Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 7) (25 page)

“Don’t ruin a witty comeback,” he says, crushing my mouth with his so that, indeed, I cannot say another word. 

Five minutes later we come up for air. Oxygen deprivation is the only explanation for why I reach for his face, caress his cheek, look him square in the eyes and murmur, “I’ve never felt this way about any man before.”

He smiles, then reaches up to brush my unruly hair from my forehead, the movement profound and fleeting.

“What do you feel? For me?” he asks, head tipped slightly down, eyes lifting up.

“Attachment.”

Love
, I want to say, but the word is like a fire starter, inert until it gets close to a flame.

And then it ignites.

I don’t say it. Can’t. Not yet. 

His face breaks into a wide smile at the word I
do
use.

“Good.”

“I thought you just told me I attach to people too easily!” My heart is pounding. My skin feels exquisitely sensitive. What I’m saying and what I’m thinking are wildly divergent, and yet totally integrated. 

“You attach emotional outcomes to the
wrong
people too readily.” As he nuzzles my neck, a whiff of his cologne takes over the tiny space. 

“Semantics,” I scoff, trying to pretend that this is banter. It’s not. This is a kind of truth I’m trying so hard to be ready for. 

I get a long, hot kiss as an answer.

Before I can turn the tables and ask him what he feels for me, the limo slows and motors into the garage at his building.

And then we’re out, walking to the elevator, hand in hand, Andrew pushing the button and like magic, the doors float open. 

“Nice trick,” I say as we walk on, my heart bouncing like popcorn on a stove.

“I have lots of them.”

The stakes tonight feel higher. The question of whether to sleep with Andrew isn’t part of this experience. And the aroused speculation of what it’s like to be naked with him in bed is gone. I know what that is like.

And it is
damn
fine.

What I feel, as the doors close and his fingers unlace from mine, his body closing the distance, mouth finding my own as his hands skim up my spine, is the wholly unfamiliar sense of familiarity. I
do
know what this is like. The fact that I get more is what is so startling.

I’m sleeping with him again.

I’m spending the night again.

His tongue is lush and ripe and doing
that
again.

And again.

Oh, God, please.

Again
.

He pushes me forward, using his thighs and hips, his hardness making me lose my breath.

And my sense of control.

Yet I have to know.

“What about you?” My words come out in a rush, as if I can cram them in between passion, as if they have to be hurried and said before this all goes away.

But he takes his time as he thinks about his answer. He is in no rush.

And then:

“I spend long stretches away,” he murmurs against my mouth, “sitting in stupid business meetings with people from around the world who think a merger is more important than anything else, or that a change in online branding will change the world. I fly in planes at crazy hours of the night and do whirlwind tours in countries that changed names during my lifetime. And lately, Amanda, I spend every waking hour away from you wondering what the hell I’m doing.”

Something in me breaks and blossoms at the same time, illogical and breathtaking, like cracking open an egg and finding a beautiful rainbow inside that takes over the sky.
 

“I’m good at what I do. Top of my game,” he continues as I splay my palm flat against his abs. He’s talking, and he needs to, and the words wash over me like the warm sea, welcoming and eternal, ancient and true.

“But not one bit of it matters. I have everything. Everything I could possibly want. Or, at least, I did. Until I realized I didn’t have you.”

“Is that why you really kissed me that night after the marina?” I ask.
 

“I already told you why I kissed you that night.”
 

“Tell me again.”

“How about I show you?”

My back is against the wall, my body craving all of this, every second of his attention, every commanding movement as he pulls me closer, pinning me between him and the moving elevator, and all I can think about is this.

Him.

Us.

What if I just stopped trying to fix problems in life and, instead, starting living?

One kiss, one lick, one groan, one cry at a time.

The elevator doors open and we lurch, Andrew’s steady hold keeping me upright. But his hands are under my shirt as he walks me backwards into his hallway. He punches the door code and it opens. I lose my footing and tumble backwards, a mass of heat and giggles as I look up at him, standing in the doorway, smiling down on me.

