Billion Dollar Beast - Olivia Hayle Page 0,32

things like tripping or furniture seem inconsequential.

His hands drift lower to my thighs and then I’m lifted up, placed on some hard surface that gives me more access to him. I revel in it, running my hands over the wide stretches of his shoulders, feeling the thrumming of life inside his powerful frame. Mine, I think fiercely.

His hands grip my waist hard, and not once has he stopped kissing me. My legs open instinctively for him and he steps between them. Eager, I lift one up, hooking it around his hip. Nick growls against my lips at the movement.

When he tears his lips from mine, I barely have time to protest before he’s put them back again, this time on my neck. A hand gently tugging in my hair tips my head back to give him more access. I stare unseeing up at the ceiling and hold on to his shoulders as sensations course through me. His lips against the hollow at the base of my throat spark me back into action.

And then I’m tugging at the buttons of his shirt. I need access to his skin too—it’s not fair he’s so much more covered up than me.

Nick glances down at my hands and then further down still, where his own are smoothing across my thighs. His fingers grip the green fabric of my wrap dress and toss it back impatiently, revealing the length of my bare thigh and just a hint of underwear.

“Yes,” I murmur, moving to the edge of the desk, unaware of anything but him and this and us and please just touch me.

Nick takes a step back. The loss of his strong arms is so sudden that I have to slide off the desk to keep from tipping over.

The long, deep look we exchange infuriates me. How dare he look at me with so much want it’s practically dripping from him and not touch me? Can’t he see I’m burning?

I take a step forward but Nick backs away, reaching up to refasten the single button I’d managed to undo.

And right before my eyes, the raw need on his features dissipates, like ripples on a lake. He’s once more the scathing, infuriating, cold-hearted man he pretends to be. Because I’m sure of that now. It’s nothing but an act.

He opens his mouth to speak but seems to think better of it. In the next moment, he’s gone, striding out the door and wrenching it open.

“Nick, don’t—”

It’s no use. He’s vanished, and I’m left standing in the study, my heart pounding like I’ve just been sprinting flat-out and still lost the race.

11

Blair

The numbers bleed together on the screen. Every time I go over purchasing orders, I see Nick’s eyes instead. And when I reach for fabric samples, the memory of his lips on mine threatens to overwhelm me. Nick had kissed me.

After nearly a decade of admiring him from afar, the experience has been overwhelming. Sure, he might still think of me as Cole’s spoiled little sister, or as a socialite in need of a hobby, but he also kissed me like he needed me more than he needed air—and there was no way he could deny that.

We haven’t spoken since. No, in the six days that have passed, he hasn’t been around at all. Not at work, where he’s either out with investors or taking meetings, and not at Cole’s, where I’d been invited for dinner one evening.

He’s avoiding me.

After walking out like that without a word, he seems intent on not giving me another. I’d chalked it up to Nick being Nick at first. To the words we’ve spoken before—my hasty assertion that he wants to push the world away—and not the kiss itself.

But as Thursday becomes Friday, and Friday bleeds into the weekend, his silence starts to grate on my self-confidence. It had been an absolutely unreal kiss, hadn’t it?

On Saturday morning, I pack up a box of samples for my new company and ignore the churning of nerves in my stomach. First Nick, and now this, all in the span of a week. Be brave, Blair.

The route to my brother’s house in Greenwood Hills has become so familiar to me now that I could probably drive it blindfolded. Cole isn’t in when I enter, but that matters little. It’s his wife I’m here to see.

“Skye?”

“I’m upstairs!” she calls, and I hurry up the steps, my bag slung over my shoulder. Filled with all my hard work and plans and hopes, it feels far heavier