The Millionaire's Wish

by Abigail Strom

  He laid her down on the bed and covered her body with his own, kissing her fiercely, hungrily, his tongue tangling with hers and his weight pinning her to the mattress.

  She wanted him closer. She opened her legs and wrapped them around his waist. She felt the length of his erection pressed against her center and she knew that was what she wanted, needed, craved on such a primal level she hardly recognized the wild sound that escaped her throat.

  He buried his face in the crook of her neck for a second, saying her name against her skin. Then his hands were underneath her, at the clasp of her bra, and in the second after it was gone his mouth was on her breast.

  She cried out, arching her back, and then he was circling one nipple with his tongue while he caressed the other with his fingers, stroking until she was pushing herself against him, unable to stay still.

  He kissed between her breasts and lower, and when he got to her garter belt she heard it rip. “I’ll buy you another one,” he said, and then he was tugging her panties and her stockings down her legs.

  Before she knew what was happening he’d hooked her knees over his shoulders and his mouth was on her again, so intimately this time she twisted away in instinctive shyness.

  But his strong hands were on her hips as he held her in place against him, against his mouth, his tongue, and her motions intensified the sensation until she was moving with him, rocking with him, doing everything his hands urged her to do as a new kind of pressure started to build inside her.

  Her hands fisted in the sheets as she fought to breathe, and the pressure tightened and coiled in every muscle. When the explosion came she called out his name, her head thrown back, the wave of pleasure so intense it left her shaking.

  She came down slowly, sweetly, through layers of warmth and pleasure. She’d come undone and Rick was weaving her together again, moving up her body with exquisite slowness, kissing her as softly as snow falling on snow.

  When he made it all the way up she’d regained some muscle control, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as he kissed her long and deep.

  After a while he rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow.

  “I got a little carried away there,” he said, reaching out a hand to brush the sweat-dampened hair from her forehead. “I meant to go slow, but you were so incredible…so responsive…”

  She gave a long, shuddering sigh. “I didn’t know I could be like that. I didn’t know anything could feel like that.” She took another breath, and then turned on her side to face him, her face pillowed on her arm. “We’re not done, are we?”

  He was still running his fingers through her hair. “We can be, if you’re tired.”

  “I’m not tired at all. And you still have all your clothes on.”

  He smiled at her. “We’ve got all night, Allison. I can wait.”

  “I don’t want to wait,” she said. “I want you naked now. I dream about seeing you naked. I’ve been ogling you for weeks.”

  She sat up and put a hand on his shoulder, pushing gently until he lay flat on his back.

  His eyes traveled down her naked body and back up to her face. “Now that you have me at your mercy, what are you going to do with me?”

  “I’m going to take your clothes off,” she said, reaching out to undo the top button of his shirt.

  She took her time, her movements slow and precise, and when he actually growled at her she just smiled and moved onto the second, and the third. She undid them all, and then brushed her palms across the hard planes of his chest as she slid the shirt off his shoulders. He shifted so she could pull it off completely, and then lay back down as she leaned forward to kiss her way up his torso. She could feel his heart pounding.

  “Allison, you’re killing me,” he said, reaching for her.

  “I’m not done yet,” she told him, catching his arms and putting them back down by his sides. Then she lowered his zipper and tugged his pants down his legs, letting him kick them off once they were past his knees.

  “Black silk boxers,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Very sexy.” She took hold of the waistband and slid them down and off, helping him shed his socks, too.

  Only then did she let herself look at him, really look at him, at his long, hard-muscled body and the erection jutting out from his hips.

  For the first time, she felt a little nervous.

  He rose up on his elbows, and the hunger in his eyes made her tremble.

  She scooted up the bed so she could stretch out next to him. “Maybe you can take over for a while,” she said.

  He gave her a quick, hard kiss. “I can do that. But I want you so much right now I’m shaking. I’m afraid I’ll lose control.”

  She met his gaze steadily. “I want you to lose control.”

  He swallowed. “One second,” he said, reaching down to the floor for his pants and the condom in his wallet. He tore open the foil package and covered himself, and then he was back at her side.

  The few moments they hadn’t been touching seemed like too long.

  She gripped him by the shoulders and tugged him down. For a moment she felt his body hard on hers, her breasts crushed against his chest. Then he pulled back, supporting his weight on his arms.

  “Are you sure you’re—”

  She opened her legs for him and felt his hips slide into the cradle of hers, his hard length pressing against her center.

  He closed his eyes briefly. “I guess you are.”

  A moment later he was at her entrance, his arms corded and tight as he held himself rigid above her. Then slowly, carefully, he pushed inside.

  Her eyes closed as her body stretched to accept him, inch by inch. They both went still as he pushed deeper, her body hot and tight around his. Then he was home, all the way home, and her eyes flew open to meet his.

  “Rick,” she said, her voice ragged and trembling and full of wonder.

