Protecting Her: A Billionaire Secret Baby Romance

by Kira Blakely

  I watched as his head bent slowly, almost as if asking permission. I could smell the shampoo from his shower downstairs; his hair was wet and curling along his neck. His masculinity was almost like a force field in reverse, drawing me toward him. His finger began to play in the soft, short curls of my pubic hair, an absent-minded playfulness. I held my breath and felt my juices rushing to swell my woman’s lips.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked in a low voice.

  I considered his words. Every part of me that was private and frightened screamed yes. Every part of me that was vulnerable and wanted to feel his powerful body against mine again to qualm my fears said no.

  “No,” I whispered and he looked at me, his eyes registering not a mocking victory, but the acceptance and surrender that I was offering to him. He took it.

  Nodding at our mutual agreement, he reached to slowly open my robe and lay it wide, drawing in his breath as he looked at me. Before, we’d been in the darkness; a comforting interaction in somewhat hazardous circumstances. This time, however, it was different.

  Reverently, he parted my pussy and bent to kiss the swollen skin, tugging the lips open to reveal my hardening nub. His tongue flicked this rhythmically, and my legs opened involuntarily as I let my head fall backward on the pillows and closed my eyes.

  There was no hiding today—no modesty or partial covering. The sun was bright despite the brutal cold outdoors, and it bathed our skin in a blue-white glare that left nothing to the imagination.

  I opened my eyes as he attended to my body and saw the rigid hardness of his penis against the cloth of his terrycloth shorts. I reached out and hooked my finger inside the elastic, pulling it toward me and downward at the same time. He hesitated only long enough to push them off and kick them to the floor. The sight of him made me gasp; I hadn’t realized in the darkness how magnificent he was.

  He knelt over me, straddling my legs, and his cock beckoned to me. Pushing up from the pillows, I took it in my hand and had the overwhelming need to taste it in my mouth. As my tongue rimmed his tip, I licked his full circumference and then plunged him into my throat. A sound of ecstasy and animal need came from deep in his chest. Almost a cry of possession, although it was he who was being possessed.

  He pulled out of my throat and in the same motion, swung around until he lay perpendicular to my legs. He forced them wide and buried his face against my clitoris, his tongue swathing my tender flesh. It swelled with moisture at his coaxing. His index finger was faintly stroking my anal opening as he lifted me upward to meet his face, the rough texture of his unshaven chin stimulating me at the same time.

  Then came the cry of his impatience and he rose to his knees and straddled me, my legs splayed wide beneath his eyes. He pulled me closer to him, his hands upon my hips. Then, with a momentary arch of his back, he plunged his penis into me. I felt the welcome sensation of his heated organ tunneling into me. Every nerve ending screamed with yearning and when he reached my depth, there was an ache that involved no pain, only the desire for more.

  I wrapped my legs over his lower back, fighting hard to keep him inside of me as the spasms began. He knew, and his hands melted upward over my stomach to cup my breasts. Then he lay atop me, sucking my nipples as they craved his touch. I felt the heat of his semen as it flooded me and my vaginal muscles lapped at him, refusing to let go.

  Finn rolled onto his back, taking me with him. He stayed inside of me, his long arms wrapped tightly over my back in a fierce, possessive grasp. I felt our combined juices trickle out of me and onto his powerful thigh. He chuckled as he felt the sensation, and if anything, hugged me even more possessively.

  Lifting my head, I swung my long hair to one side, off his face. I studied his eyes and saw a possessive peace there, convincing me to close my own and nestle more deeply into his world of safety and strength.

  In that moment, I knew. Even if there was another man in my obscured past, even if I had at some point belonged to another, the man who lay beneath me and held me in his arms reigned supreme. I kissed each of his nipples and settled my cheek into the light covering of hair on his chest. I was home.

  Chapter 21

  Finn

  I had been with my share of women over the years. Each had brought with them a different motivation, as had I. The one-night, when-the-bar-closed sleep-overs were predominant. They had seemed a good idea at the time, but when the liquor wore off and their lipstick had ruined my imported white cotton pillow case, they lost their appeal. No matter how drunk I was or how provocative they’d been to lure me to beds, I’d always used a condom. It was an insurance against their morning-after claims, as well as my own regrets. I hadn’t done that with Elspeth. What was worse, I intentionally overlooked that personal integrity.

  I was being unabashedly greedy. I didn’t just want sex; that could be had day or night with a phone call. Her body, while adorably attractive to me, wasn’t entirely unique. After lunch at the fun kid’s table, I couldn’t say she was coolly sophisticated. She was totally unlike any woman I’d been around before and that was, perhaps, her signature. She was entirely unique. Not to mention mysterious.

  I asked myself whether I was being an asshole. Did I have the right to assess her qualities as though inspecting breeding stock? What made me think I could use my sheer will to permanently erase her past? I felt a need for her to be pure and virginal, and yet I didn’t.

