His Secret Request: Billionaire Secrets - Book Three (12 page)

And she was in shock. Nadia's hands covered her mouth as she took in the person who was standing in front of her, then she jumped from her seat to hurry towards her best friend.

"Nadia, thank God. You have no idea how worried I was about you." Suzy finally found words after a long embrace.

"Suzy, my God, Suzy I'm so sorry. So, so sorry, I just didn’t want to drag you into this with me. But it's all over now."

"You should have called me baby, you know I'd do anything for you. I could've helped you."

"Don’t argue Suzy, please, not now. It's all over and nothing like this will ever happen again - thanks to these wonderful men here. I owe everything to them. Anything I can give back to these guys is theirs. Not that there's much I can offer three billionaires of course."

"I don't know about that." Ruben said. "I can think of at least one thing right now that I don’t have, that I very much want, and that only you can give me If you're really as grateful as you say you are."

"Anything." Nadia said instantly.

"Really? Anything at all?" He said with one of his maddeningly sexy smiles.

"Ruben, I'm warning you." A tall commanding man that Suzy recognized as Clayton Hargrave said threateningly.

Nadia glanced at Clayton and then hastened to qualify her offer.

"Anything in my power to give you. Within reason of course." She said.

"Okay." Ruben said. "In that case I have a very special, personal favor to ask of you Ms. Komerov."

Personal favor.
The words sent a flush of anger through Suzy. His favorite words to describe his pleasure in twisting people to do his bidding.

Then tension in the room was building. Clayton looked fit to burst and Dale wasn't far behind. Suzy wanted to shout at him to shut him up or shout at Nadia to stop playing this stupid game with the man she knew was an arch manipulator, especially of women, but the situation, the setting wouldn’t allow it - she would only have made herself look like a crazy woman in front of all these people she had just met.

"Ask away." Nadia said.

"I'm warning you Ruben." Clayton repeated.

"Don’t worry Romeo, I wouldn’t dare ask anything inappropriate of your bride to be."

Bride to be?
Suzy's mouth dropped open. Was this for real? In only a few days this guy had gone from being her ruination to being her future husband? She wasn't sure if she should congratulate or call a psychiatrist for her best friend.

"Besides," Ruben continued. " This is none of your business." He directed himself to Nadia again. "You'll grant me anything I ask that is within your power, which is within reason and which the beast over there approves of? Is that correct?"

Suzy was beginning to feel dizzy. Ruben had been so sincere to her just moments ago outside in the hallway but now he was back to himself; the cool arch manipulator, so sexy you wanted to eat him alive but relentlessly toying with people to get his way.

"Absolutely correct." Nadia answered. "But why do I get the feeling I'm being railroaded somehow?"

"Because it's what he does best Nadia." Dale joined in. "Don’t trust a word he says."

"Don’t listen to them." Ruben said. "Here is my request." He turned and took Suzy by the hand and looked into her eyes. "I want this one." He said with an intensity that made Suzy take a sharp breath in. After all they had done together, after all he had said to her, after all she had said to him, he had the staggering confidence and audacity to do something like this.

Nadia looked at her girlfriend, noted the look of shock and then smiled at Ruben.

"She's yours." She said. "Wish granted."

"Excellent." Ruben said, slipping a hand around Suzy's waist.

"Not so fast." Dale had jumped to his feet and squared off nose to nose with Ruben. Just like his brother he was even more gorgeous in real life than he looked in pictures and video. "Don’t forget that you owe me too Nadia and I have a request as well. That beautiful woman that the Lizard King has his paws all over is mine."

Nadia shrugged her shoulders and looked at her friend.

"Ball's in your court Suzy. I owe you some pretty big favors too. If you want either of these two clowns then they're yours. Just remember to be careful what you wish for. Especially with these guys."

Suzy looked at the two impossibly good looking and impeccably dressed men. One the incarnation of suave sophistication, the other the epitome of rugged, manly good looks.

It was surreal.

"That's right." Nadia said. "Welcome to
my
world."

Suzy looked at her friend and then at all the people surrounding them. It was too much. If this was some kind of game that rich people played behind closed doors then she wasn't enjoying it.

