Give Me More--A Sexy Billionaire Romance

by A. C. Arthur

  With her new job at the paper and a newfound bond between her and her sisters, Grace had begun to feel better about herself and in doing so, she’d been better able to deal with RJ. Which turned out to be a good thing because when she returned to her apartment after the girls’ trip it was to find two letters from him. She’d read each letter a dozen times before deciding to respond, and since then they’d been communicating either by old-school snail mail or telephone calls at least four times a week. She’d made the mistake of sharing all those details with her sisters.

  “I’m just sayin’, you’ve had the great sex and now you’ve done the—what did Grandma used to call it—the ‘courtin’ thing’? So there’s only one obvious next step,” Hope said.

  “Well, that might be obvious for some people, but for others, it might take a while to get to that point.” Grace left her sister in her apartment then. Hope had a key since she was the only relative of Grace’s who lived in the city. When her sister was done eating she’d let herself out.

  An hour later, Grace walked into the ballroom at the Park Lane Hotel. Marva had sent her an invitation and RJ had confirmed she’d received it, so if there’d been any doubt in attending tonight, she’d pushed it aside. She didn’t want either of them calling her to find out why she hadn’t shown up. And truth be told there’d been no doubt. Tonight, Grace was feeling more in control and focused than she’d ever felt before.

  She was late. After taking the time to get ready and chatting with Hope, she’d left her apartment a lot later than she’d planned and then, of course, there’d been traffic. She’d arrived just in time to hear Ron’s retirement announcement and to see RJ stepping up behind the lectern.

  “It’s an honor,” he began after the lengthy applause from the room full of what looked to be three hundred guests. “Not only to stand here and accept this position, but to share in this momentous evening with my parents. Mom, Dad.” He paused and looked over to where Ron and Marva sat at a private table draped in white linen with a gold candelabra at its center.

  The entire room was decorated with white table coverings and gold pots full of white flowers. Candlelight illuminated the place, along with the one dark-painted wall that was alight with tiny white lights.

  “I’ve learned so much from you,” RJ went on, “and not just about the business. But about love and tolerance. And compromise. You’ve shown Riley, Major, Maurice and me what it means to be a couple, to cherish someone and to hold their heart as tenderly as if it were precious as gold. For that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you both and wish you nothing but happiness for the next thirty-six years and beyond.”

  Tears filled Grace’s eyes as the crowd came to their feet, lifting their glasses in a toast to Ron and Marva. Her chest felt full and she struggled to breathe as emotion overwhelmed her. She needed air. Turning, she started to move toward the door when she bumped into Chaz.

  “Hey, there. You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, yes, I’m fine. Just need to get a little air. I’ll be right back.”

  And then she was on the move again, not stopping until she was in the hallway, her fingers clenching her purse tightly. She didn’t know how long she stood there staring at the marble walls, trying to get her thoughts together, but the moment she felt a hand on her shoulder she knew who it was. Chaz had no doubt hurried to tell him she was there.

  “Hi,” RJ said when she turned to face him.

  “Hi. Sorry I was late.”

  “No. I’m just glad you made it.” He laced his fingers with hers. “Let’s go over here and sit down.”

  She followed him to a row of red velvet benches.

  “It’s really good to see you,” he said when they were seated.

  Grace took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, it’s good to see you again, too. I have something I want to say to you and I’m just gonna say it now before I lose my nerve.” Because she was in danger of totally losing it right now. Hearing RJ’s words, the sound of undeniable love in his voice as he spoke of his parents and all they’d taught him, had triggered something in her that she’d been waiting to feel for a very long time.

  “Okay,” he said. “I have something I want to say to you, too, but I’ll let you go first.”

  “Good. Thanks.” She smiled nervously and stared into his beautiful brown eyes. “I love you. I’ve loved you for longer than I can remember and it’s still here.” She reached up and rubbed her fingers over her heart. “I didn’t know before. I didn’t believe I was ready to be a wife and a journalist at the same time. I really believed I had to make a choice, and I made the right choice for me at that time.”

  “Grace—”

  “No,” she shook her head earnestly. “Let me finish. After we returned from the island, I still wasn’t sure. I thought, ‘See, you were right not to marry him,’ after our last argument and the realization that we didn’t trust each other.”

  “I know, baby, and that was my fault. I should’ve trusted you. I just thought about my parents and I reacted.”

