“Sir,” he says.
I button up my coat against the cool March air and head for the guys.
They’re still standing out there, still looking up at her window.
I’m taken back to a time I’d prefer to forget. My dad had gotten into another jam, but this one was bad. Guys just like this outside our house. Watching. Dad acting nonchalant. They just wanna know they’ll get their money, he said.
But he wasn’t the one who had to deal with them—he was blacked out by the time they came to the door, so it was Mom and me. She’d wanted me to go to my room, but I was in my early teens, too big for her to boss. With trembling hands, she gave them the secret money from the soup can, with promises to bring more later on.
Is Lizzie in money trouble? It would make sense, considering her credit report. And if so, why blow off the bonus?
They become aware of me half a block down. Or at least that’s when they show me they see me.
I smile as I approach them. “Evening,” I say.
They’re both looking at me hard.
I show them my hands. I come in peace. “You have business with Ms. Cooper?” I ask.
“You a cop?”
“Just a friend of hers,” I say.
“And we care why?” the one guy asks.
“I might be in the mood to clear it up, maybe save everyone a little trouble, if I can get a sense of what it is.”
“Maybe you’re just nosy,” the one says.
“Maybe. Or maybe I handle this and you guys get to go out for wings and beer instead of sitting here.”
The guys exchange glances.
“It’s a money thing, right?”
No answer.
Yes, I’m thinking. “Is there somebody I can see about it?”
The somebody turns out to be a middle-aged loan shark named Lenny. The cost is eight thousand dollars, due on Sunday morning. I tell him he’ll have it tomorrow afternoon if he pulls his guys. He agrees, and I arrange for my PI to deliver it.
“She a relative of yours?” Lenny asks.
“Employee,” I tell him.
He gives me a rumble of understanding. Insinuating I want to fuck her. I suppose he’s right, but it’s not how he thinks.
I want to fuck her, sure. But really, I want to do anything with her. I want to know her. I want to talk to her, laugh with her, watch idiotic goat videos with her. I want to know her on every level possible.
He tells me he’ll pull his guys back for the time being. There, but not visible, as a courtesy. They’ll be back if my PI doesn’t show.
I knock on the table and leave.
Twenty-Five
Lizzie
* * *
What does it mean that they’re gone? I almost liked it better when I could see them. Are they watching secretly? Are there mob guys everywhere now? I have at least thirty-six hours, but I don’t trust them not to come early.
Just to be safe, I’ve installed the bolt lock. I’ve texted Mia to let her know her key won’t work. We had a texting argument that ended with me saying I’d be sleeping with earplugs in and wouldn’t hear her pounding on the door.
At least she’ll be out of danger.
I don’t know what to do when they come. I could run out the fire escape, but they’ll just come back. And what if it’s when Mia is here? No, I have to face them.
So I’ve been cleaning.
It’s probably silly to clean for gangsters, but I have this idea that if my place is messy, they might feel more at liberty to hurt me. The way people are more likely to throw litter on a trash-filled street.
I have on a red Henley shirt and a sporty little plaid skirt that’s good for summertime walking and that, for whatever reason, struck me as the garment least likely to inspire gangsters to carve up my arm. Which is, admittedly, not a high bar for a skirt.
Just as I begin straightening our books and pulling out the ones I want to take to Fargo, there’s a knock at the door.
It’s not exactly loud, but it feels like a crash of thunder inside.
They’re here.
I thought I was ready, but my heart’s bongo-ing, and I’m not feeling brave anymore. I tell myself it’s probably just a final warning or something, but I’m not sure that I have it in me to open that door.
I creep over, careful to avoid the creaking floorboards, and peer through the peephole.
A man’s profile. Strong nose, perfectly straight. Whisker stubble leading up to an imperious cheekbone. Pillowy, slightly thuggish lips.
Mr. Drummond!
My mind whirls.
Mr. Drummond? Here?
