“Where is she?”
“She’s at the hotel; I’m on my way. I’ll make sure she gets to the suite. Are you on your way?”
“Yes,” I said. “She didn’t answer when I just tried to call.”
“Some of the lines are down around that area; there’s lots of activity, lots of people using up bandwidth, calling, recording, tweeting. You won’t have any trouble locating her when you get here; the hotel staff knows who she is.”
“Why wasn’t she on the plane to the States?” I asked, more to myself, but, of course, Simon answered.
“I’ll find that out as well, of course. I’ve got a call into a gate agent at Heathrow that owes me a few favors. I’ll know within the hour.”
After hanging up the phone, I paced the plane, regardless of my flight assistant telling me to sit down and buckle myself in. It seemed as though time stopped as we taxied back to the terminal and I deplaned. I raced through the terminal to where my driver always met me; he wordlessly opened my door and drove toward Legacy. It was clear Simon had told him exactly what to do and where to go.
When I got to the hotel, the chaos seemed to have diminished slightly, though the streets were still clogged with onlookers and police. Two firetrucks parked right outside the hotel blocked my driver’s path, so I got out at the end of the block and raced into the lobby.
“Cassie,” I said, seeing her sitting on a bench against the wall. One of my managers was sitting with her, her arm around Cassie’s shoulders, holding a glass of water. She was patting her thigh with her palm. Cassie was white, shaking.
She looked up at me when I said her name, and it looked like it took a moment for her to focus in on my words.
“Hi,” she said dully. “You’re back early.”
“So are you, my love,” I said, and I picked her up, nodding to my manager that she should return to her other duties. “Come, let’s get you upstairs.”
I led her to the suite and put her in a warm bubble bath. I helped her undress and stabilized her as she slid down into the water.
I ran a sponge across her skin, soapy water flowing over her shoulders and her back. She looked up at me gratefully, and I ran my finger along her cheek.
“You’re safe,” I said. “That’s the most important thing.”
Her eyes welled with tears, and she pulled me in close to her. I felt my sleeves getting wet, and I pulled off my jacket and shirt, then knelt down at the edge of the tub. It was the nicest tub in the entire hotel; a double hot tub with candle holders, a space for champagne and glasses, and steps that led up and into the tub. Steps on which I was sitting.
“Don’t ever leave me,” she whispered, and she reached her arms out to me. I gazed at her, getting hard at the sight of her even though I knew the timing couldn’t be worse. I stripped off my clothes and got into the tub with her. She immediately climbed onto my lap, straddling me, the front of her body pressing against the front of mine. Her nipples were hard, erect, reaching toward me, and I arched an eyebrow in surprise as she kissed me.
I tried to pull away slightly, not wanting to take advantage of her, but she pulled me to her more tightly than before.
I felt her fingertips wrap around my cock, and I leaned in to kiss her, feeling her smile spread across her lips.
Cassie
He kissed me and I pressed my body to his, feeling the warm, soapy water slippery between our bodies. I wrapped my fingers around his cock, hard and insistent against the inside of my leg. I felt torn; I couldn’t have been less in the mood for sex, but my hunger for Brad was carnal; it was beyond the lust it had been that first night or any night since. I needed him.
I spread my legs, widening my straddle over him, and I guided his cock into me. Its hardness pierced through me and I gasped, feeling pleasure move through me instantly in waves as I rocked against him. His public bone nudged my clit, slowly becoming more and more swollen, and I moaned, my mouth pressed against his.
“Cassie,” he said, “we don’t need to…”
“Yes,” I said, “we do.” I kissed him harder, brought my hands to his neck and began to run soapy water through my fingers over his ears and cheeks. I wanted to touch every cell. He, with my granted permission, began to thrust his hips against me. He gripped me with one hand on my ass and the other on my back, holding me to him as we moved in the water.
