The Hated Billionaire by Erica Frost

Chapter 13: Brett

I looked at Christina who was lying with her head on the pillow, her eyes shut. She had her one arm out of the blanket, long and pale on the dark cover, her beautiful skin as soft as petals in the gentle light. I resisted the urge to stroke her long hair, to kiss my way up that long arm to her neck and bury my face in its scent. Her eyelashes rested on her soft cheek and I watched her lip tremble as she breathed.

She was so beautiful, lying there, so tender. I wanted to kiss her, but I also wanted her to sleep. I watched her for a moment, then rolled over to sit up.

She stirred, breathing in slowly, and I wished I hadn’t disturbed her, but then her dark eyes widened. I found myself looking into her eyes. She was frowning for a moment, but then she saw me and smiled. I bent and touched her cheek.

“Good afternoon,” I said.

She grinned and laced her fingers through mine. I felt my heart melt. I had always wanted her, but the feeling in my heart was one of immense warmth, beyond the longing I had felt before.

“Hello, Brett,” she said.

I bent and kissed her. She smiled and wrapped her arms around me, drawing me against her. I held her close, my body aroused, but wanting not to scare her, or do anything to disrupt her. She held me and I held her, my fingers in her hair.

She rolled onto her back and I sat up, looking down at her. She was smiling, dark eyes shining.

“Did you have a good sleep?” I asked.

She nodded and rolled over, and I gasped as she reached for me, drawing me against her. My lips parted for her kiss and I found myself aching with longing. I pushed her back onto the bed and ran my hand down her leg.

We made love again, both of us gripped with an urgency of longing I hadn’t expected. I had thought that I wouldn’t be ready again for another hour or two, but I found myself coming with the same sheer longing as before.

She cried out and held me and I lay down beside her, soaked with sweat. I grinned.

“Whew,” I said. “I didn’t think that would happen…”

She giggled, looking into my eyes. I loved the sound of her laughter. I would do anything to make her laugh, I thought. “Yeah, me too.”

We lay there together and I felt my heart beating more-slowly. I drew a long breath and sat.

“I guess we should wash up,” I said. She grinned and nodded.

“Yes. Let’s go and get ourselves washed off. I wonder how late it is?”

I shrugged. “I guess it must be lunchtime, or around lunchtime.”

“Yeah,” she said.

We looked at each other, and I felt oddly shy. We had just spent the whole morning in bed, and I was glowing with the sweet release of that.

“So,” I said, as I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. “What would you usually do?”

“You mean, on weekends?” she asked. She was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, and I could feel the way her eyes moved up and down across my skin, but oddly I felt proud, not shy. I could see approval in her gaze and it made me feel appreciated. I glowed.

“Yeah,” I said, turning on the shower. It was cold, and I waited for a moment or two before getting in. She giggled as I let out a hiss, feeling the surprising shock of coldness on my skin.

“Well,” she said, watching as I took shower-gel and started washing myself. “I would have eaten by now, but let me shower first, seeing as I’m used to waiting a good long time for the heated water.”

I grimaced as I stepped back, realizing now that it might take some time.

“And later I’d do some working out, and just spend an hour or two reading and relaxing.” She replied, stepping out of the water. Her body was damp and lovely and I ached to draw her against me and kiss the water from her skin.

“Good idea,” I said, struggling to resist the temptation to kiss her. I let her get out of the shower and wrap a towel around herself, her gorgeous body covered with its warm softness. I went back into the cubicle. The water was bearable, and I reached for the shower-gel again. “I think I should add that to my mornings. It’s a good way to deal with stress.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. She grinned at me as I reached for the towel. I have always been fast and efficient with stuff like showering. I dried myself off and went through to the bedroom, where she was dressing, taking an opportunity to stare at her nakedness. She went pink and reached for her underwear. I watched her step into it, my longing hard to fight – but if I didn’t, we’d never get out of bed. “It’s important to de-stress once a week.”

“I try to jog on the weekend,” I said. “But usually, I spend my morning with friends. Which maybe isn’t the best idea, since I never really take time for myself.”

“That’s not good,” she said.

“No, it isn’t,” I agreed.

I was trying to talk, but really I was distracted. Her body was so beautiful, the last traces of damp still running down her back, shining on her generous curves, and I was mesmerized by her.

I was still staring at her when she turned around.

“Shall we have lunch?” she asked. Her smile teased me, as if she knew that I was longing for her.

I shrugged and nodded. “Do you have stuff to cook?” I asked her. I tried to drag my mind away from how beautiful she was, her wet hair clinging to her pale skin, but I couldn’t reasonably expect the mundane topic like grocery-shopping to do the trick, really.