"Nadia… I'm sorry, I think I need to go. I'm sorry."

Nadia's face filled with concern.

"What is it Suzy? We're just kidding around. What’s wrong?"

Suzy stared at her friend, willing her to understand but unable to speak with Ruben standing right next to her, surrounded by all of his close friends and colleagues.

"Not here." She said.

"It's okay." Ruben said, his face transforming from sexy game player to mature concern. "I'll take somewhere until things are finished up here. We can rejoin these guys later."

"No." Suzy said vehemently. "Absolutely not."

Dale glared at Ruben.

"What the hell is going on here?" He said.

"Stop it already you guys." Nadia said to the two men to whom she owed so much, but not so much that she would let them play games over her best friend as though she were a prize they were competing for.

"You're not helping." She said, muscling the men out of her way to put her arm around Suzy's shoulder. "Come on Suzy, come with me. Please excuse us."

She pushed her way past the men and steered her friend towards the door.

"We'll be back when she's feeling better. Maybe you boys can figure out how to behave like gentlemen before then."

Chapter Two

In the days following their reunion Nadia and Suzy got up to speed on what had been really happening in their lives over the past four years. They had always been too careful and too wise to share any personal details in their communications but now that the veil of secrecy had been lifted both were greedy to learn as much as about each other as possible. Despite the change in circumstances it was hard to break the habit of a lifetime; stay low, stay clean, leave no trace. The mantra had protected them so well and for so long that to abandon it now, even to each other, made them fear that this new world of theirs could be snatched away from them at any moment.

And then there was still the shadow of what Suzy refused to tell her friend about Ruben Mayweather and what had occurred between them.

The friends were sitting together in a darkly atmospheric café in the Village, still struggling to absorbing the seismic changes that had rocked their lives in the course of the last three weeks.

After hours of excited talk they had finally lapsed into silence, sipping quietly on their smooth, designer drinks. Nadia was enjoying a cold brewed Stumptown Chelbessa bean while Suzy savored a cold-pressed almond, cashew, agave nectar and kale smoothie. She had asked for a splash of vanilla before she remembered where she got that idea from.

He might be a bastard but he had nailed it when he added the dash of sweetness to her beloved green health concoctions.

Nadia examined her friend closely, wondering if it was the right time or not to broach the subject. Suzy looked more relaxed than she had done in all the time they had spent together since their reunion so she decided to take a risk.

"So tell me Suzy, when are you going to come with me to meet with Clayton and his family?"

Suzy looked up over the edge of her wide round coffee cup. She had refused to have anything to do with the Hargraves since she had met them in the lavish apartment where Ruben had made his clumsy attempt to force her into some kind of date.

"They are all so dying to get to know you Suzy. Especially Dale." She raised a suggestive eyebrow.

"How close is Ruben Mayweather to the family?" Suzy said tensely. The question was odd but Nadia let it go.

"He's like the third brother. A member of the family really."

"So you get Clay you get his family and that includes Mayweather?"

"That's what marriage usually does. And they get you too. You're about the only family I have apart from mom but she hardly knows where or who she is anymore."

Suzy didn't respond.

"I really want you to enjoy this too Suzy. I don’t get what the problem is you have with meeting Clay and Dale. I know they can seem like a breed apart with all of their money and influence, but they come from totally ordinary backgrounds, no different from ours. They just happen to have worked very hard and now they have a lifestyle that most people can only dream of."

"It's not that. Not at all. It's just…"

Where to begin?
She thought.
Your future husband's closest friend railroaded me into the hottest, kinkiest, most mind-blowing non-penetrative sex act imaginable in order to watch me orgasm for his dirty pleasure and now I can’t sleep an entire night through for thinking about what he did to me? Should I tell you that? Should I tell you that I can’t sleep anymore because although I hate him for doing it to me I still can’t stop fantasizing that it might happen again and then I hate myself for wanting it to happen again so badly?

She was staring at her friend, paralyzed by indecision.

"Just tell me Suzy." Nadia said. "You can tell me anything now. Anything at all. We're normal people again thanks to Clay and Dale and of course Ruben. My God, without Ruben we wouldn't even be sitting here --"

"Shut up about Ruben. I don’t want to hear that name again. Do you understand?"

