I can’t decide who to side with on this one: the bitch I hate, or the slimy French male chauvinist. Bad choices all around.
Changing the subject, JP asks, “Why do you need guns?”
“The guys who come after us always have guns. I’d like to be prepared this time.”
“Really?” I ask, wincing.
“You were there when they broke into my penthouse. You really want them to come in with submachine guns, and we’re sitting ducks?”
“I just… it makes me uneasy.”
“It makes me uneasy, too. But being helpless and unarmed makes me even more uneasy.”
JP lights a cigarette in his oh-so-French way. “It is not a question of any importance, because this is not America. We do not sell guns at McDonald’s.”
“We don’t sell guns at McDonald’s,” I say, annoyed.
“No? They do not come in the, how you say, Happy Meals?” JP asks. I can tell he’s mocking me.
“Give it time,” Grant says.
“Sérieusement, the type of guns I assume you want are restricted in France. Très difficult to buy.”
“I figured. But I’m also guessing you know a guy.”
“I know a guy, oui. But he is not a ‘good guy.’”
“Criminals seldom are. Present company excluded,” Grant says.
“Grant… this man… his customers are not like you and I. They do not think of violence as an act of last resort; they use violence immediatement.”
“I get it. You don’t want to do this – ”
“And I do not like guns.”
“Duly noted. But we’re up against the Devil here, and I don’t want to go up against him empty-handed. If I have to deal with a couple of thugs to make sure of that, I’ll take that responsibility. It’s on my head, not yours.”
JP sighs. “He does not provide services for free. Or for promises of payment later, after the job is done.”
Grant retrieves our backpack, opens it up, and slaps a stack of hundreds on the table. It’s not all of our remaining cash, but it’s a good chunk of it.
“That’s ten grand. Will that persuade your guy to help us?” Grant asks.
JP’s eyebrows arch slightly as he looks at the money. “Oui – that should be very persuasive.”
21
After lunch is over, JP and Dominique go out to buy the guns. They’re still bitching at each other as they walk out the door.
Then they’re gone.
Finally: quiet.
I continue my hacking at JP’s work station.
Grant comes up behind my chair. “We’re alone.”
“I noticed,” I say as I continue to type.
He leans over and kisses my neck. “Want to take advantage of it?”
Mmmmm.
It feels really nice, but…
“I have work to do,” I say, trying my best to ignore his lips brushing against my skin.
“You can take a break.”
“Just because you don’t have anything to do right now doesn’t mean I don’t.”
“Is it absolutely necessary? Right now?”
“…no, but…”
“It’s been awhile since last time,” he whispers into my ear.
I scoff. “It’s been nine or ten hours. Maybe.”
“That’s awhile.”
One of his fingers slowly traces its way down the front of my blouse, then stops and circles my nipple, which hardens underneath my bra.
Mmmm…
“We might not have another opportunity,” he murmurs in my other ear, as his left hand reaches down and undoes the top button of my blouse.
I lightly slap his hand away – from the button. Not the finger that’s caressing my nipple. “We can’t just have sex every time there’s an opportunity.”
“Why not?” he asks, and goes back and undoes the second button. This time I let him.
“Because that would be a lot of sex.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
His fingers slip inside my blouse and slip my left bra strap off my shoulder.
I yank the bra strap back into place. “I have to work.”
“Well… what if I just… do some things to you while you work?” he asks, trailing his fingers down the nape of my neck.
Ohhhhh God.
“Like what?” I ask, feigning complete disinterest, even though I’m incredibly turned on.
“Why don’t I show you?”
Oooh.
I want to see where he’s going with this. “Fine. Do your worst.”
“Or my best,” he says with a grin.
“Whatever.”
He kneels down in front of my chair. I have to reach around his head to continue typing. This is so not conducive to work, but that ship has already sailed.
I’m totally going to have sex with him.
I just want to see what he’s going to do.
He takes me by the hips and gets me to scoot my ass to the edge of the chair, so that I’m slumped down as much as I’m sitting. He slowly pushes my skirt up my legs until it’s around my waist. Then he leans over and begins to kiss the inside of my thighs. Softly… slowly. His lips are warm, and I feel the occasional flick of his tongue on my skin.
Ohhhhh…
His finger reaches up to my underwear and strokes the satin as softly as an eyelash brushing against your cheek. I can just barely feel the sensations through the cloth… but they’re exquisite. He’s softly stroking the hood of my clit, just enough to make me quiver.
I was already wet before he started touching me. Now I’m soaked.
It’s getting really difficult to focus on the computer screen. I haven’t typed anything for the last ten seconds.
“Want to go to the bedroom?” he asks from between my legs.
“Still hacking here,” I announce. I open a Word doc so I can type nonsense and fake like I’m doing something.
He chuckles and goes back to work.
He spreads my legs further apart, then gets his mouth right up against my underwear. He starts doing with his lips what he was doing with his finger just seconds ago: lightly caressing my clit. I can feel his hot breath where satin gives way to skin.
Then he slowly edges my underwear to one side – centimeter by centimeter – with his tongue.
