Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) (21 page)

~~~~~

Mannix’s strong arms wrapped around Lizzy,
swaddled again in the baby soft blanket, and he rocked her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said.

She clung to him even though something inside
her head insisted that she get up and run.

No,
she told that small, stupid voice.
Nyet.

“You’re so brave,
mon ange.”
His deep
voice murmured beside her ear.

She thought she should shake her head, but
she didn’t.

His voice vibrated in his chest next to her
ear. “You’re so strong. I didn’t believe that you could endure
everything.”

She had given him everything she had.
Everything.

Mannix whispered, and his breath cooled her
forehead, “You overcame the pain and triumphed.”

Before, overcoming the nails of pain had been
the bare minimum expected of her.

Triumph
was a whole new concept for
Lizzy, who had suffered so much failure in her life. A single,
momentous failure had cracked the foundation of her world.

Failure was the black pit in her mind that
The Dom’s Russian words had driven her into. It blacked out her
whole life, all her hopes, everything she wanted. Every
relationship that she had tried to lose herself in had fallen into
that pit of fear and failure: Gio, The Dom, and even Theo. Once she
realized that Theo knew all about her, that he could see right
through her, she had fallen past the lightless horizon of pain.

She had
triumphed,
Mannix said.

Lizzy reached a shaking hand up to his
shoulder.

“Stay with me,” he said. “Come with me to my
house tonight, and I’ll take care of you.”

Someone who would take care of her?
Impossible.

He whispered by her ear, “Everything you
need, everything you want, I can give you.”

Instead of trying so hard to carve out
security for herself.

She was so tired.

“I’ll be there for you. I need you, Lizzy.
Your strength is beautiful. I will make you strong, and I won’t let
you go. Come live with me and be my love.”

Lizzy grasped his neck and held on.

Pain is weakness leaving the body,
and
Lizzy wanted, so much, to be strong.

Lizzy walked on sore legs to the employee
parking lot to drive her Boxster to Mannix’s house. Gravel slid
under her hoochie shoes, and her thighs still trembled harder than
they would have after a six-hour workout. Mannix had already texted
her his address, though he said that she should follow him so he
could open the security gates.

A couple spaces away, in a bright cone from a
parking lot light, The Dom held a car door open for Rae. The yellow
sodium light brightened his hair to a brilliant shade of gold, but
shadow masked his face. Rae looked skeptically at the low sports
car.

Lizzy didn’t need to duck behind the black
sedan. Only her eyes peered over the top of the roof as she watched
them.

Wow.
It was too late at night for The
Dom to be taking Rae on a Dom-Date, considering that there was
usually a music performance or theater and supper involved and then
the
afterward
part could take hours, not to mention that The
Dom usually waited months or years before initiating a date, so
Lizzy wondered where Rae and The Dom were going, so late.

In the spotlight, Lizzy saw the amused yet
tender expression on The Dom’s face as Rae lowered herself toward
the car.

Oh.
The Dom really wasn’t in a
position to take a sub. He and Rae were
together.

Rae gingerly folded her long, coltish legs
into the low-slung Tesla Roadster.

That morning, Rae’s flat tone when she urged
Lizzy to tell The Dom how she felt now made sense. The tears in
Rae’s eyes made sense.

Only a really good friend would offer to step
away, especially if her heart was breaking.

But The Dom had chosen Rae, even when Lizzy
had offered him everything she had.

He pressed Rae’s car door closed and strode
to the driver’s side. The sodium parking lot light above touched
his blond hair, turning it more sunny blond.

Lizzy’s heart sighed a small breath of
disappointment, wanting to be the one he had chosen, but it wasn’t
a spasm of pain like she had been in love with him.

And then it was gone.

At that moment, in the cooling night, Lizzy’s
interest in The Dom lost focus, and he blurred into her past.

Lizzy had a Dom, her own Dom, and now she was
positive that she should commit to Mannix.

She would give him everything.