Nadia sat in shock.

She put her coffee cup down and looked around; heads had been raised at the outburst. She smiled at the strangers, shrugged and then looked back to Suzy. Her friend was close to tears. For the first time she began to realize that something might be really, really wrong here.

Memories of her own experiences with Clayton flashed through her mind together with all of conflicting emotions she had felt at the time.

"Oh my God…." She said, her voice reduced almost to a whisper. "Did he…" She looked around the café again and lowered her voice even more. "Did he do something to you Suzy?"

"No." She hissed. "I mean, yes, he did. We did things together that I'm not… just not comfortable with."

Nadia's jaw dropped. It had never occurred to her until now that Ruben might be as 'unconventional' with his women as Clayton had been with her. She was okay with it now, more than okay, she was addicted to it, but that might not be the same for everyone. As far as she had been concerned Ruben had just arranged to have Suzy picked up from her home in Oregon and then brought to New York, but thinking back on her time with Clayton that would have given him more than enough time to mess with her head, rock her world, screw her up for a long, long time.

"Did you guys sleep together?" She asked.

"No. Not exactly. He talked me into doing stuff with him."

"What kind of stuff?"

"I don’t want to discuss details."

Suzy leaned back. "Okay. Of course. No details. But I can take it that whatever it was it's upset you."

"That's… that's putting it mildly. Nadia, I'm not sleeping well anymore. Not since then. He did stuff to me that I can't stop thinking about."

"Oh my God. Suzy, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. He's been so good to me and to my mom I had no idea he had this other side to him."

"He never forced me to do anything but he also didn't really give me any choice and then there's just something about him." She glanced up at her friend and saw understanding in her eyes. After all, she had said yes to marrying Clayton, her billionaire stalker after only how many day together? Maybe Clayton and Ruben were birds of a feather when it came to the bedroom fantasies.

"When I'm around him I just want to do whatever he tells me to do. It's like I trust him too much. I want to be with him and… and God help me I want him to do all those things to me again."

Nadia didn’t dare say a word. Although she had never phrased it like that in her head, Suzy had just put in words exactly how she felt about Clayton sometimes; helpless, addicted, crazy in love, but obviously it wasn't all roses between Ruben and Suzy the way it was with her and Clayton.

"I'm afraid of him." Suzy continued. "Okay, not afraid of him per se, but afraid of how he makes me feel and afraid that I'll let him do more things to me that I won’t be able to stop thinking about and that only he can do."

Nadia was speechless. Clayton had shaken her world but it looked as though Ruben had taken things to a new level with her best friend. She didn't know whether to be angry with him or jealous of what he had done to Suzy. Her friend was distraught but clearly excited by the experience as well.

"I don’t know what to say." She finally offered.

"You don’t have to say anything."

The women sat looking into each others' eyes for several long seconds.

Obviously the process of getting to know each other again was going to be a little more complicated than either of them had anticipated.

A shadow came over the table and the girls looked up.

Suzy froze - it was. Clayton Hargrave.

He nodded to her without a word, understanding instinctively that he needed to be careful around the women for a while until they had adjusted to all of the seismic change that had occurred in their lives. Hell, he was still trying to adjust to it all himself.

Suzy nodded back to him. Despite her ambivalence towards Ruben, she couldn’t help but warm to the man Nadia had chosen to open up her world to. Nevertheless, he had the same all encompassing, I-can-save-you-protect-you-clothe- you-rock-your-world-make-love-to-you-all-night aura as Ruben Mayweather and it automatically put her in defense mode.

"I'm sorry but I have to take Nadia away from you for just a little while." He said in his deep velvet voice.

Nadia looked at her watch. "I’ll catch up with you later at your place Suzy. I have to visit mom. Hold those thoughts, but don’t let them get to you. We haven't finished talking this through yet and I might understand your situation a little better than you realize."

Nadia, a true friend. Suzy nodded again and then watched the couple go. They looked so happy, so perfect together. She wished she could be just as normal and straight forward in love as those two.

If only she knew.
Nadia thought as she walked away.