Ohhhh FUCK.
He starts licking my lips, gently. He moves the satin further aside, and strokes his way up my pussy, all the way to the top. He pauses, the tip of his tongue resting wetly on my clit. He circles it, sooooo slowly. There is an electricity between his flesh and mine, an overwhelming current of pleasure. It’s impossible to do anything but surrender.
My eyes are closed and I let out an involuntary groan.
My hips are trembling.
I want more… I still want his tongue, but I want it harder than this. Faster than this.
And I want it now.
But he’s torturously slow and soft, licking my clit like he’s tickling it with a rose petal.
“Please,” I breathe out, and wrap my legs around his back, trying to pull him in closer.
His tongue brushes against me about one tenth as hard as I want.
“Oh God, PLEASE,” I beg, and put my fingers in his hair and force him down.
He takes my clit into his mouth and gently sucks, then licks. He strokes me with his bottom lip, firmer and firmer. He alternates so many things – licking, sucking, stroking, caressing – and all of it is getting the tiniest bit firmer, the slightest bit more insistent.
My legs are vibrating, my muscles fluttering.
“Oh… oh… oh… oh…” I cry out in staccato bursts of pleasure.
I’m going to come –
I’m going to come –
Fuck – I’m getting so close – I’m right on the edge –
His finger, the tip of it wet and soft, begins to stroke my lips, playing with my pussy as his tongue pleasures my clit.
It sends me over the edge.
“OH GOD,” I cry out,
and clutch his hair in my hands as I scream.
My muscles are fluttering. I can feel them pulsing around the tip of his finger as his tongue keeps swirling around my clit, so soft, so wet.
“OHHHH,” I scream as his finger slowly sinks deeper inside me and begins to stroke my g-spot – all while he licks my clit a little faster, a little harder.
I can’t stop coming.
I don’t ever want to stop coming.
Fireworks go off in my head – my first orgasm in Paris.
Welcome to the City of Lights.
But eventually I do come down. The contractions gently ebb and fade, and I’m left moaning as he pulls away and grins at me impishly.
“So… think you can take a break for awhile?” he asks.
“Nope,” I announce cheekily, and put my hands back on the keyboard. “Orgasm break’s over.”
“I don’t think so,” he growls, and pushes back the chair from the desk so he can stand.
“Hey!” I laugh. “I’m trying to work here – oh my GOD.”
The bulge in his crotch is so huge and so hard that it looks like it’s going to break through his pants. Not only that, but even though the material is dark, I can see the patch of wetness on the charcoal grey cloth.
He soaked through his pants with pre-cum, he’s so turned on.
He unzips and pulls that massive cock out of his fly. It juts up in the air, the head swollen and wet.
“I have to have you,” he says huskily, and uses his thumb to press it down and line it up with my pussy. Then he slowly slides that gorgeous pink head between my lips.
“Ohhh,” I gasp, and my eyes roll back in my head as he eases himself all the way inside me.
Holy fuck that feels amazing –
He moves my legs so they’re pressed straight against his body, my calves up against his chest, and he begins to fuck me. It’s an awkward position because the chair is so low – he’s been half-crouching down this entire time in order to be inside me – but DAMN it feels good.
He’s grunting, I’m moaning. He clutches my ass with one hand and my breast with the other. His cock is hitting a sweet spot deep inside me, so deep inside, that all I can do is hang on for dear life.
Suddenly he pulls me up out of the chair. He’s so incredibly strong that it’s effortless for him. I adjust my legs so they wrap around his waist, and then he slams me up against the wall, UNH, and starts fucking me again, deep and hard.
Every thrust is like a hit on a crack pipe.
I’m addicted.
I never, ever want it to end.
Suddenly he moves me over to the couch, staying inside me the entire time. We fall onto the cushions and then he’s pounding and thrusting once more.
“Aah – aah – aah – ” I cry out as I start to climax again.
“Fuck – fuck – FUCK – ” he bellows, and suddenly he’s coming deep inside me.
That’s when the door opens.
I open my eyes and scream as I see JP standing there, a You’ve got to be KIDDING me look on his face.
“Ah, putain d’merde – not on the fucking canapé!” he complains.
Dominique looks horrified. All the blood drains out of her face – and then she runs out the door and into the hallway.
“Oh shit,” Grant mutters, but he stays inside me, hard as ever.
I’m about to DIE of embarrassment.
JP throws his arms up in the air and makes a very French, thoroughly disgusted sound.
“You mind giving us a minute?” Grant calls out, annoyed.
“‘Give you a minute’? Give you a minute? It is my fucking apartment, asshole!” JP yells.
“Okay,” Grant says nonchalantly, and starts to pull out.
“Aaaah! Aaaah!” JP shouts, and lifts up his hand to block the sight of Grant’s cock, as though he would be blinded if he saw it.
“Well?” Grant asks.
“Fine – two minutes,” JP yells, then walks back out and slams the door shut.
Grant looks down at me. He’s still halfway inside me.
“Well, that was awkward,” he says.
