The Billionaire's Bargain (Blackout Billionaires Book 1) Page 3

  When the blackout ended, she still had to face the Wellses.

  “Did I lose you?” His softly rumbled question drew her from her desperate thoughts.

  Clearing her throat, she settled on the floor, tucking her legs under her. She tugged on the hem of his pants, and he accepted her silent invitation, sinking down beside her. When the thick muscles of his leg brushed her knee, she reached out and skated a palm down his arm until she located his hand. She pressed half the cereal bar into it.

  “What is this?” His low roll of rich laughter slid over her skin, and she involuntarily tightened her grip on her half.

  “Dinner.” Isobel bit into the snack and hummed. The oats, almonds and chocolate weren’t caviar and toast points, but they did the job in a pinch. And this situation definitely qualified as a pinch.

  “I have to say this is a first,” he murmured, amusement still warming his voice.

  God, she liked it. A lot. No matter how foolish that feeling might be.

  “So, you don’t want to share your name,” he continued. “And I’ll respect that. But since I’m sharing a cereal bar with you, I feel like I should know more about you besides your predilection for sci-fi movies. Tell me something about you.”

  She didn’t immediately reply, instead nibbling on her snack while she figured out how to dodge his request. She didn’t want to give him any details that might assist him in figuring out her identity. But another nebulous reason, one that she felt silly for even thinking, flitted through her head.

  Giving him details about herself...pieces of herself...meant she couldn’t get them back.

  And she feared that. Had been taught to fear that.

  Yet...

  She bowed her head, silently cursing herself. What was it about this man? She’d never seen his face, didn’t know his name. And still, he called to her in a way that electrified her. If she’d learned anything from the past, she would shield herself.

  “I’m a grudge-holder,” she said, the words escaping. Damn it. “I’ll never let my brother off the hook for burning my Christmas Barbie’s hair to the scalp when I was seven. I still give Elaine Lanier side-eye, whenever I see her, for making out with my boyfriend in the eleventh grade. And I will never, ever forgive Will Smith for Wild, Wild West.”

  A loud bark of laughter echoed between them, and she grinned. The sound warmed her like the sun’s beams.

  She tapped his leg. A mistake on her part. As she settled her hand back in her lap, she could still feel the strength of his muscle against her fingertips. Good God. The man was hard. She rubbed her fingertips against her leg as if she could erase the sensation. “Now your turn,” she said, forcing a teasing note into her voice. “Tell me something about yourself.”

  He hesitated, and for a moment, she didn’t think he would answer, but then he shifted beside her, and his thigh pressed closer, harder against her knee. Her breath snagged in her throat. Heat pulsed through her from that point of contact, and she savored it. For the first time in years, she...embraced it.

  “I love to fish,” he finally murmured. “Not deep sea or competitive fishing. Just sitting on a dock with a rod, barefoot, sun beating down on you, surrounded by quiet. Interrupted only by the gently lapping water. We would vacation at our summer home in Hilton Head, and my father and I would spend hours at the lake and dock behind the house. We’d talk or just enjoy the silence and each other. We even caught fish sometimes.”

  His low chuckle contained humor, but also a hint of sadness. Her heart clenched at the possible reason why.

  “Those were some of my best memories, and I still try to visit Hilton Head at least once a year, although I haven’t been in the last two...”

  His voice trailed off, and unable to resist, she reached out, found his hand and wrapped her fingers around his, squeezing. Her heart thumped against her chest when his fingers tightened in response.

  “I have the hugest crush on Dr. Phil. He’s so sexy.”

  He snorted. “I cook the best eggplant parmesan you’ll ever taste in your life. It’s an existential experience.”

  Isobel snickered. “I can write with my toes. I can also eat, brush my teeth and play ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano with them.”

  A beat of silence passed between them. “You do know I recognize that’s from The Breakfast Club, right?”

