No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance

by Sonora Seldon

  Steam fogged the glass of the shower stall, soapy water poured down over my breasts and stomach and thighs, and need like I’d never felt before filled me as he stroked my clit. Moving further, deeper, he slid a single finger inside me and then two, rough and probing. I rocked my hips, pressing against his hand, needing more.

  I needed all of him, all at once. I slid my hand behind me, between us, reaching for his cock, needing his strength. I wanted to feel that power straining beneath my fingers, surging at my touch, hungry for me.

  I wanted him as if it was our first time, my first time, the only time.

  He slid around me, not letting me take him in my hands – and then my back was pressed to the tiled wall and he was in front of me, palming my breasts, squeezing and stroking, rubbing my nipples until I moaned, and then he bit my shoulder and plunged into me.

  We were one person, one straining, gasping life. He took me hard, thrusting deep into my core again and again, pounding me against the tiles as I clawed at his back. Every rock of his hips brought me higher, brought my release closer, like a surging tide, until I came against him with a shuddering howl and he groaned, spending his need inside me.

  Somewhere after, we sank down until we wound up bundled together on the porcelain floor of the shower, sitting on our asses as the water sheeted over us and swirled away down the drain. My elbow knocked over a bottle of some exclusive salon shampoo that promised to do impossible things for my hair, Dave’s knee nudged me high in the ribs, and we sat cradled in each other’s arms.

  He whispered into my ear as I strained to hear him over the hissing symphony of the water. “I want you like this and every other way, every day, for as long as you can stand the sight of me. Are you okay with that? You know, okay with being together until we’re both wrinkled and toothless wretches, shadows of our former selves? Huh, please? You know you want to, right? Ninety-year-old me and almost-ninety-you going at it like a pair of arthritic wombats, what do you say?”

  “Thanks for the weird mental image, you disgusting wombat – besides, once you slow down even one bit, I’m ditching your sorry ass for Hollywood’s hottest hunk of the moment, whoever he is, and I’ll never look back. So you know what that means, right?”

  “I’m doomed to end my days in a quivering ball of remorse and pain while you and your grey-haired awesomeness rock some hot young guy’s world six ways from Sunday?”

  “It means we need to break that Texas-sized bed in the next room while I’m still willing to give you the time of day, smart guy.”

  We didn’t quite fracture our hotel’s largest and most luxurious bed into a pile of expensive and tasteful splinters, but it was a close call – and we without a doubt did ruin the silk sheets and the down comforter, because we skipped the little detail of drying off before Dave chased me out of the bathroom by tickling my ribs up and down as if they were piano keys, while I howled for mercy and cursed his name.

  Word of advice, by the way – if you ever find yourself hiding under a comforter in the master bedroom of the finest penthouse suite in a London hotel that considers itself to be slumming by admitting that paying customers even exist, be advised that the dripping wet blond sex god you’re hiding from will find you. He will find you, and he will torture you with tickling so maddening and arousing that it should be prohibited by the Geneva Convention. He will also spread your legs wide and plunge deep inside you, taking you and making you his, until every part of you hurts in the sweetest way possible and you beg for more. And when you collapse into his arms afterward, sweating and shaking and content beyond words, your eyes drifting shut as you nestle against him …

  … that’s when your stomach growls.

  Yes, while we were cavorting like sex-crazed, mad-with-love wombats, we sort of forgot the whole ‘dinner’ part of our plan for the night, and how eating is necessary in order to keep your strength up for the passionate interlocking of various naughty body parts.

  My stomach did not forget. Neither did his, because his belly made with a restless burbling noise just as he was laughing at my body for interrupting our tender post-wombat-sex moment with a demand for more calories.

  We laughed, weak and goofy and too exhausted to even think about getting up right away. Dave rolled over onto his back, his midsection issued an additional gurgling bulletin, and he talked to the ceiling as I curled up against him.

  “We could order from room service.”