  My ego wanted to believe she was there with me because she wanted to be, when in truth she literally had nowhere else to go. She was Botticelli’s Venus, risen from the sea encased in a shell that, when opened, revealed a fully-grown, voluptuous woman who was unclothed and untouched. I wanted to believe that Venus had arisen for me. Not for just any traveler along the road who happened to have enough curiosity to check out a burning shack. Was she nothing more than my reward for being a good, conscientious citizen? Why did I need it to be more than that?

  I did, though, and that’s where my ego and track record of success gave my mental meanderings a sturdy base from which to work. She was the jigsaw puzzle you’d stay up all weekend to complete, acknowledging the entire time that you were robbing yourself of the refreshing sleep you’d thought you wanted more.

  I was willingly altering my life to be with her, and that was the part I didn’t understand. I had never been one to leave things to chance. I was deliberate and strategic and yet, here I was, lounging at a lakeside retreat in the dead of winter. My business was on auto-pilot and there hung over me the shadow of a possible contribution to the death of one of the people closest to me. What the hell kind of spell was this?

  She’d fallen asleep, her face nested on my chest and my penis pressed against her pussy. Her mass of gorgeous hair covered us both. She breathed lightly through the pouty lips that purported innocence while her woman’s body screamed otherwise. I had an intense need to shelter her, to protect her from the realities of the world and keep her to myself. As impractical, if not cruel, as that would be, it was more than a challenge to me. It was my destiny. One cannot fight destiny; this I’d learned. If you did, you’d lose the battle and the prize. Destiny was the result of a formula that included the inclinations of your heart and mind, multiplied by the opportunities you allowed yourself. She was mine, and just perhaps, I was hers.

  I managed to snag an afghan lying on a chair next to the bed and eased its warmth over the two of us. It gave me the most romantic notion that she and I weren’t separate individuals, but layers of a single entity that breathed as one. I began to plan our time together—the places I’d take her, the things we’d share.

  I let myself doze in between these pleasant thoughts and each time, I’d awaken with a start and a dread that she was gone. She was always there, though. Although she was half my size, she seemed the most warming, overwhelmingly luxurious comforter, made for my body alone. We just fit.

  I had business to attend to. The world was ongoing beyond those frost-framed windows and the longer I languished here, the
further I’d have to fly to catch up. But for now, I could lie there with Elspeth draped over me and be permanently content.

  Somewhere, beneath my arrogant, careless exterior, lay a romantic. That was when I realized that this retreat had little to do with discovering who she was. It was about discovering myself. Imagine my acknowledgement that the true discovery wasn’t about myself, or her, but about the us we’d created.

  * * *

  When I awakened the next time, I realized it was much later than I’d anticipated. The blue light had faded and invited in the darkness of a late winter afternoon. Elspeth was gone, and I could smell the scent of fresh soap and moisture. I knew she’d left me; showered, dressed, and was off to some other part of the house. I lay in the darkness, thinking—a luxury I seldom permitted myself.

  When I finally rolled to my feet and retrieved the terry shorts I’d thrown on after the workout shower, I went back to my room and showered quickly again. This time, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a thick, maroon sweater. I pushed the sleeves up to my elbows, ran my fingers through my damp hair, and went in search of Elspeth.

  There was the scent of cooking food in the air. With the faintest dread, I headed to my study and logged back on to the computer. I began my personal research of Traxton. I began to understand why Marty had been so fascinated with them. There was very little information available, which made me think he knew something he hadn’t told me, and now I’d never hear.

  I wanted to buy them because they already owned warehousing at several of the largest ports and had the equipment to move the large shipping containers from the dock onto a cargo ship and off again. They also had agreements with major distributors around the world. I could get all this myself, but it would take time. There was some word out that Traxton was in financial trouble and the CEO had money issues. This made them the perfect acquisition. Had I been out-maneuvered?

  I found Google’s image search page and my fingers were suspended over the keyboard as I contemplated uploading a picture of Elspeth. Maybe she was being sought by an anxious husband, parents, or perhaps had a child of her own. Did I really want to know? I knew I didn’t, so I quickly clicked the window shut and busied myself organizing the desk drawer.

  Elspeth tapped on the door, and I went to meet her, giving her a hug with a deep kiss.

  “Dinner is ready,” she piped up, smiling.

  I nodded cheerfully. It was one of my better acting performances, I had to admit.

  “You look nice,” she complimented me.

  I noticed she, too, was wearing a skirt and sweater that emphasized her beautiful legs. The soft, fuzzy yarn of her sweater made her look like a cheerleader I’d once sampled in the back seat of a car years before. The comparison ended there, however. Elspeth was much, much more than a backseat fuck.

  I rounded the corner into the dining area and was wowed by the ambiance she’d set up. It was snowing outside but floodlights glittered off the flakes and created a tableau like a snow globe. She’d lit a candelabra for the table and white roses in a crystal, square vase sat at its base. White linen decorated the table and this time, the full set of china was in use—from bread plate to demitasse cups, silver cutlery to crystal water goblets.

  I think my mouth dropped open because she smiled gently and motioned for me to sit down. She was holding a glass pitcher and filled our water goblets, disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a platter of hors d’ oeuvres of the finest quality caviar on toast points, a selection of cheeses and fresh, beautifully arranged fruit in artistic slices. She handed me a bottle of vintage wine, wrapped in a linen napkin and asked me to pour. It was a rare and highly desirable selection, and I sampled it quickly before filling our goblets.