Lizzy awoke in the guest bedroom that Mannix
had showed her to last night, down the hall from his own master
bedroom. Elaborate molding ringed the seam where the white walls
met the ceiling. She studied the molding on the wall behind the bed
while she stretched in the sheets. The carved woodwork on just the
wall behind the bed was a little different, a little rounder in the
ocean-like waves, like they had run out of the molding that was on
the other three walls and matched it as best they could.

She shrugged. No one else would even notice.
She was a bit of a detail freak sometimes.

In the adjoining bathroom, which blazed white
on every surface like she had stepped into gleaming limbo, she
found a new toothbrush and other stuff, including a black
transparent peignoir set, size zero.

Mannix had prepared for her come home with
him. She didn’t know if she should be honored or disturbed, but at
least she felt wanted.

And she felt like someone was taking care of
her, an awkward, warm sensation.

Last night at The Devilhouse was a
pain-fueled blur.

After sleeping on it, she was pretty sure
that being Mannix’s sub was a good idea. She had gone to The
Devilhouse yesterday to become a sub and ended up with a Dom, just
not the one that she had expected.

Well, her car was here at his house. She
could always just walk out, get in her car, and drive off.

Lizzy hip-bumped the drawer closed and held
the peignoir set to her shoulders, analyzing the fit. Mannix had
bought the lingerie in smallest adult size, not knowing that even
that would be too big for her. Luckily, the gown was meant to be
short, which meant it hung tea-length on her. She gathered and
safety-pinned the back at the waist. She always carried safety pins
in her purse because all her clothes needed some sort of altering
or pinning, and hems could give out at the worst times. Slogging
around on soggy hems sucked.

Even the light silk scratched the raw skin on
her back, and her bruises ached.

She set off through the house in search of
Mannix. The hallway outside the guest bedrooms led to a grand
staircase that curved down the main floor, and she remembered that
turning right in the main room, a white-painted salt cave of a
room, would lead to the kitchen.

Mannix was waiting in the kitchen, reading a
tablet. He wore black silk pajama pants but no shirt, so his
scrolling tattoos on his undulating, muscular torso were on
glorious display. On his broad chest, the myriad of tattoos looked
like dozens of interlocking crop circles cut into rolling hills,
seen from a plane. Lizzy wanted to take a few hours to examine them
all, running her fingers and tongue over them.

Coffee billowed dark brown scent around the
black marble counters and Old World-style cabinets.

“Good morning, Lizzy. What do you eat for
breakfast?” he asked.

“I don’t,” she admitted. “I usually work out
in the mornings and then drink black coffee.”

He swiped the tablet, turning the page.
“That’s not healthy. You should eat protein in the morning, eggs,
bacon, steak, like that.”

“Oh, good God. I never eat that stuff.”

“Why not?”

Because even a few extra ounces of fat would
reduce her strength-to-weight ratio, and the loss of jump height
would show up on the vault and the floor exercise. “Habit.”

“Well, as my sub, you’ll eat. Sit on the
floor beside my chair.”

“I beg your pardon.” Sitting at his feet
wasn’t something that a Jersey girl did, yet she had said that she
would do just that for The Dom. Well, hell. Thinking about it and
actually doing it were two totally different things.
Totally
different.

“You’ll sit at my feet, and I’ll feed
you.”

Lizzy froze, her hand resting on the cold
marble counter, steadying her as she chewed her lip.

Wow, that was so weird. Being fed at his feet
might make her his dog, his pet, and so dependent on him, but it
was also strangely alluring, because he would be taking care of her
so very basic need.

One meal wouldn’t hurt, just to try it, to
see what it was like to be fed.

She settled to the floor, kneeling at his
feet.

Mannix nodded at her but left her kneeling
there while he strode around the kitchen, fixing eggs and bacon on
the stove. The aroma of smoked meat and the burning sulfur of eggs
overpowered the coffee and turned Lizzy’s stomach. She really
wasn’t used to dumping solid food in her stomach before noon.