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

“What would you normally have?” I asked. She was patting her hair dry now, her lips parted as she drew a breath, and I felt my jaw clench, trying to control myself. I couldn’t very well drag her back to bed, not after just rising.

“Something warm,” she said, gesturing at the kitchen. “Stew, maybe. And some nice bread. I always buy that good one from the bakery on the corner. It isn’t stuffed full of chemicals, so it actually goes stale. I prefer that…Bread isn’t supposed to last a week.”

I laughed. I had never encountered this side of her – the down-to-earth side. At meetings, I saw how ruthlessly practical she was, how efficient. But the side that was freaked out by preservatives in loaves was a new one. I wanted to know everything about her, I thought with a grin.

“That’s right,” I agreed. “Bread isn’t supposed to last a week. Remember when we were kids? You could still get normal bread then.” I chuckled.

“Yes,” she said softly. Again, I detected tension in her and I looked around, seeking to change the subject. The past was clearly not a good subject for her and it wasn’t worth scaring her right now.

“You have lots of stuff in this cupboard,” I said, opening one above the dishwasher. She shrugged.

“Yeah, I do. That’s the wrong one. Pasta and other stuff for lunch is in here.”

I nodded, letting her direct me about the kitchen. We made a stew with vegetables, and cooked some rice. I felt my stomach twist with hunger. I was really hungry.

We set about making the stew together. It felt odd, working with her – as if we were used to working with each other. Which, I supposed, we were – after all, we were colleagues and we saw each other at work every other week. We just hadn’t cooked stew before. The thought made me grin. Here I was, cooking stew with the sexiest finance exec in the world.

Weirdly, it didn’t feel strange at all. It just felt wonderful.

“What was the cuisine like, in your hometown?” I asked her. I wanted to find out stuff about her, but at the same time I didn’t want to risk just asking her directly. She was clearly not comfortable with stuff in her past and I didn’t know how traumatic it was. I decided to go carefully.

She shrugged. “No idea, really. I guess your usual western US stuff, for the most part. I don’t know. I didn’t really eat out.” She looked down at the cutting-board, where she was busy chopping onions for the stew.

“I see,” I said. “At college, you must have eaten out sometimes?”

She raised a brow. “Not really. I was in a rented apartment shared between three of us. We mostly cooked for each other. I guess I was lucky to survive the cooking.”

I chuckled. “Well, you clearly learned to cook,” I said. I had sampled the stew that was nicely-flavored, rich and creamy. I was sure I was going to enjoy the meal a great deal. She smiled.

“I guess I had to learn,” she said. “It was pretty tricky, since the ingredients were limited to whatever anyone had remembered to buy – and of course, what was on offer – but in a way that was a nice way to learn – basically it was an achievement if it didn’t kill people.”

I laughed loudly. She had such a good humor, and that was something that I hadn’t known before. She was usually serious in our meetings, and I’d never seen her like this.

We went to sit down to eat the stew and some slices of toast I’d buttered. I helped myself to more stew, enjoying the texture.

“You stayed in rented accommodation?” I asked, wanting to know more. I recalled my own study years – I had been in residence for all three, and never had to cook anything in all that time. I had never really thought of myself as privileged, but I was starting to see how different others’ experiences were from my own.

She nodded, answering my question. “Yeah, I did. With one girl and one guy who studied politics with me. That was my other major – Economics, and political science. I loved the first major…not too sure why I did the second one.”

“No, me neither,” I said with a grin. “If the economy is chaotic, I can’t imagine how chaotic politics is.”

She laughed. “I like that,” she said.

I blushed. “Thanks,” I said. I stretched my legs out under the table. “I guess I never really had to put much thought into my majors. Business science was what I wanted to do.”

She smiled at me. “You were pretty decisive, then.”

I chuckled. “I guess so.” It had been easy for me because I knew what I wanted. I had wanted to become inordinately wealthy, and I had. That had been my only real goal. I wondered about that now, and about why that had been so important to me.

Christina gave me a fond look. “Well, I’m not sorry that you chose to own a big company…It made it a lot more likely that we would meet each other. After all, we’re both in finance, more or less, now.”

I felt my heart melt. She really valued having met me. I reached across to her hand and rested mine on it. “I think that’s the sweetest thing I ever heard,” I said sincerely. I held her hand, feeling the softness of her skin under my palms and the slight warmth of them.

She smiled at me. “You’re sweet too.”

We both grinned and I leaned over the table and planted a kiss on her shoulder. She touched my hair and the warmth in her eyes made me smile.