“Rachelle, now!” I order and give her my no nonsense look that really doesn’t get anyone to do what I want them to, but I haven’t seemed to let it go yet.
“Okay, bossy!” she says as she turns in my arms and takes me to the cake. “Read it.”
It’s my favorite cake, a French vanilla and there’s lavender writing on it and four candles for some damn reason. I read it out loud, “To Blake, the best daddy in the world.” I turn to her as she begins to light the candles. “Well, thanks, sweetie, but what are the candles for?”
“They’re for your kids.” She gives me a smile and places my hand on her flat stomach. “You have one more now.”
“What? How the hell? Rachelle, I thought you were taking birth control! I mean, I know you were, right?” I shout.
The way she looks at me has me regretting how I’m shouting. She has this hurt expression and her cheeks are going red. “I’m sorry.”
I pull her into my arms and laugh. “No! Don’t be sorry. I’m surprised is all. I’m happy about it. I just thought we were going to wait a couple of years that’s all. You know, we talked about it.”
“Well, I forgot to take my pills a bunch here lately, and I messed up and now we’re pregnant again. I didn’t do it on purpose. I’m just so busy with the restaurant and the kids and everything that I kept forgetting,” she says with tears in her voice.
“Don’t cry, baby!” I hold her tight. “This is great news!”
“Is it? I mean, are you really okay with this?” She looks up at me with shiny eyes and it makes my heart heave.
“It’s more than okay with me, Rachelle.” I take her lips in a tender kiss as she runs her hands up and takes my hair into her fists.
Now I know why she got so hot so quickly when she brought me in here. The last pregnancy showed me a side of her I never knew before. The hormones make her nearly insatiable.
Lucky me!
Rachelle
Crickets chirp and coyotes howl as I lie in bed and wait for Blake to come join me after telling the kids their bedtime story. He is hands down the best father in the world. He’s right up there as the greatest husband too.
Six months ago I found out I was pregnant again. This is our second natural child, and she was unplanned, but loved no less than any of the rest of them.
In only three years, we managed to fill our huge mountain cabin with a real family, complete with the dog my husband dreamed of. My mother we got into a facility to help her with her many problems. My father was a bit of a nightmare to get help for, but eventually I found an organization to get him out from under the bridge.
He is still crazy as hell, but he’s crazy as hell inside a building now. I found it best to stay away from him as he tended to go off on me, ranting about my mother and throwing things.
It’s enough for me that I got him off the side of the road. I can live with that.
I’d love to report that I am one hundred percent fixed and have no more emotional problems, but that would be a lie. I have to fight myself to let Blake love me like he wants to. I sometimes think he’s too good to be true and find myself becoming distant.
I would never leave him though. I’d never leave this family we’ve built together. When my mind goes all stupid, I mostly get quiet and Blake figures out what’s going on and he loves me back to myself. He’s really good at that.
The door opens and my gorgeous man comes into our monster sized bedroom, wearing his pajama bottoms and a soft grey V-necked T-shirt. He looks handsome and his beard is trimmed up neatly.
I love the beard. Never thought I would, but the way it feels against my skin makes me a little bit insane, but in a good way.
“Hey, baby,” he says as he pulls his shirt off over his head, making his biceps bulge and taking my breath away as my eyes find his tight abs and pecs.
I lick my lips as my insides heat and I look up into his eyes as he gets to the edge of the bed. I toss the blanket back to show him I have nothing on and it earns me a wiggle from his eyebrows.
He drops the PJ bottoms and my teeth take my bottom lip between them as I bite down and moan. “Blake.”
Blake climbs onto our big and plush bed. “Say it again, baby.”
I moan his name again as he runs his hand over my large belly. He kisses it and says, “Daddy loves you, Abby.”
We picked her name out last night and hearing him talk to our baby girl like that makes my heart quiver with love for him. I place my hand over his and follow his motions over my stomach. He looks up at me with a smile.
“I love Momma too,” he says and kisses his way up to my lips.
My pulse races as his lips touch mine. He never fails to excite me. My body reacts to him in such a way that it doesn’t make sense. After kissing me long and hard, he pulls his mouth away and turns me over, pulling me back to him on my knees.
My body aches as I wait to see what he’s going to do. Blake leans over me and takes a breast in one hand and starts stroking my clit with his other hand. My moan fills the large room, and he shushes me then nips my back.
He pushes his hard cock into me, but doesn’t move it at all. I try to rock back to him to make him stroke me, but he bites me a little harder and I stop. His fingers press and pinch with just the right amount of pressure on my throbbing clit as he massages my breast and rakes his teeth over my back.
Just as my insides start to quiver with what is sure to be the first of several orgasms he’ll give me, he begins to thrust into me. Moving slow and steady until I completely come all over his dick.
Releasing my breast and moving his hand off my pussy he straightens up and pushes deeper into me. Now it’s him who moans as my body pulses around his large and hard cock. “Fuck me, baby! God damn it!”