  Laughter burst from her, and she fell back against the wall, clutching her stomach. Wow. She hadn’t laughed this hard or this much in so long. It was...freeing. And felt so damn good. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.

  At twenty, she’d met Gage, and within months, they’d married. She’d gone from being a college student who worked part-time to help pay her tuition to the wife of one of Chicago’s wealthiest men. His family had disapproved of their marriage and threatened to cut him off. Initially, Gage hadn’t seemed to care. They’d lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago, and they’d been happy. Or at least she’d believed they had been.

  Months into their marriage, the charming, affectionate man she’d wed had morphed into a spoiled, emotionally abusive man-child. Not until it’d been too late had she discovered that his fear of being without his family’s money and acceptance had trumped any love he’d harbored for Isobel. Her life had become a living hell.

  So the last time she’d laughed like this had been those first four months of her marriage.

  A failed relationship, tarnished dreams, battered self-confidence and single motherhood had stolen the carefree from her life, but here, stuck in a mansion with a faceless man, she’d found it again. Even if only for an instant.

  “Hey.” Masculine fingers glanced over her knee. “You still with me?”

  “Yes,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m still here.”

  “Good.” His hand dropped away, and she missed it. Insane, she knew. But she did. “It’s your turn. Because you phoned it in with the last one.”

  “So, we’re really not going to talk about how you know the dialogue to The Breakfast Club?” she drawled.

  “Yes, we’re going to ignore it. Your turn.”

  After chuckling at the emphatic reply, she continued, “Fine. Okay, I...”

  Seconds, minutes or hours had passed—she couldn’t tell in this slice of time that seemed to exist outside of reality. They could’ve been on another plane, where his delicious scent provided air, and his deep, melodic voice wrapped around her, a phantom embrace.

  And his touch? His touch was gravity, anchoring him to her, and her to him. In some manner—fingers enclosing hers, a thigh pressed to hers, a palm cupping the nape of her neck—he never ceased touching her. Logic reasoned that he needed that lodestone in the blackness so he didn’t surrender to another panic attack.

  Yet the heated sweetness that slid through her veins belied reason. No, he wanted to touch her...and, God, did she want to be touched.

  She’d convinced herself that she didn’t need desire anymore. Didn’t need the melting pleasure, the hot press of skin to skin, of limbs tangling, bodies straining together toward that perfect tumble over the edge into the abyss.

  Yes, she missed all of it.

  But in the end, those moments weren’t worth the disillusionment and loneliness that inevitably followed.

  Here, though, with this man she didn’t know, she basked in the return of the need, of the sweet ache that sensitized and pebbled her skin, and teased places that had lain dormant for too long. Her nipples furled into tight points, pressing against her strapless bra and gown. Sinuous flames licked at her belly...and lower.

  God, she was hungry.

  “You’ve gone quiet on me again, sweetheart,” he murmured, sweeping a caress over the back of her hand that he clasped in his. “Talk to me. I need to hear your beautiful voice.”

  Did he touch all women this e
asily? Was he always this affectionate? Or was it the darkness? Did he feel freer, too? Without the accountability of propriety?

  Or is it me?

  As soon as the traitorous and utterly foolish thought whispered through her head, she banished it. Yes, these were extraordinary circumstances, and she was grabbing this slice in time for herself, but never could she forget who she was. Because this man might not know her identity, but he still believed her to be someone she absolutely wasn’t—wealthy, a socialite...a woman who belonged.

  “Sweetheart?”

  That endearment. She shivered. It ignited a curl of heat in her chest. It loosed a razor-tipped arrow at the same target. No one had ever called her “sweetheart.” Or “baby” or any of those personal endearments. Gage used to call her Belle, shortening her name and because he’d met her in her regular haunt, the University of Illinois’s library, like a modern-day version of the heroine from Beauty and the Beast. Later, the affectionate nickname had become a taunt, a criticism of her unsophisticated and naïve nature.

  She hated that name now.

