by Ashlee Price
This isn’t his first rodeo. I’m not the first woman, nor will I be the last, he approaches with an NDA in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other. I try not to contemplate why the notion hurts, because who wouldn’t be offended by the idea you’re very easily replaceable? But it’s that very replaceability that makes me feel lesser, somehow.
The women before me were undoubtedly beautifully toned, gorgeously tanned. They probably worked out for more hours than they slept, and ate lettuce leaves with vinegar to maintain their perfection.
I eat funnel cake and cannoli on a regular basis. Pasta is my staple, and carbs and saturated fats are no enemies of mine.
Perhaps he senses my hesitation, my discomfort, because he strides forward, and before I can do more than squeak, he lifts me up and perches me on the edge of his desk.
“I didn’t want to do this here,” he grits out as he traces a finger over my collarbone. The delicate touch makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand on edge. “I wanted to take you on a soft bed, in a beautiful bedroom, when you’re warm and comfortable, replete from a lovely dinner.” He scowls at me. “Why wouldn’t you let me do that?”
I blink at him. “I wanted you now.”
“You were making a statement,” he counters. “You wanted to bring this down to the stark reality of that contract, but that’s not how it’s going to work, Grazia. This isn’t black and white, so don’t make it so.”
He bends down, gently lapping at the sensitive spot where my throat meets my shoulder.
“Why shouldn’t I? You’re the one who brought the topic of a contract up! Not me.”
“Now that’s signed, forget about it,” he commands. “I have to protect myself, just as you do, and I’ll sign your NDA without a word of complaint, but I want us to be more than that. Don’t you?” he breathes, and the hot air washes over my skin, making me feel flushed with need and want.
“Yes, yes, I do,” I whisper, my voice horrendously close to a whimper.
He nods in approval, and as a reward, his hands come up to cup my breasts. He squeezes them gently, then sends his fingers to the front clasp which releases the support. He shucks off the bra straps, baring me to his hungry gaze. He studies my tits for a handful of seconds, then drops down, his mouth immediately curling about a pouting nipple.
A cry of need escapes me and my hands come up to rake through his soft hair. I grip his skull between ferocious fingertips, urging him against me, needing him closer. He laughs and the soft vibration does things to me, things that drive me insane. My head falls back and his lips suddenly move on, higher up to my throat where he suckles at the side of my neck before darting down once more to my other breast. His hands move to my hips, and he picks at the sides of my panties before urging them down, gathering the material together so he can maneuver them down my legs.
The instant I’m bare, he drops to his knees so his mouth is on the same level as my pussy. Before I can do more than moan, he attacks, his lips curling about my clit, his tongue fucking me, tasting me, collecting my juices and generally driving me insane.
I can’t help it; I fall back against the desk, uncaring that there are papers underneath me, pens sticking into my butt, and what feels like a stapler chilling my right shoulder with its cold metallic touch. Overhead, the cool light burns my eyes and I close them, shielding my gaze from the light, but also in a desperate attempt to properly process what Marshall is doing to me.
Dear God, he’s tasting me like he’s never eaten before, dammit.
His tongue fucks into me, slurping up my juices like I was a juicy orange and he was a man stuck in the Sahara with an empty water bottle. That flexible muscle flickers around, touching parts of me no other man has tasted, caressing tender flesh that wants to cringe at his careful probing because it’s so sensitive. My clit doesn’t go unrewarded either, if this delicious torture could be considered a reward. He slurps at the nub, tickling it with his tongue, but kissing it, sucking it between his lips and dragging it between them in a way that frots the button. My nails claw at his scalp, scraping over the delicate flesh. His moan reverberates over the tender skin he’s tending to and insanity seems to be approaching with every lap of his tongue, with every slurp—each empowered by that faint buzz when he moans his own pleasure.
I spread my legs wider, then curve them about his shoulders. Digging my heels into them, I let my head rock forward as pleasure beyond anything I’ve ever known floods me. It’s almost painful. My body is so tense from the need to reject such delicious ecstasy that when it comes, the muscles in my face ache from scowling so hard with the need to process my climax.
I roar. There’s no pretty way of phrasing it. It escapes me, unbidden, not giving me a chance to withhold it, to stop it from echoing around the minimalistically-decorated office space. Everything I am, everything I was and will be seems to freeze at that moment, as questions reverberate around my head as loudly as my hoarse cries of pleasure flicker around the room.
Had I ever come before?
If that was an orgasm, the pathetic bubbles of pleasure given by cocksure men who looked at me afterward as though they’d given me the stars and the moon, well, surely they weren’t climaxes. They can’t have been. Because that—that was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, beyond anything I’ve ever known anyone discuss.
That was what romance novels are written about.
And it was with a man whose initial intention was to make me his mistress.
I’m not sure whether that detracts from it or adds to it; all I know is that my brain is scrambled. How do I know that? Because suddenly that anaconda of his is nestling between my pussy lips, trying to hit home, and I’m not running screaming from the room.
