Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells (Not Another Billionaire Romance) (26 page)

This is an
office
? Seriously? This place could be converted into a spacious two-bedroom apartment it’s so damn huge. As I do a 360 degree spin, I realize that from inside here, I have a view of every inch of the lobby, can see the receptionist typing away.

“What were you and Zachary talking about?” Noah demands again.

Zachary? That’s his name?
Facing him, I smirk. “All your dirty secrets. He knows what you did to your housemaid last summer.” 

While Noah rolls his eyes at this, Qwesie leaps up from the sofa, striding across the office, interest piqued. “Ooooh, what did he do? Tell me. Tell me, and I’ll suck you like a candy.”

Giggling, I move to the nearest sofa chair, remove my drawstring bag from my shoulders, and fling myself into plush heaven. “I wish I
did
know all his dirty secrets. Then I could blackmail him into all my nasty fantas—”

“Lotty,” Noah says, warning in his voice, while Qwesie eyes me rapaciously and licks his lips.

“Alright, alright,” I surrender through a laugh. Really need to stop being so inappropriate all the time. “Zachary and I were agreeing to a fling. He’s
hawt
. I think I had a mini-orgasm just looking at the guy.”

Noah scowls.

Qwesie walks up to Noah, clasps his hands under his chin, and makes a pouting puppy-dog expression. “Can I have her? Pleasepleaseplease, can I have her in all her uninhibited attractiveness?”

Ignoring Qwesie’s antics, Noah directs at me, “You just go around flirting with every guy you see?”

“Only the hot ones.” I pick up a decorative shell from a nearby side table and examine it. “For instance, I didn’t flirt with Mikey Boy, the vapid security who escorted me up. He’s easy on the eyes, sure, but too meh for my tastes.”

“What about me?” Qwesie asks hopefully. “You haven’t flirted with me yet.”

“Q,” Noah warns, sounding more and more irritated each time he opens his mouth.

Bored with the powerless shell, I put it back on the side table and then give Qwesie my attention, slowly dragging my gaze over his tall, lean body, his pretty-as-a-woman face, his cocksure smile. “You’re pretty,” I tell him. “But I don’t like boys with accents.”

Qwesie scoffs. “Well, that’s a first. Most harts let me inside them
because
I have an accent.”

As I start to reply with a diss, Noah talks over me with, “You’ll discover real soon that Lotty isn’t like most girls. She’s…” He trails off, eyes on me.

My ears perk up and my heart pauses its job, waiting for the complete sentence.
I’m what? I’m what? Say it, goddammit!

But he doesn’t, flicking his eyes from me.

Qwesie has no problem finishing for him. “A vixen. A temptress. A minx. Bloody delightful.”

I grin at Qwesie. He’s mental.

Sitting up in the chair, I grab my drawstring bag. “Okay, so are we gonna train or what?” Over with the fun and jokes, I’m now paying attention to the fact that I’m here to train, yet we’re sitting in a pompous office, and both men are in sharp, three-piece suits. “You’re training too, Q?”

Qwesie straightens his tie. “Look at me good, yeah. See me? Fresher than Aquafresh in a pool of Listerine. Self-defense training?” He makes a face. “
Ain’t nobody got time fo’ that
.”

A laugh bubbling up in my throat, I blink at Q, and then at Noah, who’s looking down at the floor and shaking his head, but the glint of his teeth doesn’t go unnoticed. He’s fighting a laugh.

My eyes move back to Qwesie, and then, unable to hold it in much longer, I burst out laughing. So hard and so long, tears form.

“That phrase,” I hiccup, “said in a British accent”—hiccup—“is the single most hilarious thing I’ve”—hiccup—“ever heard.”

Qwesie strolls by me, a winning smirk on his face. “Gets the wenches every time.” And then he’s gone. 

It takes me all of three minutes to calm down from rib-rattling laughing. When I do, I look up to find Noah’s jacket and tie off, laid over the back of his chair, his fingers working on his cuff-links. 

Undressing right there with that stunning backdrop, damn it if it doesn’t make him so much hotter in that moment. Wish I had a camera so I could snap this view, store it away in a secret shoebox, and keep it forever.

Setting the removed cufflinks down on his desk, he strides across the office to the partition and shifts it open with one hand, while unbuttoning his shirt with the other.

