Читать книгу The Billionaire's Conquest - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 11

Marcus stood at the broad window of the hotel suite dressed in the plush royal blue robe the hotel so thoughtfully provided for all its guests and watched the snow fall. And fall. And fall. And fall. Fat, furious flakes coming down so thick and so fast, he could barely make out the buildings on the other side of Michigan Avenue.

Unbelievable. What was supposed to have been a manageable snowfall of three to five inches had turned into a blizzard during the night. The entire city was on hold until the snowplows could get out and do their thing, but since everyone had been caught by surprise, they couldn’t do anything until the snow let up. A lot.

And the snow didn’t show any sign of letting up. At all.

The situation was going to be untenable for a while. No one would be going anywhere until tomorrow at the earliest. Not that Marcus cared. Because it meant that the one night Della had promised was all she could give him would now, by necessity, become two.

That was something he should definitely care about. The last thing he looked for in a one-night stand was for it to last more than one night. Hell, half the time he was safely back at his place before the night was even over. Once he was sexually satisfied by a woman, there was never any reason to hang around. Even the prospect of being sexually satisfied a second time rarely kept him from leaving.

But with Della, even being satisfied a third time hadn’t quelled his appetite for more. Once he’d regained enough strength to manage it. They’d both been insatiable last night, to the point where they’d slept only long enough to recover from their previous coupling, then come together even more fiercely than before. That third time, they’d had to rely on oral gratification alone to bring each other to climax, since the second time had been so rough. Not that either of them had seemed to mind. Della had been as demanding and wild as a tigress, and Marcus had mounted her the way a jungle cat would have claimed his mate.

And even that hadn’t been enough to satisfy him. In fact, that had only made him want her more. When he’d awoken that morning beside her, their bodies had been so intricately entwined, he’d barely been able to tell where hers ended and his began. Marcus never slept with a woman after having sex with her. Never. And he’d certainly never gathered one close that way and held her with such possessiveness. For a long time after waking, he’d only lain silently beside her, holding her, listening to her soft respiration, inhaling her scent. It was different now. Last night she’d smelled soft and flowery. This morning she smelled musky and dark. And, God help him, Marcus had grown hard against her as he lay there, and it had been all he could do not to take her again in her sleep. Instead, he’d eased his way out of the bed without waking her, donned the robe and called for room service.

Even its arrival hadn’t woken Della. But that might be because Marcus had intercepted the steward in the hallway when he’d heard the rattle of the approaching cart and brought it in himself. He hadn’t wanted to wake her before she was ready. Strangely, however, that hadn’t been because he wanted her rested up for another night like last night—and, hey, maybe a day like last night, too—but because he simply liked watching her sleep.

He turned away from the window and let go of the sheer curtains, throwing the room into an otherworldly dusk created by the thickly falling snow. He loved the understated luxury of the Ambassador, loved the taupe walls and buff-colored, cleanly tailored furnishings with the dashes of blues and greens in the form of throw pillows and abstract artwork. He’d wanted a suite, of course, but there hadn’t been one available. At the time, it hadn’t seemed a problem, since he’d known he and Della would only need the place for a few hours. Now that their stay was looking to be for most of the weekend, it would have been nice to have a little more room to spread out.

He looked over at the bed, where she still slept, and smiled. Then again, there was a lot to be said for close quarters. Even if those quarters were still five-star hotel roomy.

Della lay on her stomach, the ivory sheets tangled over her lower half, her creamy back and shoulders laid bare. Silently, he neared the bed, pausing beside it.

Her hair flowed like a honey river above her head and down the side of the pillow, and her hand was curled into a loose fist near her mouth. Her lips were swollen from the ferocity of their kisses, and her cheek was pink where his beard had abraded her. He remembered wrapping fistfuls of that hair around his fingers as he’d ridden her last night, then stroking it back into place as the two of them had gentled their movements in the afterglow. Even in the furiousness of their actions, he’d noted how thick and silky the strands were, and he’d loved the feel of her soft tresses tumbling through his fingers.

