The Bad Boy Billionaire's Girl Gone Wild (7 page)

“But what can really happen, Sam? I live in the city and you’re still back in Milford. Plus, you’re with Kate and—”

“You’re not over that guy,” Sam said bluntly. Shocked at the accusation, I stumbled over my words when I replied.

“Like we said on Facebook. It’s complicated.”

He leaned in close.

“Was it fake, Jane?”

“Sam . . .”

“You can tell me. I know all your secrets. And I know
you.
So I don’t think it was fake.”

At the end of our meal we lingered outside under the streetlights on the corner of Spring and Crosby. Sam pulled me close—and I didn’t pull away. Call it curiosity. Or old habits dying hard. I let him wrap his arms around me and I savored this old, familiar and comforting feeling I thought I’d lost forever.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? In his arms, I felt the old and familiar and comforting. And these days I knew exciting, thrilling, and utterly wonderful.

I knew Sam was going to kiss me. It would be like another first kiss. I was nervous. Did I want this? Or not?

His mouth pressed down on mine before I had decided what I wanted. He pulled me closer into his embrace. But instead of feeling wanted and cherished, I just felt stifled. This was something I had wanted for so long but now it didn’t feel right anymore. I tried to break free of his embrace—I need to
breathe.
It was a moment before he let me go.

“Sam, stop,” I said insistently. He stopped.

“I know—we’re on the street where anyone can see,” Sam said, even though that wasn’t it at all. “Want to come back to my hotel, Jane? It’ll be just like old times.”

I felt another text message come through. I didn’t have to look to know who sent it or what it said. I knew it was Duke.

“Not tonight, Sam. I’m not saying no forever. Just not tonight.”

There was something I had to take care of first. His name was Duke Austen, and I needed to personally deliver a piece of my mind. He was ruining my date, and possibly my life.

Sam insisted that I get in a cab—which I did. But two blocks later I told the driver to take me to Bowery and Bond instead of Fifteenth Street and Eighth Avenue. As he sped off into the night, I gave in and checked my phone. Another sexy picture from the bad boy billionaire that vanished before my eyes. It was time to reply. In person.

Bowery and Bond, Duke’s apartment

I
STORMED INTO
his apartment the second the elevator doors opened and launched into my tirade, having worked myself into quite a state on the ride over and during the length of the elevator ride.

“W
HAT ARE YOU
thinking to interrupt my date like that?”

“Hey Janet,” Duke said, looking up from his computer. “I was hoping you’d reply with a picture but the real thing is so much better.”

“My name is
Jane
.”

“Aw, I’m just trying to be cute. Besides, the name Sweater Set just doesn’t work for you in that dress.”

He stood up and came over to greet me, sliding his hand around my waist and pulling me flush against him. I couldn’t help it: I sighed. The man just did things to me.

“What are we doing?” I gasped as Duke started kissing my neck.

“Skipping over everything until we get to the naughty bits,” he murmured. I shivered from feeling his breath steal across the sensitive skin of my neck.

“Did you really read my book? Or just the sex scenes?”

“Yeah, I read it all,” he said, pulling back. “I couldn’t put it down. I read it when I should have been interviewing developers, meeting with my sales team and a hundred other things that would bring me closer to everything I ever wanted. You see, Janet, I thought you were a good girl but it turns out you’re all kinds of trouble.”

“Me?” I had to laugh. I’d never had a detention, or broken the law, or even gotten a speeding ticket.

“And you know what they say about me and trouble,” Duke said with that impossibly seductive grin of his. He pulled me close again and this time I didn’t resist, but placed my palms on the hot skin of his bare chest. I felt his heart beating.

“They say you and trouble are notoriously inseparable,” I answered softly.

My own heart was pounding, and I felt my blood thrumming through my veins. I felt desire taking over, too. There was a tightness inside and heat and a driving need to feel his hands all over my body and to feel him deep inside of me. I breathed him in and his scent made me feel more intoxicated than I already was.

