The Billionaire From Los Angeles: A BWWM Billionaire Romance (United States Of Billionaires Book 9)

by Simply BWWM

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  She let her shoulders fall slightly as she felt the weight of all of their troubles hanging on her like the dark of night. With a sad sigh, she set her purse on a nearby box and reached her hands out to him, going to him and wrapping him in a hug. Then, she lifted her face to his and brought her mouth to his to kiss him, but he turned his head away.

  “Don’t.” He pushed himself away from her.

  “Don’t kiss you? While we’re standing together in our new house for the first time, don’t kiss you?” she asked, astounded. There was little else he could do that could possibly surprise her more.

  “I’m sorry. I got to get to an appointment. You should go. I’m heading out.” He turned away from her and nodded toward the door, indicating that she should use it.

  Anger swelled up in her again, and she shook her head. “Fine. I’ll leave then. I guess we’ll catch up and talk about everything later.” She turned sharply and stalked toward the front door, yanking it open and slamming it behind her.

  Her mind was going a million miles an hour as thoughts shot through it in a flurry of confusion and questions and emotion. She got into her car and drove away, not really seeing anything around her, not being able to think of anything except all that she had just discovered about Maurice and house, and her whole future, which was a convoluted mess to her.

  She stopped at a red light and rubbed at her temples, trying to relieve some of the pressure there. Reaching to the seat beside her as she looked for her purse, her hand landed flat on the seat, and it was only then that she realized that she had left her purse back at the house. She had set it down when she had decided to kiss Maurice, and when she had stormed out of the house, she hadn’t remembered to pick it up and take it with her.

  Groaning deeply and wishing that the bad pennies would quit falling on her path, she pulled into a parking lot and turned her car around, heading back toward the house again. She was just pulling up across the street when she saw Maurice walk out of the house and lock it, and then step lightly down the stairs to the sidewalk, where a car was parked. It was a strange car, one she didn’t know and hadn’t seen before.

  She watched in stunned silence as Lisa Latimer got out of the driver’s seat and planted a long deep kiss on Maurice’s mouth before bouncing over to the passenger’s side of the car. Maurice had kissed her back like he was checking her tonsils with his tongue. He grinned at her and got into the driver’s seat, and a second later, the little car was speeding off down the road.

  Tamika stared, gaping at the place where the car had been parked. “So, the landlord was lying, was he?” she said out loud to herself, hating the sound of the words in her ears.

  She pushed her car door open and got out, slamming it behind her. With quick strides, she crossed the street to the house and unlocked the front door, thanking everything in heaven that she had demanded a key.

  Her purse was right where she had left it. She grabbed it, and just as she was about to leave, she stopped and looked around at the house. Tamika realized that she hadn’t really seen it, and so she began to walk through it, looking at each room, and trying to imagine what her life there was going to be like.

  She imagined away the boxes and the strange furniture, and she walked through the house room by room, trying to picture herself there. In the living room, where they would have a fireplace and a Christmas tree in December, and friends gathered to play games and have cocktails, in the dining room where meals would be shared with friends and family, in the kitchen where they would cook together, laughing and talking.

  She peered out of the glass doors to the patio and pool outside and tried to imagine the two of them there on hot summer days, splashing around in the water, and perhaps in a few years, a baby or two playing with them.

  With every step she took, it grew harder and harder to picture herself there with him. She walked into the bedrooms one by one. There were four of them. She wondered what they would be. Studies, offices, a den. Guest bedrooms.

  Perhaps one day a nursery or a child’s room. She stepped into the master bedroom and discovered Maurice’s brand-new bed already set up with sheets and blankets on it, with pillows there all along the head board. The bedding was seriously mussed as if it had gone through a storm and been tossed one way and the other.

  She couldn’t look at the bed without her stomach tightening and turning. The only other time that she had seen it, he had been laying in it on his back, with one woman rocking herself like a cowgirl riding a wild stallion over his groin, and another woman sitting on his face as he groped her.

  The memory made her sick, and she turned her back to the bed immediately. She couldn’t bear to see it. She knew that she was going to have to make him buy another new bed. There was no way that she could make love with him in a bed where he had done such things with other women and she had had to see it. The memory of it was never going to go away.

  With a sigh, she walked slowly and sadly down the hall and back into the living room, looking around it once more. She felt sad and sick because as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t make herself imagine her life there, not really. She didn’t feel like she fit there. She felt like Maurice fit there perfectly, and she could see him being very happy in the house, but she couldn’t see herself there at all, not even when she tried to picture it.

  She didn’t know if it was because she hadn’t been part of the decision-making process or if it was because she just really didn’t like it. She hadn’t chosen it, and he had. He had chosen it without her, and it felt like she was left out of the looking, the choosing, and the buying in such a big way, that the house had no place for her. It felt like an empty shell to her, and she didn’t know what to do with the empty shell around her, or the feeling of an empty hole inside of her.

