The Billionaire Beast

by Jackie Ashenden

  Reluctantly Nero lifted his head, looking down in her face. “After the meeting,” he insisted.

  Her thumb moved on his chest, a simple back and forth motion, absent almost. Yet it sent ripples of a strange kind of pleasure through him, pleasure that wasn’t entirely sexual. Like he was a cat and she was stroking him.

  “Nero,” she began.

  But he didn’t let her finish. “I want you,” he said again, so she was absolutely aware. “I want you to be my lover.” And because he didn’t know how else to get her to agree or what else he could give her that wasn’t money, he added a word he never used. “Please.”

  That caressing thumb stopped, her gaze deep, fathomless. “Yes,” she said simply. “I’ll be your lover.”

  The breath went out of him, because he hadn’t known how badly he’d wanted her to say yes until this moment. “You want this, too?” It came out as a demand, but he couldn’t help it. And was a shock to realize he wanted her to agree because she wanted him, not because he’d forced her into it.

  She gave a slow nod. “I do.”

  Relief spread through him, and he raised his hands, cupping her face between his palms, unable to resist the urge to kiss her.

  “On one condition,” Phoebe added.

  He tensed, a sudden and inexplicable fear going through him. “What condition?” he asked roughly, in no mood for games.

  “You tell me why you have landscapes everywhere.”

  It wasn’t what he was expecting and it caught him off guard. For a second he didn’t know what she was talking about. Then he did. The paintings . . .

  He’d started to collect them when he’d bought this house, and over the years had bought more and more. Pictures of places he would never go to. Places he would never see. He used to walk the hallways looking at them until he’d found the hallways too high, too wide, too big, retreating to his office where everything wasn’t so large. Where he had everything he needed.

  He eased himself back from her. “I like art. And I don’t like people. Landscapes are the best of both worlds.” Now she wasn’t right up next to him, he was conscious again that he wasn’t in his familiar set of rooms and that the emptiness of the hallway at his back felt like it was pressing down hard.

  You should have waited for her in your office. People are supposed to come to you. You don’t go to them.

  But he had gone to her. He’d been impatient. And now he was here in this hallway that felt like it went on forever, his office too far away. His heartbeat began to speed up again, his breath getting short.

  Fuck, if he didn’t leave right now she would know. She would see . . .

  “Tell me about them on the way to your office,” Phoebe said, her husky voice cutting through the rising feelings of suffocation. “I’ve got a favorite, just along here.”

  She began to walk down the hall toward the chasm of the stairs and he found himself following her as if he was in the darkness and she carried the only source of light.

  As they walked, she pointed out a couple of pictures, asking him questions about them, and he found himself answering. The aching emptiness at his back and over his head receded slightly.

  Farther along was a panorama taken by a famous climber of the sun rising at the top of Mt. Everest, and she stopped in front of it. “This is my favorite,” she murmured. “It’s amazing.”

  He told her who’d taken it and where, then he asked. “Why do you like it?” He’d never felt the need to know before. These pictures were for him and no one else, so why the fuck did he care why she liked it? Yet he did.

  “I’m not sure,” she said slowly, studying the picture. “You’re standing there, at the highest point of the world, looking at everything around you. And the sun’s coming up and it’s . . . beautiful. It feels like freedom. Absolute freedom.”

  The words hit him in a way he couldn’t have described, making something echo inside him. He couldn’t stop staring at her face as she looked at the painting, sharp and vivid. “Freedom?” he repeated, like a goddamn idiot.

  “Yes.” She glanced at him then back to the photo. “It’s sunrise and it’s morning, and there are a thousand new beginnings in that photo. It makes me want to spread my arms and just jump off the mountain. Fly.”

  Fly. She wanted to fly.

  Nero dragged his gaze from her face back to the photo. To the sunrise and the limitless view everywhere. There were no walls in that picture, no barriers, no boundaries . . .

