Curves in the Dark (Billionaire BBW erotic romance)

by Dirk, Delia

  “Yeah, it's bad. But I can't tell you. Really. I'm sorry.” That was a fumbled play. She might have lost this one by being too forward.

  If she could have seen Leo, Dominique would have fixed him with a piercing stare and thrown the full force of her considerable presence at him. As it was, she tried to negotiate the rapidly deepening waters with what little resources she had.

  “This is something that could affect me directly, Leo.”

  “Look, this isn't middle school. This isn't 'you tell me a secret and I'll tell you mine.' This is breaking strict confidentiality agreements. Not to mention I suspect it's also insider trading. Those are both serious crimes with jail time.”

  He was right. She wasn't just playing any more. This wasn't idle wondering about an intriguing mystery. This was something that would probably hurt her and her company and she needed to know as much as she could get out of the man.

  “This elevator is about as private as places get. Nobody would know.” Dominique didn't like feeling like the bad guy but he'd left her in an ugly position.

  “I would know!” Leo's voice was rising to a near shout. “You would know! And you'd come out of here and they'd know. They'd know why you're here today and they'd know why I'm here today and they'd know we spent God knows how long trapped in an elevator together. They aren't stupid. It's not much of a jump to make.”

  “I already know!” There. That was her trump card. “I might not know the details but I'm going to get out of here tonight and no matter what you do or don't tell me now, I'm not going to keep going with this deal. I know they're in trouble with the government. I'm not going to go playing with a company that could land me in deep shit. No matter what happens now, I've already changed my plans!”

  There was a long, strained silence that leeched all the anger out of Dominique. She felt drained, empty. Now that she had let out everything that had been building in her, it felt like there was nothing left.

  Then: “Shit. Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Dominique agreed dully.

  “Are you sure this isn't enough of an emergency for that bottle of port?”

  “God, why not? It's not like it's going to anyone in Dynacorp any more.” Dominique pulled it out of her bag. “We may as well make a night of it.”

  “It's probably about 3:00 in the afternoon, actually,” Leo replied pedantically.

  “I hate you.”

  She was on a desert island. Somewhere nice, sunny, and tropical. Somewhere with no responsibilities, no potential breach of trust law suits, and moreover no obnoxious communications directors who were bent on her downfall.

  Dominique took out the bottle of wine and the corkscrew and went to work. “There is no-one in the world I don't hate right now,” she griped.

  “Even me? I think I'm going to end up taking a bullet for you.” The cork came loose with a soft pop.

  “Especially you. The bullet will rip right through you and hit me anyway. Jesus.” Dominique took a long swig of the port. “I can't even call this a waste of good port. This is the best use for port. It is saving my life right now.” And she took another swig.

  Dominique's attempt to pass the bottle was more than a little hampered by the fact that neither of them could see. She ended up waving the wine around impotently for longer than she'd care to admit. Eventually she caved and crawled across the floor to sit next to Leo and firmly press the bottle into his eager hands. She heard him downing an equal amount of port.

  “This could be the end of our careers, couldn't it?” came Le's melancholy voice from the dark spot next to Dominique.

  “Not if we're smart about this. And we're both damn smart. Just... step softly, y'know?”

  Then the port was back in her hands and D was taking a long pull from it. A few more wordless exchanges of the bottle and her face was feeling warm and her head was pleasantly fuzzy. Their big problem, such as it was, started to look a lot less big and a lot less problematic.

  “You're right, by the way,” said Leo, “this is some of the best port I've ever had. In fact, it's definitely the best. I don't get much port in my life. Whatever you do, do not tell me what you paid for it.”

  “$1200. It's from 1945.”

  “I specifically just asked-” Leo made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. “I didn't even know they made port that expensive.” He took a delicate sip of the remaining wine and there was quiet as he tasted it. “Okay, that's an obvious lie, but this is still amazingly good stuff.”

  “Truly we are the luckiest of men,” Dominique said drily.

  “But you're a lady!” Leo giggled. His head came to rest heavily against Dominique's shoulder.

  “Give me that. I'm revoking your drinking privileges for that.” She sipped at the wine thoughtfully.

  “My head or the thing I said?”

  “The thing you said. It gave me second hand embarrassment.”

  “Good. You're comfy.”

  A beat. “Right.” Another. “Some day we'll look back on this and laugh. Or we'll be in jail.”

  The world flipped on its side for the second time that day when his head disappeared from her shoulder and reappeared pressed hotly to her lips. It was the end of the world, after all, which meant instead of her sitting stock still in shock, this just made so much sense. Dominique leaned into the touch with a hunger she didn't know was in her. The world melted a little.

  The haunting emptiness receded under the warm pressure of his mouth and was replaced by thick tightness in her chest threatening to spill over and overwhelm her. Dominique shuddered and wilted against the welcoming touch.

