I Choose You: A Secret Billionaire Romance

by Krista Lakes

  I took out the IOU from high school again, running my fingers over the card as the closest thing to a plan formed in my mind since I had fled Springfield for New York.

  You do owe me, you bastard.

  I put the card away carefully, shouldered my bag, and excused myself as I moved towards the aisle and left. I would get notes from someone later.

  But I had somewhere else to be just now.

  I didn’t call my best friend, Tessa. I didn’t tell my roommate, Nicole. I just went back to the dorm room, packed an overnight bag, and took a cab to Grand Central Station. There were trains running to Boston’s South Station every few hours, and I knew that James’s startup company's office was somewhere nearby there. I could search the internet on the way. If I hesitated, I wouldn’t go. I had to keep in motion.

  While I waited for the next train I found an ATM and took out enough cash to pay for cabs, food and a hotel room if I needed it. Though I didn’t want to think too far ahead, I didn’t want to be scrambling for money at the last second either. I tucked the cash into my wallet with the IOU, and when the train arrived I got on it.

  A little over three hours later, I was stepping into the blustery wind that blew off the frigid Atlantic. If New York was cold, Boston was frigid. There was ice and snow in the cracks of the sidewalks and dirty road salt scattered over everything. Dark snow clouds were chasing the slate grey overcast out over the sea. While I was waiting for the train I had overheard someone saying a big snowstorm was coming in. I assumed those clouds were the beginning of it.

  I grabbed the first cab I saw and gave them the address.

  I stared at the road over the shoulder of the driver, not allowing my mind to stray. I felt a smile crease my lips. I was doing what I felt, acting on how I felt, maybe for the first time in my life.

  And I was terrified.

  Chapter 9

  James’s offices were in what would have looked like just another derelict building if it wasn’t for the reflective glass in the windows and the minimalist but neatly groomed gardens at the entrance. Once I went inside, however, there were only stylistic touches that betrayed the building's rougher history. It looked like a real office. The floors were restored and polished wood and ventilation shafts hung down from the high ceilings above the sea of cubicle walls. The rest was painfully modern and simple, like an Ikea store had a wet dream inside.

  James had come a long way from his apartment living room. There must have been a hundred people working here. For the first time, my stepbrother’s success really hit me. He built all of this. This was his.

  I was impressed, but I was also a little intimidated. But I had come prepared. Before I walked in the front door, I readjusted myself in my tight sweater, which really accentuated what a woman I had become in New York.

  Now all I had to do was get the receptionist—a cute redhead who immediately made me jealous with her creamy skin and full, pouting mouth—to let me see him.

  “Mr. Coleman doesn’t have any appointments this afternoon,” she said. For the millionth time.

  “I know that. You’ve made it very clear. But if you could call him and tell him Tessa from Springfield is here, I’m sure he would make an exception.” I was using my best friend’s name. No reason to publicize that I was his stepsister when nobody knew who I was.

  “Mr. Coleman is very particular about his schedule,” she said. “If you’d like, I could see if he would be willing to meet with you later in the week.”

  Okay, this was taking too long. “Just one second,” I said.

  I wanted to walk in on him, to surprise him, but I could tell that wasn’t going to work. I texted him instead.

  Reception, please.

  And waited.

  The redhead rolled her eyes and went back to her computer while I stood staring over the cubicles. There were what looked like closed offices along the furthest wall, the one that would have a view of the harbor.

  The redhead peaked over the rim of her glasses at me. I sent James another text.

  Reception! Go to your reception, jerk!

  “Look, miss. If you don’t want to schedule another appointment, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the secretary said, turning her full attention back to me.

  “That’s not necessary, Lauren.” I turned at the sound of his gravely voice. James and several other people—college kids with laptops, from the looks of them—were coming out of a pair of double doors just off the reception area. “I was in a presentation,” he explained, holding up his phone.

  “It’s okay,” I said, my voice wobbling. He had grown out his facial hair to a thick stubble, too long to be just a five-o’clock shadow. It made him look older and his green eyes stood out even more. They looked bright in the white light pouring through the tall windows behind me. My eyes moved down to his lips as they curled in an expression of curious, but not unhappy, surprise.

  I could tell he was waiting for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Seeing him, being near him again, seemed to have shut down certain parts of my brain.

  “Okay. Why don’t you come with me? We can talk in my office.”

  He walked us through the cubicles to his office and closed the door behind him, then walked through the room to stand behind his desk. I made it a few feet past the door and froze.

  “Well, this is unexpected,” he said, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Why are you in Boston, Allie? You should have let me know ahead of time, we could have had dinner or something.” Which implied of course that he already had plans. Did he have a girlfriend? How had it never occurred to me to ask?

  His defensive body posture, the distance and the desk between us, the shock of seeing him again, it all threw me off. Suddenly, everything was feeling like a huge mistake. “It was sort of last second,” I admitted.

  He checked his watch. “Well, I’ve got a half hour or so until my next meeting. Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” he said, arching an eyebrow curiously. He sat down in his chair and leaned back into it, his hands behind his head as he studied me. “So what’s up? Why are you here?” He sat up straighter, his expression darkening. “Nothing bad happened, did it?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that,” I quickly assured him. I tried to settle my racing heart, but his aloofness had shaken my confidence. But what had I expected? For him to grab me and confess his love for me on the spot?