Old Jane played by the rules. But tonight, I was new Jane. I was trouble. And I was going to break the rules. This wasn’t getting together or some meaningful and significant lovemaking, this me in a sexy dress, having drunk some wine, and wanting to lose myself with this hot guy. Just for one night. To hell with the consequences.

My heart was pounding. Did I mention that? It set a wicked rhythm I couldn’t resist. My whole world was suddenly nothing more than the bump bump bump of my heart. I felt it like I felt a thick, heavy bass line thumping in the club. Felt it in my chest, in my belly, and lower.

Duke hadn’t even touched me yet.

I knew what was about to happen.

I reached out and traced one fingertip from the hollow of his throat, down along the soft skin of chest, savoring the taut planes of his muscles before dipping lower still, until I stroked along the edge of skin where his jeans hit.

He grabbed my wrist when I started to fumble with the button.

With a firm grasp, he started taking a few steps back, pulling me with him.

“Where are we going?”

He replied only with another wicked, roguish grin. No words were necessary for me to understand that we weren’t going to the bedroom, but that he was still going to make love to me.

Did I mention the pounding heat? Add dizziness. And breathlessness.

Carefully stepping one foot in front of the other, I followed his lead through the large living area, around the couch. Duke paused in the doorway to the wraparound terrace, the city all lit up behind him.

“Outside?”

“Let’s give you something to write about.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“The lady needs to be persuaded,” he mused. With a little tug of my wrist I stumbled forward on my high heels and fell against his bare chest. He slid one hand around my waist, holding me flush against him.

Then he claimed my mouth for the kind of kiss that was relentless, devastating, powerful and all- consuming. Our tongues tangled, our breath mingled, and with just this kiss we were one. This was the sort of kiss girls dreamed of—when they were drunk and uninhibited. I lost myself to him, to that kiss. I felt my bones turn to molten liquid. My muscles surrendered, and I melted against him.

He leaned against the sliding glass doorframe. I leaned against him. The wind whipped behind him, tousling his hair.

“C’mon,” he murmured, tugging me out onto the terrace, which had tons of small trees and plants in containers, making it feel almost like a garden. It was a hot summer night with a warm breeze stealing over the city, slipping between the high-rise buildings and low historic structures. All of it was lit up, and loud and full of millions of people in the midst of their own dramas. And yet, it felt like there was no one else in the world except for me and my bad boy billionaire.

Still locked in an embrace, Duke led the way over to the very edge. He spun me around so my back was to the city.

He placed my hands on the railing behind me.

“Don’t move,” he ordered.

Then he sank to his knees before me.

My panties were gone in an instant. My attention was drawn to the exquisite sensation of his open palms skimming up the inside of my legs.

“You look hot in these heels, Jane.”

“Good, because they hurt like hell.”.

“You won’t notice in a minute. I promise. I’ll make you forget the pain.”

There was another kind of pain occupying my mind. The pain of searing hot and shimmering desire ricocheting through me with just the touch of his hands.

He teased my inner thighs. With his thumb, he started tracing delicate circles around my clit. The pressure was light, so light I was desperate for more.

“Please,” I whispered. I feared it was lost in the wind because he just kept tormenting me with that light touch and hot, open-mouthed kisses on the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.

And then he slid one finger inside me. I gasped. Another. I gasped again.

He stroked me, stirring the flames of desire. My head fell back and I gazed up at the New York City skyline. I couldn’t see stars, but I saw all the sparkling lights of airplanes and skyscrapers.

Duke, still teasing me like crazy with his fingers, pressed his mouth against my sex and I just about lost it, shouting out my pleasure from the rooftops.

The world was happening all around us. No one, I was sure, really bothered to notice.

And then between the wicked touch of his fingers and the even more wicked caress of his mouth, I just—I just gave up. My knees started to buckle but he held me up. Breathing—who needed to breathe? Who could draw a breath in circumstances like this? I was dizzy, so dizzy and vaguely afraid of falling off this building . . . or totally in love.

Was that the worst fate?

Duke was relentless and in the end there was nothing to do but give in to the pressure and revel in the explosion of pleasure. I cried out and the sound was lost in the sounds of the city—the blare of taxi horns, the shouts of drunk revelers on the street, the wail of ambulances. I’d been shaken to my core and still, the city kept going.