He was about to turn away to pour two cups of coffee—maybe the aroma of Jamaica Blue Mountain would rouse her—when she began to stir. Slowly, murmuring soft sounds of wakefulness, she inhaled a deep, satisfied breath and released it slowly. Her eyes still closed, she rolled over and arched her arms over her head for an idle stretch. The action displayed her full breasts to their best advantage, stiffening her rosy nipples. Then she straightened her legs to stretch them, too, the sheet falling away as she spread them open, making visible the dark blond nest between her legs.

Again, Marcus stirred to life simply looking at her. She was utter perfection, beauty so unflawed and pure that he almost wished he hadn’t sullied her.

Almost.

Instead, unable to help himself, he leaned over and traced the pad of his middle finger along her calf.

She moaned softly in response to his touch, smiling a very tempting smile, but she still didn’t open her eyes. So Marcus drew his finger higher, up over her knee and along her thigh. She gasped a little this time, then uttered a low, erotic sound that seemed to come from deep inside her. But she still didn’t open her eyes.

So Marcus leaned over the bed, moving his finger to the inside of her thigh, closer to the juncture of her legs. Della, in turn, opened her legs wider. Now Marcus smiled, too, and drove his hand into the silky thatch of curls hiding the feminine core of her. For long seconds, he furrowed her with light, slow, measured movements, pushing his fingers through the hot, damp folds of flesh. Deliberately, he avoided the sweet little spot that would drive her over the edge, but he skirted close a time or two, just to hear her swift intake of breath and ensuing groan of pleasure. When he pulled away again, he slipped a finger inside her, gently, since he knew she must still be tender from the night before. When she lifted her hips from the mattress to pull him deeper, he withdrew his finger, then inserted it slowly again. And again. And again.

When he knew she was at the verge of coming apart, he brought his thumb into the action, this time settling it resolutely on her now-drenched skin. It was easy for him to rub the pad of his thumb over her sweet spot, even when she began bucking her hips wildly at the onslaught. His fingers were covered with her essence now, making his manipulations come more quickly, more insistently. With one final push, he brought her to climax, making her cry out at the sensations that rocked her. She arched one last time, then slowly came back down to the bed. Marcus drew his hand up along her naked torso, leaving a trail of her own satisfaction in his wake, circling first one nipple, then the other, before moving his hand to the delicate lines of her neck.

“Good morning,” he said softly, as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened.

She was still breathing raggedly and trembling from his touch, but she managed to whisper, “Oh, yes. It is a very good morning. I could wake up that way every morning.”

The words should have had panic racing through Marcus. The last thing he wanted to hear was a woman including him in her everyday life. Instead, he found himself warming to the idea of waking her that way each day. Doubtless because any man who started his day knowing he’d brought a woman to climax took with him a sense of power and well-being. Not to mention smugness. It made a man feel as if he could do just about anything.

It had nothing to do with simply enjoying an intimate moment with an exceptional woman.

“There’s coffee,” he said. “And breakfast. I didn’t know what you’d like, so I ordered some of everything.”

“Coffee,” she said, still a little breathless. “Black,” she added as he was about to ask how she took it—almost as if she were reading his mind.

That, too, should have made him bristle. He didn’t want women understanding the workings of his brain. Mostly because few of them would approve of his thoughts, since they generally consisted of: A) women other than the one he was with, B) work, C) women other than the one he was with, D) how well the Cubs, Bears or Blackhawks were performing, depending on the season or E) women other than the one he was with.

But he kind of liked the connection with Della and, strangely, didn’t want to think of anyone or anything other than her. So he only said, “Coming right up.”

By the time he finished pouring two cups and removing the lids from the cold dishes the steward had brought up, Della was out of bed and wrapped in a robe identical to his own—except that hers swallowed her—and was standing at the window the same way he had been earlier. The snow was still coming down as opaquely as it had been then, and he thought he saw her shake her head.

“It’s like a blizzard out there,” she murmured incredulously.

“No, it is a blizzard out there,” Marcus corrected as he came to a halt beside her and extended a cup of coffee, black like his own, toward her.

She took it automatically with one hand, still holding open the curtain with the other. “How are we going to get … home?”