  “That would make sense. Last night’s room service was great, even though we didn’t quite finish the Cornish lobster because you distracted me with this.” I reached for his cock, stroked it up and down, and despite having already gone above and beyond the call of duty, it tried gamely to rise to the occasion yet again.

  “Mmm, but I couldn’t help it because you sidetracked me with this.” He rolled toward me and sucked one nipple into his mouth, nibbling and working at the tender nub.

  “Also this.” He moved to my other breast, sucked that nipple deep into his mouth as I quivered beneath him, and our stomachs sang a song together because that was not the kind of meal they wanted, the bastards.

  Dave sat up and looked around the room. “Okay, food – but not room service, not tonight. I had to waste a perfectly good summer day sitting in one blank room after another, listening to people who made my skin crawl with every word that came out of their mouths. I want to go out, but not to a restaurant – I’ve had enough of four walls and assholes for today.”

  He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised. “I know you were on your feet checking out the sights today, but are you game for more walking? I think I want to get out in the air and get moving – and they have food trucks here, right? Are they open this late?”

  “Yes, they have food trucks and food stands and food everythings, and I have no idea how late they’re open, but I think it would be a swell idea to go find out.”

  So we did.

  Dave pulled on his best non-designer jeans, took ten minutes figuring out which geeky t-shirt he wanted to wear – “There Is No Spoon” was the winner – and topped off his look with dark glasses and a Chicago Cubs cap turned backward on his head, because he never did have issues with looking like an adorable moron. His hair ran wild because he couldn’t be bothered with taking a comb or a brush to it, he abandoned his phone, and he headed for the door at warp speed. I suited up in jeans and the billionaire version of a flannel shirt, made a last-minute grab for my phone – one of us had to be practical about staying in touch with the outside world, and I nominated me – and hurried after him.

  We walked, block after damp block, as a mist that wasn’t quite rain hung in the night air. Traffic lights flashed, and the wet streets shimmered red and green beneath them. Trees dripped, moisture beaded on the windows of passing cars, and the scents of wet earth, wetter grass, and oil-slicked wet asphalt filled every breath. A rumble from a distant corner of the sky said a fresh storm was coming, and I wished I’d been practical enough to grab a jacket or a coat on our way out for this endless march down every road and lane and street and byway London had to offer.

  My stomach grumbled, wanting me to get with the program and eat, but Dave held my hand and kept walking. We passed three different food carts that were bundling up for the night, two that were still open, and we soldiered on.

  “Dave?”

  He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me close as we stepped off a curb to cross a side street. “Talk to me, beautiful.”

  “We’re going to eat at some point, right? I’ll walk with you to the ends of the earth and back again, but some fuel would help me to keep going.”

  “Gotcha.”

  More damp, shining streets and a few random turns later, we found a food truck that was open for business and selling something the chalkboard propped against one tire identified as “Takeshta Pasties,” and that my nose identified as unknown but potentially delicious. We negotiated on the subject of how many of these things we wanted and with what toppings, I insisted on
what the British call ‘chips’ and us heathen Americans know as ‘fries,’ and Dave picked us out two bottles of something that might have been fruit juice – although that was a guess, since neither of us could read or even identify the language printed on the labels. Food Truck Guy swore up and down it was great stuff, though.

  Dave paid the man with a crumpled wad of paper that had a picture of the Queen on it, while I checked my phone when it buzzed in my pocket. I saw it was Einar “How Dare You Take Some Personal Time On My Dime” Dallstrom, so I ignored the call and concentrated on juggling a foil-wrapped handful of whatever it was we’d bought, while Dave took a chance on a swallow from his bottle of yellow ooze.

  We found a park bench that wasn’t too wet and sat down to what turned out to be a mouthwatering meal. Onions and peppers and meat that might have been beef but probably wasn’t drowned in a spicy sauce that was equal parts soy, barbecue, mystery, and amazing. Dave wolfed his down like a starving man, I raced him to the full-stomach finish line, and afterwards we traded burps and opinions on the identity of the delicious meat.

