No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance

by Sonora Seldon

  He inspected factories, he discussed new production schedules for overseas facilities, and not every company official was happy to see him come through the door – you could see some of them dreaded being saddled with Celebrity Dave while they were trying to do their jobs – but by the time he left, they all knew there was a sharp mind behind the public smile, not to mention someone with light-years more reason and heart than his father.

  Poor Einar was not popular in any corner of his empire, no matter how much money he earned for everybody – not that I was shedding any tears for the grouchy old bastard, but still.

  Dave talked to company employees from division presidents and senior research scientists right down to janitors and receptionists, and he gave them all an equal hearing. He met with union representatives and with the officials of more governments than I thought there were countries.

  Most of the time, I was at his side for these meetings and tours and talks and negotiations – sometimes, I wasn’t.

  Sometimes, his schedule listed a meeting with a minor government official or an obscure company employee with an opaque job title, or a private individual who seemed to have not much to do with anything in particular. Names were never mentioned for these people, but I was always sent off on some errand or other while Dave met with them. He wouldn’t meet my eyes when he asked me to go get this or check on that, but relief was written all over his face when I returned.

  When I returned, Nameless Somebody was always gone.

  I didn’t waste too much time worrying about those meetings. Maybe company secrets were being discussed and the other person was uneasy about me hearing them, or maybe Dave really did need an iced mocha latte right that minute – whatever, I wasn’t going to lose sleep over it when we had to hit a dozen more places that day, and more the next day, and still more the day after that.

  Some days were different. Some of the days and most of the nights were ours.

  On those scattered days and nights, there was no worldwide corporate empire. No business dealings, no cameras, no meetings or announcements or celebrity groupies or hurried trips to airports – in those rare moments and hours, it was just me and Dave, together.

  We made love in the night until our bones ached and we fell asleep in a tangle of arms and legs. I couldn’t get enough of his hands, his mouth, the power of him driving between my legs as I came, and never enough of cradling his head against my heart afterward, as he talked about his day, or his dreams, or nothing at all. We explored each other with the lazy tenderness of two people who are sure they have all the time in the world.

  Dave never stopped being Dave, of course. He just didn’t have it in him to be normal, not every day.

  I dared him to wear one of those red-and-white-striped Dr. Seuss hats to a board meeting, and he did. The thing was two feet tall and it swayed from side to side as he looked this way and that, droning on and on about earnings projections and market capitalization options and being all earnest and serious and responsible. The suits around the table shot nervous glances at each other but never said a word about his choice of headwear; they did look to me for help, I could see the pleading in their eyes – but I was too busy wearing my crocheted Flying Spaghetti Monster hat and taking notes like a good personal assistant to worry about their lack of fashion sense.

  Dave counted my freckles one morning and claimed I had 517 of the things lurking on my body. In the stands at a Cubs game that afternoon, he announced out of nowhere that the freckles were demanding a recount, and he somehow found a few dozen more right in all the most ticklish spots on my neck and ribs – I squealed, he kept counting as I squirmed and squealed some more, beer was spilled and hot dogs were thrown, and a security guard sort of asked us to leave.

  I kept finding his Star Wars action figures in my lingerie drawer. There’s nothing quite so odd as coming upon two tiny plastic versions of C-3PO standing in the lacy cups of your favorite bra, on either side of a yellow Post-It note proclaiming We are fluent in over six million forms of breast massage! – unless maybe it’s running a tub full of steaming hot water in your Denver hotel suite on another crazy day, running down the hall to answer your phone, and coming back a few minutes later to find three dozen Chewbaccas standing shoulder to shoulder around the rim of the tub and staring at you.

  Yes, members of Dave’s rebel army traveled with us. They had their own suitcase.

  One memorable Chicago morning, I woke up when a cascade of paper spilled all over me, accompanied by a shower of thumbtacks and a rain of tape. I lurched upright, yelping and cursing as Dave dug me out from beneath the blueprints that had fallen off the wall above the bed.