He noted her hesitation on the last word, as if home for her were a somewhat tentative state. Another clue that she really was only visiting here. Nevertheless, she’d assured Marcus that no one would miss her—at least not until today. Both thoughts bothered him a lot more than they should. For one thing, it shouldn’t matter if Della was tied to another man, since Marcus didn’t want to stake a claim on her anyway. For another thing, they’d both only wanted and promised one night, that should have been more than enough to satisfy their desire to enjoy each other for a little while. The fact that she was only in Chicago temporarily or might be involved with someone else should be of no consequence. In fact, it should reassure him that there would indeed be no strings attached.

For some reason, though, Marcus didn’t like the idea of her being only a visitor to Chicago. He liked even less that she might be involved with someone else.

Too much thinking, he told himself, and way too early in the day for it. It was the weekend. He was snowbound with a gorgeous, incredibly sexy woman. Why was he thinking at all?

“No one is going anywhere today,” he said before sipping his coffee. “Not even the snowplows will be able to get out until this lets up.”

Della turned to look at him, and that strange, panicked look he’d seen for a few moments last night was back in her eyes. “But I can’t stay here all day,” she told him, the panic present in her voice now, too. “I have to get … home.”

Again the hesitation before the final word, he noted. Again, he didn’t like it.

“Is there someplace you absolutely have to be today?” When she didn’t reply right away, only arrowed her eyebrows in even more concern, he amended, “Or should I ask, is there someone who’s expecting you to be someplace today?”

She dropped her gaze at that. Pretty much the only reaction he needed. So there was indeed someone else in her life. Someone she’d have to answer to for any kind of prolonged absence.

“Is it a husband?” he asked, amazed at how casual the question sounded, when he was suddenly feeling anything but.

Her gaze snapped up to his, flashing with anger. Good. Anger was better than panic. Anger stemmed from passion, not fear. “I wouldn’t be here with you if I had a husband waiting for me.”

Marcus had no idea why he liked that answer so much.

“What about you?” she countered. “Is there a wife somewhere waiting for you? Or has she come to expect this kind of behavior from you? ”

He chuckled at that. “The day I have a wife waiting for me somewhere is the day they put me in a padded cell.” When she still didn’t seem satisfied by the answer—he couldn’t imagine why not—he told her bluntly, “I’m not married, Della.” Not sure why he bothered to add it, he said, “There’s no one waiting anywhere for me.” Then, after only a small hesitation, he added, “But there is someone who will be worried about you if you don’t come … home … today, isn’t there?” He deliberately paused before the word home, too, to let her know he’d noticed her own hesitation.

She inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, then dropped the curtain and curled both hands around the white china coffee cup. She gazed into its depths instead of at Marcus when she spoke. “Home is something of a fluid concept for me at the moment.”

Fluid. Interesting word choice. “And by that you mean …?”

Still staring at her coffee, she said, “I can’t really explain it to you.” “Can’t or won’t?”

Now she did meet his gaze. But her expression was void of anything. No panic, no anger, nothing.

“Both.”

“Why?”

She only shook her head. She brought the cup to her mouth, blew softly on its surface and enjoyed a careful sip. Then she strode to the breakfast cart to inspect its choices. But he couldn’t help noting how she looked at the clock as she went, or how her eyes went wide in surprise when she saw the time. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. On a Sunday, no less. It seemed too early for anyone to have missed her if she had been able to surrender an entire night.

“You really did order a little of everything,” she said as she began lifting lids. “Pastries, bacon, sausage, eggs, fruit …”

He thought about saying something about how they both needed to regain their strength after last night, but for some reason, it felt crass to make a comment like that. Another strange turn of events, since Marcus had never worried about being crass before. Besides, what else was there for the two of them to talk about after the kind of night they’d had? Their response to each other had been sexual from the get-go. They’d barely exchanged a dozen words between the time they left the club and awoke this morning—save the earthy, arousing ones they’d uttered about what they wanted done and were going to do to each other. Ninety percent of their time together had been spent copulating. Nine percent had been spent flirting and making known the fact that they wanted to copulate. What were they supposed to say to each other that didn’t involve sex? Other than, how do you take your coffee or what did you think of La Bohème? And they’d already covered both.

She plucked a sticky pastry from the pile and set it on one of the empty plates. Then, after a small pause, she added another. Then a third. Then she added some strawberries and a couple of slices of cantaloupe. Guess she, too, thought they needed to rebuild their strength after the night they’d had. But, like him, she didn’t want to say it out loud.

