an academic text.”

“But it is.” I’d said it before I thought, but I added, “It’s not my period, so I don’t know too much about it, but we did take a look to compare it to this.” I nodded toward the pavement, hoping he’d take the hint.