  After spitting a scrap of tape out of my mouth and throwing all the tacks I could reach at him, I said it was past time he told me what the deal was with these blueprints. They already commanded almost every square inch of wall space in his bedroom, they’d recently started edging out into the hallway as if they were planning a sneak attack on the kitchen, and how much confidence was I supposed to have in the skills of an architectural engineer who couldn’t even get paper to stay on a wall?

  He dumped an armload of the attacking blueprints onto an end table, he brushed a few tacks off them and onto the floor, and then he stepped on one of the tacks and howled. I grumbled my way out of bed and rescued the moron, and I’m not quite sure how we got from a blueprints-and-tacks rescue operation to kissing while we sat there on the floor, but we did.

  “Soon.”

  He said that one word when we came up for air, after sitting on the hardwood floor and kissing in a ball of knees and elbows and hormones and enthusiasm. His back to the wall, he then wrapped both legs around me, hugged me up against him, and propped his chin on top of my head.

  “I’ll tell you soon. That crazy explosion of paper is the roadmap to my dream, and I’ll tell you where it leads when the time and the place and everything else is right. Trust me?”

  “Always, you idiot. By the way, I’m pretty sure there’s a tack under my ass.”

  He went exploring for the tack, found some interesting territory down there, and breakfast ended up being lunch.

  A week after the Attack of the Blueprints, Kristen met me at Vincenzo’s boutique, while Dave endured the torture of a meeting across town with Our Imperial Lord and Master Einar Dallstrom. In between final fittings of the dozen or so gowns I seemed to need for some insane reason, I told Kristen that our fame level must be dialing back to ‘mildly interesting old news,’ since Dave and I were no longer recognized and mobbed in every last place we went.

  And that was fine by me, but Kristen was not convinced.

  “You’re still huge in South Korea, did you know that?”

  She held her iPad out to me as we lounged around on a white leather couch in the lobby of Vincenzo’s too-exclusive-to-be-stained-by-the-presence-of-mere-customers establishment. She swiped to a screen showing a pack of middle-schoolish girls giggling for the camera, and what the hell had they done to their hair?

  “See? The latest craze in Seoul is ‘the Cassie look’ – getting your hair dyed flaming red and curled into a frizzy explosion. Adorable, isn’t it?”

  I stared at her, I stared at the iPad, and I stared into a nearby standing mirror. “Women want their hair to do this?”

  Precise tapping steps echoed across the marble floor. “Of course women want to be enclosed in shimmering clouds of fire, it is a thing as natural as the desire to be loved and to love in return. Your hair is the sun, and women everywhere revolve around it like the planets, drawn to its untamed passion in the same way they are drawn into their lover’s arms. Truly, I should not need to point this out, it is as obvious a thing as the stars strung across the wine-dark sky over Tuscany.”

  Hi, Vincenzo.

  The temperamental and three-quarters crazy master of all things fashion swept to a halt in front of us. His nails were lacquered in metallic green and lavender this time around, his carefully foppish suit was ivory silk with silver pinstrip
es, and as always, he was a towering toothpick of a man on a vital mission – drown Cassie Hamilton in as much over-the-top style as possible.

  “And as the water lily opens to the morning light, so the gown of jasmine-scented satin and Andorran brocade is now ready to become one with you, Miss Cassandra – the final adjustments to the bodice have been made, the seed pearls applied once again because they were not too perfect for words the first time, and you will now come with me to the fitting room where it awaits your beauty.”

  He was sweet, he just had a straitjacket sort of way of showing it.

  And he was beyond good at his job – once I was in this latest dress and then looked into one of the fitting room mirrors, a second of shock and maybe two more seconds of no-way-seriously passed before I accepted that the reflection draped in teal silk and aquamarine lace and acres of shimmering azure satin was me.