“That’s the view I love. Except you’re wearing too many clothes.”

He shuts the door.

“How many is too many?” I ask.

“Any.”

We’re playful and in pleasure mode now, the relief of just being together making us move fast suddenly, as if we have to capture the moment and pin it down, enjoy it first and savor it later. 

There will be a next time
, our bodies tell each other.
There will. But let’s make sure there is a
now
.
 

Our clothes in a puddle of discarded propriety at the edge of his front door, we kiss our way to the bedroom. His bed is unmade, a surprising display of messiness that makes me smile. I’m currently kissing him as the grin trips over my lips, so he stops and bites my earlobe. The hard warmth of his ticklish skin, scattered with hair that makes my hands rake across his skin with delight as he rubs against me, makes me heady. 

“What’s so funny?” he asks just as my hand reaches for his hardness, fingers wrapping around his thickness.

I can’t answer because I’m laughing. I halt in the doorway to his bedroom and, because he’s attached to the part of him I’m holding, he has to stop, too. 

“I know you’re not laughing at
that
!” he adds, clearing his throat meaningfully. 

I descend into giggles that take minutes to recover from, my whoops of uncontrolled devolution breaking down slowly, like a music box whose key is finally unwinding down to the last few notes.

“No,” I finally gasp. I’m still holding him. “I’m laughing because your bed is unmade.”

“So? We’re just going to mess it even more.” His abs slide against mine and a shiver runs through me.

“Also, you’re tickling me. On your skin. The hair on your legs.” I reach down to touch the tops of his thighs. “Your belly.” I reach up. “Your happy trail.”

I slide my palm down.

“My habitrail? I know I have some body hair, but did you just refer to that patch as a
habitrail
? Like a hamster?”

With great flourish, he takes a step back and points both sets of fingers, palms facing in, at his navel and below, and declares, “
This
does not involve furry monsters.”

Cue more giggling for the next seven minutes.

“I said Happy Trail. Two different words. No hamsters.” I can’t stop gasping.

A look of confusion, relief, and amusement fills his face. “Well, that’s an improvement, but what the hell is a ‘happy trail?’”

I point with my index finger at the thickening hair below his navel, tracing it down for him on his torso until he inhales sharply.

And then I drop to my knees.

“
That
, Mr. McCormick, is a happy trail. And while I see no furry monsters, I am discovering definite signs of a male animal here.”

His growl of satisfaction confirms it, in fact.

A few minutes later, he stops me.

“I don’t want to...this isn’t how I want....well., I just..” Andrew isn’t a stammerer, so this is charming.
I
do this to him. My mouth, my hands, my attentions take away his poise and leave him more real.

I stand on tiptoes and kiss him.

“You want me.”

“I want to be in you. I want you in my arms. Not on your knees.” He’s breathing hard, his eyes dark and intense. “I want to make love with you, Amanda. In my bed, under me, on top of me—but together.”

Rather than answer, I lead him to the bed and he takes control, crawling over my body as he warms my heart, my toes, my eyes and arms and legs and everything. 

“I wanted to ask you a question in the car,” I whisper as he kisses my collarbone, his breath coming in sighs and sounds like restraint becoming frayed by too much use.

“Yes?”

“What do
you
feel? For me?” I murmur. His face hovers above my breast, brow relaxed and smooth. One second passes. Two. Three. I lose count because time becomes a blur of chaos as I wait to hear my anchor in the endless river of hope. 

He lifts his head up and moves so our faces are inches apart. The moon pokes out from clouds here and there, making the light erratic, carrying a dewy glow like gossamer flattened with an iron and spread thin. I cannot see his eyes in full, but I feel the soft energy of his breath against my chest.

“I,” he says sweetly, “feel....” He sighs, then gives me a look of earnest connection that makes all my doubts disappear.

