TROUBLE (The Billionaire's Rules, Book 9) (4 page)

Cullen fucked her mouth, talking to her
as he did so.
 
“You’re going to have
your mouth filled every time you ask me an impertinent question from now
on.
 
Got it?”

She nodded slightly as he thrust his hips
faster and she tasted the salty taste of his semen leaking from the head of his
dick.
 

“Suck me off,” he said.
 
“Suck every fucking drop.”

She made a noise, a moan in her throat,
and he pushed deeper into her mouth.

Her nipples stiffened further and her
tongue swirled around his shaft, as spit dripped down her lips.
 
More saliva showered his balls and the
floor.

“That’s right,” he said, his voice growing
deeper as he hit his rhythm.
 

She felt like she was going to come.

“Touch that wet pussy while I fuck your
mouth,” he told her, pumping his hips.

Ivy did as she was told, sliding her
fingers into her folds, feeling the dripping stickiness of her slit.

Now Cullen was withdrawing from her
mouth, and then dragging her to her feet and pushing her face-first into the
wall.

He pulled her blouse over her head and
unsnapped her bra in a hurry, and then both his hands grabbed her breasts,
squeezing her nipples.

His hand slid between her legs and began
rubbing her clit while the other hand slid up and grabbed her chin firmly while
he talked into her ear.

“I’m going to fuck you and make you
come,” he whispered.
 

“Yes, please,” she moaned.

He inserted himself into her open slit,
and his cock pushed into her, and she accepted it easily.
 
He began slowly pounding her from
behind.

And then his hand released her jaw,
before his arm wrapped around her throat in a chokehold while he fucked her.

She could still breathe just fine, but
Cullen was gripping her neck tightly.

“Oh, God,” she moaned.

Somehow, shockingly…Ivy realized she
liked having his arm around her neck like this.

“God’s not going to help you—only
me.
 
I’m the one who decides what
you do, what you feel—and when.”

His cock slid in and out as his other
hand continued to rub her sopping mound.

“I’m…I’m going to come,” she cried.

His bicep bulged.
 

Ivy reached up and grabbed his hand and
moved it to her throat and tried to make him squeeze more tightly as he fucked
her.
 

At the same time, she started to come,
harder than she’d ever come before.

His groin slapped against her bare ass
cheeks while his cock plunged deeper and deeper into her hole.

 
“Choke me,” she muttered, squeezing his
hand with both her hands.
 
“Choke me
while you fuck my pussy.”

Ivy shuddered as the last of the
magnificent orgasm ripped through her body, even as Cullen quickly withdrew,
his face wearing an expression of disturbance.

He backed away, grabbed his shorts and
sweats and put them on.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she begged,
still standing near the wall as she watched him dressing.
 
“I’m not used to doing these things.”
 
She hung her head.
 
“I liked it.
 
I thought you liked it, too.”

“You tried to take over,” he said, not
looking at her.
 
“That’s not how
this works, Ivy.
 
I thought I’d made
myself abundantly clear.”

“Cullen,” she said.
 
“Why are you so angry with everything I
do?”

 
“I’ve had a long day, Ivy.
 
I was arrested, I spent most of the day
in jail, and since then I’ve had nothing but questions coming from you.”

She threw her head back and made a
frustrated groan.
 
“You’re
infuriating.”

“Your complaints are also tiresome.”

“And you don’t think you complain?” she
laughed.
 
“All you do is whine about
my attitude.
 
Maybe you should take
a look in the mirror once in awhile.”

Cullen finally turned to face her.
 
“The disrespect is out of control.”

She licked her lips.
 
“I’m just frustrated.
 
I’m sick of being treated like an
annoyance.
 
I’m supposed to be your
wife, remember?”

“I remember all too well,” he said.
 
“I remember that you knew what the rules
were when we started.
 
I recall
telling you that once we married, things would still continue.
 
I need you to follow my rules.”

“I’m trying, but you keep changing them,”
she retorted.

He smirked.
 
“I don’t believe I’m the one who’s
changing the game.”
 
He looked down
and shook his head.
 
“Every time I
give you a chance to prove yourself to me, you defy my wishes—“

“Because I liked what you were doing
during sex and asked for more?” she said, disbelieving how far his insanity
went.
 
“Most men would love that,”
she said.

Cullen’s eyes went flat.
 
“I’m not most men.
 
And you have no idea what most men want,
Ivy.”

“I got carried away in the moment.”

“Your excuses for disobeying me are
endless.”

“It’s easy for you to demand obedience,” she
told him.
 
“You don’t know what it’s
like to have someone control you.”

His eyes flashed.
 
“I don’t?” he said.
 
“Are you absolutely certain of that?”

“No, of course not.”

“Don’t assume to know what I have or have
not experienced.”
 
 

“Maybe if you’d tell me more about your life,
I’d understand better.”
 

 
“I’ll tell you what I want, when I feel
it’s appropriate,” he warned.
  

 
“I’m sick of all your rules.”
 