  My bare shoulders and almost-but-not-quite-too-much cleavage glowed pale against dozens of shifting blues and almost-greens, more shades of blue than I ever knew existed. Turquoise and cerulean cascaded over my curves, embracing them, flowing over them like water, and have you ever worn something that amped up your strong points and erased your faults, and made you feel more special than should have been possible?

  That dress did it for me.

  I turned in place and saw the same impossible girl in every other mirror in the room. I did have my doubts about the train of ruffles spilling onto the floor behind me – how was I supposed to keep my too-high heels from catching in all that fabric? – but I decided ruffles and heels and doubts didn’t have a chance against this version of me, and I also made the command decision that Kristen had to see this dress right now.

  A piercing wolf whistle shattered the air as I stepped – carefully – into the lobby, and guess who was back from his meeting?

  “That’s my BOSS, people! Hot as the surface of the sun and ready to whip me into submission!”

  Dave clambered onto a couch across from Kristen, because being a pervert with his feet firmly on the floor wasn’t enough. Standing on the leather cushions, he clasped his hands together over his heart, closed his eyes, and then threw both arms back and shouted at the ceiling.

  “Command me, for I am your slave! I beg you, rule me with your whips and chains! Force me to serve you with every inch of my body! EVERY inch!”

  I kicked off my high heels, picked one of them up, and hurled it in his general direction – although my aim was awful, because it’s hard to throw with any accuracy when you’re laughing hard enough to almost split a seam in your impossibly blue and perfect dress.

  “I command you to sit down, you disgusting freak, or you’ll go to bed tonight alone and unwhipped!”

  Kristen fell apart in a giggling heap. “Jesus, Davey, what does a girl like Cassie see in you? Does she have a thing for morons or what?”

  She leaned forward over her knees and shook with a fresh fit of laughter, while Dave jumped down from the couch, hurried to my side, and slipped an arm around my waist.

  “I’ll have you know this woman worships my mighty light saber! She goes to her knees in awe at the mere sight of my –”

  I shut him up with a kiss.

  Once we were sitting on the couches like more or less normal people, Kristen nodded her approval of history’s sexiest blue gown. “I told you Vincenzo is the high priest of fashion, didn’t I? Admit it – this IS the perfect blue dress of all time, right?”

  Dave kissed my cheek and then whispered into my ear. “You’re perfect.”

  I nestled into Dave’s shoulder and noticed that the silk tie I’d fastened in a crisp Windsor knot a few hours before now hung crooked and loose. The gold tie clip bearing the Dallstrom Defense Systems logo was missing. His Anderson & Sheppard suit jacket was rumpled and unbuttoned, and his hair was running wild.

  “Rough meeting?”

  He took my hand in his. “When Dad’s in the room, it’s always a rough meeting.”

  Kristen looked up from her iPad. “Let me guess – he’s insisting on the Middle East trip Monday? Right after London this weekend, and before Beijing?”

  Dave sighed, sinking back against the couch and putting his other hand over his face. “That’s the plan. Yet another publicity parade to show me off as ‘the future of this company’ and all that crap – along with plenty of private meetings in dark corners and shadowy places along the way, where the press can’t see and where I get to tell his international network of assholes to toe the line that I have no say in making, oh joy.”

  I sat up, reached over, and lifted his left hand from his face. “Dave?”

  His trademark smile was weary but game. “Yes, my mistress?”

  “One, stop whining. Two, everyone in this room knows that Einar Dallstrom is way too mean to die for at least another thousand years, so the future where you have to step up and actually do something other than travel the world and smile is a long way off. So suck it up, play nice with the reporters and the photographers and the secret dark network of assholes, and maybe I’ll let you take me whip shopping in London this weekend. Deal?”

  Kristen groaned, while my Dave grinned from ear to ear and a mile wide. “Your every secret naughty wish is my command, boss.”

  The future wasn’t a thousand years away, as it turned out.

  The future crashed down on us in less than forty-eight hours.

  20

  I had to open my mouth about the whips.

  I should have known better.