My heart bongos a new tune. It’s an angrier and more excited tune than the Mobsters are coming! tune.
“Yeah, you can just fuck off,” I call through the door.
Slap. Palm meets door. Eye meets peephole. “Open up. Come on.” Still so arrogant. “We need to talk.”
“You need to stop sniffing chemical fumes if you think I’m ever going to talk to you.”
He slaps the door again, more softly this time. “Open up. Please.”
“Why?”
“Because we can’t have this conversation like this.”
“We already had it. That was our entire conversation.”
“Just open it,” he says.
“You think you’re still the boss of me? I cannot even…”
“Seven…”
“Oh my god! You don’t get to call me that. Seven is dead.” Angrily, I jerk back the bolt. “You killed her!” I fling open the door.
And come face-to-face with Mr. Drummond, larger than life in a dove-gray suit and bright yellow tie.
My heart stutters.
It’s weirdly wonderful to see him.
I grip the knob, reminding myself how mad I am at him, how he told Sasha about us, how scared I am of the loan shark guys.
“News flash,” I bite out, “you don’t get to order me around ever again. And if you think we’re going to fuck right now—or ever—after you told Sasha every intimate detail of our phone calls. After you told her to fire me? Being that you didn’t even have the courage to do it yourself? Soooooo not gonna happen.”
He narrows his eyes. “You think I told Sasha about what we said...and then told her to fire you…”
“Unless Sasha’s psychic. Because she seemed to know a whole lot of details.”
He swears softly under his breath and waves his hand, indicating he wants to come in, and suddenly I’m backing up, and he’s crossing the threshold, closing the door, leaning back against it, gazing down at me with those stormy gray eyes.
Everything in me comes alive. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. I cross my arms over my chest. “You think you’re staying now?”
He takes a deep breath. “I thought it was her.”
“What?”
“I thought Sasha was you—the caller.”
I frown. Sasha?
“The Hello Morning emails were coming from inside Vossameer,” he says. “I confronted her, and she more or less confessed that she was Operator Seven. And…she inferred a lot from our conversation.”
“Wait.” I widen my eyes. “Sasha pretended to be me? To your face?”
He gives me a grim look that makes me glad I’m not Sasha. “I wouldn’t have told anybody about our calls. And please believe that I did not tell her to fire you. It’s the last thing I’d want.”
“Oh.” My pulse races.
“That’s not the kind of man I am,” he adds. “I didn’t even know it was you until this morning.”
Sasha impersonated me?
I think back on our firing conversation, going over the whole strange exchange. “When Sasha fired me, she pumped me for all sorts of information.”
“I figured. She seemed to know a lot. Jackalope, for instance.”
I bite back a smile. “You thought Sasha was Operator Seven.”
“Not for long.” He looks down at me, leaning back on the front door, large and glorious in our humble apartme
nt. He lowers his voice. “She could never be you.”
Heat licks over my skin. “Oh,” I whisper.
“Nobody could be you.”
Nobody could be you. Did he kiss her? Of all my problems, like a crazy woman, I focus on that.
“I invited her to dinner,” he says. “I was already suspicious, but when she told me she didn’t care for dessert, I knew for sure. And then I discovered her favorite musical is Grease.”
“I would’ve expected 101 Dalmatians.”
He looks confused. Even confused, he’s gorgeous, maybe more gorgeous, because his guard is down.
I say, “You should’ve known the minute she said yes to dinner.”
“I should’ve known before that—way before that,” he says. “They told me you quit. That you stormed out, saying how much Vossameer sucks.”
“Well, I did say that. But I sure didn’t quit.”
“Because you needed the bonus. For Lenny.”
Something in me turns upside down. “How do you know about that?”
“I had a conversation with those guys out there. They’re gone, by the way. The debt is settled.”
“Wait—what? They’re not coming back?”
“No. The debt is handled.”
“Did you…handle it?”
