Billionaire Biker's Secret Baby_A Bad Boy Romantic Suspense

by Weston Parker

  Over the years, I would have loved to have a word from him. A phone call. A freaking text. But that was before he put my child and me in danger. Before he became an overprotective nightmare.

  So I ignored his texts and his calls, and I’m continuing to ignore them.

  Our flight heads out tomorrow morning anyway. Ax can hold for one more day. I don’t want anything to disturb this precious pause in the drama that is my life recently. I’ve got a few short hours not to have to worry about the Cravens and their bullshit. Or Ax and his control issues.

  I know now what he wants. At least it’s what he says he wants. Ax wants a happy little ready-made family, one he can just waltz into and take charge of. For years I would have given anything to have just that. But now I’m not ready to cede things so easily.

  I’ve given my life, my blood, my body to my family. My daughter and I have a bond forged through love and strife. It doesn’t seem fair that Ax can just show up and claim his parental rights when I’ve had to prove them over and over. Late night feedings. Early morning bus stops. Colds and flu and sass mouth and giggle parties.

  Sure, maybe I’m being unreasonable, but is it so much to ask for him to be invited into the family, instead of inviting himself in? Things worth having are worth having because they aren’t easy or effortless. Maybe I want to be something worth having. Something that requires effort.

  Lex enjoys the pool so much, I practically have to drag her back to the suite. It’s getting late, so I order pizza from room service. My daughter almost falls asleep with a slice in her hand. I tuck her into bed and venture toward my own room.

  Along the way, I catch sight of Luke through the open door of his room. He’s shirtless, his skin slick with sweat as he grunts out pushup after pushup. I count for a moment but stop once I top 25. Leaning against his doorway, I admire his efforts.

  His back muscles ripple underneath a tattoo of a mean wolf. I wonder what pack Luke’s a member of.

  “If I could do that many pushups, they never would have kicked me out of CrossFit.” I don’t bother to mention that I also neglected to pay my bill after my free trial membership ran out.

  Luke pauses, then goes to his knees before standing. Picking up a towel off the bed, he wipes his face then wraps it around his neck. “Gyms are for pussies,” he says, then smiles.

  I laugh at his oddball sense of humor. I have to admit, Luke is a fine looking man. And when he smiles, I imagine women tossing their panties at his godlike feet.

  But no matter how handsome he is, he’s not Ax. His rock-hard body should be enough to make me drool, but I’m still pining over my stupid high school sweetheart. I might be the lamest person I know.

  “Our flight leaves tomorrow afternoon. I have to admit, I’m not ready to leave this palace of room service and billion-thread-count sheets.”

  Luke grins. “It is nice. Still, the Craven’s house is just about as luxurious.”

  “But it’s full of Cravens, so that pretty much ruins it for me.”

  Luke sits on the edge of his bed, his expression mutating. “I know you’re pissed at him right now, but you should have seen Ax when you guys were missing. He was ready to tear off heads and rip through bodies to get you back.”

  Frowning, I sit down beside him. “Yeah, but he wasn’t willing to warn me that you and your ilk were lying in wait for us. If he hadn’t been so goddamn selfish, Lex and I could have gotten out of town before your guys nabbed us.”

  Luke looks nonplussed at my use of “your guys,” but it doesn’t stop him. “I think you’re being naïve. If a billionaire wants you, he’ll get you. No offense, but I doubt you were headed off to hide anywhere where you wouldn’t be found. You were probably driving to some relative’s place, likely your closest relative, right?”

  I swallow hard, my head drooping, and he has all the answer he needs. “See? If you really wanted to hide, you would have gone somewhere where you have no connections. Where no one knows you and you know nobody. Most people don’t have the means to up and leave their life behind like that. But a billionaire has unlimited means. If Brent wanted you found, they would have found you.”

  “Point taken.” Lifting my hands, palms out, I broadcast my surrender. “But I think you’re missing the larger point, which is, Brent wouldn’t have wanted me if he and Ax weren’t embroiled in some line of succession last-man-standing chess game. I want no part in that, and Ax could have stayed away and kept us out of it.”