  But every time this man called her sweetheart, she felt cherished, wanted. Even though it was also a stark reminder that he didn’t know her name. That she was lying to him by omission.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she blurted out.

  “Isn’t that kind of our MO?” he drawled. “Ask.”

  Now that she could satisfy the curiosity that had been gnawing at her since she’d first encountered him, she hesitated. She had no right—never mind it not being her business—to probe into his history and private pain. But as hypocritical as it made her, she sought a piece of him she sensed he wouldn’t willingly offer someone else.

  “Earlier, when I first bumped into you...you were having a panic attack,” she began. He stiffened, tension turning his body into a replica of the marble statue adorning the fountain outside the mansion. Sitting so close to him, she swore she could feel icy waves emanate from him. Unease trickled through her. Damn it. She should’ve left it alone. “I’m sorry...” she rasped, tugging on her hand, trying to withdraw it from his hold. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

  But he didn’t release her. Her heart stuttered as his grip on her strengthened.

  “Don’t,” he ordered.

  Don’t what? Ask him any more questions? Pull away? How pathetic did it make her that she hoped it was the latter?

  “You’re the only thing keeping me sane,” he admitted in a voice so low that, even in the blackness that magnified every sound, she barely caught the admission.

  A thread of pain throbbed through his confession, and she couldn’t resist the draw of it. Scooting closer until her thigh pressed against his, she lifted the hand not clasped in his to his hard chest. The drum of his heart vibrated against her palm, running up her arm and echoing in her own chest.

  She felt and heard his heavy inhale. And she parted her lips, ready to tell him to forget it. To apologize again for intruding, but his big hand covered hers, halting her words.

  “My parents died when I was sixteen.”

  “God,” she breathed. That hint of sadness she’d detected earlier when he’d talked about fishing with his father... She’d suspected, and now he’d confirmed it. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Plane crash on their way back from a business meeting in Paris. Ordinarily my mother wouldn’t have been with my father, but they decided to treat it as an anniversary trip. They were my foundation. And I...” He paused, and Isobel waited.

  She couldn’t imagine... Her father had been a nonfactor in her life for most of her childhood, but her mom... Her mother had been her support system, her rock, even through the years with Isobel and Aiden’s move to California and back. Losing her...she closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder, offering whatever comfort he needed as he relayed the details of the tragedy that had scarred him.

  “My best friend and his family took me in. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me, where I would be now, without them. But at the time, I was lost. Adrift. In the months afterward, I’d skip school or leave my friend’s house in the middle of the night to go to the building where we’d lived. The penthouse had been sold, so I no longer had access to my home, but I would sneak into the basement through a window. It had a loosened bar that I would remove and squeeze through. I’d sit there for hours, just content to be in the building, if not in the place where I’d lived with them. My best friend—he followed me one night when I sneaked out, so he knew about it. But he never told.”

  Another pause, and again she didn’t disturb him. She wanted to hug that best friend for standing by the boy-now-man. She’d had girlfriends in the past, but none that would’ve—or could’ve, given their own family situations—taken her in as if she were family. This friend of his, he must’ve been special.

  “About four months after my parents’ death, I’d left school again and went to the basement. I’d had a rough night. Nightmares and no sleep. That’s the only reason I can think of for me falling asleep in the basement that day. I don’t know what woke me up. The noise? The heat?” His shoulder rose and fell in a shrug under her cheek. “Like I said, I don’t know. But when I did, the room was pitch-black. I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face. I heard what sounded like twigs snapping. But underneath that, distant but growing louder, was this dull roar. Like engines revving in a closed garage. I’d never been in one before, but somehow I knew. The building was on fire, and I was trapped.”

  “No,” she whispered, fingers curling against his chest.