  Tamika walked outside and stood there on the front step, looking around at the neighborhood. She had wanted to research neighborhoods, to find the right one for them both. She wanted to know about school districts and neighbors, about rules and groups in the neighborhoods. She wanted to know it all, and she knew nothing whatsoever about the place where she was standing.

  Looking over at the empty spot where Lisa’s car had been, she wondered what was really going on with the two of them, and how he could have kissed her like he had. She also wondered why it didn’t hurt her as much as she realized that it should have. She felt more bitter and numb about it than anything else. She considered that after seeing him screw Lisa in his new bed, perhaps something as small as seeing him kiss her just wasn’t enough to make a dent in her heart or spirits.

  With a heavy sigh, she locked the house and walked back to her car with her purse on her shoulder and about a million questions running wild through her mind. There was no way to know what she should do or how she should feel. She had never been so confused in her whole life.

  She got back into her car and set her purse down, just as her cell phone chimed. With a frown of curiosity, she picked it up and looked at it. It was a text message from Shane.

  ‘I’m still hoping that I can take you to the symphony tonight. Please come with me. I need to see you.’

  She could not stop the smile that spread wide over her face. Again, her mind went straight to the justification of possibility. If Maurice could kiss Lisa Latimer and go out with her, then she could go out with Shane, although she vowed to herself that it would be a platonic evening, just friends going to the symphony together.

  She texted him back telling him she would go, and he said he would pick her up. She went home and got ready, and when he arrived at her door, she opened it, and he gasped at the sight of her. She was wearing a light lavender gown that hugged every one of her curves, teasing a little at the breasts with a little more than a hint of cleavage, and a long slit up the skirt of it that revealed just enough leg to go from glamorous to sexy in a breath.

  Around her neck was the diamond heart necklace that he had given to her. He whistled low and gave h
is head a shake. “Every time I think you couldn’t possibly be more beautiful, you amaze me.” He reached for her, pulling her gently into his arms and kissing her softly, deeply, and tenderly.

  “I could get used to doing this all the time with you,” he murmured to her as he gave her a little smile.

  She said nothing in return, only smiled back at him. Taking her hand, he walked with her to the elevator and then down to the long stretch black limousine that was waiting for them. She gasped when she saw it, loving it.

  “I haven’t ridden in a limo before! This is so exciting!” She grinned at him, and he looked at her in utter surprise, but he said nothing about it.

  All during the ride to the symphony, he gazed at her intently; even through their light talk about an array of things, his eyes stayed on her, and she could see that there was deep thought going on behind them, though she couldn’t begin to imagine what it might be.

  They sat side by side in a beautiful garden while the symphony played wonderful music all night, and with each passing moment, her anxiety and sadness and confusion seemed to dissipate, until it was gone, and she was left with only happiness, only bliss, only a dazzling smile that belonged solely to the man at her side, who was holding her hand, and who kept studying her throughout the whole night.

  When they left, she felt as if she was floating on a cloud, she was so happy.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that. It was my first time at the symphony.” She shook her head as they walked along together, ambling their way back to the car.

  He raised a brow in surprise. “Really? Your first symphony?” She nodded, and he gave his head a shake. “There’s so much to show you and share with you, and I am going to love doing all of it.” He grinned and pulled her closer, wrapping his arm around her shoulders as he gave her cheek a kiss.

  Again, she said nothing to his mention of their spending more time together in the future. He acted as if she was his, no one else’s but his, and she let him, liking the feeling of it, and not minding for the first time that it wasn’t a possibility and that it wasn’t actually true.

  They got back to the limousine that was waiting for them, and she curled up in his arm beside him as the car left the curb. He looked over at her and touched her cheek tenderly with his fingertips. “I don’t know what it is about you, but I just can’t get enough of you. I don’t want to get enough of you,” he breathed quietly as he brought his mouth to hers.

  She didn’t argue or hesitate; she just let him kiss her, and she kissed him in return, just as hungrily as he did, just as much in need of tasting him, and of feeling him as he was in need of her. When he reached for her, closing his arms around her body and pulling her on top of his lap, she didn’t protest or try to stop him. She didn’t want to. When he slid her panties off of her legs, she helped him, and she reached for his pants to push them off of him.

  There was no resistance in her at all when he took her breasts and dark, hardened nipples into his mouth, tasting them, biting and sucking at them, and it was her who let him guide her body over him, pulling her down over his erection, as he pushed it up deep inside of her.