“Sweet tooth, huh?” he asked as she licked a bit of frosting from the pad of her thumb.

“Just a little,” she agreed. Balancing both the plate and cup, she moved to the bed and set them on the nightstand beside it. Then she climbed into bed.

Well, that was certainly promising.

Marcus filled the other plate with eggs, bacon and a bagel, then retrieved his coffee and joined her, placing his breakfast on the opposite nightstand. Where she had seated herself with her legs crossed pretzel-fashion facing him, he leaned against the headboard with his legs extended before him. Noting the way her robe gaped open enough to reveal the upper swells of her breasts, it occurred to him that neither of them had a stitch of clothing to wear except for last night’s evening attire, that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing a person wanted to wear during the day when a person was trying to make him- or herself comfortable.

Oh, well.

He watched her nibble a strawberry and wondered how he could find such an innocent action so arousing. Then he wondered why he was even asking himself that. Della could make changing a tire arousing.

“Well, since you won’t tell me why home is so fluid,” he said, “will you at least tell me where you’re making it at the moment?”

“No,” she replied immediately.

He thought about pressing her on the matter, then decided to try a different tack. “Then will you tell me what brings you to Chicago?”

“No,” she responded as quickly.

He tried again. “Will you tell me where you’re from originally?”

“No.”

“How long you’re going to be here?”

“No.”

“Where you’re going next?”

“No.”

“How old you are?” “Certainly not.”

“Do you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she may have smiled at that. “Not particularly.”

“How about fuzzy gray kittens, volunteering for public television, long walks on the beach, cuddling by firelight and the novels of Philip Roth?”

At that, she only arrowed her eyebrows down in confusion.

“Oh, right. Sorry. That was Miss November. My bad.”

Her expression cleared, but she said nothing.

“What’s your sign?” Marcus tried again.

That, finally, did make her smile. It wasn’t a big smile, but it wasn’t bad. It was something they could work on.

“Sagittarius,” she told him.

Now that said a lot about her, Marcus thought. Or, at least, it would. If he knew a damned thing about astrology. Still, it was something. Sagittariuses were born in June, weren’t they? Or was it October? March?

All right, all right. So he knew as much about her now as he had when he started his interrogation. Which was nothing. Hell, he didn’t even know if she was telling the truth about being a Sagittarius or not liking pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

Immediately, however, he knew she was telling the truth about those things. He had no idea why, but he was confident Della wasn’t a liar. She was just a woman who wouldn’t reveal anything meaningful about herself and who was sneaking around on a lover. Had she been a liar, she would have had a phony answer for every question he asked, and she would have painted herself as someone she wasn’t. Instead, he was left with a blank slate of a woman who could be anyone.

But that, too, wasn’t right, he thought. There were a lot of things he knew about Della. He knew she loved an esoteric art form that most people her age had never even tried to expose themselves to. He knew she cried at all the sad parts of an opera, and that she was awed by the intricacies of the music. He’d seen all those reactions on her face when he’d watched her last night instead of La Bohème. He knew she liked champagne. He knew she was enchanted by a snowfall. He knew she laughed easily. He knew she was comfortable in red, red, red. All of those things spoke volumes about a person.

And he knew she came from a moneyed background, even if she was currently making her way by having someone else pay for it. It hadn’t taken an inspection of her jewelry or a look at the labels in her clothing—even though he had as he’d picked up their things from the floor while she slept—to know that. She was smart, confident and articulate, and had clearly been educated at excellent schools. She carried herself with sophistication and elegance, obviously having been raised by parents for whom such things were important. She’d been perfectly at ease last night in every venue he’d encountered her. If she wasn’t the product of wealth and refinement, Marcus was a bloated yak.