  Leo's hands fluttered to her waits and with a sharp shock Dominique realised that this little fantasy was about to shatter. His roaming hands would tell him just as much about her body as a lit room and he'd know.

  But far from vanishing, the hands began to caress her curves. A tongue traced Dominique's lower lip. She was trembling uncontrollably, she knew, but it had been such a long time since she had been so disarmed. Left so utterly open and helpless against whatever came. And it was good. It was the best thing she'd felt in years.

  Leo rumbled against her as the kisses became hotter and wetter. Her hands clutched at his shoulders and stroked the back of his neck as his hands became bolder. Started to wander atop hills and valleys of clothed flesh.

  The shrill ring of a phone left them skittering away like startled rabbits.

  When Maintenance got the doors open, they were too drunk to be properly coherent. All potential business meetings were cancelled and they were escorted home like wayward schoolchildren.

  Two days later Dynacorp was indicted for massive fraud.

  Dominique thought about that day more often than she'd ever admit. She bookmarked Leo's Wikipedia page – it turned out his last name was Kane – but had yet to make any attempt to get in contact with him.

  Now, Dominique Ashford is a powerful woman. Leo Kane's number may not be publically available but it was a near-certainty that she knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, and if not, hey, string pulling was practically in her job description.

  But two months passed and the most she had done was bookmark his Wikipedia article and, well, that was just unacceptable. She was a mover and a shaker. She made things happen. But, as ever, she was all but paralysed when it came to her love life. So she did nothing about it. For two months.

  After all, they were drunk. That made everything that happened as unreliable a thing as she could imagine. She thought about orchestrating a trip down to DC – hell, even a vacation to visit the Smithsonian – but Dominique couldn't find it in her to look the man up and hanging about a city hoping they would run into each other was so beneath her it was insulting.

  Which was all such a shame, because regardless of sexual attraction, they had gotten on very well and it was near-impossible to meet people she could actually trust with real friendship in her line of work. Besides, a contact that high up in the White House was beyond useful.


  So Dominique spent her life on her work, as she always did, rarely saw anyone who had no agenda, as she always did, and pined over a man whose face she had seen more in photos than in life. She hadn't even done that as a teenager.

  And that made it all he more outlandish when Leo showed up all by himself.

  Dominique was perplexed by the quiet rapping at her penthouse door. She hadn't been expecting anyone and this building's security weren't exactly slouches.

  A look through the peephole sent her reeling. Her body wrenched the door open without a brain attached, so her usual quick wit was supplanted by a dumbstruck expression and a long, inarticulate “uuuuh.”

  “Turns out you live in the same building as one of the big-name donors we've been sweet-talking.” God, photos and videos had nothing on reality. “This time I am actually campaigning in LA. I can't believe you're Domino Ashford! I mean, you're in the news all the time. I should have recognised you!”

  “In the dark?”

  “When we were leaving the elevator at least, but it didn't even cross my mind. I thought you were somebody's lackey, but no, of course you turn out to be one of the most powerful CEOs in the country – sorry, sorry. It's just crazy.” He was running at the mouth to fill Dominique's silence. “I was trying to figure out who you were for months, by the way. When I said it didn't cross my mind, I meant it.”

  “I could be insulted by that if I wanted,” she joked, but in the tense atmosphere it fell embarrassingly flat. “I'm not, by the way.”

  “I can't believe I called it on the Domino thing, either. You going by Domino, I mean. I always thought Domino Ashford sounded like something a silent film star would be called.”

  “You want to come in?” Dominique cut in.

  “Yes. Yes, definitely.” And they moved scene into her living room. “I wish I'd thought of giving you my number. Or something. Any kind of contact information,” he said stiltedly.

  “By the end of that day, I was surprised I could find my way home.”

  The comment didn't deserve his laugh, but it was so full of relief, Dominique felt herself relaxing.

  “I would have found you sooner but my work – you know, you're probably one of the few people I've met who'd appreciate how much I work.”

  “Intimately,” she said and immediately regretted it.

  “Plus you, you're an incredibly hard person to track down, and I have a lot more resources than your average person.”

  “Oh but that's by design, my dear,” Dominique said coyly. My god, she was flirting. Without the permission of her brain.

  “You have no idea how relieved I am. Yeah, relieved. I was worried you wouldn't want to talk to me at all.”

  “I think we both know how much I can talk.” That line was crap but Dominique was feeling uncharacteristically off-kilter and it was enough to put the words in her mouth.

  “I was trying to describe you to someone a while ago. But you don't look like anyone I've ever seen before. I kept dropping my adjectives, and I'm a speechwriter.” Leo stared determinedly at a spot near Dominique's feet.