  There was a cream of asparagus soup, obviously freshly made, a small dinner salad with tomato rosettes and when she brought in the main course, Beef Wellington with piped whipped potatoes, I knew I’d been had.

  “Anything wrong?” she asked meekly, her eyes glittering as I took in the perfectly executed dinner before us.

  “You set me up.”

  “I did, indeed.”

  “Why?”

  “To teach you not to be judgmental. Every day, I see the look in your eyes and hear the doubt in your questions. You’ve drawn a conclusion about me, my dear friend, and needed to learn to be patient. I am who I am, Finn. I can’t make up a past, or a future, for that matter. Take me as I am, today, right here and now. That’s all I can give you,” she finished, holding up her wine to toast mine.

  “Well played,” I complimented her. I realized I’d just seen a new prism in my petite companion. Was it still possible she was a player in some monstrously elaborate game and I, the fly caught in the web?

  Chapter 22

  Elspeth

  That was the night I began sleeping in Finn’s room. I was careful to point out that I wasn’t moving in. That seemed too much like a foregone conclusion and if there was anything my life didn’t have, it was a conclusion. I preferred to think of this as learning more about one another. Up until now, the camera and lights had all been on me. Finn had escaped the exposure, but I thought it was time he shared in it—if only to understand what he was putting me through. That conversation came up as we lay, side by side, in his king-sized bed. I had teased him that it was a bed without personality—a Plexiglas sculpture that happened to hold a mattress and fitted sheet.

  “What’s wrong with my bed?” he protested, although weakly.

  “It has no personality.”

  “Are beds supposed to have personalities?” he responded, doubt in his voice. “Did I miss a memo somewhere?”

  “No, your bed isn’t void of personality—it’s deliberately neutral.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” he commented, his fingers running the length of my inside arm. I had to admit it felt great, but so did talking. It seemed so long since I’d had normal conversation without the weight of my life’s mystery involved.

  “It means that I’ve noticed that at times, you go out of your way to avoid making impressions on others. It’s like wearing a certain kind of watch might tell them you make more than minimum wage, so you wear none.”

  “Oh, now you’ve got that wrong,” he argued. “Not wearing a watch for me was a personal goal. It’s a symbol that I own my own time.”

  “But is that true?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You never make appointments?”

  “Rarely.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like appointments.”

  “You don’t like commitments.”

  He was frowning, wondering how we’d gotten to this from my initial comment on the design of his bed. I didn’t bother to explain that this was how women worked—how we thought. Why take a straight line when a circuitous one often won the goal through sheer endurance?

  “And that’s another thing,” I continued before he caught up with my thinking. Women also had the timing thing down pat.

  “Another thing?”

  “I’m beginning to feel like I live under a microscope. Every word I speak is analyzed, you order in experts to give opinions as to whether I’m lying, and so forth. I don’t like it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Why is that?’ You just now admitted that you don’t like people making assumptions about you, and you have to ask why I would like my personal privacy as well?”

  “Whaaaaat? I never admitted I don’t like assumptions.”

  “Then you don’t.”

  “Are you messing with my head or did you sneak pot into the main course at dinner, which… by the way, was terrific.”

  “Of course, it was. I had to teach you a lesson about assumptions. I turned the tables on you.”

  “Elspeth, you’ve got me not only turned, but dizzy. What are you getting at?”

  “What I’m trying to suggest is that just maybe I will never regain my memory. Have you considered that? It’s possib
le my life began the night you rescued me, and I’ll have to start from scratch. If that’s true, do you really want me to begin my new life feeling as though I’m a prisoner on parole and you hold the key to throwing me back inside?”

  He was silent long moments as he considered what I was saying. I suspected it had entered his mind before I brought it up and he was feeling guilty. I’d known him long enough to recognize that when he was quiet, he was bothered by something he’d done, or not done.

  “So, tell me about you. Who held you accountable?” I asked.

  “What makes you think someone held me accountable?”

  “No, sir. You can’t play my game. I’m onto that and we’ve moved on. I’m asking you straight out—who influenced you?”

  I felt his shoulder move beside me in a shrug. “Many people, I guess.”

  “Name one.”

  “Mr. Rodney.”

  “Who was that?”

  “My junior high gym teacher.”

  “So, was he like a super athlete and taught you about self-discipline or something?”

  He chuckled and I remembered how I loved the sound of his laughter; it came from within his belly and vibrated as though his diaphragm was a musical reed— rigid and yet able to vibrate when you moved air over it. “Hardly. No, Mr. Rodney was incompetent. The rumor was they’d given him a medical discharge from the Army because he continued to wet the bed. He barely made it through college and only had a Bachelor’s, but since there was little competition for his job, it was his by default.”

  “Then how was he an influence?”

  “Mr. Rodney epitomized everything I didn’t want to be.”

  I thought about this. “That’s interesting. So, you didn’t like that he failed at things?”

  “No. I didn’t like that he took on things at which he could never be successful, so he sought failure. It was a standard to which he aspired.”