My body goes crazy for him and I rock back to meet the hard thrusts he begins as he tries to make me come for as long as possible on his dick. He’s found a trick that will take me right back into a hard orgasm most of the time if he starts it before I stop pulsing completely.
He pulls me back to him, plunging his cock into me then my orgasm slows and he stops. Reaching up, he takes both of my breasts in his hands and pulls me up so my back is against his chest. His dick still moves inside me, but the strokes are short as he rocks into me.
Both breasts he squeezes and pulls on the nipples, sending jolts of electricity through me. One of them he releases then he places one of his fingers into my mouth. “Suck it.”
I run my mouth up and down his finger and suck it just like I would do his dick. He groans against my neck as he begins his assault on it. Nipping and sucking at it before he bites down hard and it sends me over the edge again.
Sucking harder on his finger, I reach around behind me and grab his fantastic ass with both hands and help him plunge deeper into me as I fall apart around him. This time it sends him into an orgasm and he moans in my ear as he comes hard inside me.
He quits pulsing before I do as my pregnant body is insatiable it seems. I want more and he knows this. He lies me down and rolls me to my back. I pull my knees up as I have this part down. It’s the only way to finish me, thoroughly.
With panting breath, he kisses my clit and runs his tongue up and down my folds, dipping his tongue into me. Over and over he goes until my whole body is shaking and I scream with the ultimate release.
He kisses me gently until my body stops shaking and everything stills in me. Slow kisses he trails up my body then lies next to me, draping his arm over my stomach and kissing my cheek as my lids grow heavy and I fall asleep quickly in his safe embrace.
The man knows how to keep me satisfied!
Blake
The full moon’s light shines into the window of our bedroom. Tall pines filter it somewhat as I gaze out at the night sky and hold my wife in my arms as she sleeps peacefully after we made love.
An owl hoots then another answers its call. One, large, white owl flies past the window then the other flies after it. Both are large and majestic looking as th
ey fly past the window, hooting as they go.
My hand rests on Rachelle’s pregnant belly and just as one of the owls hoots and flies past the window again our baby kicks. A grin spreads over my face instantly with happiness.
I can feel my parents’ presence in my heart and find more than comfort with it. I find joy and happiness, and thankfulness all at once. If not for their wishes of their individual ashes being spread in opposite oceans and the money I had to play the lotteries across this big country, I would not be where I am tonight.
I would never have needed to meet Max Lane to seek financial advice. I would never have met the beautiful lady I hold in my arms. The little red-haired girl and dark-haired boy I found at the children’s home Max grew up in would still be there and not making this family what it is today.
My son wouldn’t be sleeping in his crib down the hall and my daughter wouldn’t be kicking her mother as we speak. Nope. None of this would be, without their passing and their wishes.
The morning I found out my parents had died a piece of me did too. I knew life would never be the same for me. I never told a soul about how low I became in the weeks following their death.
The fact was that I had sat in their bedroom one night a few weeks after their death, drinking a bottle of whisky and holding a pistol in my shaking hand. I was planning on ending it all. The pain had become too much, and I didn’t want to live anymore all alone in this big and cruel world.
I wasn’t always the buff bodied man I am today or when I met Rachelle. Nope, I was a fat little boy who got beat up a hell of a lot. I grew into a pretty chubby man who had super low self-esteem. When they died, it took away the only people who loved me, the only ones who never made fun of me.
That night as I sat there with that bottle and that gun something happened as I put the barrel of the gun in my mouth and put my finger on the trigger. Something slammed against the outside wall, making me nearly jump off the bed it was so loud.
For some reason, I stopped what I was doing and went outside to see what the hell had made the loud noise. It was dark, but I saw a large rock near the area I had heard the noise from. As I looked around I saw the mouth of the big bass mailbox hanging open.
I went over and found one flyer inside and pulled it out, surprised to find I must’ve left it when I checked the mail earlier that morning. Taking it inside, I looked at it and found it was advertising this weight set, home gym thing. No money down and I could make low monthly payments.
I didn’t go back into my parents’ room that night. I left the bottle and the gun on the bed in there and went to my own room and went to sleep. The next day I called the number on the flyer and by that afternoon the equipment was delivered and the guys set it all up in the living room for me.
The home gym came with this pamphlet that told me how to eat right and within a couple of months I was well on my way to where I am today. I took every picture of the old me and burned them all. The new body gave me new confidence, and I finally did what my parents’ will asked me to.
I made the trip to New York and dropped Dad in the Pacific then went across the country, playing the lotteries in each state on my way to Los Angeles where I dropped off my mother.
That was the first step on my new life’s journey. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell my wife about the desperate man I was or not. That guy did die that fateful night after all. The old, fat, depressed, and insecure Blake was no more after that.
Happy go lucky Blake was born and apparently was being sent to find a young woman who needed him very badly. And I am happy to find out we get to have our happily ever after, after all.
The End
The Billionaire’s Gift
Preview Books 1 & 2
A Holiday Romance
By Michelle Love
The Billionaire’s Gift
A Holiday Romance
Book 1
A Time for Thanks Giving
By Michelle Love
Description
Loss. Love. Realizations
.