I didn’t remember ever making love in the water before; the sensation was full body. Each movement reverberated with the echoes of the water, and Brad felt both hard and soft at the same time. I melted into him and cried out as my orgasm shuddered through me. He rode it out with me as I moaned with each new wave, and, when he knew I was slowing down, he pulled out and picked me up, his arms strong and his grip tense on my body. He wrapped me in a towel and carried me to the bed, where he set me gently, never once taking his eyes off of me. I felt my words, Don’t ever leave me, moving through his mind as he gazed at me. I won’t, his eyes said back, and I reached for him.
He entered me again, my arms pinned down and my legs spread, and this time he let himself go. He pounded at me, his cock pressing apart the folds of my pussy with each thrust, exposing my clit to a pressure that would, I knew, make me explode at least once more before we were through.
“Cassie, were you in that car?” he asked suddenly.
A bolt of fear moved through me as I remembered sitting with Patrick, laughing.
“Yes,” I said, and he wrapped his arms around me, buried my face in his shoulder, and continued to thrust, slowly at first, then faster, faster, faster, until we were moving together and my breath was a continued, gasping cry of ecstasy. When he came, it flooded from his body into mine, and he groaned, a sound that was more growl, more force, than I’d ever heard.
He finished, and he slid off of me, laying next to me on the bed. Our bodies were still covered in suds from the bath; the bed was wet, but neither of us cared. He reached his hand out to mine and interlaced my fingers with his own.
“I have some answers,” I said. “And I think I know who did it. I think I know who tried to kill me. Who killed Patrick. He told me, kind of, before he…” I stopped. I couldn’t say the words.
“Whatever you think you know, Cass, it can wait until tomorrow. Let me take care of you tonight. Are you hungry? I’ll get one of everything up here within the hour. If you’re thirsty, we’ll get water, wine, whatever you want.”
“No, I need to say this. I need to tell you who’s responsible.”
He looked at me with eyes that were at first pleading, then, as he saw I was serious, I watched them gloss over. He had disengaged.
“It was a man,” I said, “a very powerful man. I just don’t know his name. Yet. But, I’m investigating; Patrick, he told me some names to go on, and I’m going to investigate them until I get to the bottom of what happened.”
“The NCA knows how to do their job, Cass,” Brad said gently, rubbing my breast with the pads of his fingertips. “Let them do the detective work. Like you said, you’re not an investigative reporter.”
I looked at his expression; it was guarded. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and not just from my recent arousal. I knew the time was now: it was now or never.
“Manuel Brown,” I said slowly, the words feeling foreign on my tongue. “Does that name ring a bell?”
The Billionaire’s LEGACY
Unbelievable Revelations
An Alpha Billionaire Romance
Sarah J. Brooks
Cassie
“You need to eat something,” Brad said from behind me. His voice startled me and I jumped a bit.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just ate a little while ago.” I didn’t turn away from the computer screen. The light from the monitor spilled onto the skin on the back of my hand, and I focused on it when Brad put his hands on my shoulders and began to rub them. I resisted the urge to lean into him, but I felt my body wanting, craving, his touch.
“That was seven hours ago,” he said gently. “Let me
at least make you a sandwich. I’ll bring it to you.”
I sighed quietly and looked up at him over my shoulder. He was looking down at me, a concerned look on his face. “Okay,” I said, more to get him out of the room so I could get back to work than anything else. I wasn’t the least bit hungry and, more, didn’t believe for one second that I’d sat there not moving for seven hours. Where had the time gone? “That sounds good.”
He smiled gratefully, as if he had been anticipating an argument, and he squeezed my shoulders, leaning in to kiss my neck. His lips were warm, and I felt my body begin to respond to the softness of his kiss.
“Okay, then,” he said and left the room. I sighed and leaned back in my chair, his interruption causing me to take a breath and realize that my eyes were hurting from the strain of staring at my computer screen for so many hours. It had been a week ago that Patrick had been killed, and, since then, I’d done nothing but try to figure out who was responsible.