His voice gentles. “Seems I owed you money. You’ll get the rest, too.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Really. Thank you. And, um, the dress—”
“Forget the dress,” he rumbles. “I don’t care about the dress.”
Butterflies flutter madly in my belly. “Oh…okay.”
His gaze is fixed on me, not in an aggressive way, but more like he’s assessing. “That’s not what I care about, Seven. That’s not why I’m here.”
Lust and nervousness swirl inside me. Of course I’m thinking about the whole savage-clothes-ripping thing. Is that why he’s here? That’s who I am on the phone—it’s who we are on the phone. It’s blisteringly hot on the phone, but I never did anything like that in real life.
But that’s what’s between us now. It’s huge between us now. A wild river.
“What do you care about?” I manage to ask, even as I remind myself that I shouldn’t go down this path. That I’m still reeling from Mason. That I’m leaving town and can’t get emotionally invested.
He searches my eyes, like he’s really concentrating on me. He says, “I care about the way I felt when I was talking to you. I liked the way we felt together.”
“I liked it, too,” I confess. Because apparently I’m all about confessing things to Mr. Drummond.
He comes nearer. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat, inches from my lips now. The air between us feels charged with electricity; a frisson of aliveness plays across my skin. “It’s not how I usually am.”
“You’re not usually like that? Savagely ripping women’s clothes off?” It’s a joke, but not.
He reaches out and touches my shoulder, slides two fingers down the waffle-weave fabric covering my arm. Just that tiny touch and I’m breathless. Dizzy. The floor seems to dip.
“Not usually. But everything’s different with you,” he says. His breath comes hard—I can tell by the rise and fall of his chest. By the way his yellow tie moves in the light. “Everything with you was real and true in a way I never had. New.”
“Me, too,” I say. “With you.” The truth. And just like that, things feel intimate again, like our calls.
His finger is still on my arm, nearing my elbow, but something’s happening. The few atoms of oxygen left between us have changed. I feel him on my belly. I feel him on my thighs. I feel him in the stretch of my Henley shirt over my wildly sensitized nipples.
“I would’ve moved heaven and Earth to find you.”
“I can’t believe that Sasha tried to…” My words fade out and he lifts his fingers from my elbow and touches the nook of my throat. He slides those fingers slowly, slowly, down until they hook over the top of the unbuttoned V of my shirt.
He lets them hang there. The backs of them graze my breastbone as I breathe. The brush of his skin on mine burns—just that tiny point of contact.
His cuff link catches the light, seeming to pulse slightly, maybe in time with my breathing. Maybe in time with his. Maybe we’re breathing together.
He says, “Everything with you feels like a new discovery. Not of lands or continents, but something more. What it’s like to connect. What it’s like to want somebody so bad…”
“So bad that you rip off her clothes,” I say. “Because you need her pussy so bad…”
“So bad,” he rasps.
We both seem to still. To wait. Horns honk and helicopter blades chop in the world outside, but the small apartment feels pin-drop silent.
And I’m squeezing my pelvic muscles so hard, I might make myself Kegel-come.
“You rip off her clothes,” I say.
“Yeah?” he says, voice rough as sand.
“So desperate. And you haul her over your shoulder and carry her to her bedroom. And you throw her down there. You don’t even care, you just throw her down.” I lower my voice, “like a brute.”
His gaze roams heavy and hot over my lips, my neck.
I glance over at my bedroom door; then I look back at him.
It’s here I realize I’m trembling. Good trembling. Alive trembling. Like really crazy-alive trembling. That’s what we have together—scary honesty and aliveness.
“You totally ravish her,” I add.
His fingers curl more tightly over the V of my shirt. Just that little movement sizzles. What would it be like to really touch?
He’s wondering it, too. I feel him in a way I don’t feel other people.
“God, Drummond,” I pant, “you need to rip off my clothes and fuck me already.”
Something changes in his eyes. He doesn’t do it right away, though, power-mad jerk that he is. He uses his grip on my shirt to pull me to him, slow and strong, eyes on mine until we’re too close to see each other anymore, and then it’s just his lips consuming mine in a slow, hungry kiss—lips to lips, tongue to tongue.
