Billion Dollar Beast - Olivia Hayle Page 0,78
I’m already looking for another company to butcher.”
I snort. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
We uncover the hot tub, steam rising into the cold, freezing air. Snowdrifts frame the cleared patio, close enough to reach out and touch.
Smiling angelically at Nick, I form a snowball.
“No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”
“You wanted me to relax.”
“Relax, not fight.” He climbs into the hot tub, the width of his shoulders rising out of the hot water. “If you’re itching for it, I can bring up our living situation again.”
I drop the snowball and glare at him. He chuckles, not bothered in the least by my death look. His laughter comes much more freely now.
“Fine, I won’t,” he says. “Now will you please get in here? It’s killing me to see you in a bikini from so far away. I need access.”
Rolling my eyes at that, I climb into the hot tub after him. “My apartment has everything I need,” I can’t resist saying. “My assistant has the space she needs, too. It’s like a little headquarters.”
“So make it into that.”
He’s not joking. “You think?”
“Yes. Turn it into your office and move in with me instead.”
Slicing through the water, I cover the short distance to him and into his waiting arms. “Into your apartment?”
“No,” he says, tucking me against his large form. “It has absolutely no charm, as you’ve pointed out enough times. No decorative pillows though, but that’s really the only plus.”
I elbow him and he rolls his eyes, the picture of reluctance. “Fine, fine. You’ll be allowed a few in our new place. Choose wisely where you’ll put them. Couch or bed, but you can’t have both.”
“You’re cruel.”
He presses a kiss to my temple. “I don’t care where we live, Blair. Just as long as you’re sleeping in my bed every night.”
I relax into the warm water and his embrace. “Well, I know I said I was dead-set against it…”
“Yes?”
“But there is a place in Cole and Skye’s area for sale. I know it’s too soon for us. But it did get me thinking… perhaps Greenwood Hills wouldn’t be so bad?”
Nick snorts. “So you want us to do the whole thing? White-picket fence and a dog and a baby on the way.”
“No dog,” I say. “And no baby. Not yet, anyway. And the fence doesn’t even have to be white. There are a ton of other possible colors, a whole rainbow of them. I’m open to suggestions.”
His hand toys with the side-knot of my bikini bottoms. “I doubt the neighborhood association would allow for a rainbow fence,” he says. “But like I said, I don’t care much where we live. And being close to Cole and Skye… well, I know it would make you happy.”
“Not to mention it’ll make you happy, too,” I point out. “No point in denying it.”
He grumbles in response, but I know it’s the truth. Nick and Cole are thick as thieves again, though it had taken a few months for the both of them to adjust to the new dynamic.
My brother had even winked when he told us to take the chalet this weekend. “Don’t tear the place down completely,” he’d said. I wasn’t sure what I felt about that type of joke, but he was on board, and that’s what mattered.
“Remember when we were up here last time, watching those glaciers and ice caves?” I ask.
“Of course I do.”
“They were gorgeous. Beyond anything I’ve seen. And still… I just kept thinking about how you’d seen me as a grown woman for the first time the night before. It was the first time I’d ever really felt hopeful where you were concerned.”
His voice drops an octave, the huskiness in it settling in my stomach. “Believe me, I have never seen you as anything else. That was the whole problem.”
“Even from the beginning?”
His hands grip my waist, lifting me onto his lap. Our bodies fit easily together in the warm water. “Even from the beginning.”
“I know that means you were basically pining for years, just like me, which isn’t nice… but it selfishly makes me a bit happy to hear, too.”
His smile is crooked, a wet hand reaching up to cup my cheek. “Of course it does.”
Our kiss is sweet. They’re increasingly common, these soft kisses—ones that speak of a future. Not rushed and filled with instantaneous passion, although there’s often plenty of that, too.
“There are no neighbors around, right?”
Nick’s eyes are heated as he looks from me to the wide expanse of snow-covered firs. “No. An errant squirrel, perhaps. A moose.”
“They can watch.” I untie my bikini top, loving the way his eyes darken.
His hands replace the dark fabric and our kisses turn from sweet to heated. He presses his face to my neck, lips on my skin. “I love you.”
Funny, how those words never stop affecting me, not when they’re spoken in his gravelly voice. Especially not when his scarred hands are on my skin, and when it’s just the two of us and a lifetime of togetherness to look forward to. He’d said it about a month after I did, and when he did… it was well worth the wait.
“I love you too,” I say, gasping as he undoes the knots of my bikini bottoms and pulls them out of the way.
“That was smart,” he comments. “Can’t all your panties be like that?”
“I’ll consider it for the next collection.” My voice is breathless, hands gripping his shoulders as his fingers begin to move between my legs.
“One more thing,” he says.
“What?”
“We’ll live wherever you want. Hell, fill the place with decorative pillows to your heart’s content. But I want a small ceremony, Blair. I know how you Porters like it big.”
I roll my hips against him to emphasize those words and we both laugh for a moment, the husky sounds mingling in the cold air.
Then his words break through my haze of desire. “The ceremony?” Had I really heard that word from his lips?
“I will ask you one day, you know.” His voice is teasing, but his dark, heated eyes are serious.
I rest my forehead against his. “Wow,” I murmur, doing my best to hold on to this man, to the sensations he’s making me feel, emotional and physical all at the same time.
“Nothing else to say? That’s not like you.”
“Hinting at marriage? That’s not like you, either,” I echo.
He laughs, hands moving quicker now. Perhaps this was what he wanted to say. “I’ve decided something,” he says. “Well, I decided it weeks ago.”
“Oh? And what was that?”
“If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right, Blair. I’m all in. So no more tip-toeing around me when you suggest couple’s dinners. No more sly hints about wanting to go to Oregon and see my hometown.”
I grimace. “Not so sly after all?”
“You’re the sneakiest,” he assures me. “But there’s no need. I’m not about to bolt. Not now, and not later.”
“Good. Because you know I wouldn’t let you,” I say, my words breaking into a gasp when his fingers circle a particularly sensitive spot. “There’s no place you could go where I wouldn’t find you and try to drag you out. Not even your own melancholy.”
Nick presses his lips against mine. “And I’ll be your punching bag, whenever you need one.”
My laughing reply is cut off entirely as he moves, as his fingers circle, forcing me to tighten my grip on his shoulders. And there’s no fear at all in this surrender, not from him and not from me, with only the wide-open sky as our witness and the falling snow as our companion.
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Author’s note
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ABOUT OLIVIA
Olivia loves billionaire heroes despite never having met one in person. Taking matters into her own hands, she creates them on the page instead. Stern, charming, cold or brooding, so far she's never met a (fictional) billionaire she didn't like.
A voracious reader of romance, Olivia picked up the pen a few years back and what followed was nothing short of a love affair of her own. Now she spends her days giggling at the steamy banter she's writing or swooning at their happily-ever-afters.
Smart and sexy romance—those are her lead themes!
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