  Luke looks me up and down, one of his eyebrows lifting and the corner of his mouth turning up. “I’m sorry, Sabrina, but I don’t know how you expect a man like Ax to stay away from a woman like you.”

  My mouth drops open as my face flushes with heat. “What?”

  “I see the way he looks at you. That man wants you like a junkie wants his fix. He’s stuck on you, and I don’t think he’s the type to let go of what he wants.”

  “He’s not,” I murmur.

  “Didn’t think so.” Luke’s voice is soft. “You’re a good-looking woman, and any man would want to hold onto you, but for Ax, he’d fight his way through hell to have you.”

  I stand, not knowing what else to say. At the door, I turn back. “It’s funny. You say he’d fight his way through hell, but he walked away ten years ago, and it didn’t seem to hurt him any.”

  Luke shakes his head. “Honey, none of us is the same person we were ten years ago. But maybe you owe it to yourself to see if the person you are now is compatible with the person he is, not ten years ago, but now. Sometimes we cling to the past because we think it’s doomed to repeat itself. But maybe it’s not. Maybe people change. And maybe you’re afraid to find out if that’s true.”

  His words have the ring of truth to them, but I can’t digest them all now. I say goodnight and retreat to my own bed. After nestling in the blankets and tucking the pillows around me just so, I expect to drift off to an untroubled dreamland again like last night. Instead, I lie there, the hours slipping past as sleep eludes me.

  Am I being too hard on Ax? Can I not let go of the past because I can only see a future where he leaves me again? Or, am I afraid of what happens if he stays?

  Damn that Luke. Who would have thought my bodyguard was also a philosopher?

  I drift off in the wee hours and dream about the ballroom downstairs.

  It’s like a silver wonderland full of twinkling fairy lights and delicate furnishings. It’s also full of people dressed in finery from ages past. Huge bell skirts made of yards of silk. Breeches and powdered wigs, the whole nine yards. But, most interestingly, each person is wearing a carnival mask over their face.

  I wander through the crowds, realizing as I go that I too am dressed in a fancy ball gown. But I’m the only one who doesn’t have a mask. Dancers twist and twirl around me, and I start to feel lost, but then a hand grabs mine.

  The man who pulls me into the dance is tall and well-built, and his body feels familiar. I know him, know his heat, know the rhythm of his heart as it beats in his chest. He waltzes me around the room, making me feel as if I am flying, as if my feet don’t touch the ground while he whirls me round and round to the strings and flutes.

  I take in his handsome face, the top half covered with a shiny black mask. The bottom half sports a strong jaw and lips that were molded for kissing. I wonder how they taste, but somehow, somehow I know.

  My partner waltzes me out onto a columned patio where a silver moon dominates the black velvet sky. Pulling me closer, he lowers his face until his lips brush my neck. The atmosphere is so romantic that it pulls me in, removes my inhibitions.

  I welcome the advances of this handsome stranger that I somehow know so well. Waltzing me down marble steps, he dances me into a garden of night-blooming flowers. The fragrance is so sweet it’s almost overwhelming.

  We reach a gazebo overlooking a still pond, the moon’s reflection making the water’s surface glow. The handsome stranger gently lays me down among the pillows and takes me into his arms where he
begins to kiss me.

  His kisses are like coming home after a long journey. They captivate me, and soon I’m pulling the stranger toward me, begging for more. Everything feels so right, like a dream half-remembered. He unlaces my corset, revealing my breasts, and when he begins to lavish them with attention, I feel on the verge of climax.

  The stranger slips my dress upward, and I feel him positioning himself at the apex of my thighs. I’m wet and ready for him, full of a longing for this reunion that somehow is happening for the first time. He enters me, and I succumb to my orgasm, waves and waves of pleasure washing over me.

  I know this man, know his body, know who he is somehow, who he really is, deep inside.