  I should have known that Dave would hold me to it and that he’d take me straight from our London hotel to a store full of whips, chains, cuffs, g-spot stimulators, and other ungodly kinky playtoys. I also should have known that billionaires don’t fulfill their sex toy shopping needs in the normal sleazy kind of adult store, the kind with racks of dusty porn DVDs, pegboard displays of mass-produced fluorescent green dildos from China, and dark linoleum-floored corners full of lurking perverts.

  Nope, on my first jet-lagged day in town, I stood on a gleaming hardwood floor, surrounded by glass and mahogany display cases as I looked down at a gold-plated vibrator with a price tag of …no, I had to be seeing things, or misunderstanding the math.

  “Ma’am, may I ask a question about this … um, this item?”

  The saleswoman who’d been hovering at a discreet distance walked over to stand at my right elbow. “I’d be pleased to help you in any way that I can. What would you like to know?”

  “Well, not to be crass or anything, but is the price really –”

  “Three thousand eight hundred pounds, yes. And if I may say so, this lovely piece is a triumph of Swiss craftsmanship and remarkable in every respect – would you like to take a closer look?”

  I’d like to have a heart attack now, please. “So in dollars that would come to …?”

  She beamed as if she simply adored doing math in her head for ignorant American girls suffering from sticker shock. “At today’s exchange rate, just under six thousand U.S. dollars.”

  Dave suddenly appeared over my left shoulder while I was busy hyperventilating. “Ooh, is that all? Bag that puppy up for the lady right away, she totally wants it.”

  “Dave, you can’t spend the equivalent of a decent used car on my clitoris.”

  “Too late, I already did. Besides, I consider providing your clitoris with a happy ending to be my highest mission in life, so there. Promise to send me video of you using your new best friend while I’m stuck in meetings all day tomorrow?”

  “For almost four thousand damn dollars, not only do I expect a happy ending from that thing, but it also better take me out to dinner, buy me a bottle of Dom Pérignon, paint my toenails, and do my taxes – besides, I had the crazy idea I’d spend tomorrow outside doing tourist things, not inside getting all up close and personal with the finest in perverted Swiss craftsmanship.”

  “I’m sure tourists use vibrators outside all the time, it’s probably a tradition or something, and they love traditions
here – and sweet, there are the whips! Come help me look at them, so I don’t get into trouble all by myself.”

  He latched onto my elbow and steered me over to a wall display of whips, and sure, he was just teasing me – but still, there he stood, beaming like an excited little kid checking out the new line of Lego sets, while I stood beside him and gawked up at the beautiful awfulness like an awestruck country mouse.

  I couldn’t look away. Whips of braided Italian leather, whips with one thin, stinging lash and whips with a dozen deadly strands, whips with intricate patterns of knots worked into each strip of leather and whips with handles of copper and gold – they hung side by side, row upon row, displayed like priceless museum pieces beneath the light of a blazing crystal chandelier.

  People used these things? On each other?

  It was all so compelling and wrong and …

  … and yes, while Dave wandered off to check out something shiny and disgusting in a distant corner, I did have them box up the one with an engraved sterling silver tip on the end of each lash. You know, not to use or anything, God no, I’m not a pervert – I just wanted to see the look on his face when I surprised him with it later.

  I swear.

  Dave suffered through his meetings with various unofficial somebodies the next day, while I went outside and got all touristy on London’s ass. That night, our plan was to unwind at an umpteen-star restaurant for the filthy rich before flying out to Dubai the next morning – but after hours of sweaty sightseeing, I felt the need to take a shower before dinner. Dave felt the need to join me because nobody else was available to scrub my back, and you won’t be surprised to hear that the plan felt the need to vanish in a puff of lust.

  I say it was my new vibrator’s fault for not having a ‘scrub her back’ setting.

  Dave slid in behind me before I knew he was there – one minute hot spray was needling into my face, and the next his hands were sliding over my breasts. He teased my nipples to aching hardness with his fingers, I squirmed and tried to turn around in his arms but he wouldn’t let me, and then he reached between my legs.