I shuddered as I remembered back to that day, to the explosion that had rocked the hotel where Patrick had just hugged me goodbye. The hours afterward, the chaos. The next morning when I had checked my email and found the message Patrick had sent before his death. He had sent it in the moments between when I’d said goodbye to him and when he’d gotten into his car. I imagined him walking to his car, his phone in his hands, shoulders hunched, tapping quickly at the keys. An email, not a text. Had he known? I would never know the answer to that question. I’d woken up the day after his death and turned on the computer seeking a sense of normalcy. Instead, I’d found his message.
Cass,
Don’t forget our conversation. Don’t forget the names we discussed and their relationship to one another. In the event that you are reading this after something has happened to me, don’t let fear or sadness stop you. You have friends; they will make themselves known to you as needed. You are protected.
Patrick
It was such a cryptic message, still, and, though I found it impossible to believe that he had known he was going to die, a part of me believed that he’d had an intuition about it. He had never emailed me before; I didn’t even know he knew my email address. But, NCA agents can figure out probably most anything, I guessed… except for the connection between Manuel Brown and Mavin Toller.
I heard rustling at the door behind me and quickly closed out of Patrick’s message. I would have no way of explaining it to Brad, and I didn’t want to cause a fight. A moment later, Brad came into the room with a sandwich and a glass of water on a small tray. A rose in a vase and silverware on a cloth napkin made it seem as though the meal was from room service, but I knew from the look of the sandwich that Brad had made it himself.
I smiled at him gratefully. “Thank you,” I said.
He kissed the top of my head and pulled me toward him. “I’ll leave you alone, please eat.”
He left, and I stared at the sandwich as a bizarre mix of hunger and sadness filled my stomach. I didn’t know what our relationship would end up being. So much had happened to pull us off track, and it didn’t seem like either Brad or I knew how to bring things back to where they should be. It was as though the obstacles between us were insurmountable. I thought back to the first night in Belize when we had talked, how drawn I had been to him, how curious and insatiable our initial contact had been. Now it seemed like it was a contest as to which of us was pulling away more, faster.
I had been surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, that he had accompanied me to the funeral. I’d never been to the funeral of a decorated agent of anything before. The outpouring was incredible. NCA agents, as well as representatives from Scotland Yard and the FBI populated the church and burial. Brad had stood by my side from beginning to end, introducing himself in a way that no one really knew exactly who he was. I wondered, based on Patrick’s ideas, if he had done this out of compassion for me, or if he had been worried about being arrested.
I took a bite of the sandwich and my stomach rumbled gratefully. I looked at the website on the computer screen. I’d tried a thousand different searches, sent out several different feelers to contacts, dug deeply into every journalistic instinct I had—and, still, I kept coming up against dead end after dead end. I could find references to Mavin Toller, and, thanks to a contact of Patrick’s, I was able to look at some parts of his former CIA file.
Manuel Brown was a ghost. I found one mention of a Manuel Brown, but, without any other corroboration, it was impossible to tell if that Manuel Brown was the same as the one I was looking for. No birth date, no pictures, no references past or present. No articles, family trees, or even the most basic google information. It was as though he existed in name only.
Still, I was determined to find the truth. If something could happen to Patrick, something could happen to Brad, or to me. I knew Brad was involved in something; I had known that, at least on some level, since day one. It was time to figure out what that was.
Had I missed an opportunity with Patrick? I chewed my sandwich and thought back to the funeral. To all of the people who had said Patrick was the best friend a guy—or girl—could have. He had no family, no wife, no children, parents deceased. I chewed another bite of my sandwich and wondered.
Three days later, I was still wondering. I was dressed in a ball gown standing in front of a full length mirror in a dress Brad had had delivered hours earlier. The dress fit beautifully, and he had brought in a velvet covered box after I’d told him I had the dress on.
