The Billionaire's Heart (The Silver Cross Club Book 4) (22 page)

My cock ached. I needed to be inside of her, to move in her until we both exploded. In my next life, I would be the sort of man who kept a box of condoms in his desk. I would just have to wait, or go jerk off in the bathroom later, something I hadn’t done since high school.

If I had known Sadie in high school—well, neither of us would have graduated, for one thing.

She shifted her hips, moving closer to the edge of the desk. I chuckled and gave her what she wanted: my fingers deep inside, and the heel of my hand grinding against her clit, firm pressure just where she needed it. She was so hot and wet that my fingers met no resistance as they sunk in. I moved my mouth to her ear and said, “Do you get this wet for all the boys, or should I be flattered?”

She moaned again, already past the point of words, and she sounded so eager and desperate that I immediately lost all interest in teasing her. I wanted to feel her come on my hand. I wanted to watch her face as she came undone.

I rocked my palm against her and crooked my fingers inside, pressing firmly, and kissed her neck just below her ear, which always made her squirm in the most delightful way. She was so sensitive, so
hungry
. I couldn’t get enough.

“Elliott,” she said, and gasped, and went to pieces against me.

TWENTY

Sadie

I stayed late at work on Thursday evening to finish going over some paperwork. Elliott tried to convince me to go home with him, “just for dinner,” but I knew that would turn into an all-night sex fest and probably a late start the next morning. We were two days out from the conference, and Elliott didn’t seem nearly as concerned about it as I thought he should be. How like a man: as soon as sex was on the table, nothing else mattered. Typical.

I finished after a couple of hours and spent a few minutes tidying the office. I cleared off my desk, rinsed out the coffee pot, and then paused by Elliott’s messy desk. Stacks of papers and file folders teetered precariously, and a half-empty coffee mug looked like it was in danger of spontaneously generating a new life-form. Elliott was untidy at the best of times, and with the conference looming he had descended into outright filth. Maybe it was a consequence of his upbringing. His family had probably had an entire army of housekeepers, and nobody to yell at him if he left his dirty socks on the floor.

Well, I wasn’t his mother
or
his housekeeper, but that mug was gross. I took it into the bathroom to scrub it out in the sink. When I returned it to his desk, I glanced at the stack of folders, idly curious, and the one on top caught my eye: UIF FINANCIALS.

UIF. Uganda International Friendship, maybe?

I flipped my folder open without giving myself any time to think about what I was doing.

There it was, right on top: an email about an impending wire transfer, with so many zeros after the first number that my head spun. And all of this money going into Elliott’s account came from a company that didn’t seem to exist.

It was pretty strange.

I read through the rest of the file, one piece of paper at a time, but I didn’t find anything that answered my questions. There was no smoking gun, no memo that said, “I’m stealing money from the Ugandan government and nobody can stop me, hugs and kisses, Elliott Sloane,” but I was suspicious as hell. If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck…

I would ask Elliott about it. Tomorrow. And it would turn out to be completely innocent, and we’d laugh about it, and maybe he would chastise me a little for doubting him and going through his files, and I would pretend to be contrite. No big deal.

Elliott wasn’t the sort of person who had sketchy dealings with fake corporations.

I needed him to not be that sort of person.

I went outside into the cold and the dark. I was starving—lunch had been a long time ago—and I just wanted to get home and sit on my couch with a bowl of cereal, the dinner of champions.

I was halfway to the subway station when my phone rang.

I fished it out of my bag and glanced at the screen before I answered. I didn’t recognize the number. “Yes?”

“This is Eric Patterson,” a man said. “Have I reached Sadie Bayliss?”

“This is Sadie,” I said. I didn’t think I knew anyone named Eric Patterson, but something about the name set a vague memory stirring at the back of my mind.

“Wonderful,” he said. “I’m so glad I was able to get in touch with you. I’d like to offer you a job.”

“Wait, hold on,” I said. “
What
? I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know how you know who
I
am, and I definitely have no idea why you’re trying to give me a job.”

“You don’t remember me?” he asked. “I’m hurt. We’ve met.”

Had we? Eric, Eric—and then it came to me: he was Elliott’s friend from the silent auction, the red-head.

I was instantly creeped out.

I was pretty sure Elliott hadn’t told this Eric guy my last name, but somehow he had looked me up anyway, even gotten my
phone number
. But, okay—maybe he’d asked Elliott for my contact information, and Elliott had just forgotten to mention it to me. That was possible. Elliott had a lot on his mind. Maybe it was totally legitimate.

Somehow I didn’t think that was the case.

“How did you get my number?” I asked. Might as well cut to the chase.

He laughed, like I had asked exactly the right question. “Clever girl,” he said. My skin crawled. I wasn’t a girl, and I certainly wasn’t okay with him saying it in that voice. “I have my ways.”

This guy had obviously watched
way
too many James Bond movies. “Look,” I said, “it’s late, and you’re sort of creepy, so why don’t you send me an email tomorrow with whatever weird proposition you have in mind? I’m sure you’ll be able to find my email address.”

He laughed again. “
Very
clever. You’ll hear from me soon.” And then he hung up.

Okay, file that under
surreal and unsettling
. Shaking my head, I tucked my phone back into my bag and decided to put the whole incident out of my mind. If Eric emailed me tomorrow, I would deal with it then. He was probably drunk, though, and would forget all about it by morning.

But on Friday morning, there was an email waiting for me, very innocent, subject “My weird proposition,” sender Eric Patterson.

I sighed heavily and clicked on it.

“Everything okay?” Elliott asked.