  His lungs abruptly felt like they were in a vice or weighted down by concrete, and he couldn’t make them expand. Couldn’t get a fucking breath. The corridor he hadn’t walked down for years getting longer and longer, the walls soaring into the sky, the space above him pressing him down . . .

  His heartbeat was like thunder and he was conscious that his breathing was audible and sharp. Jesus Christ, if he wasn’t careful, he was going to fucking lose it right in front of her.

  Then unexpectedly, warm fingers laced through his, jolting his awareness from the emptiness all around, making the air rush back in into his lungs as if an oxygen mask had been jammed on his face.

  Phoebe wasn’t looking at him, turning already toward the stairs, keeping her fingers threaded through his. “Come on,” she said in her usual calm and steady way. “We’d better get to your office. I know you have some information you want to go over with me.”

  He knew she’d seen his vulnerability in that moment. And it made him want to push her away, tear his hand from hers and go straight to the safety of his control room, hide himself. Protect himself. Because he couldn’t bear it if anyone knew. If she knew.

  But he didn’t do any of those things.

  He simply tightened his fingers around hers and held her hand all the way back to his office.

  * * *

  Charles’s room in the private hospital was small, but the sun came right into it, laying a shining trail across the foot of his bed.

  Phoebe had particularly liked that. A little piece of the outside world touching him. Not that he would ever know, but when she’d first brought him here, she thought it would be something nice to tell him when he woke up.

  If he ever woke up.

  Phoebe tucked in the sheet that had come untucked at the end of the bed then smoothed down the coverlet, a reflexive gesture. Then she moved over to the shelf where the flowers from her last visit drooped. Taking them out, she replaced them with the sunflowers she’d found in the florist just down the street. They didn’t smell—not like the roses—but she liked the bright, joyful color and thought that maybe there was a part of him that was conscious, that saw what she was doing and liked them, too.

  Dumping the dead roses in the trash, she turned back to the sunflowers and tweaked the arrangement, humming along to the show tune she had playing quietly on her phone. He might be able to hear music, they’d told her. And voices, too, so keep talking and play him songs he might like.

  So she did. Every single visit.

  Turning from the sunflowers, she cast her eye over the room, looking for something to tidy or put back in place, because sitting down in the chair beside Charles’s bed wasn’t something she liked to do. Not when it felt too much like sitting beside someone’s grave.

  She shouldn’t be here, not when Nero had given her strict instructions to come back home immediately after she’d finished her meeting with Lorenzo, Nero’s rather scary half-brother. But she’d needed to come and see Charles. She hadn’t visited since she’d started working for Nero, and she’d needed the reminder of her real life, of what she should be thinking about instead of being consumed by Nero’s relentless, magnetic presence.

  Not that she was going to think about him and what she’d agreed to in the silence of that hallway, caged against the wall by his intense, demanding heat. That felt wrong, especially given she was in the same room as the man she’d been going to marry one day. And still would if he ever woke up.

  Except that day was getting harder and harder to imagin
e, especially now that this infection was proving stubbornly resistant to treatment.

  Phoebe walked slowly over to the bed and sat down on the chair beside it. Then she reached out and put her hand over Charles’s where it lay on top of the coverlet.

  He looked even worse than he normally did, pale and gaunt, the skin on his cheeks sunken in, all his muscles gradually wasting away. Nothing like the tall man with the brown hair, sparkling blue eyes, and apologetic smile she remembered from that day in the Tube station. He’d been so inept with the Tube map and so utterly charming when she’d tried to help him. She’d just come from lunch with her mother, who’d been more clingy and emotional than usual, and his smile and offer of coffee had been balm to her tired soul. His “English Rose” he’d called her, and she’d felt so flattered. Falling in love with him had been easy, moving to New York even easier.

  Except he was as inept in New York as he had been in London.