  His eyes never left hers as he began to move, sliding out and pushing in, and she felt the shock every time he found her center. When the pressure started to build she moved beneath him, restless and agitated, and Rick’s jaw tightened as his thrusts turned harder, faster. When the storm broke this time she knew he’d be right there with her.

  Her head arched back as she cried out. Her body spasmed and then fluttered around him. He called out her name and thrust hard once more, bringing his mouth down on hers as he pulsed inside her.

  It was a long time before they moved again.

  Her body was still humming when he eased out of her, taking care of the condom before he lay down beside her again. He pulled her close, and she rested her head on his chest with a feeling of joy inside her that was too big for words. His arms tightened around her, and she wondered if he was feeling the same thing.

  She fell asleep listening to the sound of his heartbeat.

  When she woke up, it was a few hours before dawn.

  She lay in Rick’s arms for a few blissful minutes, and then sat up carefully so she could watch him sleep. His strong features looked relaxed, peaceful even, with those intense green eyes hidden from view. In the low light of the desk lamp they’d left on, his hair was coal black.

  Allison hugged her knees to her chest and settled in for a nice long look.

  His mouth… He could work magic with that mouth. Hard one minute, soft the next, demanding and tender at the same time.

  And his body… Allison let her gaze drift down over his arms and shoulders and chest to his well-toned abs and the hipbones angling down toward his…

  He might be asleep, but she still blushed.

  And his hands…oh, yes, his hands. Strong, knowing, gentle… He could chase away fears with a single caress, take her to heaven with one firm stroke.

  Allison rested her chin on her knees. She felt more at home with Rick, more at ease, than she’d ever felt with anyone. She’d told him things she’d never told a living soul—and she knew, now, she was going to tell him the rest. She’d tell him what happened the night she
broke up with Paul.

  A wall inside her crashed down and everything flowed together, whole.

  Ever since that night ten years ago she’d kept her strength and weakness apart, the one hiding the other. A part of her strength had always come from the fear of weakness, the fear of needing something outside herself. But the strength coursing through her now was different. It came from everything that she was. Rick accepted every part of her, and because of that, she could too. She didn’t have to be afraid of herself anymore.

  A sudden rush of joy made her feel like dancing. She couldn’t contain it. She had to tell Rick, had to tell him she—

  “Rick!”

  He awoke with a gasp, reaching out for her blindly. She grabbed both his hands in hers.

  “Allison, what is it? What’s wrong?” He pulled one hand away to scrub the sleep from his eyes, and she felt a wave of nervousness. Her epiphany had seemed so momentous, but maybe it could have waited until morning.

  Except that it couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  She straddled him. His body came alive, and suddenly his eyes didn’t look sleepy at all.

  “Feel free to wake me up like this anytime.” He thrust up against her, and Allison had to stifle a moan even as she grabbed his hands and pinned them to his sides.

  “Cut that out,” she said sternly. “I have something to say to you.”

  He stared up at her, surprised. Waiting.

  Such a simple thing. Three little words. Three…little…

  She wanted to shout it. She wanted to sing it, with a full orchestra behind her and fireworks in the sky. But with her breath all gone and her heart hammering against her ribs, her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “Rick—”

  She leaned closer, afraid he wouldn’t hear her.

  “Rick, I love you.”

  He went utterly, completely still. The planet might have stopped on its axis.

  His eyes were bright, and she realized with a shock that there were tears in his eyes.

  “I love you, too,” he whispered. Then he gripped her wrists. “I love you, Allison,” he said, his voice clear and strong this time.

  Then he was tugging her down to him and his arms were tight around her, and they were kissing.

  They kissed forever, like teenagers. They kissed like they were never going to stop.

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms, their legs tangled together and Allison’s head on Rick’s shoulder.

  When she woke up again, it was a new day.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rick opened his eyes and saw Allison coming toward him with a breakfast tray.

  He sat up and propped his pillow behind him. “The woman I love brings me breakfast in bed after a night of incredible sex. Either I’m still asleep, or this is an elaborate plot to make me believe that dreams really do come true.”

  “It’s the second thing,” she said with a smile, putting the tray down next to him and sitting cross-legged on the bed. She’d put on her pajama top but not the bottoms, and the glimpse he caught of her black lace panties made him instantly aroused.

  “You know—”

  “Don’t even finish that thought,” she said, pouring him a cup of black coffee.

  “How do you know what I was thinking?”

  “Call it woman’s intuition. Try to control yourself long enough to have breakfast, okay? And then there’s something I want to tell you.”

  He grinned at her. “You already told me you love me. You’re not going to take it back, are you?”

  “Never,” she said.

  She handed him his coffee and poured a cup for herself, but she set it down on the tray without drinking it. “It’s something about Paul,” she said abruptly. “I told you a lot last night, but—” She trailed off.

  “You don’t have to talk about anything you’re not ready to.”