The only thing that spoiled that earthquake of an orgasm was the emptiness of my clutching sex. And boy, there’s no way I can feel empty with that mammoth dick trying to burrow into my tight channel.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he croons, his cock head nudging over my clit and back down to my gate. I can hear the slippery slide of his path and know I’m so wet I should be embarrassed. He presses me down to the desk and sets himself atop me. He nuzzles his nose against my cheek, his forehead against my temple as he keeps on crooning. “I’ll fit, baby, I’ll fit. I promise. You’ll love it.”
Those soft whispers are so filled with tenderness that my shocked heart embraces each word. Even as he tries to forge a path inside me, I press my stomach muscles down, clenching them tightly so as not to tense up down below.
Each inch is hard won, and it doesn’t help that the last time I had sex was at least eighteen months ago. I’m small anyway, but lack of use isn’t aiding my case here.
Whimpers escape me, small sounds that I don’t realize I’m uttering. They’re involuntary, scared mewls as he tries to fill me with that huge dick of his. When the first few inches are in, both of us are panting. His forehead has sweat beading on it, and I know mine does too. It surprises me that those small touches of his, the nuzzles and caresses of his lips against my cheek and jaw, his nose rubbing against mine, each of them help me relax a little, help him forge his way deeper inside me.
When he hits a particularly tight spot, a cry of pain escapes me, and I arch my hips, rocking them up in an attempt to relieve my discomfort. The move, however, shuffles something around, and suddenly, he slides in deeper and with an ease that has my eyes crossing because tender tissues, heretofore untouched, are now being caressed. Each gentle thrust has my nerves tingling, and behind my closed eyelids, there’s a firework display going on as those same nerves seem to sizzle and snap with the intensity of what’s happening in my body.
“Look at us, Grazia,” he whispers. “Look down.”
Blearily, I do as bid, realizing he’s pulled away from me a little so I can look between our bodies. When I see the fat root of his shaft burrowed between my legs, a cry escapes. He did it. I did it. That huge thing is inside me. I have no idea why I’m proud, I just know that I am. And God, l
ooking at us, connected in that way, makes me want to scream.
“I need you,” I tell him in return. “Move, take me,” I carry on, finally letting my head fall back, unable to look at us together anymore.
This shouldn’t feel as intimate as it is. He wanted this to be a business transaction, for God’s sake! But I changed the status quo of this particular deal, and he wasn’t wrong when he said it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted anyone.
And I want Marshall. God, do I.
I tighten the muscles in my sex around his dick in silent entreaty, then groan when he reacts by carefully retreating from my pussy and then slowly returning. Each thrust is gentle, careful, and though I appreciate his care, I wish he could fuck me, claim every inch of me—but that’s for another day, another time, when I’m used to the anaconda and can easily take everything he has to give.
My heels rise up again, almost of their own accord, but this time, they dig into his butt. I don’t let him retreat too far from my cunt, wanting him inside me more than I want him out. Because of this, his thrusts are shallow and those untouched parts of me, the ones deep inside my pussy, get all the attention. Within minutes, I can feel myself juddering. Orgasm is near, and I know that it will be epic, more epic than the last one he gave me.
His pace quickens as his own climax approaches, and the rough panting breaths that gust over my cheek, dusting my face with his need, fill me with an urgency that has me clawing at his back, begging him to go faster. When he obeys, it takes two thrusts to make me explode. And as pleasure rains down on me, as it swells nerve endings, flooding them and drowning me in the ecstasy of the moment, I feel him come.
Even though every part of me feels like it’s soaring overhead, a single sliver of me is cognizant of something I should have noticed when I looked down at our joined sexes—he didn’t wear a condom. And he has just come inside me.
While I process that and the wondrous sensations overflowing every part of me, I hear him whisper in my ear, “Mine.”
The arrogance of the man knows no bounds.
What else could be expected of a self-made man who has billions in his bank account and all before the age of thirty-five? Still… His. The nerve.
I want to scream at myself, rail at my stupidity. Why did I sign the damn agreement? Why didn’t I stalk out? Storm off? Why did I let him come in me? Goddammit!
All I’ll say is that he had me unbalanced from the beginning. It’s no excuse, no excuse at all, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense to me.
I’m not used to being unbalanced, and the instant he put me on edge, I was a goner.
The crazy thing is, I have no real regrets. He was right when he asked me to think about the last time I wanted someone. When I craved another’s touch, another’s kiss…
It seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe it is.
Trust has always been an issue for me, so on that level, I can understand Marshall’s need to guard himself, to protect his name and his brand for the future. Still, every feminine part of me chafes at the need to sign something that states I won’t utter a peep about the man I’m dating. And that’s what we’ll be doing.
I’ll be no man’s mistress.
I know I made that very clear to him.
My mother was a mistress. I’m the result of that adulterous affair, and my shame knows no bounds about that sordid secret.
To her, it was a way of life. Accepted among her community, respected even.
To this day, she sees no wrong in it. She was Gianni DeVecchio’s girlfriend… something that to her, is an honor.
Can you imagine? The woman thinks it was an honor to be the go-to slut of a mobster’s son. And I’m the granddaughter of that mobster. A heavy hitter, or so I’m told, in the Mafioso world.