“Everything, Amanda. I feel
everything
.”

The kiss that seals my fate comes with a sense that time itself ripples right now, like a stone thrown into a pond. The water will go back to being placid and smooth, but the stone remains forever moved, the water displaced
just so
forever. And ever. 

And everything.

Discreet and quiet, he reaches into his nightstand and finds what he needs for protection, the same way he has each time we’ve made love before. I’m grateful for the smooth integration, for his responsibility, for the thoughtful resoluteness in making sure that making love is safe.

His words make all the blood in my body rush to places where his touch thrills and sates, where we get as close as two individuals can possibly be. I want him in me, too, and as I stretch back and pull him to me, I wrap my legs around him, inviting him the only way I know how without words.

He finds me wet and wanting, his hips moving against me with a measured distraction that I find alluring. His fingers trace a circle around one nipple as he thrusts gently, all the way, making me tip my hips to take him in.

The fresh heat of him over me captivates every part of my being. Andrew is in me, over me, arms around me and I am enraptured. The strands of web that make up Amanda are woven by time, experience, emotion and senses, and right now he is threaded in me, weaving new patterns into the tapestry of my essence.

We move against each other with slow strokes that carry the groundswell of urge and need, of fire and ice, of everything. 

Everything.

“I feel you, Amanda,” he murmurs, his voice harder to control. “And you’re
all
I want to feel. I want you.” My own control is fading, too, as impulse driven by logic dissolves under the moans that build in my throat. Too many years of no one, too many memories of loneliness, and far too many missed chances flood me as my blood skyrockets and crests, fevered and pulsing, searching for ways to find more of him. 

From the way his hands grasp and explore, seeking to find new ways to touch and ignite, I think he feels it, too.

“You have me now,” I say, my words caught in my throat as my pulse quickens and the glow inside spreads, so powerful it pulls him in, too. As we come together we integrate, those threads of passion and respect, of shared time and futures to come, all mixing with flesh and bone. He’s carrying me away to some place we create between our hearts, where the only risk is in never taking a chance at all. 

I tuck my head up against his shoulder and lick his neck, then give him a soulful kiss. He tastes like some exotic flavor, alluring and new. As we move against each other in the night, he fills me with a joyous bliss and hearing him call out my name in the throes of intimacy is, well.... 

Everything.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“He’s in Tokyo again.” Shannon whines. “Why do they
both
have to be there?” Declan went with Andrew for this round of negotiations. We’re both feeling their absence. They come home tomorrow after nine days away. I’m squeezing in as many DoggieDates as I can while Andrew’s out of town and can’t magically appear at any of them.
 

I know. I’m lying to him. Great way to start a relationship, right? But it’s for a higher cause. The Paycheck Cause. Can’t pay my bills with kisses and breve lattes in bed. Oh, if only I could...
 

“They come home tomorrow,” Marie says with an eye roll. She and Carol are getting ready to go out for work, purses in hand, faces excited. But first, Marie fiddles with some folders on the dining table. Jason has let Marie turn their dining room into a wedding Command Central that puts the White House emergency bunker to shame. The Jacoby family dining room looks like the War Room at the White House. No—not quite.
 

It is more organized.
 

And speaking of the White House...
 

“We still haven’t received an RSVP from the president or vice president,” Marie says with a disappointed sigh as she goes through the mail and sorts response cards.

“You expected the President of the United States to attend Declan and Shannon’s wedding?” Carol snorts.

“I expected a gentle decline, if nothing else. Or he could send the First Lady. But would it kill the man to stop by for twenty minutes?”

I’m not sure which is more remarkable: that these sorts of conversations don’t shock me, or that Marie actually holds out hope that the president might just pop in for the wedding.

“Where are you going?” Jason asks pleasantly, stepping into the house via the sliding patio door. His hair is half on end and half flat. There’s a giant smear of grease on his right cheek, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. His face is sprinkled with streaks of cotton.