  “I couldn’t move. Thick black smoke filled the basement, and I choked on it, couldn’t breathe. I can’t tell you how long I laid there, paralyzed by fear or weak from inhaling smoke, but I thought I was going to die. That room—it became my tomb. A dark, burning tomb. But then I heard someone shouting my name and saw the high beam of a flashlight. It was my friend. I found out later that he’d heard about the fire on the news, and when I hadn’t shown up at his house after school, he’d guessed where I’d gone. The firemen had believed they’d cleared the entire building, but he’d forced them to go back in and search the basement. He should’ve stayed outside and let them come find me, but he’d barreled past them and entered with only his shirt over his face to battle the smoke, putting his life in danger. But if he hadn’t... He saved my life that day.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Sliding her hand from under his, she wrapped her arm around his waist, curving her body into his. She’d known him for mere hours, and yet the thought of him dying, of being consumed by flames? It bothered her in a way that made no sense. “He was a hero.”

  “Yes, he was,” he said softly. “He was a good man.”

  Was a good man. No. It couldn’t be... Horror and disbelief crowded up her throat. “He’s gone, too?”

  “A couple of years now, but sometimes it seems like yesterday.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Isobel shifted until she knelt beside him. She stroked her hand up his torso, searching out his face. Once she brushed over his hard, faintly stubbled jaw, she cupped it and lowered her head, until her forehead met his temple.

  His fingers drifted over her cheek, and after a moment’s hesitation, tunneled into her hair. Her lungs seized, shock infiltrating every vein, organ and limb. Only her heart seemed capable of movement, and it threw itself against her sternum, like an animal desperate for freedom from its cage.

  Blunt fingertips dragged over her scalp. A moan clawed its way up her throat at the scratch and tug of her hair, but she trapped the sound behind clenched teeth. She couldn’t prevent the shudder that worked its way through her. Not when it’d been so long since she’d been touched. Since pleasure had even been a factor. So. Long.

  “I need to hear that lovely voice, sweetheart,” he rumbled, turning and bowing his head so his lips grazed the column of her throat as he spoke. Sparks snapped under her skin as if her ne
rve endings had transformed into firecrackers, and his mouth was the lighter. “There are things I want to do to your mouth that require your permission.”

  “Like what?” Had she really just asked that question? And in that breathy tone? What was he doing to her?

  Giving you what you’re craving. Be brave and find out, her subconscious replied.

  “Find out if it’s as sweet as you are. Taste you. Savor you. Learn you,” he murmured, answering her question. He untangled their clasped fingers and with unerring accuracy, located her chin and pinched it. Cool but soft strands of hair tickled her jaw, and then her cheek, as he lifted his head. Then warm gusts of air bathed her lips. She could taste him, his breath. Something potent with faint hints of lemon, like the champagne from earlier. But also, underneath, lay a darker, enigmatic flavor. Him. She didn’t need to pinpoint its origin to know it was all him. “Then I want to take your mouth. Want you to take mine.”

  “I...” Desperate, aching need robbed her of words. Of thought.

  “Give me the words, sweetheart.” He didn’t breach that scant inch of space between them, waiting on her consent, her permission.

  When so much had been ripped from her in the past, choices not even offered, that seeking of her agreement squeezed her heart even as his words caused a spasm to roll through her sex.

  “Yes,” she said. Then, as if confirming to herself that she was indeed breaking her self-imposed rules about caution and recklessness, she whispered again, “Yes.”

  With a growl, he claimed that distance.

  She expected him to crush his mouth to hers, to conquer her like a wild storm leveling everything in its path. And she would’ve thrown herself into the whirlwind, been willingly swept up. But his tenderness was as thorough in its destruction as any tornado.

  His lips, full, firm yet somehow soft, brushed over hers. Pressed, then withdrew. Rubbed, cajoled, gave her enough of him, but waited until she granted him more. On the tail end of a sigh she couldn’t contain, she parted for him. Welcomed the penetration of his tongue. Slid into a sensual dance with him. It was she who sucked him, licking the roof of his mouth, sampling the dark, heady flavor of his groan. She who first brought teeth into play, nipping at the corner of his mouth, raking them down his chin, only to return to take just as he’d invited her to do.