The Billionaire's Heart (The Silver Cross Club Book 4) (20 page)

He kissed me, and all my weird nervousness, the jittery energy that kept sparking across my skin—it dropped away like a radio shutting off. With Elliott kissing me, there was no room for anything else. Our bodies knew how to fit together. Our mouths met, and his lips spoke a language I thought I had forgotten.

“Sadie,” he groaned, trailing his mouth down my neck, his stubble scraping against my skin and making me squirm with delight. His hands came up to cover my breasts, squeezing roughly, his thumbs sliding across my nipples, and I felt my back arch off the bed. I was hungry. My skin was hungry for his. I wanted him.

His mouth moved lower, down to the thin-skinned hollow between my collarbones, down to the bony flat of my sternum, and then down lower to take one of my nipples between his teeth.

The noise I made was barely human.

He chuckled, and I felt it as a vibration, his chest quaking where it pressed against my thigh. “Don’t laugh at me,” I gasped.

He pulled away enough to speak. “Not
at
,” he said. “With? Nearby?” His breath gusted against my nipple, a cruel tease, and I took his head in my hands and guided him back to where I wanted him.

He was definitely laughing at me.

I didn’t care. He was expert, casual, using his teeth enough to provide a delicious contrast to his wet tongue, but not enough to cause actual pain. He moved from one breast to the other, sucking and licking, and the heat between my legs grew and spread and made me squirm against him, desperate for some relief. When I couldn’t wait anymore, I slid one hand between my thighs, ready to take matters into my own hands. So to speak.

Without moving away from my breast, Elliott seized my wrist in one hand and pinned it to the mattress.

“You are the worst person I know,” I said.

He laughed at me again, the bastard. But he stopped sucking on my nipple and rolled to one side, trapping my pinned arm beneath his body, and trailed his free hand up the inside of my thigh.

I was afraid to blink, afraid to take a breath or do anything else that would cause him to stop.

But he stopped anyway, inches short of where I needed him, and said, “I take it there’s something you want me to do.”

I could have sobbed. I didn’t understand how he was so cool and collected when I was made out of wildfire, ready to burn everything I touched to the ground. “Elliott,” I said, frustrated, desperate.

“What’s that?” he asked, all fake concern. “Do you want something?”

“Touch me,” I wailed.

And he finally, finally did.

I expected him to tease me some more, but instead, he gave me exactly what I wanted: two fingers pressed inside of me, long and sure, and his thumb rolling carelessly over my clit, a little rough and exactly right. My hips shuddered upward, a helpless, automatic motion, and he clicked his tongue at me and said, “Now, now. Can’t have you getting too excited.”

“I thought that was the point,” I said, voice ragged.

“Oh, there’s going to be plenty of excitement,” he said, “but not just yet.” He moved his fingers, twisting them inside me, and I gasped and clutched at his sweater. “Hmm,” he said. “On second thought.”

“
Please
,” I said, desperate for release, desperate for this ecstatic torture to come to an end.

“No, I think I’ll make you wait a little longer,” he said, and took his glorious fingers away and slid off the bed.

I made a pitiful whimper.

“Hush, I’m coming right back,” he said, and tugged his sweater over his head.

Oh
. This was interesting.

He wasn’t slow or methodical about stripping. He yanked his clothes off like he couldn’t wait to be naked, and I realized that he was probably just as eager as I was, just hiding it better. He wanted me to think he was totally in control, but his trembling hands and the eager, clumsy way he fumbled with his trousers gave him away.

And somehow that was even better than Elliott Sloane, Icy Sex God. I liked him real, overwhelmed, and
with me
. We were in this together. We were all in.

I ogled him as much as I could in the forty-five seconds it took him to get naked. Clothes didn’t do him justice, I decided. He was hiding some serious muscles beneath those fancy suits he liked so much. His broad, freckled back rippled with each motion. Nice shoulders, nice arms. And—when he slid off his boxer-briefs—a surprisingly nice ass.

100% American grass-fed beef.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked me, naked, hands on his hips, cock hanging thick and heavy between his thighs.

“You don’t want to know,” I said, still ogling. “Not you. I would never laugh at that weapon of mass destruction you’re armed with.”

He smirked at me, obviously pleased. Men always liked it when you talked about how big their dicks were. Most of the time it was a polite exaggeration. Not with Elliott, though. That thing meant business. “Do you always talk this much during sex?”

“I talk this much during life,” I said.

“I’ll take it as a sign that I’m not working hard enough at distracting you,” he said, and came back to bed.

After that there was no more hesitation, no more fooling around. He settled between my legs and kissed me deeply, his hands running across my body like I was known territory, a country he had already claimed. We worked together to roll a condom onto his cock, and then he seized a fistful of my hair and pulled my head back, tipping my chin up to force me to meet his eyes.

What I saw there undid me.

Longing, lust—everything that I felt, reflected back at me and magnified by my own desire. He was a dear friend, someone I respected and liked, and he was also a
man
. After tonight, I would never be able to ignore this rough, primal energy running just below the unruffled surface of his skin.

“This isn’t your first time, is it?” he asked, a little mocking smile on his face.

He was a jerk, and I couldn’t get enough. “Are you asking me if I’m a virgin? You think I was saving myself for marriage?”

“Some people do,” he said. The green was almost gone from his eyes, crowded out by his blown pupils.

“Not me,” I said. His cock was already nudging at my entrance
.
“I’m too impatient. I couldn’t wait.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, “because I don’t think I could stand to be careful with you tonight.” And that was all the warning I got before he drove home in one thrust.

