No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance

by Sonora Seldon

  “That’s quite all right, Ms. Hamilton. It’s just my stunning wife and myself here tonight, celebrating the anniversary of the first night I ate sushi off her ripe and lovely naked body –”

  Great, another billionaire pervert – but wait, how did he know my name?

  “– and between our fond memories of that occasion and the entertainment provided by your devoted young David, the evening’s been quite stimulating.”

  Excuse me? “Sir, I don’t understand how –”

  Two sounds interrupted me at once – pounding at the front door, and the creaking of the ladies room door as it opened off to my right.

  Ashley Killane lumbered into view, heading for the corner table with her hands pressed to the small of her back – and dear lord, the poor woman was pregnant. Vastly pregnant, massively pregnant, the most pregnant woman in the history of females getting knocked up. I knew from the magazines she’d been a big girl before, but now all her other curves were outdone by her swollen belly, and was she going to pop out a whole litter right here and now?

  Her husband shot to his feet, hurrying to her side and guiding her to the table with one arm around her waist. “Take your time, my beautiful Ashley – are you sure you’re quite all right? Would you like me to carry you?”

  “I’m pregnant, Devon, not handicapped – and it’s sweet of you to offer, but you’d snap your spine if you tried to lift me and this army I’m carrying.”

  Ashley tugged her dress straight, shoved a stray strand of brown hair behind one ear, and looked my way as Killane eased her into her chair. “And before you ask, I’ve got twins in here and I’m due in another two months, but I feel like I might explode any second. Hey, is somebody going to get the door?”

  The glass door now shook in its frame beneath a hammering fist, and my heart leapt in my chest when I heard a frantic voice.

  “Cassie, I need to talk to you, I need to know you’re all right! If you could also manage to not hate me, that would be great, but I need to come in and make sure you’re okay, please!”

  Dave?

  Why was he here, when he wasn’t mine anymore?

  Ashley glanced at me and then at her husband. “Say, Red here is that Cassie Hamilton they’re talking about on TV, isn’t she?”

  “Indeed yes, and I believe that’s her loyal David at the door – Jimmy, let the boy in if you would, and we’ll hear all about what it’s like to be attacked by a mad Hungarian woman on live television. My, isn’t this exciting?”

  Attacked? What the –

  Time must have passed while I covered the distance from the corner table to the front door, but I didn’t notice; I just knew that one second I was jumping up from my chair and the next I was at the door to catch Dave as he half-fell into my arms.

  The left side of his face ran red with blood.

  “Dave, what happened? Are you all right? I mean, I can see you’re not all right, but Jesus, what –”

  How did he manage to smile through all that blood and craziness? “Let’s just say a certain somebody didn’t handle the truth very well. Hey, could I maybe sit down for a second?”

  Once I got him seated at the corner table, Dave sank back in his chair. Breathing heavily and soaked to the skin from running in the rain, with blood leaking from his face and dripping onto the tiled floor, the poor guy looked like six kinds of hell in a ruined suit.

  He looked like my Dave.

  I didn’t know how that could be, so I covered my confusion by getting him cleaned up. Everybody chipped in – Mr. Killane disappeared into the restaurant’s kitchen, chatted with somebody back there in what sounded like Japanese, and came back with ice, clean towels, and a first-aid kit. Ashley contributed some Pons wipes from her purse so I could scrub off what was left of Dave’s TV-perfect makeup, and Jimmy got busy being all massive and silent and mysterious as he stared out through the front door at the rain. Hey, somebody had to do it.

  Once I got the bleeding stopped and his face mopped up, I counted four deep parallel scratches across Dave’s face, running from the hairline right down to his jaw. He wouldn’t need stitches, not quite, but it was bad – the innermost scratch barely missed his left eye, the eye that was already swelling shut with a huge purple bruise.