Not that wealth and refinement necessarily manufactured a product that was all the things Della was. He need only point to himself to prove that. He’d been kicked out of every tony private school his parents had enrolled him in, until his father finally bought off the director of the last one with a massive contribution for the construction of a new multimedia center. The same contribution had bought Marcus’s diploma, since his grades hadn’t come close to winning him that. Not because he hadn’t been smart, but because he hadn’t given a damn. As for sophistication and elegance, he had gone out of his way as a teenager to be neither and had embarrassed his family at every society function he’d attended. He’d raided liquor cabinets, ransacked cars and ruined debutantes—often in the same evening—and he’d earned an arrest record before he even turned sixteen. If it hadn’t had been for Charlotte …

He pushed the memories away and instead focused on Della. If it hadn’t had been for Charlotte, Marcus wouldn’t be sitting here with her right now. And not only because Charlotte’s absence last night had allowed him to strike up a conversation with Della, not once, but three times. But because if it hadn’t had been for Charlotte, Marcus would now either be in a minimum security prison for wreaking havoc and general mischief past the age of eighteen, or he’d be lolling about on skid row, having been finally disowned by his family.

“What are you thinking about?”

Della’s question brought him completely to the present. But it wasn’t a question he wanted to answer. Hey, why should he, when she wouldn’t answer any of his?

At his silence, she added, “You looked so far away there for a minute.” “I was far away.” “Where?”

He sipped his coffee and met her gaze levelly. “I’m not telling.” “Why not?”

“You won’t tell me anything about you, so I’m not telling you anything about me.”

For a minute, he thought maybe she’d backpedal and offer up some answers to his questions in order to get answers to some of her own. Instead, she nodded and said, “It’s for the best that way.”

Damn. So much for reverse psychology.

“For you or for me?” he asked.

“For both of us.”

The more she said, the more puzzled and curious Marcus grew. Just who the hell was she? Where had she come from? Where was she going? Why wouldn’t she tell him anything about herself? And why, dammit, did he want so desperately to know everything there was to know about her?

“All right, if you really want to know, I was thinking about something at work,” he lied.

She said nothing in response, only picked up one of the pastries and enjoyed a healthy bite.

“Don’t you want to at least know what I do for a living?” “No.”

There was that word again. He was really beginning to hate it.

“I work for a brokerage house,” he told her, deliberately being vague about his position there, since he still wasn’t sure how much to say. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted to say a lot about himself. But not for the usual reasons. Usually, he only opened up to a woman by saying things designed to impress her, in order to get her more quickly into bed. But he’d already gotten Della into bed and still wanted to impress her. That was strange enough in itself. Even stranger was how he suspected that the best way to impress her was to not brag about himself. Well, not just yet, anyway.

She was swallowing when he told her about his job, but it must have gone down the wrong way, because she immediately began to cough. A lot. Marcus was about to reach over to pat her on the back—or administer the Heimlich if necessary—but she held up a hand to stop him and reached for her coffee instead. After a couple of sips, she was okay. Though her face still looked a little pale.

“I’m fine,” she said before he could ask. “That swallow went down the wrong way.”

He nodded. And once he knew she really was fine, he picked up the conversation where he’d left off. “I work at—”

“Stop,” she said, holding up a hand as if trying to physically stop the information from coming. “Don’t tell me what you do or where you work. Please, Marcus. We agreed. No background information. No last names. No strings. No past, no present, no future.”

“We also agreed only one night, “he reminded her, “but that’s obviously not going to be the case. We’re stuck here for at least another twenty-four hours. There’s no harm in getting to know each other a little better. Unless you can tell me one.”

He could see by her expression she could think of at least one. Maybe two. Maybe ten. Never in his life had he met a woman whose face was such an open book. Forget mind reading. A man could discover a lot about Della just by looking at her face. And what Marcus discovered now was that there was no way she was going to open up about herself to him.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t open himself up to her.

“I work at Fallon Brothers,” he said before she could stop him. He didn’t add that the Fallons in the name of the multibillion-dollar company that employed him were his great-great grandfather and great-great uncle or that he was the fourth generation of the Fallon empire that would someday be running the company, along with his cousin Jonathan. Except that Marcus was the one who would become CEO upon his father’s retirement next year, that meant he would be doing even less work than he was now as a VP, and then the partying would really begin. If Marcus was a fixture of the tabloid rags and websites now, he intended to be a permanent, cemented, superglued fixture once he didn’t have to answer to his father anymore.