  When I can breathe again, I look him in his eyes. Reaching up, I pull away the black mask that covers the upper half of his face, but when I do, there’s only another mask beneath it.

  Then I wake up, gasping for breath. What the fuck kind of dream was that? My nipples are hard, and I’m sure I’d find my panties soaked if I checked them.

  Checking the clock, I realize we need to leave for the airport in a couple hours. Climbing out of bed, I walk to the window and pull back the shades for one last glance of the city humming away beneath me.

  I needed to get away, to have some time to myself, to think. To process. But, after last night’s dream and my conversation with Luke, I realize it’s time to go home.

  It’s time to talk to Ax, to see what he really wants, and on what terms he’s willing to accept it.

  It’s time to see if I know the man beneath the mask, or if, after all this time, he’ll stay a stranger.

  53

  Ax

  “I don’t give a fuck what you think, Leigh. He’s going to examine my father.”

  My stepmother is glaring at me, her perfectly manicured hands balling into fists. “I’m not letting some backcountry witch doctor paw at my husband. This is my house, dammit, and you’ll follow my rules.”

  I’m about to explain how it was my house before it was hers, but my father stops me from that petty line of reasoning. “Leigh, enough. I want to see the damn doctor. Let him in.”

  Leigh gives out a huff of frustration but moves out of the doorway of my father’s suite. I motion for the short, balding doctor from a practice three towns over to go inside, and he pins me with a look that says this isn’t exactly the reception he was expecting.

  Tough titty, Doc. No one around here gets what they want.

  My father thanks the physician for coming, then settles into an armchair in the sitting room outside his bedroom. Following the normal routine, the doctor takes my father’s temperature, his blood pressure, and his pulse. He listens to his chest with a stethoscope, peers into his eyes with another instrument, then sits on an ottoman in front of my father’s chair and asks my dad a list of rudimentary questions.

  He asks what medications my father is taking, and I give him one of the cups of meds I took from Chuck. Peering up at me with confusion, he asks if I have a list. I look to Leigh who glares back at me.

  “Come on, sugar plum,” my dad says with a cajoling tone I’ve never heard him use in my life. “Tell the doctor what I’m on.”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she starts to rattle off a list of medications. The doctor nods, seeming to match pill to prescription as Leigh talks. When she finishes, the doctor scribbles a few things on a notepad, then leans back and puts his hands on his knees.

  “You were right to be concerned about interactions,” he says to me. “No physician in his right mind would prescribe all of these together.”

  Leigh blows out air between her lips in a futile gesture of protest. “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

  The doctor shrugs. “It’s not an opinion, young lady. It’s a fact. Taking this mess all together would lead to extreme lethargy, muscle weakness, cognitive confusion, and probably a number of other issues.”

  “My husband is recovering from a stroke! He needs to take his medication.”

  “I understand his condition, missy, but I’m telling you, there’s no need for him to be taking all these. He should be on one pill for hypertension, and another to stop clots, but the rest of this is just impeding his recovery.”

  Leigh’s eyes widen, and she looks at me, her mouth opening and closing, like a fish on dry land. I assume this isn’t the response she was expecting. Maybe she’s as innocent as my father believes her to be.

  “Your fucking brother,” she growls after a moment. “He brought the doctors to the house, got the prescriptions himself and told Chuck what to give him. I assumed he only wanted the best for you. Now I see he’s played me just like he played you both.”

  My father stands and moves close to his wife, putting his arm around her. “Come here, honey. It’s not your fault. We all trusted Brent, and now we know better. But I’m fine, now, and I’m going to get better. So let’s put aside blame and guilt and be happy we caught on when we did.”

  I see Leigh’s shoulders start to shake and her eyes well with tears. It’s my cue to escort the doctor out. He tells me to give my dad an aspirin a day and the blood pressure pill, but to throw out the rest. I thank him for his time and watch as he passes the sentries at the front door and heads down the driveway.

