Betting the Billionaire (9 page)

“Are you sure about the ribbons of blue-inlaid wood going down the center?” Gabe asked, staring at the table top she’d created and started while he cut the uprights.

“Yeah, it’s perfect for the Beauchamps.” She stripped off her dust mask and stepped back to admire the table top. It was made of two-by-eight pieces of oak, tongue and grooved together to form a table top large enough to fit six. In the center, she’d carved out a winding river path and inlaid it with blue-stained pine.

“Why’s that?” He came up behind her. Not touching, but close enough that she could feel the unsettling physical tug of his nearness.

Her pulse pounded in her ears as she tried to unobtrusively brush the saw dust from her afro and clothes. What she wouldn’t give for a way to slick on some lipstick on the sly. “Their family has lived in Salvation for almost forever, and their family homestead was right on the river, which was perfect because they opened a rafting company. That location didn’t help, though, when their house caught fire. Business had petered off with the recession, and they’d dropped their insurance, meaning no funds to rebuild.”

“So the town is building them a home?”

“Sort of.” She shrugged, her shoulder rubbing up against his bicep, sending a delicious shiver marching across her skin.

He brushed away some sawdust sticking to the back of her T-shirt. “What do you mean?”

The label said one hundred percent cotton, but it felt threadbare as his hand lingered at the small of her back. “Jacobs Fine Furnishings partnered with Habitat for Humanity on the build.”

“You organized it?” A touch of gravel entered his tone as his other hand landed on her hip.

“It wasn’t just me.” Her voice shook, and she stepped away, desperate for space. Falling for Gabe would be dangerous, and she was far too cautious for that. It wasn’t the right time. She wished like hell she knew when that time would be.

“You’re always taking care of people, aren’t you?” Amusement and determination gleamed in his eye. “The Beauchamps, your father, the company.”

“I like it.” Uncomfortable with the conversation’s turn, she leaned down to study the hand-drawn design plan they’d created earlier. She ignored the bitterness lingering on the back of her tongue. When it came to family, helping was never a sacrifice. It was just what she did.

His thumb hooked under her chin and tilted her face up. “So who takes care of you?”

She blinked in surprise and realization. “I do.”

“Is that why you were so worried about telling your dad about your new job?”

She jerked out of his grasp, stumbling away from the workbench. “How did you know that?”

“There are only so many places to eat in Salvation.” He circled the workbench, crossing to her side and leaning against the edge. “I ended up having lunch at a diner, The Kitchen Sink. Your friend Ellen was my waitress. I complimented her on the elves she gave you, and pretty soon, she’d brought me up to speed on all things Keisha.”

Good Lord. Of all the people in the world he could have a little chat with, it had to be the one person who knew every last embarrassing factoid. “I’m gonna kill that girl.”

“I hope you don’t.” He grinned, diffusing the tension wiring the room. “I hear she knows the secret ingredient for the pecan pie.”

Keisha snorted. “So she says.”

“So why didn’t you tell your dad?”

Next to the word “stubborn” in the dictionary, there had to be a picture of Gabe Campos. And if that was the case, that page was dog-eared at every high school in America. “It’s a long story.”

“We have to wait until tomorrow to assemble and stain it, and I doubt the loft up there has WiFi, so I’m all yours.”

He was as charming and poisonous as a rattlesnake, but she found herself hypnotized into giving her secrets away anyway.

“Okay, I’ll give you the short version. I was engaged.” Embarrassed heat beat against her cheeks. “The invitations were mailed and the RSVPs collected. Then, about a week before the ceremony, I found my almost husband in bed with two women. We called off the wedding. When I told my dad, he had a stroke. I thought he was going to die. I couldn’t do that to my dad again. I had to wait for the right time, which never seemed to come up since there was a wolf from Harbor City howling at our doors.”

He stared at his sawdust-covered shoes. “What changed your mind?”

“He sort of pummeled it out of me.”

“I could see that.” Gabe laughed. “But you know you shouldn’t spend your whole life doing what people expect just because you think you should.”

Ouch. That hit close to the bone.
“So says the man who tried to take down a small business based on a faulty gut.” Nothing like a snappy comeback to make her feel on steadier ground with Gabe. Too bad it still felt like the world shifted every time he reached out and touched her.

“She shoots, she scores,” he bellowed in a fake sports announcer’s voice before his gaze dropped to her mouth, and his eyes darkened into two pools of Caribbean blue. “One more thing. He’s an idiot.”

Her breath caught. “My dad?”

“No, your dickwad former fiancé.” Gabe’s finger traced an electric path across her jawline from her sensitive earlobe to the dimple in her chin, angling it up. “He is, without a doubt, a stone-cold moron.” He leaned down and delivered a devastating kiss.

Everything tumbled to place inside her. It wasn’t forever. It may just be for tonight. It didn’t matter. She was done waiting on the sidelines for her life to begin. It started now.

His teeth scraped against her bottom lip, entreating her to open. She didn’t need the encouragement, but that didn’t mean she was going to make it easy for him. Pushing against his broad chest, she gained an inch of space between them.

Confusion danced in his eyes.