We both burst into laughter. Despite my extreme mortification, it’s just too absurd. On the run from a serial killer, and we get caught fucking on the sofa.
Grant raises an eyebrow. “He did say two minutes…”
“So?”
Without warning, he plunges inside me all the way again.
OH MY GOD!
My eyes roll back in my head with the sudden jolt of pleasure, and I have to keep myself from crying out.
“We could use the time wisely,” he whispers in my ear as he continues to rock back and forth inside me.
He feels so good that I’m tempted –
For about a millisecond.
“Git,” I say, and slap his arm.
He pulls out of me, and we laugh as he has to unbuckle his pants and pull out his shirt to strap down and cloak his erection, at least until it subsides.
“To be continued,” he whispers as I pull my underwear back into place.
22
JP and Dominique come back a couple minutes later. He looks pissed; she looks pissed and dejected.
They’re each carrying a couple of parcels wrapped in brown butcher paper. JP has a three-foot long one that might have conceivably held a giant bouquet of flowers. I didn’t notice them before because, well, I was more concerned about being caught having sex.
They put the packages on the dining room table and rip off the paper. There are guns inside: two semi-automatic pistols, one assault rifle, plus six boxes of bullets.
“That’s it?” Grant rages. “That’s all we get for ten grand?”
“No, apparently you get to fuck on my canapé, too,” JP says in a surly tone of voice.
Grant looks at him like he’s about to strangle him.
JP rolls his eyes. “Calme-toi. He will get more rifles, and some explosives, but it will take time. Besides, these? These are very rare in France. Very expensive.”
“If this is what five or six grand gets you, I don’t doubt it.”
Grant picks up a pistol, pops out the clip, slaps it back in, racks back the slide – all the things you normally see in action movies.
I’m pretty impressed. “I didn’t know you ‘did’ guns.”
“I normally don’t, but I realized a long time ago that I might piss off the wrong person one day, so I prepared.”
“Seems that day has come.”
“Seems that way,” he agrees, and holds out the gun to JP.
JP puts his hands up. “No, no. I do not like guns.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn.”
“I think not.”
Grant sighs, then offers the gun to Dominique.
She gives him a dirty look, then takes the gun. She pops the clip out and racks back the slide. A bullet goes flying into the air – which she catches, then thumbs into the stack of ammo in the clip before she clacks it back into the pistol handle. “There is no need to have a bullet in the chamber.”
“Well, look at you,” Grant says. “Somebody’s been practicing.”
“Oui. Someone left me, so I had a great deal of time,” she says coldly.
Ow.
Even though I don’t like her, and she’s been trying to steal my man all day long, I can tell she’s hiding a lot of pain.
It doesn’t make me like her any more, though.
Grant looks at me like Well DAMN, somebody’s pissed, as he takes the other pistol and tucks it into the back of his pants.
“Don’t I get a gun?” I ask, incensed.
“Do you know how to shoot?”
“…no…”
“Then you don’t get a gun.”
“Hey!” I pout.
“When our connection finally delivers the other overpriced items he promised – ” Grant says, looking accusingly at JP.
JP rolls his eyes again. “Ah, bordel…”
“…you can have one. I�
�ll give you a lesson in the meantime.”
“Just as long as it is not on the canapé,” JP mutters.
“Will you cut it out with the damn canapé?” Grant says, irritated.
“Every time I sit on it now, I am going to think of you fucking on it. I want a new one.”
“Buy it with your ten million dollars,” Grant snaps, and that ends the discussion.
23
Things are a little bit tense in the apartment for the next couple of hours.
But if there’s an upside to being caught in flagrante, it’s that everybody shuts the hell up for a while and I can finally get some work done.
Not to mention that Dominique completely cuts out the flirting with Grant. In fact, she’s downright cold to him.
She won’t so much as look me in the eye, much less make a single rude comment.
AWESOME.
If she starts getting flirty with Grant again, I know exactly what to do.
While I’m working, JP starts spaghetti sauce for dinner. Despite the irony of a Frenchman preparing an Italian meal, it smells delicious. After sautéing the meat and garlic, he adds the tomatoes and simmers everything for two hours before it’s ready.
While all this is going on, one very interesting detail comes out of my uninterrupted hacking session.
I don’t have any leads to try to find Epicurus, so I decide to go back to the beginning – and the closest thing to a beginning we have is the raid on Grant’s penthouse in New York.
I hack the NYPD’s servers and find the police report, and start reading through it.
Something is a little off, though, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. It starts bugging me about the time that they list all the stolen paintings in the safe room.
Then I look at the crime scene photographs, and it’s obvious: amongst all the other pieces of art, there are a couple of blank spaces on the walls. Whoever broke in must have taken two of the paintings.
“Grant, Grant,” I call excitedly. “Get over here.”
He looks over my shoulder. “What is it?”
I point at the photos. “They took two of the paintings!”
It takes a second for it to register. When it does, he lets out a string of curses.
“Mother fucker,” Grant seethes. “That goddamn son of a bitch – ”
The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) Page 7