  She lifted two fingers to touch to his lips. “Your love and dedication to your family is one of the many things I adore about you, Ronald Gold III. I also love the way you never asked me to be anything but myself. The way you supported my goal as a journalist, reading all my articles and even keeping some of them.” She was filled with awe and complete reverence remembering the times he’d done that.

  “I know that I can be myself whenever I’m with you and that’s enough. It’s enough for you and for me. And in the end, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? What you and I feel and what we have together?” She let her hand fall from his lips and pressed it to her purse, which was sitting in her lap. “I knew what I wanted to say to you when I came here tonight but then when I heard you talking, I actually felt it. I felt that thing that I think has sustained your parents and my parents in their marriages all these years.” Hurriedly, she opened her purse and pulled out a black velvet box before lifting her gaze up to him again. “I love you, RJ, and I need to know if you’d still like to marry me.”

  RJ glanced down at the box and back up to her, his expression perplexed and then animated as he shook his head.

  Her heart sank. “You’re turning me down?”

  He reached into the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket and pulled out another black velvet box. “No, baby. I was gonna ask you to marry me again.”

  Grace stared at the ring box he held and then pushed hers until the boxes clinked together like champagne glasses. “Then I guess we’re getting married.”

  RJ smiled and leaned in closer to her. “I guess we are,” he said before taking her mouth in a soft kiss.

  * * *

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  PROLOGUE ONE

  Five years ago

  FRED VAUGHAN LOVED AMSTERDAM.

  It was the last stop on the European trip he and his twin, Frank, had taken to celebrate the end of their undergraduate degrees. In the fall they would both be back at school—Frank for a master’s in business, and he to law school—and the trip had been a graduation gift from their parents, albeit a begrudging one on his father’s part. Frederick Vaughan Sr., had expected both of his sons to spend the summer working at Vaughan Enterprises, the massive development conglomerate that his own father had started, but he’d been overruled by his wife.

  Fred was grateful. As a Vaughan, his future was set in stone, and he’d known that since childhood. He hadn’t ever thought he’d minded, either, until he’d had his undergrad diploma in hand and realized that, after four years of killing himself studying while his peers partied, he was about to head right back into the grind. The weight of expectation had started to wrap thin tendrils around him, to tug at his limbs, his skin. Tendrils he thought he could break free of, but the more he pulled against them, the further into the morass he sank.

  So really, he would have loved anywhere that wasn’t school, or home. Anywhere he felt free. But...he really did love Amsterdam. He loved the history, so rich and old that it made the roots of Boston feel shallow. He loved the beaches and the confidence that the European women wore like a second skin.

  He loved the culture, the clubs. And tonight, their last night there, he loved the throb of the dance music in his veins, the rumble of the bass beneath his feet. He loved the icy chill of the beer in his hand and the writhing mass of bodies on the dance floor. He wasn’t much of a dancer himself, but he could watch the movement all night. The people. The connections—friends and love and, best of all, lust. People coming together for a moment or an hour or a night.

  “You like to watch?”

  The voice was husky, pitched lower than the din of the club. He looked down—he and Frank always had to look down, because they were each six feet four inches tall—and found himself on the receiving end of an assessing gaze from a pair of bright blue eyes. Those captivating eyes were set in a fairy-tale princess face, though he had the instant certainty that she wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.

  Caught by the question and the intensity of those eyes, he took a moment to reply, a single impression working its way through his brain to his mouth. “Is that a Boston accent I hear?”

  “Ten points for the pretty boy.” She grinned up at him, a saucy curve of full lips painted bright pink, and his eyes tracked the movement. “You expected something else? You sound surprised.”

  He had been, in fact, and by more than the surprise of finding someone from his faraway hometown here in Amsterdam. Though her face was delicate and feminine enough to have fit in among the pedigreed women he’d left back home in Boston, it was surrounded by long, wild black curls A silver ring pierced her right eyebrow, and thick black eyeliner accentuated that deep blue of her gaze. In short, she looked wild. Untamed. Like she’d sprung from the earth right here in Amsterdam, a magical creature wrought from his wildest dreams.

  Looking down into fierce eyes, he felt something stirring inside him. Some kind of primal need awakened, unspooling from a tight knot in his gut, answering her call.

  “You’re staring,” She waved an arm in the air and leaned on the bar to catch the attention of the bartender, who came running the second he caught a glimpse of her lush cleavage. This gave Fred a moment to admire the tattoos that decorated her arms, which were bare, revealed by a simple white tank top. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you that’s rude?”

