CRAVED (By the Alpha Billionaire #1) (2 page)

Maisie

“Aren’t you going to say ‘good morning’?” I asked as he brushed past me. I seeped my tea bag in and out of my Styrofoam cup of hot water as I felt the sheer intensity of his presence pass by. “Or is someone’s ego feeling a little bruised this morning?”

The truth was, I’d fallen asleep the night before, but I didn’t want him to know that. I tried my hardest to stay awake. I wanted to knock on his door at midnight in nothing but a white robe and practically offer myself to him on a silver platter. I wanted to feel him so deep and hard inside me that I’d forget all about Luke and Sara. I wanted to do something crazy and so not like me just for one night just to feel something other than the hurt that coursed through my veins like an incurable disease.

But I fell asleep. I fought it as long as I could, but the exhaustion of the day won over and slipped me into the deepest sleep I’d ever experienced. I didn’t expect to see him at breakfast the next morning though.

“Good morning,” he said, not even bothering with the cutesy nickname he’d christened me with the night before. Apparently Mr. Businessman was in a mood.

“Not a morning person?” I asked, taking a careful sip of my tea and watching him slap some soggy French toast on a paper plate. I stayed mum as I watched him glance around the room for a place to sit. Some conference on leadership had packed the hotel the night before and apparently everyone decided to wake for breakfast at the exact same time. “You can sit with me. I won’t bite.”

“I’ll take it back to my room,” he said, adding a sarcastic, “but thanks.”

Judging by his sheer good looks and arrogant attitude, he probably wasn’t a man who was turned down much if ever. Was he really sulking because I didn’t knock on his door at midnight?

“I’m sober now,” I said as he walked away. He stopped dead in his tracks.

“What did you say?”

“I’m sober now.” I took another sip of tea and shrugged a single shoulder, stifling the smile that consumed my lips. Fucking with him was fun. Fucking him might be fun too.

“That ship has sailed, Mouthy,” he said, walking away.

***

I checked out of the hotel and headed outside to my car. A beautiful, warm spring morning greeted me, birds chirping and everything. It was as if the world was spinning madly on while my own personal world was collapsing. I had to go back to the apartment. The scene of the crime. I just prayed and hoped Luke and Sara were smart enough not to be there. It had taken everything I had the day before not to freak out on both of them. They were lucky my emotions paralyzed me enough that all I could do was run out of there crying instead of spewing venomous words and throwing ceramic objects in their general direction.

I leaned against my car and fished for my keys, catching a notice on the screen of my phone indicating I had a message from Luke.

“Ugh,” I groaned as I proceeded to read it. Just as I expected, it was an apology. Luke gushed on and on about how perfect I was for him, how stupid he was, how he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, how Sara conned him, and on and on. I didn’t buy it nor did I finish the multi page block of text.

We’d been together so long, I’d grown used to overlooking his shortcomings and ignoring the fact that we had a comfortable sort of love. Like those old jeans you kept since high school because you loved them once and they remind you of happier times, so you hold on to them even if they no longer look good on you or they went out of style years ago. That was Luke for me. And maybe it wasn’t even love I felt anymore, but a sort of contented nostalgia that I confused for love.

I called him to make sure he wasn’t at our apartment.

“Maisie.” He answered in the middle of the first ring.

“I need to know if you’re gone,” I said. “I’m coming home. I don’t want to see you. Or her.”

“Did you get my text?” he asked. His voice was all groggy and early morning. I used to think it was cute. Now it annoyed me.

“I did.”

“And?”

“What about it?”

“Do you accept my apology?”

I scoffed. “For fucking my stepsister?!”

“For messing up. Maisie, I’m not perfect. Neither are you.”

“Yeah, but I never cheated on you.” I crossed my free arm across my waist, silently debating on whether or not to hang up with him. We’d fought before and our fights could go on for days. “Not once, Luke.”

“Sara’s the only…mistake I’ve made since we’ve been together,” he insisted. “I swear to you, Maisie. You’re my first love. You’re my everything. I’m going to marry you someday.”

He’d been saying that for years. In fact, he’d said it so much it stopped losing its potency a long time ago.

“I’m not marrying you, Luke,” I said, hanging my head back and staring up into the cloudless, blue sky. From the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Businessman exiting the lobby with his rolling suitcase behind him. Dressed in gray slacks and a navy blue sweater with a navy check shirt underneath and blacked out Warby Parker sunglasses, my heart skipped a beat. I quickly looked away and prayed he didn’t see me checking him out. “I need to know. Are you home or are you gone?”

Sawyer rolled up next to me. Evidently it wasn’t enough that our rooms were adjoining, our cars were also next to one another. I turned my back to him.

“I’m here, baby,” Luke said, ignoring everything I’d just said. “Waiting for you. I’m going to make this up to you. I swear.”

“No,” I groaned. “You can’t. I don’t want you to. I just want you gone. Let’s go our separate ways. This was only a matter of time.”

“What are you saying?”

I thought about how Luke and I hadn’t been intimate in months. Perhaps it was partly due to the fact that he was getting some on the side from Sara, and partly because I was losing my urge to want to get buck wild and naked with him like we did when we were first falling in love. A girl can only have so many orgasm-less sex sessions before she loses her urge to get freaky. The vibrator tucked in the back of my nightstand drawer got more action than Luke in the last year.

“I don’t think either one of us were truly happy,” I said, keeping my voice hushed. “This is probably for the best. Just, please, pack your bags. I’ll give you two hours. When I come home, I want it to look like you never existed.”

Luke began to argue, but his words meant nothing. The second I opened my mouth to speak again, I felt the phone being pulled away from my ear.