Duke stood. I gazed up at him. His face was so stark in this light—my eyes were drawn to the sharp slant of his cheekbones, the sensuous curve of his upper lip, the darkness in his eyes, his hair, tousled by the wind. I reached up to thread my fingers through his hair. Again, he caught my wrist. Again, he didn’t let go.

Instead, he spun me around so I was looking out over the edge.

“Oh God,” I gasped as I looked down too many stories to count.

“Shhh,” he murmured into my ear. “I’m holding onto you. I won’t let you go.”

Duke pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses along the back of my neck. Then he shoved up my skirt. I teetered on towering heels, held steady only by the firm grasp of his hands on my hips.

He moved against me, and even though I had just had a core-shaking orgasm, I was ready to go again.

In a mercifully quick moment, he unzipped his jeans and slid on a condom. And then I felt the rock-hard length of him pulsing against my clit. Lord help me, I moaned.

Duke leaned over me, nibbling on my earlobe, pressing kisses on my neck, caressing my hip and teasing me again with his fingers. Back and forth. In and out. All around. I was going mad. Mad!

“You’re so ready for me Jane,” he murmured.

“I’m well aware of that,” I gasped. “Really fucking aware.”

He laughed softly and the rush of his breath across my skin was yet another sensation that was somehow magnified until the point of being nearly unbearable.

And then, when I couldn’t stand the wait anymore, he was inside of me with one smooth thrust. I gave a shout.

His cock filled me up. I turned my head—we kissed, the sort of passionate, distracted, tooth-clinking-against-tooth kiss that had happened when you were both overcome with the rhythm of in and out and in and out and in and out. His hands skimmed up my front, closing around my breasts. I moaned. It was too much. All of it—his hands on me, his cock inside me, the city all around us . . . I couldn’t hold on for much longer.

He took my nipples in between his fingertips, the pressure making them stiffen into hard peaks. Oh, God. Oh, Duke.

It could have been hours. It could have been minutes. It could have been years. However long it was, I ceased to exist and he did, too. We were one, tied together with pleasure, crying out above the city.

Our cries as we came together were lost in the noise of the city. With heavy-lidded eyes, I gazed around. People . . . all around . . . living their lives on Saturday night. I looked over the edge, down a dizzying number of stories to the city street below.

“I got you, Jane,” he murmured.

“Never let me go,” I whispered.

Chapter Seven

Freeman’s Restaurant

A few days later

I
MET
R
OXANNA
after work for a quick bite to eat before we headed over to a party on the private roof deck of her office’s building. It had to be noted that there was a chance Duke would be there. It had to be noted that because of that possibility, I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to come up with the perfect outfit.

And then, of course, something came up at work at the last minute ensuring that I didn’t have time to head home and change. I went straight to the restaurant wearing my work clothes: a charcoal pencil skirt, black silk camisole and thin black cashmere cardigan. Strappy silver kitten heels. My hair was pulled into a ponytail.

First, Roxanna handed me the glass of wine she had gone ahead and ordered. Then she said, “So Duke might be there.”

“Oh?” She didn’t buy my innocent act and rolled her eyes.

“You know he’s always invited to these things. And I bet he’ll assume that because of my job and thus being practically required to attend, there’s a chance that I will insist you come with me.”

“I’m avoiding him,” I confided.

“Is that what you did the other night? Avoided him?”

“Shut up.”

“Did you avoid him with a passion?” Roxanna asked, grinning devilishly.

“I mean it, Roxanna. I was tipsy and emotional and it just happened. But now I’m setting boundaries. I will not be his secret lover and mistress while he’s married to his work. Besides, Sam got an offer from NYU.”

Roxanna nodded politely and then carried on with her ridiculousness.

“Did avoiding him bring you to dizzying heights of pleasure?”

“Where’s the waiter?” I asked, looking around. “I’m ready to order.”

“What do you fancy? A hot billionaire and multiple orgasms?”