  “And every time I came up with a word, it'd fall apart. I couldn't call you 'lovely' because that's a word boring old men use to hide that they have nothing to describe in the first place. I couldn't call you elegant because you're raw and fierce and burning with passion. I couldn't call you beautiful because it's such a cold, aloof word and you're too damn alive.

  “And the only thing I could come up with was this movie I saw on TV when I was a kid. I think it was an old movie, but it could just as easily have been some show. Anyway, it was old, it was black and white, and it was about these farmers during the Dust Bowl.

  “They lived in this little cabin out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity. The farmer started work before the Sun rose and he used this lantern to see what he was doing. First he'd hang it from the ceiling but then he couldn't see under the cows to milk them. So he puts it on the ground but it sets the hay alight and soon there's a fire and it almost ruins everything.

  “But then they built a dam off in another county, a power dam. So they crisscrossed the countryside with poles and they strung wire from the next to the next. And somehow it was like something out of Greek mythology. Some weird heroic journey where brave gen trudge through the cold and dark to leave these huge indelible pillars in their wake.

  “They get the generator started up and lots of switches are thrown and when the lights come on it's almost a religious thing. Now this guy's got light to for when he milks his cows on those black winter mornings. And his family – they're reading at night and they're listening to the radio and they get a stove and a washing machine -

  “I thought it was magnificent. It was a life changer. And everything before and everything after was different because it was there. Even when it wasn't there the possibility of it changed the way things looked to those people.

  “And that. That is what you look like to me.”

  Dominique hadn't noticed when Leo's hands caught hers. She didn't know when they started sitting so close or when her mouth had opened. But on that last word, Leo's deep black eyes flicked up to meet hers and Dominique was transfixed. Frozen in space and time.

  And for the second time soft lips melted the world around her and it shrunk down to only fit her and the warm shape in her arms.

  Their lips parted but stayed hovering, only inches from one another, their hooded eyes locked together.

  “I can see why you write for the president,” was the thing that came out of her mouth. Stupid, stupid!

  There was a moment of sheer incomprehension and then Leo started laughing uncontrollably, slowly sinking down until he was bent almost double.

  “It was... beautiful. I mean that,” she cut in, trying to regain the lost moment. “Thank you.”

  “You have no idea how accurate that was, though,” he chuckled, pressing another quick kiss to her lips.

  One kiss became another. Then a third, and soon the was pressing kisses all over her face. One of Dominique's hands reached up to fist itself in his feathery hair. Then she pulled and now the kiss had force to it. Teeth got involved, shooting sparking flashes out of Dominique's belly. She caught Leo's lower lip, bit. Sucked. He gasped and a deep sound shivered out of his throat.

  “When- how long are you in town for?” Dominique asked, lips brushing against his ear. Then her mouth travelled down, caught at the sensitive spot underneath.

  “Only a few days.” Leo's voice was satisfyingly gravelly.

  “Well then,” she murmured, “we'd better make the most of it.” She pulled back, held him by his shoulders. “Stay the night?”

  He grinned. “I don't know what I expected tonight but it wasn't this. Yes. Of course. Of course. There's nothing I want more.”

  It was his turn to take control when he dove in with lips and teeth and tongue for the base of Dominique's throat. Normally she had trouble handing the reins over to a love but here, here nothing felt wrong. A hand on the curve of her hip shook her tentative confidence and something hot and tight fluttered helplessly in her chest.

  But the mouth kept moving, kept kissing and sucking at her neckline. And that made it alright for now. The top buttons of Dominique's shirt came undone and Leo pressed amorous kisses across the top of her breast, lingering at one collarbone.

  He started down the rest of her shirt, chasing down and capturing each newly revealed piece of skin. Dominique was flushed and tousled by the time he reached her stomach, but not enough to stop the wave of self-consciousness from crashing down on her.

  And she must have shifted or tensed or made some unfortunate motion because Leo took her hand in his and mumbled, “Gorgeous,” into her skin. But after more slow kisses he didn't seem satisfied because he looked up so their eyed could meet – God, his eyes were like honey – and said, “You really are. You don't believe it and I think you probably wouldn't care for platitudes, but it's true and I mean it completely and utterly. You are one of th
e most beautiful people I've ever seen.”

  Dominique wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him she was really a humongous fat cow and that nobody thought she was even pretty. They just told her that because if she wanted she could ruin their lives.

  She didn't have a chance to do more than open her mouth before hands were tugging her up and the pair of them were stumbling off into the bedroom. Leo quickly unbuttoned and lost his shirt, staring at her with eyes druggy with lust. The front of his pants was tightly tented and that, at least, was proof of something.

  Dominique was still reluctant to undress in front of him, however, especially in the sight of his fit body. So Leo stepped up behind her and started kissing the back of her neck and together their hands made their fumbling way down her buttons and started on the front of her pants.