“The sparkle in your eyes will make this shine more brightly,” he said, and he’d opened the box to reveal an emerald necklace with diamonds. It popped from the black dress and, as I looked in the mirror, I realized he was right; it made my eyes shine.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and kissing him. “Thank you.”
“I know a benefit is the last thing you want to be doing right now,” he said, pulling back from me and looking into my eyes. He gripped my forearms with his warm hands, and I felt a shiver move through me. “But, it’s important for you to be there; and I want to be able to show you off.”
He smiled, then, and I had no choice but to smile back. When we’d first met, the idea of a billionaire wanting to show me off to his friends would have blown my mind. Now… after so much had happened, I didn’t know what showing me off would accomplish.
“I know it’s important to you,” I said. “And we don’t have to stay all night, do we?”
“No,” he said. “We’ll cut out early, I promise.”
We drove to the benefit and arrived in time to be a part of the opening red carpet walk. Camera flashes and shouted questions pummeled me and assaulted my senses as I realized I hadn’t been out of the hotel at all since Patrick’s death. Brad covered my shoulders with his arm and protected me, hurrying me past the photographers and into the building. Once we were in, he relaxed. I felt grateful for his protection and his care. He was, at the very least, a consummate gentleman.
It was that feeling that carried me through the evening. I watched him talk, network, schmooze, whatever, with benefactors and clients, working the room like he was born to do it. His tux fit him like a glove, and he moved in it as though it was a second skin. His smile was natural and unforced, yet it had an energy behind it that seemed to reach out and grab people; even the crankiest person in the world couldn’t have resisted.
I watched women lust after him, seeing it happen in a way I never had before. Because I was on my own for much of the night, sitting at the bar or walking around talking to Simon and the other business associates of Brad’s that I’d met, most of the flirters didn’t know he had come with a date. I watched women flock to him, flutter around him, and slip back like insects gently shooed away, daunted but not deterred. Every few minutes, he looked over at me. Sometimes he smiled or waved, but most often it was just his gaze traveling across the room and burning into me.
I remembered telling Patrick that Brad would never abduct anyone. He wouldn’t nee
d to, I thought as I watched him. Any woman—and a lot of men—would follow him straight into hell if he asked them to accompany him.
Was that what I was doing? Was I following Brad straight into hell?
“You know he only has eyes for you,” Simon said next to me. I turned to him.
“What?” I asked.
“You have a very sad look on your face,” he said kindly. “I couldn’t help but notice.”
I liked Simon a lot. He was intelligent, soft-spoken, and kind. He was Brad’s partner, but he seemed to have naturally, over time, fallen into more the role of an assistant. I got the feeling that both he and Brad preferred it that way.
“I was thinking about…” I shook my head. “I don’t know what I was thinking about.”
“You may have been thinking it was about time for the evening to wrap up,” Simon said. “I understand Brad promised you an early night.”
I nodded. “He did, but he’s obviously very busy. I know this is an important night for him.”
“You’re important to him,” he said easily. “Excuse me for one moment.” He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder, smiled at me, then walked toward the restrooms.
“Another cocktail?” the bartender asked.
“Sure, why not?” I said.
I’d had only a few sips of my martini when Brad broke away from the throng of people around him and walked over to me.
“Are you ready?” he asked. His voice was low and rumbling in my ear, and, despite the fact that I’d been feeling such distance between us, I felt my body warm, a faint tingling beginning in my stomach and moving between my legs. I felt my nipples harden against my dress.
“I’m ready,” I said, smiling. The martini had been delicious and strong, and I felt its effects as Brad escorted me across the room toward the door. I kept my face straight as I noticed the disappointed looks on the faces of more than just a few women. Did they really think that he was available? I shushed myself, realizing that he could very well be available; it was him committing to me that made him unavailable to all of these women, who were far wealthier than I was and had far more business being with him than I did.
Billionaire Romance Box Set: The Billionaire's Legacy: An Alpha Billionaire Romance Box Set Page 19