  His eyes stared at me, and for the first time they strayed from my face. As he looked over my figure, I saw a flicker of the darker desire I recognized from his car. It was something.

  I knew just what to do. I pulled my purse around and opened it, digging for the card.

  “Are you all right, Allie?” he asked.

  “Just give me one second,” I said. I found it. I took out the card, rubbed it between my fingers for luck and courage, and set it on his desk. “Here.”

  He picked it up. A grin spread across his handsome face as he recognized it. “You still have this?” He laughed. “I always figured you would have thrown it away as soon as you passed a trash can.”

  “I still have it.”

  He looked up at me, then checked both sides of the card. “No expiration date. That was foolish of me.” He looked every bit the professional businessman while looking over this contract, and it turned me on even more. “Okay, well I’m a man of my word. What do I owe you?”

  I tried different ways of saying it in my mind, all of them sounding strange, artificial, wrong. But as the silence drew out I gave up, and just said what I felt. “You,” I squeaked.

  “Me?” he said.

  “I want you,” I said again. “That’s why I came here.”

  It sounded silly, like some over-wrought scene from a badly directed movie. I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t. He played with the card in his fingers and stared at me. Finally he stood up and walked around his desk. He handed me the card.

  “You want to tel
l me what’s really going on here?”

  “What happened in the car…”

  “That was a stupid mistake,” he said, his voice darkening. “And I’m sorry for it. I crossed a line with you I had no right to cross.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “There’s nothing else to say about it.”

  “Of course there is. I know you’re my…”

  “Your brother,” he finished for me, his mouth forming a cruel hard line.

  “…stepbrother.”

  “Does that really make any difference?”

  “It does for me,” I said, standing up a little straighter. I was getting angry, and it was giving me a little courage to stand on. “It’s not like it's incest.”

  James seemed to flinch at the word, then laughed. “Are you listening to yourself?”

  “Stop it,” I snapped. I pushed his chest. It was hard under the oxford shirt he was wearing. He didn’t move. “Don’t try to make this a joke.”

  “I’m not,” he said, seriously. “But you’ve gone off the deep end, Allie.”

  “So what was it, then?”

  “What was what?”

  “The kiss, you jerk,” I said, swatting his chest.

  “I already told you what it was. It was a mistake.”

  “It didn’t mean anything? You don’t feel anything?”

  “Jesus, Allie. Are you listening to yourself? And besides, aren’t I the guy who ruined your life?”

  “Just tell me, then. If you tell me that it was really just some mistake and you don’t feel anything for me, I’ll leave right now.”

  I swallowed, cursing myself for being so direct. I was practically forcing him to reject me.

  Something inside of him broke. He crossed the distance between us in a heartbeat. Before I could say anything further he grabbed me, one hand turning my face up to his and the other seizing my hip. He pulled my trembling body tight against his.

  But before he could swoop down and kiss me, I stood up on the balls of my feet, pressing my breasts against his chest and running my arms around him as I reached for his lips with mine.

  It was too violent to call it a kiss.

  He crushed his lips against mine, his tongue dipping into my mouth then tasting my lips before kissing along my jawline, hungry and wet. As he sucked in my earlobe he let out a ragged breath. My body was on fire for him, every sense suddenly inflamed. I felt too hot. I wanted to rip off all of my clothes.

  He must have read my mind, because his hands slid from their positions to grip the hem of my sweater and pull it off over my head. He pulled it so quickly and without care that it almost tore. My fingers worked at his shirt buttons, but he knocked them away. He grabbed his collar and pulled until the shirt ripped open, the buttons skittering across the floor.

  I could feel how excited he was, how he was losing control. I loved it. His hands seized me again, one sliding down my back and under my jeans and panties to cup my ass, the other up my chest to grope my breast through my bra. He squeezed with what felt like all his strength, and I whimpered my pain into his mouth as he kissed me again.

  I reached between us and opened his jeans, desperate to feel him. I reached down into the folds of fabric and ran my hands along his hard cock. I curled a hand around him, fingers cupping his balls, and squeezed gently. He let out a low groan and broke the kiss.

  His hands slid around to the front of my jeans, unbuttoning them as I unzipped his. He pulled mine down roughly, panties and all, then spun me around. He ran his hands down my arms, grabbing my hands in his and placing them on the desk so that I was leaning down in front of him.

  Without warning I felt the heat of his hard cock pressing between my thighs, his hand sliding around me as he stroked my wet pussy and guided himself to my entrance.

  He leaned down into my ear. “I’ve been waiting to claim you for a long time,” he growled. A smile briefly crossed my lips as I realized he had no intention of using a condom.

  I cried out as he pushed his hips forward, feeling every inch as it filled me, stretched me. I whimpered, an intoxicating mix of pain and pleasure shooting through my womb. I had never felt so wonderfully full.