  “Dave, who did this? Why?” I choked back a crybaby sniffle and added, “I’m sorry I kind of lost it and took off before whatever it was that happened, but I couldn’t deal with losing you and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to kill whoever it was so dead, and I –”

  And I didn’t finish that sentence because Dave grabbed me by the hair and pulled me in close for a kiss – a deep, surging kiss, hungry and possessive and arousing, and the world sort of went away.

  Thirty seconds or a year later, Dave pulled away just enough to rest his forehead against mine. “Boss, you did not lose me. You will never lose me. I am your Dave, now and tomorrow and always. Are we clear on that?”

  I gaped at him, stunned and weirded out and in love like a fool. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure of that like I’m sure of right and left and up and down. Do I need to convince you again?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  I grabbed him by a fistful of hair this time, and our second kiss was somehow hungrier and hotter and I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t care, and it might have turned into right-in-the-middle-of-a-sushi-restaurant sex if we’d been alone.

  I was reminded we weren’t alone when a certain preggers girl hooted and whistled.

  “Do it! More tongue!”

  “I must agree, my Ashley – more tongue is absolutely vital, and if our guests would like to utilize this table for a deeper exploration of the subject, might I suggest a variety of exotic positions?”

  Dave and I pulled apart enough to breathe, and then I scooted my chair up against his and leaned into him. He held me close to his side with one arm and it was all kind of embarrassing, but not really.

  I murmured against his drenched and expensive lapel. “Dave?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “What happened?”

  Before Dave could answer, Devon Killane picked up a remote control from the table, aiming it at a small TV screen mounted on the wall next to the takeout counter. “What marvelous timing – it appears Channel 7 is replaying the footage yet again, so let’s watch what happened, shall we?”

  He unmuted the sound and the voice of the anchorwoman on the screen blared to life.

  “For those of you just joining us, true love ran anything but smooth at the Wentworth Center tonight, when David Dallstrom, the heir apparent to Dallstrom Defense Systems and its new Director of Operations, rejected the announcement of his surprise engagement to Hungarian banking heiress Ilona Szörnyeteg – and suffered some spectacular consequences. Let’s take a look.”

  The footage began with a clip of the announcement itself, followed by a close-up of Ilona Whorebitch’s glacial face as she latched onto Dave’s arm – and then I saw what happened after I bolted.

  Somewhere, somehow, Dave had located another microphone to replace the one his dad had thrown away into the crowd. His face filled the screen, eyes blazing. Off-screen, someone yelled “kill the music, do it now!” as the cheering and clapping died away in confusion.

  Dave’s voice thundered in the silence.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you need to know the truth – this engagement was announced without my knowledge or consent, and my father should be ashamed of himself for trying to pull this bullshit on all of us.”

  The view cut to a different camera, as his would-be bride dropped her hand from his arm and backed away a few steps. Her mouth gaped open, she stared at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted three heads, and every line of her body froze still as she realized that from her bitch queen perspective, something had gone terribly wrong.

  “I apologize wholeheartedly to Miss Ilona Szörnyeteg, her father Gregor Szörnyeteg, and the entire Szörnyeteg family – they’re all fine people, and none of them did anything to deserve this kind
of public embarrassment. But although she’s a lovely young woman that any man would be lucky to have at his side, the fact is that I have never had any relationship with Ilona Szörnyeteg. I am not engaged to her, I never will be engaged to her, and for a very good reason – I already have a girlfriend, a woman who’s smart and strong and beautiful, and also way too good for me.”

  Dave’s never-was fiancée took one step back in his direction. She froze still again. Her arms hung straight and rigid at her sides and those grey eyes lit up with a deadly fire.

  “Her name is Cassie Hamilton, I love her with all my heart, and –”

  And that was when the Hungarian Ice Queen lost it.

  “You shame me, you SHAME MY FAMILY!”

  With every bit of will in her skinny stick of a body, the woman launched herself at Dave and he barely had time to glance in her direction before her bony little fist slammed into his eye.

