Crash into Me: A BWWM Russian Billionaire Romance (13 page)

She’d deliberated for long minutes about whether or not to add a smiley face, but ultimately decided against it. That seemed too needy. This way it just seemed like she was curious about whether or not she’d see him. Not like she was hoping she would.

Which was good, since Alexei didn’t even bother to text her back.

Imagine her surprise, then, when later that night he flopped onto the stool next to her and rested his head on the polished wood of the bar. “Sam,” he called pitifully. “Do you have anything for stress?”

Sam chuckled and gave him a once over, apparently not surprised to see him. “Tequila?” he asked, already reaching for the bottle.

“Sure, why not?” Alexei mumbled and then looked at Emma. “Hello.”

Emma, for her part, was rigid with surprise. She’d assumed that his lack of response to her text had meant that she wouldn’t see him, either that night or ever again, but there he was, giving her that little smile as if it hadn’t been days since they’d last spoken.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He frowned. “It’s Friday. We come here on Fridays.”

And yes, for the last couple of weeks that had been true, but… “I didn’t think you were coming. You didn’t reply to my text.”

“Oh. Apologies, Emma. I am just very bad at replying to messages. You can ask my mother.”

There was a bitterness to his voice when he said that, and Emma let go of her annoyance and just accepted the fact that she was happy to see him. It was easier, and sometimes she just wanted to do the thing that was easy.

“It’s alright,” she said, and petted his head, finding that she’d missed the way his hair felt between her fingers. “So what happened with your apartment?”

He groaned again, but told her the story, pausing to accept his shot from Sam and request another. By the time he came to the end of, she could sort of understand why she hadn’t heard from him since then.

“Wow. And your mom just...doesn’t care?”

Alexei shrugged. “So it seems. Apparently that’s just how business works.” He knocked back his second shot and sighed, seeming to consider whether or not he was going to ask for another. Emma realized that she hadn’t seen him drunk or hungover in all the time they’d been spending together, and she thought that was promising. But she also thought that finding out that your mother wasn’t really bothered that your father was probably murdered was cause to drink. So she summoned Sam herself.

Alexei’s smile was grateful, and when he leaned over to kiss her cheek, Emma smiled back.

It was a good beginning, she thought. They still didn’t know where they stood in terms of what they were doing or what they were, and they were both busy people. She had her work, and Alexei had told her that he was going to try and figure out what was going on with these people who’d wanted his father dead as well as keep learning more about the family business.

“If I have to take it over, things are going to change,” he’d told her, determination flaring in those eyes.

Somehow their usual weekends together started to extend into the weeknights, as well. One of them would turn up at the other’s home after a full day, and they’d get take out or one of them would cook, and then they’d talk about their day. It felt like a relationship as Emma knew them to be, but neither of them had said the word yet, and she was beginning to wonder if they ever would.

That was fine, though. It was fine. What they had was plenty good without dragging labels into it, and Emma didn’t want to ruin anything by bringing it up.

Not when she got to spend nights with Alexei the way they spent them. Full of passion and mutual wanting. Sometimes he would push her up against the wall and just kiss her for long minutes, hands roaming. Sometimes she would take papers and files or his laptop from him and climb into his lap, hands sliding under his shirt while she kissed and nipped at his neck.

Labels or no, she felt freer to be herself with him than she had with anyone else in recent memory.

She felt completely comfortable with attacking him when he came out of the shower, pouncing on him and toppling them both onto the bed, fingers tangled in his damp hair. When he smiled and kissed her neck, she grinned, laughing softly. There hadn’t been much forethought behind her actions, mostly she just wanted to be touching him, but when his towel fell away, revealing that he was half hard and delectable looking, she suddenly had a lot of ideas about what she wanted to do.

Emma pressed a hand to his chest and pushed him flat against the bed, kissing her way down his body from his mouth to his neck to each perfect collar bone, fingers sliding ahead to touch damp skin and chase errant beads of water.

She licked his nipples and teased them with her teeth, enjoying the sounds he made for her when she did so. He was delightfully responsive, which helped give her the confidence to do this.

Her lips brushed over his stomach from his chest, and she dragged her tongue around his navel and then down to that delicious vee at his hips, watching with interest as his cock twitched and jerked, clearly wanting to remind her that it was still there and eager for attention. She smiled and bypassed it for the moment, kissing each hip bone and then lower, following the trail of dark hair down.

“Tease,” Alexei huffed.

“Impatient,” Emma chided, grinning up at him. But she took him in her hand and stroked slowly from base to tip, twisting her hand and enjoying the groan Alexei gave in response.

She lowered her head and pressed a kiss to the head of his length before wrapping her hand loosely around the root and giving in to what he clearly wanted, licking him in long strokes like he was her favorite treat. He tasted like clean skin and warm water, and she savored it for a bit before opening her mouth wider and letting the tip push inside. Emma sucked on the head briefly before she pushed downward, taking in more.

Alexei hissed with pleasure and tangled his fingers in her hair. She could feel him trying to keep his hips still, and she smirked, enjoying the effect she was having.

Honestly, she would do this every chance she got. Emma loved the way he felt in her mouth, thick and getting thicker, hot and heavy, pressing against her tongue and towards the back of her throat as she worked him deeper.

They both knew he could easily come like this, lose himself in her mouth, but she had other plans, so before too long she was pulling off with a pop, kissing his dick one more time before she pushed herself up and onto her knees.