  Phoebe grimaced, appalled at the thought. Sure, Charles had been hopeless with money and, in fact, any kind of organization, which meant she’d been left to manage their finances, their apartment, their shopping, their vacations, basically everything. Yes, she’d resented it sometimes, but Charles had always been so very grateful to her that her resentment never lasted long. Besides, she liked helping people, it made her feel useful. She was also good at it.

  She tightened her hand on his. His skin was warm, his pulse steady, and he looked like he’d wake up at any second.

  Normally she chatted to him about what she’d been doing, telling him the minutiae of her day, but that didn’t feel right all of a sudden. Not when the minutiae of her day involved Nero, and she didn’t want to talk about Nero. She didn’t even want to mention his name, not with Charles listening.

  Guilt twisted in her gut, but she shoved it away. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, she was here with Charles.

  “I got a call from Dad,” she said into the silence. “Just as I was leaving a meeting, actually. It’s Lily’s birthday in a week or two and of course he wants me to come home. Mum is always worse around this time of year, and apparently this year it’s particularly bad. According to Dad, naturally.” She gave a soft laugh. “He always talks such rubbish about not being able to deal with Mum and needing me to handle it. He even said he’d pay the airfare, which was nice of him, I guess.” She stroked her thumb over Charles’s papery skin. “It would have been nicer if he’d been paying for me to be there because he wanted to actually see me, but then we can’t always get what we want, right?”

  Her mother would be pleased to see her, at least. She always needed lots of reassurance when it was Lily’s birthday. The sister Phoebe had never met had died of leukemia at seven years old, long before Phoebe had even been born. Lily who’d been perfect in every way.

  Unlike you.

  The thought was insidious, but Phoebe shoved it away as the music cut out. Getting the phone off the nightstand next to the bed, she looked down at the screen and saw that the battery was dead.

  Dammit. And she was pretty sure she hadn’t brought a cord with her either. Which meant that Nero wouldn’t be able to contact her.

  She cursed under her breath. Well, that wasn’t going to make him happy, especially as she hadn’t mentioned she was going to visit Charles.

  Without the music to fill it, the silence in the room became thick, a silence that she’d always felt unbearable because of the weight of absence that came with it. But there was no absence in the dense quiet today. It was the opposite. A presence filled it. A presence that crackled with energy, with restless power, with hunger. With life.

  Nero’s presence, waiting for her.

  I want you to be my lover . . .

  Her skin prickled and tightened, her breath getting shorter, an ache gathering down low between her thighs. A fire she kept firmly banked suddenly glowing hot. And no matter how hard she tried to keep them at bay, the memories of the night before slowly began to fill her head.

  Nero’s big, warm hand sliding between her legs, caressing her roughly. His mouth at her throat and then lower, brushing over her breasts, his tongue circling her nipple. His lean hips spreading her thighs, his heavy weight settling on her. The stretch of her sex as he pushed his cock slowly and surely deep inside her . . .

  Phoebe’s breath caught and she closed her eyes, trying to get herself back under control. God, getting turned on now, in this room, was so inappropriate and wrong she didn’t know where to start.

  Yet, she’d told Nero yes. That she’d be his lover. He’d come to her, out of his suite of rooms for the second time in a row and she’d seen so clearly what that had cost him. His skin pale, gleaming with sweat, the look in his eyes wild. Then he’d seen her, and she’d been up against the wall, pinned by his heat, before she’d even had a moment to think.

  It should have made her angry maybe. She’d woken up that morning alone, to find a preemptory message on her phone from him demanding her presence, as if the previous night hadn’t happened. She didn’t mind that, in fact, it was better if they both pretended it hadn’t. Yet then, so unexpectedly, he’d come for her, and it clearly hadn’t been to discuss any kind of meeting.

  She’d looked up into his dark gaze, hearing the rush of his accelerated breathing and noticing his damp forehead, seeing the glitter of something desperate in his eyes. Then he’d whispered please, and she couldn’t find it in her to say no.