With the partition open, I can see more of what’s hidden: a standalone wardrobe, a standing lamp, and a small table with some folders on it.

He opens the wardrobe, and I sit up straighter to peek inside over his shoulder. Two starched suits, four seam-pressed white shirts, an armful of folded sweatpants, T-shirts and jeans, and at the very bottom, two pairs of sneakers and two pair of polished shoes.

Noah shrugs out of his shirt and the desire builds. Really, why does he have to be so damn sexy? His back muscles flex as he snags one of the plain white T-shirts and hauls it over his head.

“Are you really going to hook up with Zachary?” he asks out of the blue, back turned to me as he undoes his belt buckle.

Dear God, I want him to turn around so I can see…see the V I know is there…the trail of dark hair from his navel down…I mean, why deprive me now, right? When he struts around the house half-naked
all the time
.

I wonder, though, if he’s hiding on purpose. Does he
know
how badly I want to see? Does he
know
I’m practically salivating right now? Does he
know
I’m imagining him spreading me wide on that huge desk of his and eating me out until I scream, the sun spotlighting us like a blue film camera?
Does he know
?

His pants hit the ground with a quiet thud, and my nipples stand at attention. Scooting to the edge of the chair, I wrestle the urge to crawl across the room on all fours and beg him to let me taste him. His tight black boxers hug his fantastic buns, legs strong and long.

In an instant, he shoots a glance over his shoulder at me. “You’re just going to ignore the question?”

What question?
“Huh?”

At my blank expression, his eyebrows pull together, noticing my stiff perch on the edge of the chair, thighs tightly squeezed together. It’s also quite possible drool is leaking from the side of my mouth, but I’m too busy being shamelessly turned on to check.

Something flares in his eyes, and Reckless Lotty is screaming at me,
‘Act on it! Act on it
!’

He doesn’t and instead mumbles, “Never mind.”

My ogling doesn’t cease, not even when he’s fully dressed and striding across the room until he’s towering above me.

“Ready?”

Untrusting of my ability to speak out loud just yet, I nod.

Noah attempts to hold back an arrogant grin, but it manifests anyway. “These moments are so rare that I wish I could bottle them because I never know when I’ll get another like it.”

What’s he going on about
? “Rare moments of what?”

“You,” he says with a color of amusement, striding off and leaving me to follow, “completely tongue-tied.”

“Oh, please.” I scoff, following him out the door. “I’m not tongue-tied. I’m just…”
Aroused
.

“You usually go quiet when aroused?”

Wait, what? I didn’t say the word out loud, did I? Frowning at his back as he leads me across the lobby to the other door on the left, I almost miss Zachary’s flirtatious wink at me, too caught up in Noah to flirt back.

Noah pushes the door open for me, gesturing for me to go in, and the smug look on his face makes me growl in my throat.

As soon as he’s in and the door is closed, I whirl on him, stabbing a finger to his chest. “You did that to mess with my head, didn’t you?” I accuse. “Undress in front of me. Taking your sweet little time. You…you demon! Dangled yourself in front of me like carrot when you know damn well how I feel.”

“
Feel
?” He cocks his head. “What, horny? You’re horny for every man you see, Lotty. So don’t blame me for being unable to control your urges.”

He acerbically bit out the latter, tone serrated with the spitting sharpness of jealousy.

He dislikes me flirting with other men. Which is bullshit considering I’m not allowed to flirt with him either. What the hell’s his problem?

“Can I flirt with you?” I demand. “Can I tell you how hot and bothered you make me?”

Lust. Fire. Storm. Right there in his eyes. I can’t only see it, I can
feel
it. Still, he denies us both, exasperation burning through his words. “Didn’t we already talk about this?”

“Right,” I say with a single nod of my head. “Then stop worrying your big ugly head about who
I
flirt with.”

He bites his lip and narrows his stare, as if contemplating whether fighting with me is worth it. Guess not, because he reaches forward and grabs my drawstring bag from me, tosses it to a bench, and it’s then I actually pay attention to see that the room is a gym.

“You want my ‘big ugly head,’ though,” he grumbles as he strides off to the center of the room that’s clear of equipment, space aplenty to practice karate if we wanted.