I’ll never forgive her for bringing me into the world the way she did, and I wish to hell I was my half-brother or half-sister. They were born in wedlock, were the rightful children of my stepfather. Ted always treated me like I was one of his own, but I knew the difference. How could I not when all the kids at school would never let me forget I was DeVecchio’s spawn? When the priest looked at me with scorn, no matter how good I was, no matter how often I went to confession, or how much I helped out around the church…
I discarded my past the instant I left for college. I made a name for myself, a reputation that was tainted by no other. I made friends, sisters from my sorority house. And after, those same sisters helped me create a new life. My events business isn’t my vocation, it isn’t what feeds my soul, but it sure is what pays the bills and enables me to keep hands-on with my sewing and design business.
My reputation is sterling. My brand is untouchable. I’ve been hired by the city’s most prominent names. I did that, and that’s why I agreed to a relationship with Marshall. I agreed to sign away my rights, as long as he signed away his.
This will never be unequal. Whatever he asks of me, I’ll ask of him; otherwise, I’ll back the hell away.
To taste the forbidden fruit that is him, to know him, to touch and taste, I’ll sell my soul to the devil. But on my terms, and only as long as Marshall is along for the ride too. And when his head settles heavily on my breast, his sweat drying on my skin, I know we’re both damned…
To be continued…
DESIGNER FOR THE BILLIONAIRE
A Billionaire Romance Novel
(Contemporary Romance Novels)
Book 3
A CUT ABOVE
By: Ashlee Price
Description
Grazia Fabiola’s affair with Marshall Levitt was always going to be an unusual one, but their clashes over everyday life are nothing in comparison to their clashes in the bedroom.
Fire meets fire when the two come together, but it’s nothing to the inferno that overtakes Grazia’s life and destroys her world. When Marshall steps up to the plate, it’s up to Grazia to decide if she can let him help her.
Such a concession is hard for a woman as independent as Grazia, but trust is another matter entirely.
Does she trust Marshall enough to let him help?
And if she can’t, is that the end of yet another chapter in her life?
Chapter One – Marshall
“Not hungry?”
The question prods me from my thoughts, and as I stare down at the large plate of gnocchi alla sorrentina—my most favorite dish at Mama Leone’s in Brighton Beach—I have to grimace. “Not really,” I reply, looking up at my PA, Miranda.
“Any reason?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow at the full dish in front of me. “It’s very unusual for you to leave your food when you come to this…” she sought the appropriate word, “…place.”
It might sound difficult to construe that as a criticism, but it was.
Brighton Beach was where I’d been born and raised. In project housing, amid tens of dozens of poverty-stricken families, I’d come to realize I wanted more than my parents had.
I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones. Both of my parents were together, which made my family a rarity. I, however, would have loved it if they’d split up. Dad had spent half his nights getting drunk and beating on Mom whenever the mood struck, and Mom hadn’t been much better with booze.
Most nights had been spent with my head under the pillow, trying to drown out the yells. Escape had come in the form of my grandmother buying me a laptop with some money she’d won in the lottery, of all things.
“Boys Marshall’s age need a computer,” she’d told my father, who’d bitched at the ‘waste’ of money.
The bitching had grown rather vitriolic when Gran had subsequently refused to pay the rent for us that month.
I’d lived in fear of my father taking the laptop from me one day, pawning it to pay for one of his many vices. He might even have done that once, because all of a sudden, I’d had to go to Gran’s to use it, and Gran had told me never to take it home.
By that point, I was hooked, and so I spent nearly all my free time there. By the time I was fourteen,
I could hack with the best of them and I was practically living with her.
College had come a-calling at a younger than average age for me. At sixteen, I’d been on my way to NYIT with a scholarship funding my degree—all thanks to that one investment on my grandmother’s part. Without her, without that laptop, I wouldn’t be where I am today: choosing to return to Brighton Beach out of nostalgia, rather than having to live here out of necessity.
The thought makes me shudder. There are good people here, as there always are among the bad, but still, this is no longer my world.
Miranda reaches over and taps my hand. “Marshall? Why do you keep wandering off?”
I blink at her. “Do I?”
“That’s the third time I’ve asked you a question, you’ve started to reply, and then you’ve faded into silence.” She spears a piece of ravioli with her fork, and I get the feeling she wishes she could do the same to me. “What’s going on? You only go this quiet when there’s trouble.”
My lips twitch because, ordinarily, she’d be right. But things have been complicated since Grazia Fabiola signed the ‘mistress agreement’ I put before her a week ago. Ever since, life has been a little odder than usual.
“There’s no trouble.” When she cocks an eyebrow at me again, I shake my head. “For once.”
“Then what’s going on?”
I shrug. “Nothing. I’m just thinking. No harm in that, is there?”
“Why invite me for lunch if you were just going to stare off into the distance?”
It’s my turn to be surprised. “We always eat together.”
“Maybe I had other plans.”
“Seriously?”
She purses her lips. “No, but I might have.”
There’s a strange cast to her irritation with me. It’s almost like she’s… But no, she couldn't be. Miranda is like an ice queen. She’s so cold, I practically get chilblains being near her, and she’s never made me feel like she is attracted to me.