  She wanted him. She did. He’d proved it over and over again to her the night before. And she might give herself all kinds of excuses for agreeing to his demands, that he’d paid for Charles’s care and now she owed him. That he was her boss and she had to do what he said. That she had to give him what he wanted, keep him happy.

  But all those excuses meant nothing, and she knew it.

  She’d agreed to be his lover because she wanted to be in his bed. She wanted his hands on her, wanted his mouth, wanted his cock inside her. She wanted the way he looked at her, studied her, making her feel as if she was as deeply fascinating to him as he was to her.

  Because she was lonely. She’d been lonely for years.

  Because he’d whispered “please” against her skin.

  Because as they’d walked along that hallway back to his office, his cold fingers laced through hers, she’d know for certain there was something broken inside of him. And she wanted to fix it.

  Naturally, though, that didn’t make what she was doing any less wrong.

  Her eyes felt dry, her throat tight, and she so didn’t want to be feeling the rising tide of hunger now, not while she was sitting here with Charles.

  Which meant it was definitely time to go.

  Getting up from the chair, she bent over the bed to kiss Charles’s forehead, then she grabbed her handbag and went out the door. Only to be stopped by one of the doctors who asked if she had time to talk.

  She didn’t really have time for a meeting, not with Nero being unable to contact her, but the doctors were concerned about this infection so she nodded.

  Nero wouldn’t be happy, but he could handle an hour without her.

  However, the meeting went on much longer than Phoebe had anticipated, and was full of frightening talk about no-resuscitation orders and what Charles’s wishes were when it came to turning the machines off. She came out of it feeling rattled, night already creeping over the city by the time she stepped onto the sidewalk. She’d sent Nero’s driver away, which meant that she had to get a cab back to his house, and that took longer than she’d thought, too. Traffic turned out to be a nightmare, some big event making the trip from Midtown to Nero’s house take a whole hour.

  By the time she got out of the cab, night had well and truly fallen, and she knew she was going to have to brace herself for the fact that he was going to be extremely unhappy with her.

  It should have made her afraid and yet, as she made her way through the iron gate and up the front stairs, it wasn’t fear that sat in her gut but something else. Somethi
ng hotter, rawer. Something like anticipation.

  Because part of her wanted the storm that was him. Wanted to be battered and engulfed by it. Wanted to rage at it in return, because the wind and the rain and lightning, the sound and fury of a hurricane was better than the silence in that hospital room. Better than the absence, than nothingness. Better than the worry.

  Yet, another part shied away from all that noise. It wanted the quiet, the silence, the space. Because that was familiar and safe. She knew her role, knew who she was in that silence. Charles’s fiancée. The excellent personal assistant and expert organizer. The one who handled everything without fuss and provided help whenever anyone asked for it. The daughter her mother called on whenever she needed emotional support and her father whenever he got sick of dealing with her mother.

  She knew how to be that person, not the wild, passionate woman Nero had uncovered the night before. He’d managed to get under her skin, strip her bare and not just physically, he’d stripped her emotionally, too. Which was possibly even more confronting.

  At the top of the steps, Phoebe paused to take a breath, then pushed open the front door and went inside. She wondered whether to go straight to his office to apologize—because naturally, by now he would have tried to contact her ten million times and would have failed—or whether to head straight to her suite and prepare herself for him.

  Either way, it was going to be unpleasant.

  Deciding to get the confrontation over and done with first, Phoebe headed to his office, but when he didn’t answer her knock and she put her head around the door, she found the room empty. Okay, so maybe he was in the gym?

  But he wasn’t there either.

  She checked the library, yet that, too, was empty.

  Curious. Where would he be if he wasn’t in any of those rooms? He never left them, did he?

  Only to go to your bedroom.

  Phoebe turned from the library door and hurried up the stairs. She didn’t know why he’d go to her suite, but it was the only other place he’d conceivably be, which meant she had to at least check there.