  “Boss, I think we just ate wombat.”

  “You’ve got wombat on the brain, it was clearly goat. Want a fry to chase it with?”

  I fed him one of my fries, he popped a spare chunk of sauce-dripping meat into my mouth, and my phone buzzed again.

  It was Daddy Dallstrom once more insisting on dominating our time, and what was his problem? Couldn’t he run the Evil Empire by himself for a while? We’re off the clock, Your Imperial Asshole Majesty.

  I heard a whimper and looked up from flipping off my phone to see we had a new friend.

  Somehow, a stray dog had found Dave. It came out of the night, all bones and desperation, its yellowish long coat tangled and filthy as it stood in front of him, begging with its huge brown eyes and every inch of its wiggling body.

  Dave didn’t hesitate, handing over the rest of my fries as the thin and rain-soaked mutt wagged its tail in a frantic blur. The poor thing inhaled the food as if it didn’t expect to see another meal for the rest of the year, so of course Dave dug out more Her Royal Majesty money and went back to the cart for another serving of awesome. He broke the mystery meat up into chunks, hand-fed them all to his new pal, and the two of them looked like the happiest pair of blonds in town.

  I watched them and remembered how attached Dave had gotten to that stray I’d found tied outside the Jayhawk Tavern all those months ago. I thought about when Kristen agreed the site of my dead bar could be turned into an animal shelter, and Dave had said to name it after “Carson.”

  His new worshipper licked Dave’s fingers clean and sat back expectantly, waiting for more. “Dave, you know we’ll never get rid of him now, right?”

  My big softie of a cook answered by talking the food truck guy out of a paper tray full of miscellaneous scraps because the truck was closing for the night. He came back, set it down in front of the dog, and pulled me to my feet. “There, that should keep him busy while we make our getaway.”

  We hustled away and I glanced back once. Our charity case looked at us beating a retreat and then looked down at the tray of scraps that must have seemed like the bounty of a lifetime. Tail quivering tentatively, the dog took sneak peeks in all directions as if suspecting it was being set up for something, and then its stomach made the decision. The dog chowed down, and we booked it on down the street.

  Dave glanced back more than once.

  We moved at a get-out-of-sight-before-he-finishes-it pace, hurrying past shuttered pubs and open night clubs and homeless wanderers with two legs instead of four. Dave looked back over his shoulder as we dodged past a crowd of people getting off a bus, he looked back again to check on his new friend as we jumped to one side to avoid getting drenched by a truck swerving through a curbside puddle, and when he almost got us run over by looking back at the dog instead of forward at the traffic while we were crossing to the next block, I decided to take action.

  I started with a brazen lie. “Look, another shop crammed to the rafters with disgusting toys for perverts!” Pointing at a totally innocent Korean grocery store across the street, I grabbed Dave by the elbow and steered him in that direction, not letting him stop until we were high and more or less dry under the awning outside the Busan Food Mart.

  Dave peered at the window display. “Does bok choy have sexual possibilities that I’ve never considered?”

  I ignored that, because I wasn’t letting him get started about all the kinky uses he could think of for innocent Korean vegetables. “Dave, let me guess – your buddy back there looked like Carson, right?”

  Dave’s head jerked around and he stared at me. He bit his lip, he looked away again, and then he took my hand and started us walking again, walking down the street and away from my question.

  Oh, I don’t think so.

  “And the dog back at the bar, the one that followed you around the kitchen all night before I sent him home with that rancher – he reminded you of Carson too, didn’t he?”

  Half a block later, Dave pulled out his wallet.

  We stepped around a pack of young guys in hoodies who were bulling down the sidewalk as if they owned it, and I breathed a silent prayer of thanks that they had no idea the man with the wallet in his hand was a billionaire. They hustled on past and out of our lives, I made a mental note to not skip out of the hotel without the bodyguards next time, and Dave never even noticed how close he came to maybe getting mugged.