  I reached up to the ice pack Dave held against his swollen left eye. I lifted it just a bit, he hissed with pain, and if anything, his ripening black eye looked even more raw and awful than it had a few minutes ago.

  It looked like an angry heavyweight prize fighter had popped him one.

  “Holy shit, Dave, she did this? She can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet!”

  My poor battered guy clamped the ice pack back against his eye. “Yeah, it turns out that woman’s a lot stronger than she looks. Jesus, this hurts –”

  More yelling echoed from the TV’s speakers. I looked up to see the Dave on the screen stepping back from his attacker but not making any move to defend himself.

  One hundred pounds of pure rage now stood right next to the microphone, and her every howling word rang out across the shocked and silent ballroom.

  “You can HAVE your filthy fat pig of a woman, stupid boy! Rut with her in the street where you both belong!”

  Men in suits rushed onto the stage – security staff, bodyguards maybe, I don’t know – but they weren’t quite in time. Just before they could haul her out of range, the angriest girl in Chicago took one more swing at Dave.

  He ducked, but she connected anyway. Shrieking in wordless incandescent fury, the woman sank her flawless pink razor-nails deep into Dave’s skin and raked them down his face.

  Arms still at his sides, he backed away, blinking and shaking his head as blood ran into his eye. The security guys or whoever they were dragged Ilona Szörnyeteg away, she ditched English and screamed a long angry torrent of words in her own language, and that was when the broadcast cut back to the anchorwoman.

  Over her shoulder, the screen displayed a not-too-awful cell phone picture of me, a shot that someone must have taken during our round of schmoozing. “We don’t know too much yet about the girlfriend David Dallstrom took such a beating for, only that she’s his personal assistant and a Kansas native who –”

  Devon Killane muted the sound again and raised an eyebrow as if he’d just observed a minor rules violation during a fencing match. “David, I do so admire your devotion to the lovely Ms. Hamilton – but my, that poor girl on the stage was ever so cross with you, wasn’t she? It so happens that Hungarian has seventeen different words for the human penis, and I believe she used every last one of them, there at the end – and not at all in a complimentary fashion, I might add.”

  Thanks, Captain Obvious.

  “Well, I don’t have any sympathy for that bitch.” Ashley shifted in her chair, winced, and added, “Hell, if I’d been there, I would have sent her perfect white teeth spraying to every point of the compass, and then maybe made her drink about a dozen bottles of pop and locked her out of the bathroom, and goddammit, I think I have to pee again.”

  Looking over at me, she added, “If you let Blondie there get you pregnant, be aware that you’ll be spending the next nine months of your life in the bathroom – the first four throwing up, and the last five peeing all damn day long.”

  Some contrary part of me had to ask. “So is it worth it?”

  You know what they say about pregnant women glowing? It’s so true.

  Ashley turned to her husband, smiling up at him as he leaned in close. She wrapped an arm around him, nestled her head against his broad chest, and breathed in her man’s warmth as he held her. He nuzzled her hair, she purred with contentment, and they were the only two people in the world.

  “It is so worth it, Red. Trust me.”

  And you know what Dave said.

  “Sweet, can we get busy with the pregnancy thing right now? I’m thinking there’s not enough room on the table, but –”

  I informed him that no Cassie Hamilton pregnancy was starting with spectators in the room – I’m an old-fashioned girl that way – and besides, I was on the pill, as he very well knew.

  “My mighty semen laughs at birth control! I will send out an army of millions upon millions of dedicated sperm soldiers, and they will sacrifice their tiny squiggling lives to the cause of advancing my DNA into the next generation! No obstacle will deter them! Not pills, not latex, not common decency – they will prevail, or my name is not Idiot Child!”

  “I don’t care if they’ve got itty bitty sperm light sabers in there and they’re doing it for the Force – nothing’s getting through my chemical barricade, or I’m suing Bayer right into bankruptcy.”