“Listen, pencil dick, she wants you gone.” I turned around to see Sawyer talking on my phone to my ex-boyfriend.

“What are you doing?” I reached for my phone, but Sawyer stepped out of my reach.

“Who am I? I’m the guy who spent all night long fucking the shit out of your sweet Maisie,” he said into the receiver. “God, her lips were fucking fantastic around my dick.”

My throat swelled and my face flushed.

“And when she was done sucking my cock,” he said. “I fucked her from behind and came all over her back. And when it was all over, she begged for more. I made her forget your name, jackass. Come to think of it, I think I made her forget hers too.”

He ended the call, handed my phone back to me and climbed into his car. I walked over to him as he rolled his window down.

“Do I thank you for that?” I scoffed, though secretly it felt nice that he defended me like that.

He shrugged and adjusted his dark glasses, and I wished more than anything I could sneak a peek of those killer, hooded eyes again. Suddenly I wondered if his little favor was more of a dig at me, hinting at what could’ve been if only I’d knocked on his door.

“You leaving town? Your plane all fixed?” I asked.

“Hopefully by this afternoon I’ll be midflight to JFK,” he said, running his hands along the wooden steering wheel of his rental car. He leaned forward and started it up.

“What are you going to do until then?”

He pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Mouthy. Was going to drive around town and see the sights.”

“The sights?” I laughed. “You realize this town has a population of thirty-two hundred. We might have a shoe store and a McDonald’s, but that’s about it as far as sights go.”

“I can’t stay another minute in that hotel,” he said. “It reeks of musty carpet and chlorine.”

“Sorry it’s not up to Sawyer Thomas’ impeccable standards,” I said. “You might want to leave a review on Yelp when you get a chance.”

“Ah,” he turned to me. “You remembered my name.”

“Don’t read into it,” I said. “I’m a school teacher. Names are sort of my thing.”

I taught fifth grade at Garden Springs Elementary, and we just so happened to be on spring break that week. Too bad for Luke, he completely forgot I didn’t have to work, which was how I walked in on him and Sara doing the nasty.

“School teacher?” he said, the words slowly falling off his tongue. “You don’t look like a school teacher.”

“What do school teachers look like?” My hands flew to my hips, and I threw him my best teacher stare.

“Themed sweater vests. High water pants. Glasses,” he said.

I reached into the bottom of my purse and pulled out a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, slipping them over my nose. “There. Now do I look like a teacher?”

“More like a naughty secretary.” He squinted behind his glasses. “Or a hipster. I can’t decide.”

“Has anyone ever told you how completely offensive and chauvinistic you are?”

“Has anyone ever told you how overly sensitive you are?”

My hands gripped fistfuls of air as I groaned. He was so fucking hot and so fucking annoying and he got under my skin like no one ever had. And I didn’t even know him!

I placed a hand on his car door and leaned into his window. “Sawyer, it’s been great getting to know you. A real pleasure. Truly.” I placed my hand over my heart. “I sincerely hope you enjoyed your stay here in our little town. Maybe next time you fly over Missouri you’ll think of me and the way I looked when I walked away, never having given you a taste…”

I backed up and watched as his lips twisted into agitated amusement. “Get in the car, Mouthy.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get in.”

“Why would I do that?!”

Sawyer wasted no time climbing out of the car and heading toward me until he completely invaded my space and his rich cologne filled my nostrils. I could swim in that stuff it was so divine.

“Because I said so,” he said as his hands gripped the sides of my face as he lowered his lips onto mine. We stood, lip locked, in the middle of a Best Western parking lot in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday morning. He kissed me. And I liked it.

Oh, god, did I like it.

Sparks flittered through my entire body from my fingertips to my toes and then settling back up into the pit of my stomach, making me feel like I’d just gone upside down on a rollercoaster. He tore himself away from me, leaving us both breathless and my lips stinging hot.

In silence, we climbed into his rental car and he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked as we drove toward the west side of town.

His right hand reached across and landed very intentionally on my leg, working its way closer and closer to my tingling, hot core. His fingertips grazed over the top of my jeans, and I swiftly remembered I wasn’t wearing any panties. I’d tossed the dirty ones from the day before in the trash that morning after my shower.

“Oceana Voyage,” he said.

“Say that again?”

“My jet,” he said. “It’s called the Oceana Voyage.”

“So you really do have a jet? That wasn’t just a story you tell strange women in bars to try to impress them?”

His hand inched closer, gripping my thigh before his fingers began pressing hard over the ache in my jeans, barely providing an ounce of relief. “Stop talking, Mouthy. You’re not allowed to talk until I say so.”

I watched him from the corner of my eye as he drove towards the airport on the outskirts of town. We pulled into a parking space next to a hangar that housed a large, private jet with Oceana Voyage emblazoned across it in shiny gold letters. I stood back as he talked to the mechanic and within minutes the automatic staircase came down and he motioned me toward it.

I reluctantly followed him up the steps, my hands carefully gripping the handrails. I’d never stepped foot on a plane in my entire life. Living in Missouri, we were smack dab in the middle of the country. If we couldn’t drive somewhere in half a day, we just didn’t go.

A living room area and a bedroom and, from what I could see, a bathroom, filled the bulk of the plane with a private cockpit in front. A 50” flat screen TV was installed against one of the walls. Chrome. Leather. Velvet. Plush. Lux. It was like a fancy little apartment with wings. I could only imagine how expensive this plane was, and I made a mental note to Google Sawyer’s name the next chance I got. Apparently he wasn’t lying about being a fancy pants businessman.

“Sit,” he said, pointing to a couch. “Don’t speak. You’re not allowed to speak on my plane.”