Blaine Vanderbilt may only be thirty-years-old but he’ managed to make a fortune in the retail market as the founder of a chain of discount stores he named Bargain Bin.
The tall man with smoldering good looks has a hard heart. He’s led his life thinking there is no harm in running a business that puts others out of theirs.
Until his elderly father passes away and leaves him with the question, should he make some changes to how he’s been living?
It has Blaine wondering about all he’s done not only in his business life but in his love life as well as he’s been as cold with women as he’s been with other business owners.
He decides the time has come for the tides to turn and he makes a plan to change his ways, completely. Step one is making sure the children who are stuck in the Children’s Hospital in his hometown of Houston have some great holidays and that’s where he meets the woman who may be his saving grace or his worst enemy.
Can Delaney Richards accept Blaine for the man he is becoming or will his past bad deeds be a thing she can’t forgive him for?
Chapter 1
BLAIN
November 5th:
The sound of light pops hitting the canvas rooftop of the black canopy fill my ears along with my heart. It feels as if it’s raining inside of me too. Today we are laying my father to rest in the grave next to my mother’s. She died when my youngest brother, Kent, was born, a rare thing nowadays. That happened twenty-five years ago. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it used to.
But with Pop’s death, the pain is coming back, biting at me with a vengeance. It’s been a long time since anything has hurt me. It took me years to harden myself to the point I was unbreakable. And in one day, Pop’s managed to break that whole steel structure, that had surrounded my heart, down.
Like a grizzly bear with a huge fist, Pop’s slammed into the protective barrier that shielded me and my feelings from any pain. He was taken away from us so suddenly. His fatal heart attack at fifty-seven has left me, my younger sister, Kate, and the youngest of us, Kent, alone in this world.
I’m the oldest and I assume the others are going to be looking to me for the first time in their lives as a role model. I have never been what Pop’s would call a good role model to them. As a matter of fact, he would use me as an example of how not to be.
I’m a billionaire at the tender age of thirty. I’ve worked on my little empire since I started college. I Mastered in Business and managed to hedge in a group of like-minded investors to help me with my endeavor.
With the initial investment money, I managed to build a great business. My first store, Bargain Bin number one, in downtown Houston, my hometown, was a complete success. Only a year and a half later, I had the money to open another store in Dallas.
It occurred to me at that time, if the stores I was opening in the big cities was working so well, why didn’t I try opening one in a smaller town. Not a tiny town, a midsized town.
So I opened the next Bargain Bin, that one was number three, in Lockhart, Texas, population 13,232. Just the right size to find out if my idea would work.
One by one, my store took over the markets in that town, just the way I thought it would. There was some controversy about my store coming in and ruining business for the locally owned, small town stores that were already established there but I didn’t care. Business is business, no reason to take anything personal.
The thing about Bargain Bin is that I will beat any price on anything. Sure, I have to really search around the world for the cheapest products but it’s working for me. I have stores all over the United States now. Quite a feat for a man my age.
Pop’s wasn’t in love with my way of doing business or how I treat women either. He told me on more than one occasion that my heart was cold. He was right, I had to agree with him on that.
Just like anything that you want to keep for a long time, freezing is the best way to accomplish that.
A sq
ueaking sound brings my mind back to what it should’ve always been on instead of roaming away from the sadness in front of me. My sister leans into my side and runs her arm around me as she sniffles. “I’m going to miss him, Blain.” We watch as my father’s gleaming titanium casket is lowered into the dark ground.
Not exactly sure what to do, I look to my brother, who is on the other side of her, for what might be the appropriate response to such a thing. As always, he helps me out as he gestures for me to put my arm around her and pat her on the head.
I mimic his movements and say, “There, there, Kate. Things will be alright. You have me.” And just like that, Kent has me taking the place of Pops as he was mouthing the words for me to say to her and I was doing it, trusting him, without thinking.
“You will?” she asks. “Do you promise, Blain?”
Narrowing my eyes at Kent, I tell my little sister, “I promise. Whatever you need, you come to me. I’ll be here for you.”
Kent gives me a smile and a thumbs up and I give him the bird. He’s always been that thorn in my side. The baby of the family and the guy who tries like hell to make me see my evil ways, as he calls them.
My stores employ mostly people with disabilities. As those people are all on some type of disability government assistance, they can’t make too much money. So I make sure to pay them only what their particular amount can be. I don’t want to mess up their assistance after all.
Kent thinks I’m a terrible person for doing such a thing. He calls it exploitation. I call it, doing smart business. He can call it what he wants, he isn’t in charge of how I make my money.
Which brings me to the fact he and my sister make very little of the green stuff which makes the world go around. Kent is currently a truck driver. He hauls oil from point a to point b. Over and over, he does the same damn thing day in and day out. A nightmarish way to make a living, if you ask me.
Shattered: A Billionaire Romance Series (Contemporary Romance Novels) Page 121