  “How about a trial run then? Just so you can quake in awe and aroused terror at the power of my sperm army’s transportation system? You’ll have to make a personal inspection of their facilities, of course, and test out lots of different configurations –”

  “Do we have to discuss this in front of –”

  “Sure, why not? Besides, I seem to remember a certain smoldering sex goddess promising, in these exact words, to fuck me ‘blind, lame, and senseless’ tonight, and I know my gorgeous and truthful Cassie would never, ever lie to me –”

  Ashley smiled like the all-time most wicked pregnant girl ever. “Ooh, you two are so going to do it like howling chimpanzees all night long, and could you at least take some pictures? Huh, please?”

  Devon Killane rose to his feet. “Then it seems the least we can do for the cause of love and sperm armies is to give these two a ride home, so that they will have sufficient strength left to take pictures from every possible angle. That is, my Ashley, if you’re ready to leave?”

  She was, we did, and Dave held me close as we rode home to a penthouse apartment full of beds waiting to be broken.

  18

  Moments after the Killanes dropped us off at Dave’s building – and after Ashley stuck her head out of one of the limousine’s windows to holler, “At least two hours of footage on Youtube in the morning or it didn’t happen!” – Dave and I soared skyward in his apartment’s private elevator.

  He leaned against the wall of the elevator, holding the melting ice pack to his face as I turned my phone on long enough to find seventeen missed calls from Kristen. I shot her a quick text – D bloody but ok, u r the best, must go have lots of sex now, will call in a.m. – and shut the phone back off again, because I figured Dad Dallstrom and his need to control all earthly life would track us by the thing if I left it on.

  Up top, Dave stayed by the elevator only long enough to punch a code into its control panel. “There, that locks this baby out, so it won’t respond to commands from anywhere but here – so if the Emperor and his goons want to come get us, they’ll have to walk up eighty flights of stairs to do it, and I don’t think even Dad is that crazy.”

  Once the penthouse’s front door was locked behind us, we walked through the foyer and into the living room, and you know something?

  I had plans for when we entered that apartment.

  I’d sit Dave down and check the status of his black eye and his savaged face. Then I’d leave him to change out of his drenched suit and rest up for a bit, while I stripped off my equally soaked clothes and took a quick shower. We’d maybe eat a little something, we’d stretch out on the couch to watch a movie and cuddle, and then …


  Dave had other plans.

  One minute I was steering him toward a chair and deciding he needed a fresh ice pack, and the next minute I was trapped between his body and the wall.

  His voice was a low rumble, his breath tickling and warm against my ear.

  “We need this now, right now. No more waiting.”

  Dave leaned into me, pinning me in place with the weight of his body. He took my face in both of his hands and he kissed me.

  His mouth was pure hunger.

  Hot and demanding, his lips melded to mine. His tongue probed wet and deep, he threaded his fingers through the damp mess of my hair and held tight, and I twisted beneath him, helpless to get away and not wanting to go anywhere. He sucked on the tender curve of my lower lip, warmth ached in my breasts, and why did we still have all these clothes on?

  He moved lower, murmuring against my skin as he trailed wet kisses across my face and down my neck. His hands and those long, warm fingers pulled free of my hair and released my face and drifted down and down, exploring, tracing the curves of my trembling body beneath my wet blouse and clinging skirt.

  I pushed into his hands, wanting him to hold my breasts, cup and knead them – but his palms brushed over the sides of my breasts instead, barely touching before sliding past them and down.

  I wanted him more than air, and I wanted to kill him.

  “Dave, please, I need you to touch me, really touch me …”

  After a gentle nip to my neck, he pressed his mouth to my ear again.

  “Then we need to get you out of these clothes, don’t we?”

  My voice shook and I didn’t care. “You too, cook.”

  I grabbed at his suit jacket and tore it off him, he had me out of my skirt before I knew it had happened, and we left a trail of clothing down the hall.

  By the time we made it into his bedroom and he kicked the door shut behind us, he was out of everything but his boxers – his Spongebob Squarepants boxers, because he was Dave, after all.