“Marcus, please,” Della said again, her voice laced with warning. “Don’t say another—”

“My permanent residence is on Lakeshore Drive,” he continued, ignoring her. He picked up the pad and pen labeled with the hotel’s logo that lay on the nightstand near his breakfast. “Here. I’ll write it down for you,” he continued, and proceeded to do just that. “But I also have places in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Aruba. All the big financial capitals, in fact.”

When he looked up after finishing the last digit of his cell number—he’d given her the numbers of the office and his penthouse, too—she was gazing at him with much consternation.

Damn, she was cute when she was consternated.

“Since when is Aruba a big financial capital?” she asked.

“Since I spent a fortune on a house there and spend another fortune on rum every time I go down there.”

“I see.”

“I’m thirty-eight years old and a Chicago native,” he added as he dropped the pad with his address and phone numbers onto the mattress between them. Not that Della even glanced at them. “As an undergrad, I majored in business at Stanford, then got my MBA from Harvard. Yes, I am that clichéd businessman you always hear about, except that I didn’t graduate anywhere near the top of my class either time. Doesn’t mean I’m not good at what I do,” he hastened to add, “it just means I’m not an overachiever—that’s where the cliché ends—and that I make time for more than work.” He threw her his most lascivious look, just in case she didn’t get that part. Which he was pretty sure she did, because she blushed that becoming shade of pink she had last night. “Marcus, I really wish you wouldn’t—” “Let’s see, what else is worth mentioning?” he interrupted, ignoring her. “I broke my arm in a skiing accident when I was eight and broke my ankle in a riding accident when I was ten. I have two sisters—both older and married to men my parents chose for them … not that either of them would ever admit that—along with two nieces and three nephews. My favorite color is red.” He hoped she got the significance of that, too, and was more than a little delighted when color bloomed on her cheeks again. “My favorite food is Mediterranean in general and Greek in particular. I usually drive a black Bentley, but I also have a vintage Jaguar roadster—it goes without saying that it’s British racing green—and a red Maserati. You already know about the opera thing, but my second greatest passion is port wine. My sign is Leo. And,” he finally concluded, “I don’t like pina coladas or getting caught in the rain, either.”

By the time he finished, Della’s irritation at him was an almost palpable thing. He’d sensed it growing as he’d spoken, until he’d halfway expected her to cover her ears with her hands and start humming, then say something like, “La la la la la. I can’t hear you. I have my fingers in my ears and I’m humming. La la la la la.”

Instead, she’d spent the time nervously breaking her pastry into little pieces and dropping them onto her plate. Now that he was finished, she shifted her gaze from his to those little broken pieces and said, “I really wish you hadn’t told me those things.”

“Why not?”

“Because every time I discover something else about you, it makes you that much more difficult to forget.”

Something stirred to life inside him at her words, but he couldn’t say exactly what that something was. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but neither was it exactly agreeable. It was just … different. Something he’d never felt before. Something it would take some time to explore.

“That’s interesting,” he told her. “Because I don’t know one tenth that much about you, and I know you’re going to be impossible to forget.”

Still studying the broken pastry, she made a face, as if she hadn’t realized what a mess she’d made of it. She placed the plate on the mattress on top of the pad of paper with the information he’d written down, though he was pretty sure she’d given it a quick glance before covering it. With any luck, she had a photographic memory. With even more luck, he’d notice later that the slip of paper had moved from the bed into her purse.

Her purse, he thought. Women’s purses were notorious for storing information—probably more than a computer’s hard drive. Not that Marcus could vouch for such a thing. He’d never had the inclination to search a woman’s purse before. It was actually a pretty despicable thing for a man to even consider doing.

He couldn’t wait to get into Della’s.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you a few things about myself.”

Finally, they were getting somewhere. Just where, exactly, he wasn’t sure he could say. But it was farther down the road than they’d been a few minutes ago. He wished he could see farther still, to find out if the road was a long and winding one with hills and valleys and magnificent vistas, or if it ended abruptly in a dead end where a bridge had washed out, and where there were burning flares and warning sirens and pylons strung with yellow tape that read Caution!

Then again, did he really care? It wasn’t as if anything as minor as cataclysmic disaster had ever stopped him from going after what he wanted before. And he did want Della. He wanted her a lot.