I cried out and arched against him, overcome. It felt so good and
right
to be filled by him, to have the weight of his body pressing me into the bed. He let go of my braids and dropped his head to rest his forehead against mine, releasing a long groan and twitching his hips against me.

“Christ,
Sadie
,” he said.

We moved together in a timeless rhythm. Without words, without thought, our bodies knew exactly what to do. It was both easy and terrifyingly complicated: a simple pleasure, but weighted with meaning because of who I was with and the messy tangle of feelings I hadn’t even begun to pick apart.

I hadn’t lied to Elliott. I was no bashful virgin. I’d had years of good sex with Ben, warm, familiar, thoroughly satisfying sex, but it was never anything like this. Elliott was turning me inside out.

God. Ben had only been dead for a year, and here I was, already in another man’s bed and having the time of my life.

Till death do us part, indeed.

I turned my face aside, afraid Elliott would see something in my expression that would make him stop. I didn’t want him to stop. It was just—strange, being with someone new. Moving on with my life. Living.

Then he moved his hips again and I couldn’t think anymore.

It didn’t take very long. It couldn’t, not with me so worked up from his teasing. Everything was heat and sweat and the feeling of the muscles of his back moving beneath my hands. I felt my legs tense in their familiar way, quivering with the strain of pleasure. He sat up on his knees and tugged my hips onto his lap, my ass resting against his thighs, and on his next thrust, something about the new angle made me moan so loudly that a dim, distant part of my brain worried that the neighbors might hear. He grinned, victorious, and drove in quick and deep, hitting that spot that made me feel like I was about to liquefy.

It was
so
good.

“I think you’re about to come for me,” he said, and I shook my head, not really denying it, but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of coming on command. But he just smirked at me and rolled his hips again, and my orgasm hit me out of nowhere.

The intensity of it bowled me over. I shuddered and wailed, nails digging into Elliott’s back, and he didn’t stop moving in me the whole time, not even when I begged him to, not until I was a limp puddle on the mattress.

Then he flipped me over and fucked me fast and hard until he came with a low groan.

NINETEEN

Elliott

I lay on top of Sadie until I caught my breath, and then I pulled away from her and staggered into the bathroom to clean up.

After I disposed of the condom, I stared at myself in the mirror while I washed my hands. I looked the same as I always did. There was no sign that I had become a predatory, morally bankrupt lecher who exploited vulnerable women.

Sadie wasn’t my girlfriend. She wasn’t even my no-strings-attached fuck-buddy. She was a beautiful, heartbroken woman who was still mourning her dead fiancé, and I had just taken advantage of her loneliness to get my rocks off.

Truly, not my finest hour.

It wasn’t that I had forced her. I didn’t have to worry about
that
, at least. She had been a visibly, vocally willing and eager participant. But I had taken advantage of the situation nonetheless, and maybe there was some subconscious part of her that felt she couldn’t tell me no.

I exhaled and ran my wet hands through my hair, slicking the messy strands back into place. Cool and collected. Button it all down. No room for nerves. No time for anxiety. Pretend they’re all naked. My old elocution teacher’s advice ran through my head, the mantras he had drummed into me still useful after all these years.

I needed to apologize to Sadie, and tell her that it couldn’t happen again.

I went back into the main room, bracing myself against the sight of a languid, post-coital Sadie and the unpleasant conversation that would ensue. But Sadie was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, leaning down to lace up her boots; and she looked up as the bathroom door opened, her face an expressionless mask, and said, “I should probably go.”

I stopped dead, deflated like a popped balloon. How easily she took the wind out of my sails. I said, “Look, this was great, but—”

“It was a mistake,” she said. “It was unprofessional. We work together, and I just think—this has the potential to get really messy, so. Let’s just focus on getting ready for the conference.”

All of which was more or less exactly what I’d been planning to say to her, but her words still pricked my ego. No man liked to hear himself described as
a mistake
. “Right,” I said. “I agree. I’ll see you tomorrow at work, then.”

“Yeah,” she said, and stood up, hoisting her purse onto her shoulder. “See you.”

When she was gone, I stood at the window for a long time, staring out into the night. After a while, a light snow began to fall, tiny flakes drifting toward the street. I went to sleep, then, and didn’t remember any of my dreams.

I woke at dawn and went to the office. It was Wednesday. The conference started in three days. We were ready—almost ready—so close to being ready that my to-do list had dwindled to a single page. We would be ready.

I had registered to give a short talk in one of the panel sessions, and I spent the morning writing an outline and assembling the slides for my presentation. I still had little fondness for public speaking, but I could do a passable job, and it was important for me to get my face out there. Recognition, visibility—all of those industry buzzwords. I would do whatever it took to get the company off the ground. Dance naked on stage. Sing, literally, for my supper.

And then I would just have to hope that an investor took pity on me.

I had tried to play it cool at Regan and Carter’s the night before, but the Boston investors backing out had set me reeling. I couldn’t understand what had made them change their minds, and I was afraid word would get around somehow and mark me as tarnished goods. Or my father would find out, and leave me a gloating message about how he’d known all along that I wouldn’t be able to make it in the real world.

As if I hadn’t spent the last decade confronting every harsh, messy, terrible, life-changing facet of human existence. In my father’s world, none of that counted. Only money mattered.

I was sitting there brooding when Sadie arrived, and I quickly turned back to my computer and moved some text around to pretend that I was doing something useful.

She set her things down at her desk and gave me a look like she knew exactly what I was up to. “What’s on the agenda for today?”