I clutch his arms through his suit coat, shocked by the ferocity of his kiss and my breathless response.
He spins us around and presses me to the door, cupping my face, kissing me senseless. One steely thigh presses brazenly between my legs.
“Oh my god, I love this already,” I gasp into his mouth.
My hands find their way under his jacket, fumbling to get his shirt free of his belt, desperately seeking skin.
He lets off long enough to shrug off his suit jacket. It disappears and he’s on me again. I press my fingers into his warm, muscular back.
He nips my lip, then kisses me some more, like he can never get enough. He kisses my cheek, my nose, my other cheek, my forehead, and then he’s back on me, pressing into me deliciously.
I whimper a little, moving with him—much as I can, considering most of me is flattened by his big, hard body and wonderfully cucumbery cock.
He slides his hands under my skirt, palms my ass, and hauls me up.
I swing my legs around him, wrap my arms around his neck. I’m a lust-crazed barnacle, totally glomming onto this guy. “Yes,” I whisper.
He whomps me against the door and we make out, all dirty and sweet. He holds me tightly, giant hands on my ass, fitting us like two pieces of the most urgent puzzle in the world.
His fingertips curl into my butt crack through my panties as he squeezes my ass cheeks, pressing and squeezing, which does something insane to my clit. “Fuck, you’re wet,” he grates.
“I’m gonna come right now,” I gasp.
“Not yet.” The room spins, and suddenly we’re moving.
He carries me around our little couch and on into the dim hush of my bedroom. He bangs the door shut behind us and continues on, throwing me down on the bed.
I pant like a trapped animal, excited, aroused beyond capacity.
His chest heaves under his white shirt, tie ha
lf loosened. The darkness in his eyes hits me like a drug. Without warning he’s on me. Rough fists grab the top of my shirt. He rips it down the middle.
I gasp. Cool air hits my belly.
He just keeps going, brutally ripping my shirt. His tie trails over my skin, a wicked feather to contrast with his violent movements. It’s the hottest thing ever.
He yanks down my bra cups and presses his warm, whiskery face to my bared chest.
I groan as he devours my breasts, all rough whiskers and urgent sucking. I grab on to his arms, hard like rock. I’m burning up.
Mindlessly he sucks. My swollen sex aches with need.
He pauses only long enough to yank off my skirt and obliterate what’s left of my poor panties. With clumsy movements, I take off my bra and toss it out of ripping range. Because, bra shopping.
“I like you like this, perfectly naked to me,” he growls. He kisses my bare belly, hands roaming everywhere. “Every inch of you is hot.”
Without warning, he slides his finger through my wetness.
I gasp and arch under his touch.
“Look at you, so naked and wet. Waiting for me.” He does me with his finger, eyes fixed on mine. “Waiting for me to take you.”
“More,” I rasp.
Instead he takes his finger from me and slides it lewdly into his mouth and sucks.
He sucks off every last bit of juice like it’s the last sustenance left on the planet, because that’s men for you.
Slowly he draws his finger back out, gazing down at me. “Mine.”
Warmth spreads through me like honey. Amazing Mr. Drummond.
His eyes drop to my lips, and suddenly the pad of his finger is there, a whisper of a touch on my bottom lip, the weight of a butterfly.
I close my lips over the tip of his finger and suck. Like it was always meant to be, like me sucking on his fingertip was predestined. Unavoidable as air.
Lewdly, he pushes his finger deeper into my mouth. Just invades it. “Suck it,” he commands in his stern Mr. Drummond tone. “Show me how you’re going to suck my cock.”
I give him a look that says, you are SUCH an asshole! Being that his finger’s in my mouth, the look’s mostly in my eyes and a little bit in my cheeks.
“I know,” he says softly. “But I’ll make it so good.”
The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl Page 17