“Spam,” I said. “They want me to buy pills so I can have a firm erection.”

He laughed, and went back to what he was doing. For being the son of a cutthroat business magnate, Elliott had a surprisingly unsuspicious nature.

I skimmed Eric’s email. Exciting opportunity, new venture, ground floor, salary, benefits, yadda yadda. Nothing particularly interesting, although he
was
offering me a salary that was slightly higher than what Elliott was paying me. Not worth it to go work for a creep, though.

But there at the end, a single line:
You may have noticed something suspicious about Elliott’s funding. I can tell you more.

I swallowed. Clicked reply.

It was a long, agonizing thirty-eight minutes before Eric replied.

I’ll be at the conference tomorrow. Let’s talk.

And then, somehow, I had to work for the rest of the day.

Close to lunch, I gave up. It wasn’t just Eric’s email, either: I was done. I had done everything I could to prepare us for the conference, and there was nothing left to do. Sure, I could change a few words around, maybe quadruple-check that I’d packed everything for tomorrow, but it would just be busywork. There was no reason to stay at the office. And Elliott was always bugging me about working too hard, so maybe he would let me go home early. It was a sunny day, and fairly mild out according to the weather forecast. Maybe I could take a walk in the park and enjoy not being freezing cold for once.

I got up and went over to his desk. He glanced up at me, eyebrows raised, and I said, “I’m done.”

“How should I interpret that statement?” he asked. “Done in what sense? Finished with life? Finished with working for me? Fully cooked, like a Thanksgiving turkey?”

I gave him a look that I hoped accurately conveyed my feelings about being compared to a fat bird.

He grinned. “Not a turkey, then.”

“I mean I’m done
for today
,” I said. “And so are you, obviously. Look. We’re ready. There’s nothing else to work on. I think we should both go home and relax.”

“Sadie Bayliss playing hooky?” he asked. “I never thought I’d see the day. I agree with you, though. I’m just wasting time at this point.” He tipped his chair back and gave me a speculative look. “I think we should get out of here.”

“What do you mean
we
?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what he meant, and my heart was already beating faster in anticipation.

He smiled at me, slow and wicked, and my stomach flipped over. “
We
,” he said again. “You and me. And a bed, ideally, and a full box of condoms—”

“Elliott!” I exclaimed, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder, my face heating. “We are
not
going to spend all afternoon rolling around in bed.”

He tipped his head to one side, pretending to think about it. “Why not?”

“Well, because,” I said, and swallowed. I couldn’t actually think of a good reason, and the idea of his hands on me was wiping every objection from my brain. “Because…”

“My place is closer,” he said, and I turned back to my desk to get my coat.

* * *

We didn’t, in the end, have sex
all
afternoon, but we gave it a good try. Elliott put me on my hands and knees on his bed, curled his big palms around my hips, and fucked me through three orgasms, each one more powerful than the last, until my arms gave out and I couldn’t do anything but rest my face against the pillow and moan helplessly. Elliott manhandled me like we’d been doing this for years and he understood my body better than I did, and there was nothing I could do but come to pieces in his arms.

Afterward, we lay side by side on the mattress, panting, staring up at the ceiling. Elliott took one of my hands in his and held it against his chest, pressing my palm flat against his skin. His heart beat beneath my fingers, strong and steady, and I felt unexpected tears pricking at my eyes. I didn’t want to believe that he was doing something sketchy with his company. Whatever I felt for him, whatever connection had grown between us, I believed that he was a good and earnest person.

I hoped that Eric wouldn’t prove me wrong.

“What’s wrong?” Elliott asked.

Get it together, Bayliss. “Just recovering,” I said, turning on my side to face him. “You did a real number on me.”

He rolled his head toward me and grinned.

A wicked spirit took hold of me then. “Am I the first black woman you’ve been with?” I asked. I didn’t want to worry about Eric or the company any longer. Pulling Elliott’s pigtails would cheer me up.

He raised his eyebrows. “No.”

The man was impossible. I raised my own eyebrows and kept looking at him expectantly.

For once, it worked. He sighed and said, “I lived with a Kenyan woman for two years. I would have married her, but her family objected. I don’t blame them.”

“Hmm,” I said. “So is it like a fetish kind of thing? You’ve got jungle fever?”

The look he gave me was utterly appalled. I wanted to burst out laughing, but I powered through, determined to play it straight and see how riled up I could get him. I wrinkled my nose and turned my head away slightly, looking at him from the corner of my eye like I was reconsidering his motives. To my utter delight, he turned pink, and said, “I do not have
jungle fever
. My God, Sadie.”

“How do you know?” I asked, as earnestly as I could. “It’s not something you can diagnose yourself. Maybe—”

“I’m sure,” he said. Even his ears were turning pink. “I’ve had sex with enough white women that there is no doubt in my mind.”

That was it for me. I rolled on my back and broke into hysterical laughter, waving my hands in the air above me like a helpless bug, too amused to speak.

“Were you—have you been screwing with me?” he asked, suspicious.

“Oh God,” I choked out, a breathless squeal. “Oh my God.”

“You
were
,” he said. “Incredible. I’m fairly sure that violates the Geneva Convention.”

I finally got myself under control and caught my breath. “The Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to this situation. Don’t be silly.”

“I’m phoning The Hague tomorrow,” he said. “Then you’ll be sorry.”

I turned toward him and rested one hand against his cheek. “My darling, you’ll do no such thing.”

“Ah, sweet condescension,” he said. “Don’t you know I have connections? I’m a
Sloane
. I’m a big deal. I could call my father up and—”