The image of Mannix doing something so
domestic as cooking had never crossed her mind. Lizzy had assumed
that she would do those wifely things for him, but evidently
not.

Roll with the momentum,
she
thought.

Mannix brought two plates to the table and
wolfed down his bacon and eggs while she waited, a reprieve that
settled her stomach.

When he was finished, he turned his chair to
face her. Mannix loomed larger over her, marking their difference
in size. She was used to being small and feeling size disparity
with everyone, but this emphasis was disconcerting.

He picked up a piece of bacon, cracking it
into small pieces, and held it in his fingers in front of her
mouth.

Lizzy leaned forward and delicately took it
out of his fingers, then chewed and swallowed the salty, crisp
meat.

Vile.
She did
not
like eating
in the morning.

He held a fluff of scrambled eggs out to her,
also just in his fingertips, and she sucked that off his fingers.
The creamy butter that he had fried them in ran over her tongue and
tasted like browned, flaky pastry.

When her mouth closed around his fingers,
Mannix’s black pupils expanded, crowding out the pale blue in his
eyes, though his expression didn’t move.

Oh.
Now she got it.

She ate all that she could stomach from his
hands, sucking on his fingers and languorously running her tongue
over his palms, even though half of what he had put on the plate
was left over. Mannix’s breathing remained determined and steady,
but his eyes remained dilated with passion and his pulse jumped in
his throat.

Considering the sexy way he held each morsel
out to her, Lizzy felt rather like a pampered pet.

After a few minutes, when she was so full
that her stomach was getting upset, she took each tidbit more and
more slowly, concentrating more on sucking on his hands than on the
food, until he wiped his hands on a napkin and dropped to his knees
on the floor in front of her, kissing her and holding her face in
his huge hands.

Yeah, this was better.

His lips held hers, and he kissed her first
softly, his lips just brushing hers, then deeper.

She stood on her knees, raising to meet him.
Heat shot from her lips down her core, and desire sparked in her
belly again. She pressed harder to him, wanting to taste him more.
He opened his lips, kissing her deeper, mouthing her lips and
tongue like she had licked his fingers.

Lizzy sucked in a jagged breath and reached
for his shoulders, but he pulled away from her and stood up.

She almost fell over without his hard chest
to push against, but she caught her balance by grabbing the
chair.

Above her, he untied the drawstring of his
black silk pajama pants. His predatory gaze told her exactly what
he wanted, while she was down there on her knees. His abdominals
were so overbuilt that his torso protruded like a beer belly, but
beer could never produce those hard crenelations and bricks of
muscle.

Mannix shoved his pants’ waistband under his
balls.

His cock was as pale as the rest of his skin,
but the shaft was rose pink and the top was violet, so engorged
with blood. No wonder he had kept pushing into her last night.

Lizzy had planned to lean forward and give
him some great head because, well, she had had some practice at
that, but he grabbed the back of her skull in his meaty hands. She
opened her lips quickly as he pulled her mouth onto him.

While his mouth had tasted just like her
own—breakfast and an underlying hint of toothpaste mint—his cock
tasted like the clean musk of Mannix’s body. His hardness shoved
past her lips and pressed the back of her mouth. Lizzy stood on her
knees and held the chair.

Mannix groaned and rocked against her lips
again. His fist clenched on the back of her neck, but her blond
hair was too short to grab hold of.

Her lips were too stretched to smile, but she
had a surprise for him.

Lizzy sucked a deep breath through her nose
and relaxed the muscles of her throat, allowing his cock to inch
farther in. She pressed forward, taking him in slowly, down
farther. Inside her mouth, his suede cock throbbed against her
tongue and the back of her throat.

His surprised grunt was gratifying.

Her nose met his body, and she had taken him
all the way down her throat. Lizzy had all kinds of muscle control.
His male scent was stronger next to his body, that natural musk
that had been almost hidden by the green cologne he was wearing.
Lizzy sipped air through her nose, and his earthy scent rose into
her.

He moved, slowly, in and out of her throat.
Behind her head, his fist shook with exertion.