 

“As long as you’re in my presence, the
rules still apply,” he breathed, his eyes narrowing.
 
“You will respect me.”

“But I don’t respect you,” she said.
 
“I can’t respect someone who treats me
like this.”

A muscle jumped in his cheek.
 
“Do not test me.”

“Fuck your tests,” she said, and in the
heat of her anger and frustration, she stomped out of the house.

He didn’t follow after her.

***

Ivy returned back to her apartment by
public transportation.

This time of night, there were all kinds
of shady characters in the city, but Ivy didn’t even care.
 
She was so angry and wounded, she almost
welcomed someone trying something.

She felt like she could rip someone’s
face off with her bare hands.

However, the trip home remained
uneventful.

It wasn’t until she was taking her keys
out to open the door to her apartment that she got a text message.

At first, she assumed it was from Cullen,
but quickly she realized it was from an unknown number.
 

We need to talk but ur phone is not
secure.

That was all the message said.
 
Ivy felt a pang of fear that steadily
grew as she re-read the text and tried to imagine who might’ve sent it.

Lucas
from the FBI?

What
about Xavier?

She didn’t know, but somehow she doubted
it was either of them.
 
This was
someone altogether new.

Ivy walked into her apartment and stared
at her phone, waiting for what came next.
 
Whoever had written her wasn’t going to stop there.

She decided not to respond at all.

Whatever this was, whoever was sending
her messages, she didn’t want anything to do with it.
 
This had something to do with
Cullen—it always had something to do with him.

And she was putting Cullen Sharpe in the
rearview mirror for good, this time.
 
She wasn’t going back to work at Biomatrix Pharma, she wasn’t going to
call him or take his phone calls, and she wasn’t going to speak to anymore shadowy
figures involved with his dark little underworld.

Ivy got into the bath and kept the phone
far away from her, and she soaked and closed her eyes, listening to the steady
drip…drip…drip from the faucet into the tub.

Eventually, when her body felt like an
overripe prune and she was sweating from the heat, Ivy got out and changed into
her comfortable pajamas.
 
Then she
crawled into bed.

Sleep was a long time coming, but finally
she managed to drift into a restless, tormented semi-consciousness.

When she came to again, it was late and
still dark.
 
Ivy got out of bed and
went and checked her cell phone.
 

The truth was, she hoped that Cullen had
tried to call her fifty times so she could know he wanted to repair things
between them.
 
But of course, there
was nothing from Cullen Sharpe on her cell phone.

Instead, there was yet another text
message from the mysterious source.

A new phone is being delivered tomorrow.
It will be safe.

That was all it said.

Ivy deleted the two mysterious texts and
then got back into bed, wishing that all of this madness could just be erased
from her mind.
 
If only she was able
to delete memories as easily as text messages from her phone.

But the memories wouldn’t leave.

All she could seem to do was cycle
through every little moment she’d spent with Cullen, and try and piece together
how they kept self-destructing over and over again.

Why did it have to hurt so much?

Why couldn’t it be easy, and why weren’t
they able to find happiness?

Ivy was certain that deep down, Cullen
Sharpe wanted to be happy too.

***

When Ivy got up the next morning, she was
bleary-eyed and exhausted from hardly having slept.
 
But there was no point in just
continuing to lie around in bed, so she rose, changed into jeans and a sweater,
and ate a bagel while drinking coffee.

She watched TV and tried to keep her mind
off everything else.

Everything that had no answers.

It wasn’t until late morning that her
door buzzed.
 
Getting up, Ivy went
and looked outside.
 
There was
nobody there anymore.

But there was a small box sitting on the
stoop.

Whoever was delivering the package was
dumb enough to just leave it outside in full view of everyone on the
street?
 
It could be stolen in an
instant.

Ivy decided that the intelligence of the
secret messenger was now definitely in question.
 
Staring down at the small box on her
stoop, she considered her options.

She could just leave the box out there
and keep trying to ignore whoever was attempting to reach her…or she could risk
interacting with them.

Nothing
good can come of this
.

Ivy sighed and let the curtain fall back
into place.
 
And then she left her
apartment, went downstairs, and grabbed the box.
 
It felt light, as if it might even be
empty.
 

There was no return address on it.
 
This box hadn’t been mailed via the
postal service or Fed Ex.
 
No, this
had been hand-delivered to her apartment building.

Ivy held the box and scanned the
surrounding area, seeing plenty of people walking to and fro, cars driving
past, but nobody that appeared to be watching her.

She turned around and went back inside
the building and into her apartment.

What
if it’s a bomb or something?

Closing and locking her apartment door
and then shaking the box lightly, Ivy decided it wasn’t a bomb.
 

It had to be a phone, just as the
anonymous texter had assured her it would be.

She opened the box at the kitchen table
and then pulled apart the meticulously taped bubble wrap.
 
Inside, she found a cheap looking
disposable cell phone.
 
When she
picked it up and hit the power button, it turned on.