  They swayed their bodies together in passion and breathless need as the limousine swept through the dark city, their pleasured cries muffled so that the driver would not hear them, though he couldn’t have anyway. Their aching need for each other was growing stronger, and it felt to her that the need was much more emotional than physical as they clung to one another, as they kissed, as they touched and gripped and sighed with ecstasy into each other’s mouths and ears, until at long last they could no longer hold back their orgasms, and they shuddered together, and he flooded her again with his release as she held him tight to her breasts.

  When the car pulled up to her apartment building, they were dressed again, though his shirt wasn’t buttoned up all the way. He walked her to her door and kissed her long and hard there, as if letting her go was perhaps one of the most difficult things he had ever done.

  He finally pulled away from her reluctantly. “Don’t go back to him,” he said quietly, his eyes locked on hers. “I can’t stand it that you keep going back to him.”

  “What?” she asked incredulously.

  He shook his head. “I am falling in love with you. I want you. I want you more than I have ever wanted any woman, and I know that it’s fast and sudden, and I just don’t give a damn. It is what it is, and what it is is real. I want you. It’s driving me crazy that he’s still in the picture. That you’re still tied to him. That you keep going back to him. Don’t go back to him.

  Come to me. Be with me. Live with me, be mine. Be all mine. I am not in the habit of sharing what is dearest to me with other men. You are so precious to me.” He pressed his lips together into a thin line and held her face in his hands, piercing her eyes with his. “Please… I’ll let you go, and I won’t make you do anything, not ever, but I want you to know exactly how I feel.

  I don’t want you to have to guess or to be confused, so I’m telling you. I want you to have a clear and knowledge-based choice. I am falling in love with you, and I want you for as long as I can have you. Leave him. Choose me. Please…”

  He trailed off then and dropped his hands from her face. She could barely see him, blinded as she was by the tears in her eyes. She couldn’t speak at all, the lump in her throat was too big to swallow.

  Shane gave her a little smile, leaned forward and kissed her softly once, and then let her go. “Think about it.” Then, he turned and walked away from her. She blinked as much as she could to push the tears away so that she could see him, but more tears took the place of those that had gone, and she gave up on seeing him when she heard the elevator doors close.

  Struggling to open the door, she finally made it to her bed, where she collapsed and wept, until she fell asleep in her lavender dress, curled around her pillow.

  Morning light woke her, and she looked around, wondering what time it was. It was early. She didn’t have to be to work for a while. She looked down at her dress and sighed, shaking her head. She couldn’t believe that she had slept in it, but it was too late to undo that.

  It was too late to undo everything that she was wearing: the dress, the weight of the problems she faced, the guilt that hung about her like a lead shroud, and the enormity of the message that Shane had told her the night before.

  He was falling in love with her. He hadn’t even waited for her to say that she loved him back, or not; he had just gone on with it. He loved her, he wanted her, and he was giving her a decision to make. She had no idea that the whole world could weigh so much on such slender shoulders as hers, but it did.

  She took herself to her shower and tried to wash it all down the drain, but nothing left her. She dressed and readied for work and saw that she still had a great deal of time before she had to be at her desk.

  Biting her lip, she picked up her keys and headed for her car. She didn’t know how she knew what she was doing, but somehow, deep in her, she did know. There had to be some resolution. She couldn’t keep living like she was, torn in half between two men.

  The closer she got to her house with Maurice, the stronger she felt about what she was doing. They were going to sit down and talk it out and figure out what the hell was going to happen, she promised herself.

  She pulled up to the house and when she found that it was locked, she let herself in and headed down the hall toward the bedroom. When she walked in, she stopped in her tracks. Lisa Latimer was laying on the bed with Maurice, nestled down between his legs with his erection sunk all the way down her throat. Both of them were nude. It was easy to see that she had been there all night, and the seriously rumpled bedding suddenly made perfect sense to Tamika.

  Both Maurice and Lisa looked up with wide eyes. Tamika shook her head and turned on the spot without a word. She walked back down the hallway and was halfway across the street to her car when Maurice finally reached her, still yanking on his silk boxers as he tried to straighten them ar
ound his waist.

  “Wait! Wait a minute!” he called out, looking around wildly to see if anyone else was outside.

  Tamika stopped when she reached her car, and he gripped her arm and turned her around to face him.

  “What?” she asked, looking at him expectantly.

  “I… I screwed up. I know I did. Don’t leave. I want you here. I do. I just… I just needed a little extra something, you know, to get me by while you weren’t here. She just there for a little head, that’s all. It ain’t nothing.” He shook his head, looking as if even he didn’t believe a word that was coming from his own mouth.

  Tamika shook her head. “No. This is ridiculous. We are so broken that we can’t be fixed. We’re done. I saw you leave here with her last night, Maurice, and I bet your landlord wasn’t lying to me when he told me that she’s been with you every night.”

  “Yeah, but… but that was just so we was even, you and me,” Maurice tried to justify it, still holding tight to her arm. She pulled herself free of him.