  “I know,” she said. “I appreciate that. But I’m ready to tell you now, because…” She broke off and smiled at him suddenly. “I realized this morning that it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve been carrying this around for so many years, like a wound that won’t heal. And then I woke up beside you and realized that the memory doesn’t have any power over me anymore. Because of you.”

  She pushed the tray aside and crossed the space between them, and he had just enough presence of mind to put his coffee on the nightstand before she was kissing him. He wrapped his arms around her and slid down so she fell across his chest, and he let his hands rove under her top and across the smooth skin of her back, and then down to her hips so he could fit her securely against the erection that the blankets weren’t doing much to hide.

  Another second of that and their conversation would have had to wait, but Allison broke the kiss and scooted a few feet away.

  “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

  “Yeah, that was terrible of you. Come here and do it again.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Just let me get this all out, okay? Then I’ll kiss you senseless, I promise.”

  He sat up against the headboard again. “It’s a deal,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “So…” She took a deep breath. “It took me a long time, but I finally realized Paul wasn’t making me happy. Whatever feelings I’d had for him in the beginning were gone. To make things worse, he—he drank a lot, and when he drank he got angry. He was drinking the night I broke up with him.”

  She was hugging her knees, her eyes looking down as she told the story. “He’d yelled at me a few times, but he’d never hit me. Not until that night.”

  Rick froze.

  Allison’s eyes were still down. “When I told him it was over, he slapped me across the face. I tried to run away, but I wasn’t fast enough to get away from him. He dragged me into an equipment shed, and…”

  She closed her eyes. “He hit me so many times. I think he kicked me, too, after I was on the ground. I had two broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, a broken wrist.”

  A white flash burst behind his eyelids, leaving him shaking.

  “He left me there in the dark. I think I might have passed out for a little while. When I came to I dragged myself out, and found a pay phone, and called for a cab so I could get to the hospital.”

  “A cab?” he asked abruptly. “Why not your parents? Why not 911?”

  She sighed. “I told my parents I took a bad fall off a horse. They were already losing a daughter to cancer… How could I give them one more horror to deal with? Especially since I felt like it was all my fault for going out with him in the first place, when I should have been focused on my family.”

  She held up a hand before he could say the obvious. “I know it wasn’t my fault. I get that now, I really do. If I could go back in time and talk to myself I’d know exactly what to say. But I was eighteen, and I felt guilty and ashamed and sick of myself, and all I wanted to do was forget it ever happened. To put it behind me and never be vulnerable like that again.”

  He remembered telling her the reasons he never talked about his father, and felt sick inside. “But by not telling anyone, you were agreeing with him. You were agreeing that you were nothing, someone whose pain didn’t matter.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “Believe me, if something like that happened to me today, I wouldn’t react the same way.”

  His throat felt raw, his muscles tense. If anyone dared to hurt Allison today he’d tear them to pieces with his bare hands.

  “You never pressed charges?”

  She shook her head. “A few days after it happened he got into a bar fight with some businessman. Hurt him pretty badly, I think. The case went to court and for the first time in his life Senator Winthrop couldn’t make something go away. Paul spent some time in juvenile detention.

  “I think it scared him straight,” she added with a grim smile. “I’m pretty sure he must have gone through the twelve steps at some point, because I got a letter from him when I was in college, wanting to ‘make amends’ for what he’d done to
me. I never answered it. Sometimes I wonder if I should have…not for his sake, but for mine.”

  He could never make amends for hurting Allison. For hurting a girl who’d never done harm to a living soul. A girl who tried so hard to take care of others, who’d grown into the most beautiful, compassionate, incredible woman he’d ever met.

  He wanted to reach out for her, to pull her into his arms and take her away, take her…where? To a place where there was no violence, no evil, no demons masquerading as human beings?

  There was no such place. He of all people should know that.

  “I wish you’d told me this last night,” he said.

  She stared at him. “Why?”

  “If you’d told me last night, I could have…talked to him.”

  Her eyes got wider. “What do you mean by that? Rick, what are you thinking about right now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe you. You look…dangerous.”

  “I’m fine.” He threw off the blankets and reached for his clothes, on the floor beside the bed. He got dressed quickly, as if there was somewhere he could go—something he could do.

  There had to be something he could do.

  Then he looked at Allison. She seemed so small and fragile sitting there on that enormous bed, her eyes wide as she stared at him.

  “Should I—not have told you?”

  He sat down again, taking her hands in his.

  “I’m glad you told me. I love you, and you can tell me anything. It’s just…thinking about that bastard hurting you, and you dealing with it all alone…”

  His hands tightened.

  “That’s why you stayed single for ten years. Because of what he did to you.”

  “I never wanted to feel like that again. Not that I expected every guy to hit me, but…I saw my friends get hit by love in other ways, ways they brought on themselves. Wasting their time and their emotions like I had. Life hands you enough pain without standing in line begging for more.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want to waste my heart on someone who wasn’t worth it, someone who would hurt me. I didn’t want to waste time on an illusion.”