“Boo hoo!” I yell at him. “What are you, twelve? Yes, that’s what I said: your head is ugly.”

Noah looks down at himself, then crosses his arms and looks at me, a ghost of a smile gracing his lips. “Yeah, you’re just dying to know how big and ugly my head is, aren’t you?”

Only a second passes before I get it, and my gaze unerringly drops below his waist.

‘
Yes, yes!
’ Reckless Lotty pants, clapping and jumping up and down. ‘
We so want to know how big and ugly his head is
.’

A wave of annoyance washes over me, and it’s then I understand the looks of irritation Noah used to get whenever I flirted with him. Because right now, I want something I know I can’t have, and it pisses me off.

Only God knows how many minutes of me staring below his waist tick by before he breaks into my head with, “Are you going to stand there all day and fantasize about my big, ugly head, or are we going to train?”

When I lift my gaze to him, he laughs at me. He knows he’s won this round. Two tongue-tied moments in one day? Yep. The more time I spend around him, the less rare those moments might become.

Giving him his win, I move to the center of the room. “Let’s do this.”

His grin is brighter than stadium lights. “Yeah. Let’s.”

Bastard
.

Noah = 2. Lotty = 0.

F
OURTEEN

“
O
OOOH,
L
OTTY
C
OOLEY
is back
!”

This is from an overly enthused Kiera, standing, dressed to the nines in my bedroom, and nodding in one-hundred-percent approval of my outfit.

Tonight, we’re going out. Yes,
out
. I can’t believe she’s gotten me to agree to this, but I did resolve not to live in fear anymore, didn’t I? It’s also possible this bravado is on account of the last eight afternoons of self-defense classes with Noah.

I never knew he had it in him, but it turns out he’s one hell of a trainer. He tells me Muscles trained him in self-defense, then gave him two straight years of MMA fighting skills. I told him I’m interested in learning MMA, too, and he promised we would start next week.
Yippeeee
!

In training, he’s brutal and doesn’t joke around with time. He forwent the intro chatter, telling me I should YouTube that on my own, and there was no newbie gentleness. Just went straight into it. 

As a result, his time-saving approach proves effective because, while I’m no karate kid, I can now defend myself in simple ways I never knew I could. And this has slaughtered some of my helpless fear.

Consequentially, I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long, long while: Drink booze, dance like mad, and have
fun
.

I’m wearing the sexiest, shortest dress in my closet—a tight, leather bustier number—and the wickedest pair of high heels—a strappy nude stiletto that straps up just below my knees. My hair is straightened and parted down the middle.

I look hot. I don’t need Kiera’s bouncing compliment to know that. As someone who used to be obsessed with looking my bestest in the latest, I know how to sort myself out. How to tone it down and how to amp it up. And tonight, it’s definitely amped up.

I’ve gained weight—good weight—since I began working for Noah, so my “Brazilian Curves” are back, in areas they are most highly appreciated.

My eyes roll at Kiera’s wide grin. “Let’s hit it.”

I pick up my clutch—which holds three hundred dollars, one lip gloss, one mini-comb, a pack of
Mentos,
a small sample bottle of Givenchy cologne, and my two cellphones—and sass out the door, Kiera trotting behind me.

“In that outfit, you’re so getting me laid tonight,” she tells my back. “My wing-woman is back!”

My eyeballs will be sore by the end of the night if I continue to roll them at this unbridled, sex addict behind me. Her sole purpose for waking up in the morning is hot guys, big dicks, and emotionless sex. And she doesn’t apologize for who she is.

As for her “getting laid” comment, well, back when we used to have our “privileged brats” crew, I was considered the hottest and the sexiest of the lot, mostly because I was an early bloomer
and
because I had zero filter when it came to boys.

I’m the one, because I had no shame or filter or attraction to hot boys, who hooked my girls up with the boys they liked but were too shy to approach. I did all the approaching on their behalf. Thus, I was dubbed their “wing-woman.”

Time has passed, however, and Kiera has obviously grown, unabashedly, into her sexuality, so she doesn’t really need me to get her laid. That sly fox is capable of getting that done on her own.

“Getting you laid?” I return with a scoff. “I’m looking out for my own hoo-hah tonight, madam. In fact,
you
are the popular vixen now; you should be hooking
me
up.”