  He’d never really liked tattoos before. No, that wasn’t entirely true—he’d never given them much thought, especially not as applied to women. He was pretty sure he didn’t know any women who had one.

  “Is it rude if I’m admiring you?” He wasn’t sure where the words came from. He did well enough with women, but his brother was the player—a player he’d forgotten was standing right at his elbow.

  “Smooth, Fred.” Frank grinned at him. Fred scowled as his brother stepped forward, drawing the attention of the ethereal creature in front of them. “Hi, I’m Frank. If you’re interested in the looks without the corny lines, I’m your man.”

  This wasn’t a new scene—Frank had been cockblocking him since they’d both hit puberty—but this time Fred felt irritation flickering little fingers into his veins. He was the easygoing twin, and usually he just shrugged it off when his brother swiped a woman out from under his nose. There were plenty of fish in the sea, after all, and he attracted plenty of his own.

  This woman, though? He was intrigued. He’d punch his own twin in the face before he let her go with Frank.

  The woman had looked from Fred to Frank, her lips curving with amusement.

  “Nice to meet you, Frank.” The woman smiled up at his twin, that sexy voice curving like smoke around her words. Fred puffed his chest out, about to tell his brother to beat it, but he quickly discovered that there was no need. “Wanna go away now and let me hit on your brother?”

  Both twins choked out a startled laugh. Frank looked at Fred, and Fred had a tense moment in which he wondered if his twin was going to push his point. Instead, Frank shrugged before wandering off into the dancing throng of people.

  “Are you always so...” He trailed off as he searched for the correct word. She grinned, the smile like lightning in a dark sky.

  “Forward? Abrupt? Rude?” She accepted one of the shot glasses the bartender handed her. As she wrapped her fingers around the small glass, Fred noticed that she had a delicate black rose tattooed on the top of each of her four fingers, excluding her thumb.

  “Assertive,” he countered. He had a sudden vision of that hand, those roses, wrapped around his cock. Heat licked up his spine when she handed him a matching shot glass.

  “Generally, yes.” She studied the golden liquid in the shot glasses for a moment before shooting him a challenging glance. “Does that offend your delicate sensibilities? Are you one of those men who needs to be in charge?”

  He thought about this for a moment. Thought about the men he knew back home. This woman’s overt confidence would rub them all the wrong way, he knew that without a doubt. Probably because they didn’t have much of their own. They were used to women with good family names, women who’d been raised to support the men in their lives. Women who didn’t challenge.

  He’d never been overly interested in those women, at least not for longer than one night. Now, as if she’d just appeared, was a woman he found fascinating, and he wasn’t interested in anything except being honest.

  “I like being in charge.” He tapped his shot glass against hers. “I like it even more when a woman knows exactly what she wants.”

  He watched as something sparked in her eyes, a deep blue glitter. He couldn’t hear her sharp inhalation of breath, not over
the thundering music, but he saw it. Watched the swells of her high, tight breasts press against the thin fabric of her top.

  She wasn’t wearing a bra. Through the translucent fabric, he could make out the dusky circles of her areolas, the tight pucker of her nipples, which were hard—hard for him?

  He could also see that some kind of jewelry adorned each of those taut buds. He’d never seen anything like it, not in real life, and he felt a sharp, physical ache with the need to touch.

  Silently, they each tossed back their shots. Fred’s eyes tracked the delicate lines of the woman’s throat as she swallowed, then the path of her tongue as she swiped it over her lips to catch the last drop.

  “What’s your name?” He caught the shot glass from her hands, set it and his aside, using the gesture as an excuse to brush his fingers over hers. He tangled his own large hand in her small one, tugging her closer to him, close enough that the tips of those adorned breasts brushed against his wide chest. He felt fire in the wake of the touch.

  “Why?” She rubbed her thumb over his knuckles, looking up at him from beneath long, tangled lashes.

  “What do you mean, why?” He frowned. “You know mine.”

  “Yes.” She nodded to punctuate her point. “But what does knowing your name is Fred tell me? Does it tell me what your favorite color is? Does it tell me how your skin smells? Does it tell me what you’ll do when I touch you?”

  With her free hand, she traced a finger down the center of his chest, awakening nerve endings as she went. He caught it just before she reached his belt, holding it in place.

  “Right now, my favorite color is pink. This pink, right here.” He lifted his other hand to cup her face, traced his thumb over those pillowy lips. “I’d love to find out what other shades of pink you have.”

  He felt her exhalation, the damp heat fanning out over his thumb as she spoke. “Pretty words, Boston boy.”