  He kissed the back of my neck, his hands running over my body and finding my breasts. He grabbed the cups of my bra and pulled them down roughly, tearing the fabric. I didn’t care, so long as he didn’t dare pull that hot hardness out of me. He grabbed my breasts in both hands and squeezed them, his fingers pulling on my hard nipples as he thrust himself up into me.

  I closed my eyes, overwhelmed by him, feeling small under his rough hands as my entire body shook from his assault. Whenever I was with another man, this was when I would imagine that it was him fucking me. Only this time it really was him fucking me. It was better than any fantasy. Another wave of pleasure washed over me. His thrusts came faster, harder. I moaned, making sounds that he didn't even know I had learned from girls that he had fucked. Only these were genuine.

  He slid one of his hands down my belly. I wondered if he was imagining what it would be like to fill my body with his seed, to impregnate me and see my belly grow. His fingers moved on, touching me in the most sensitive of spots. “I want you to cum on my cock, Allie,” he said. His voice told me that this was a demand. That my orgasm wasn't for me. It was for him. “Come for me.”

  He rubbed my hard little nub, his cock changing the angle of its thrust until it was hitting me in a place I had never been touched before. I let out a moan, grinding my ass into his thrusting hips involuntarily as the pleasure washed over me. I heard him let out his own groan of pleasure as he rolled his hips, working the sensitive flesh with the head of his cock, his fingers rolling my clit.

  I flushed, fire everywhere, and cried out as I came, my entire body rigid as every muscle convulsed.

  “Oh, fuck,” he moaned, driving his hips hard against my little ass, burying every inch inside of my convulsing pussy. He rubbed my clit harder until I came again, this time almost painfully, and kept himself inside of me, letting the walls of my pussy stroke him as they spasmed.

  I felt him stiffen and a moment later felt the pressure of his climax, his cum spurting deep into me. I sighed with ecstasy as I felt my stepbrother's seed completely fill me. This was what I wanted more than anything.

  He let out a ragged cry, his hands sliding up to my breasts again, squeezing them as he pulled me hard against his body, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe as he came and came into my sore pussy. It was the most amazing feeling, and I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted him to fill me forever; with his cock, with his seed, with his baby. I saw myself with Audrey’s big round belly, beautiful and adored. I wanted that. I wanted his baby.

  I shuddered, every nerve raw and oversensitive to James’s hands as he caressed me all over. He cupped my breasts, ran his palms over my belly and down my hips to my thighs. I wondered if he just assumed I was on birth control, like most girls my age, or if he wanted me like this. Fertile and completely his.

  Finally, he withdrew, his cock slowly pulling out of my exhausted body. I collapsed against his desk, hugging the expensive smelling wood. I heard him putting his clothes back on. I just laid there, breathing hard.

  “Hey, Allie,” he said.

  “Mmm hmm,” I said, still gripped by ecstasy.

  “I just want to make sure. You are on the pill, right?”

  My heart sank. I couldn't lie to him. He was my stepbrother. But maybe...

  I straightened up and looked back over my shoulder. I guess he kept spare shirts in his office somewhere, because he was buttoning up a new one to replace the one he had torn apart earlier. I bit my lip and smiled coyly. “What do you think?” I asked, using my sweetest voice.

  He smiled at me. “Yeah, that's what I thought.” I wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved. I didn't care. I felt his seed within me, warming my core, impregnating me as we spoke. It was what I wanted.

  He laughed. “Allie, are you goin
g to move? I've got a lot of work to do today.”

  I slowly rose from his desk. I knew I was going to feel sore tomorrow, maybe even later today. Still, I had to get it together if I wanted to remain in control of this situation.

  I put my clothes on quickly, the tight clothes feeling good against my skin. I hadn't felt this good, this alive, in my entire life. I had finally done it. The man of my dreams had taken me, hard and unprotected, and probably impregnated me. Things were perfect.

  Once I was dressed, I turned back toward him. He was just finishing tying his tie, and he smirked at me as he looked at me. He dipped his thumb in a water glass and ran it along the outside corner of my eye.

  “Gross!” I cried. “What are you doing?”

  “Your mascara is running. Here, there's a bathroom on the other side of the waiting room to my office. Lauren will see you but, well, I'm sure she heard you earlier anyway.”

  I blushed. Those moans came from deep in my body, and I knew they had been loud. I hoped she would keep things under wraps.

  As if psychic, James gripped me by my shoulders. “Don't worry about it. I pay her far too well, and she's under an array of non-disclousure agreements. She won't tell a soul about this.”

  I nodded and smiled. “Okay, James.”

  He smiled at me. “Go get cleaned up. I'll see you in a bit.”

  I gave him one last kiss. His lips met mine, and it was a calmer kiss than we had had yet. Then I walked out the door.

  Of course, Lauren gave me an incredulous look as I crossed the waiting room. I couldn't blame her. I wondered if she knew she had just listened to a brother and sister have sex in her boss's office, even if they weren't blood related. It would be enough to send anyone into shock.

  I went to the bathroom and washed my face off well. When I finally finished, I left the bathroom and started to head back into James's office. Lauren spoke up. “James had to head to a meeting. He said to check your email.” She went back to her computer, apparently having gotten over the shock of earlier.