“I hope you’re not planning on teasing me all night,” Alexei said, and there was a glint in his eyes that Emma liked a lot.

“Not
all
night,” she said and got herself into position.

“
Oh
,” Alexei breathed, eyes wide as he watched her.

Emma laughed, and it was a throaty sound. She grinned at him from astride his hips, rolling her own as she moved on his cock. There was something powerful about this position, and she liked it. Liked that it gave her control over the movements and made it so that she didn’t seem so small.

And she liked that she got to watch Alexei’s face. To see the pleasure and desire flicker over those handsome features, knowing all the while that she was the reason for it.

“You look very smug right now,” Alexei said, hands gripping her hips as he pushed up into her body deeper.

“Do I?” she replied, panting and swiveling her hips in a move that made him groan and think his head back against the pillows. “I wonder why that could be.”

“Tease. You are just a tease,” he accused once more.

“You like it.”

“I do,” Alexei admitted. He slid one hand up from her hip to tease her breast, thumbing lazily at a nipple. It hardened even more under his touch, and when he pinched it and twisted it hard, she moaned and arched. “But then, you like this, too.”

Emma made a face at him and went tight around his cock, moving her hips faster until she was riding him with fervor.

“That’s it,” Alexei urged her, voice husky and deep. “That’s it. Take what you want. God, you’re gorgeous like this.”

She would have been blushing at the way he was talking to her, but she was already flushed from the exertion and from pleasure. He kept teasing her nipples while she rode him, her movements making him pinch and tug on them harder, and the slight pain of it was just the edge she needed to keep her going.

It felt so good, feeling that heat roll through her, and she knew it wasn’t going to take long. They had been sleeping together for long enough that they knew what the other liked. They knew the little places on each other’s bodies that made them sing with desire.

She knew that Alexei knew that she liked to be on top, liked to have that control, but he also knew that she liked having it taken from her, and so when he let go of her nipples and grabbed her up, rolling them so that she was pressed down to the bed and he was on top, bearing down and still sheathed inside of her, she gasped, mouth open as the heat doubled.

Alexei smirked. “Thought you’d like that.”

“What are we doing?” Emma replied. It hadn’t been what she’d meant to say, but the words had spilled out of her from the back of her mind.

“Well,” Alexei said. “Right now, I’m in the process of making you scream my name. And then I was thinking a nap followed by more of this.” And by ‘this’ he apparently meant pulling out just enough that he could slam back in with a short, hard thrust that stole Emma’s breath and her train of thought.

Who could focus on asking stupid questions when there was a very attractive man hovering over her and pumping himself into her again and again?

He took control like he was born to have it, the bed squeaking and bouncing as he worked his hips. They breathed together, mouths open and barely touching, just mingled breaths and light brushes of lips that almost turned into more. Emma would lean up to kiss him, but then his cock would hit that spot inside of her, and she was moaning instead. Her hands sliding up Alexei’s arms to his shoulders where she dug her nails in and held on like she was worried about being swept away.

She moaned sweetly for him, soaking up the noises he made in return and the grunted half sentences about how she felt so good.

“Emma,” he panted, eyes open as he stared down at her. “Emma, Emma, Emma.”

“Alexei,” she breathed back, fingers moving to thread into his curls as she dragged his head down and claimed a kiss. It was messy and breathless, and she could barely hold it because his hips were thrusting and she was so close, but she wanted to come with the taste of him on her mouth. “Please.”

“Come on,” he whispered, lips moving against hers. “Come on. Come for me, pretty girl. Come on.”

And she did, voice cracking on a high pitched whimper as all that heat and fire broke open inside of her, dragging her under and stealing her breath with the force of it. She could feel herself go tight around him and heard him groan her name as he took her even harder and then found his own release, shuddering hard.

She kept waiting for it to be less good. For them to get tired of each other or find something that they disagreed on so much that it outweighed how good everything else was. But it never happened. Everything was just hot and wonderful, and the chemistry didn’t seem to be fading.

“What are we doing?” she asked again, once she had caught her breath and was lying under him with his head tucked against her neck.

“Why do you keep asking that?” he wanted to know.

“Because I want an answer?”

“We’re…” Emma could feel him making a face against the skin of her neck. “I believe the word is cuddling.”

She snorted at that and shook her head. “What, they don’t have a word for cuddling in Russian?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just not used to using the word. Or doing the act, either.”

“You
know
what I mean, Alexei.”

He sighed and leaned up on one arm, looking down at her. “Yes, I know what you mean. I suppose I’m wondering why it matters. If we like what we’re doing then why do we have to label it to death?”

He had a point, and she knew it. It was what she’d been telling herself for the last several days, in fact, but when it came down to it, she needed to know. She needed to know before she stumbled upon him and some other woman and had to face the fact that he meant more to her than she meant to him.

“Because,” she said. “For one, you’re being dramatic. I don’t want to label it to death. I just want to know what you think. What you...what you want.”

“I want
you
,” Alexei replied simply. “And I want to not be having this conversation. I’m no good at this conversation.”

“I can tell you’re trying really hard at it, too,” Emma muttered, stung. She hated being dismissed.

Alexei huffed and ran fingers through his hair. “What do you want me to tell you?” he asked. “That I think long and hard every night about where this is going? About how I want to introduce you to my mother and meet your parents and ride off into the sunset.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Emma snapped. “That’s not what I’m saying, and you
know
it. But, fine. You don’t want to talk about it? We don’t have to talk about it.”