  My suspicions have been born out. Not only has my brother tried to hurt me, but he kept our father drugged and docile while he ran his company into the ground. Brent must have thought Dad’s stroke was the perfect opportunity for a hostile takeover, and Leigh was too shaken up to question Brent’s advice.

  At least I can stop worrying about Leigh. She might be a brat, but it seems her only crime is spending too much money on shoes and handbags.

  I’m poking around the kitchen, considering a snack before dinner, when I hear a commotion in the front hallway. The sound of familiar voices lights a fire under my ass, and I make my way down the hallway.

  My daughter is the first one to greet me, with a shy, “Hi, Ax.” Sabrina’s eyes flash over and meet mine for a split second before they’re drawn elsewhere. Luke reaches for the suitcase in her hands and offers to take it up to her room for her. Sabrina gives him a radiant smile of thanks, and it feels like a punch to my gut.

  I brush off the jealousy. “Did you ladies have a nice trip?”

  “Yes, we did!” Lex is so jubilant that it makes me feel like I missed out on something amazing. “We stayed at this fancy hotel that had a pool, and we ordered room service, and I met Benjamin Franklin and had cream pie!”

  “Did Benjamin Franklin make the pie himself, or was it store bought?”

  Lex shakes her head at me like I’m speaking another language, but I catch a small smile flitting across Sabrina’s face. “Well, little lady, you’re back just in time for dinner, so what say you take your stuff upstairs and wash your hands and face?”

  “Okay,” she says, then starts to hustle her stuffed backpack up the stairs.

  “Welcome back,” I say, my voice low.

  “Thanks,” Sabrina replies.

  I fight not to say the words, but they start to tumble out anyway. “You should have let me know you were going to Boston.”

  Her face tightens. “I’m sorry. I assumed Leigh would tell you. She practically told the whole dang world via the TV cameras in the parking lot.”

  “It would have been nice to hear it from you. Maybe you didn’t have to pick up your phone, but a text even would have been—”

  “I needed space, Ax,” she cuts me off. “You were smothering me.”

  “I just wanted to know that you were safe.”

  “Luke made sure of it, so you don’t need to worry.”

  I bite back a retort constructed of jealousy, something along the lines of cozying up to a certain bodyguard while on her business trip. Still, my response isn’t as tactful as it could be. “I’m always going to worry, Sabrina. Especially with the shit that’s going on now. I told you, I need you to cooperate.”

  “And I told you that I have a life, one you
and your brother aren’t going to keep me from living!”

  She turns on her heel and starts to head up the stairs, but I pull her back, and she tumbles into my arms. “Dammit, Sabrina. Do we have to fight every time we see each other?”

  “That’s not really my call, is it, Ax?”

  “Why can’t you see what this is doing to me?” I say, breaking down. I hope she doesn’t hear the tremble in my voice, but I can’t fucking hold it back anymore. “Knowing I put you and our daughter in danger almost destroyed me. It would have destroyed me if anything had happened to you. But the more I try to pull you toward me, the more you pull away.”

  As if she took my words as a direct order, Sabrina tries to extricate herself from my grip. “Ax, you’ve got to let go. Physically and metaphorically. You can’t order me to be with you. That’s not how this works.”

  “Then tell me how it works! Because I need to understand. How can I get through to you? How can I get you back?”

  Sabrina stares at me, and for a moment, I think she’ll tell me. She will reveal the secrets of the universe, and we’ll live happily ever after. I should have fucking known that nothing is ever that easy.

  There’s a creak on the floor above, and I see Luke heading back down the stairs. Taking a breath, I release Sabrina’s arm. “This conversation isn’t over.”

  She rolls her eyes. “As if I would be so lucky.” Then she’s jogging up the stairs two at a time to get away from me.

  “Hey, Boss Man,” Luke says as he passes.

  I turn to follow him, anger welling up inside me. “Did you have a good time on your little vacation with my family?”

  Luke pauses, turning around with an expressionless face. “They’re good people. It was nice.”