  He took a picture out of his wallet and put it in my hands. “That’s Carson.”

  The photo was a creased and faded snapshot of another life. Dave couldn’t have been a day over thirteen or so, all knees and elbows and wearing a mile-wide smile. He stood with his arms wrapped around a Golden Retriever that was standing on its hind legs, propping its front paws on his chest, and slurping his face with wild, blurry enthusiasm.

  “Carson was older than me by two years. I grew up with him, he was like my furry older brother. He was supposed to be Kristen’s dog when Dad first got him, but Mom said the day I came home from the hospital, Carson latched onto me like I was the one he’d been waiting for, and he was my shadow for the rest of his life.”

  I looked down at the gangly teenage Dave in the picture. “Wow, you’re a stick figure in this shot – how long did it take you to grow into that body, anyway?”

  “Yeah, this was taken right when I was in the middle of The Growth Spurt From Hell – I shot up way taller almost overnight, my muscles and coordination went on vacation, I could manage to fall down just walking across a room, and it felt like some stranger had hijacked my body and wouldn’t give it back. I didn’t feel like I was really me again for at least another couple of years – but I guess so much else had changed by then, that … well, it was just weird.”

  My phone vibrated yet again in my pocket, and although Emperor Dallstrom had at least been decent enough to get his family a dog all those years ago, he was stomping all over a tender moment in the here and now – but when I checked, it was Kristen calling.

  I decided she’d understand later that I’d been nursing her baby brother through a memory and couldn’t answer the phone. “So why don’t you have a dog now? You could spoil him rotten and he’d be your partner in crime, he’d slobber all over your shoes and listen to you go on and on about the plans for the Death Star and –”

  “Carson stayed with me after Mom … after she died. He had all he could do to clamber up onto my bed, he was sixteen and pretty arthritic by then, but he slept next to me every night after it happened. He wouldn’t leave me, no matter what. I don’t know how, but he knew she wasn’t ever coming back and he wouldn’t leave me. He didn’t mean to ever leave me, I know that.”

  He didn’t need to say anything more, because dogs aren’t immortal. I handed the picture back to him, and for once I had the sense to keep my big flapping mouth shut.

  We walked, and the only sound was the city all around us.

  Horns squalled and a hu
ndred conversations drifted past in scattered words and sighs. It was maybe eleven or so at night – back home in Kansas, back when it was still my home, everything in our small town except my bar and the one and only gas station would have been closed. No one would have been on the streets in Eli Springs – but being an international capital and all, London was wide awake and alive at this hour. Rain drizzled down and lightning flickered through the clouds, but people ignored the weather and went about their business without a second thought. Music pounded out of open club doors, arguments shot back and forth between friends and enemies, it was chilly and dank but no one seemed to notice, and we walked through the crowded streets with our arms around each other.

  As we turned down another random street, my phone buzzed like an angry hornet yet again, and it was Kristen yet again. What was so urgent? Had Einar just sold us all to China?

  Before I could decide whether or not to answer the call, Dave decided for me by taking my phone and burying it in his own pocket.

  “Forget the phone, I’ve got an idea.”

  Uh-oh.

  On the far side of the street, another park stretched off into the darkness. Dave hustled us in that direction as if we were on an urgent mission, and we only almost got hit by a red Volkswagen whose driver figured that the crosswalk and the traffic lights were nothing more than mild suggestions that perhaps he shouldn’t kill us.

  We made the sidewalk still alive and in one piece. I caught my breath and thought about going over to one of the park benches and sitting down again because my tired legs said we’d done a lot of walking – but Dave hung onto me, twirled me around by one hand right there on the sidewalk, and after I stumbled to a confused and breathless halt, he smiled at me.

  Yeah, that smile. How could just a smile and those crazy green eyes that went on forever make me feel like nothing in this world was impossible? Whatever he had in mind, I was game.