“We’re going upstairs.” She turned toward the stairs, adding a little extra swing to her steps before looking over her shoulder at the man who kept her body humming like a well-tuned engine. “What I plan on doing with you is going to take time and a comfortable bed.”

Chapter Ten

Gabe slapped at the wall, searching for the light switch at the top of the loft stairs. Lights were the last thing his body cared about at the moment, but he wanted to see Keisha as she went over the edge. And he’d take her to that orgasmic edge and push her over as many times as humanly possible.

His fingers grazed the switch, and he flipped it on. Light flooded the tiny space.

Under normal circumstances, he would have looked around the room to get his bearings, but Keisha’s beauty knocked him blind to everything but her. Sarcastic, sexy, and tempting as all hell, she was everything he’d been searching for without ever realizing it. The negotiations on the phone had been six months of foreplay. Now it was time to close the deal.

Pivoting, he pressed her curvaceous body against the open door frame, his dick trapped behind his zipper begging to be set free. Buzzing from pulse after pulse of pleasurable sensation, he grabbed her full hips and pulled her against his hardness.

“Feel what you do to me, Keisha.��� He nipped his way down her neck before kissing his way up, stopping at the sensitive patch of skin behind her ear and sucking her earlobe between his hungry lips. “That’s all because of you.”

She shivered and reached down between them and rubbed him through his jeans. “I did a lot then.”

Pleasure ripped through him, and his balls tightened just from her touch. “But not nearly as much as you’re going to.”

She popped the top button on his jeans. “Promises, promises.”

Her almond scent surrounded him, binding him to her with the strength of a thick rope. His zipper whispered down, and her soft hand slid inside, wrapping around his hard dick and squeezing him just tight enough to make him groan in appreciation. God, this woman was going to kill him with pleasure before he ever got a chance to touch her.

That couldn’t happen. He had to make her feel how much she meant to him.

Her thin cotton T-shirt that tormented him all day with the deep, plunging V-neck had to go. He dipped his fingers under the hem and pulled it up, the action forcing her to release him—a blessing and a curse. The hot pink material slid up her dark brown arms, and he had every intention of whipping the shirt off as soon as he could, but then the material bunched around her. Seeing her tits straining against her red silk bra as her arms were lifted high stiffened his dick as if he hadn’t been hard before.

“Fuck, you are sexy as hell just like this.” He fisted her T-shirt, drawing her wrists closer together. A coat hook screwed to the wall over her left shoulder caught his attention. “I want you to hang on.” He pushed the twisted T-shirt fabric into each of her hands and looped the middle around the hook. “If you wrap those sweet hands around me again, I’m going to forget all of the things I want to do to you.”

“And what is it you want to do?” The tip of her pink tongue flashed across her bottom lip, wetting it so that it glistened.

“This.” He traced a finger from the base of her neck, between her mind-boggling tits, down the center of her abdomen and to the button on her jeans, flicking it open with ease. Determined to draw out the anticipation, he inched the denim over her fleshy hips, his balls tightening with each inch of mocha-colored skin revealed. Unable to deny himself, he traced the waistband of her red and white polka dot panties with his tongue.

She shivered under the onslaught as she thrust herself closer to his mouth. “It’s not polite to tease.”

“Too bad.” He kissed her silky skin above the tiny ribbon bow at the center of her panties. “Because it’s going to be a long night, and I’m going take my time tasting every inch of you.”

Keisha pulled on the fabric holding her in place and arched her back, needing to get as close to him as possible. Gabe’s words reverberated against her skin so fucking close to her clit that she nearly came from his promise alone. She wanted to feel him everywhere now, and he was set on tormenting her until she was a quivering mass of want. She needed him. Only him.

“Touch me.” It wasn’t a plea. It was a demand.

He dropped to his haunches, laying his palms against her inner thighs and spreading her legs as wide as they could go with her jeans pooled around her ankles. “Where?” His lips traced a line of fire from her calf to mid-thigh.

Her legs quivered beneath the sensual assault, her muscles no match for the desire overflowing her system. “Everywhere.”

“Here?” He licked the curve of her stomach, deliberate and maddening as desire dampened her panties. Rolling onto his heels, he blew cool air across her abdomen, making her tremble in anticipation of his next move. “Or here?” One long finger traced the silk of her bra cup, slipping inside to rub against her sensitive nipple. “Maybe you meant here.” He sucked her earlobe into his hot mouth while his hands busied with unfastening her bra, and her knees nearly buckled.

The strip of red silk hung useless from her arms, and he pushed it up so one strap hung from the wall hook.

“Damn, just look at you.” He cupped her boobs, caressing the underside with his fingers as his thumbs circled the yearning peaks. Leaning forward, he sucked one brown nipple between his lips, his beard raking against her tender flesh and heightening the tension coiling in her core.

She stopped breathing. Heat and damp flooded her folds in reaction to the itch building deep inside her that only Gabe could scratch. Her need to feel him sliding inside her slick core hit hard enough that she tore the fabric tethering her to the wall hook.

“Looks like you’re out one shirt.” He took the scrap of fabric from her wrists and tossed it across the room.

“I don’t care,” her husky and hungry tone betrayed the depth of her need.

“Then it’s past time for the rest of it to go.” He slid his palms down the length of her jellified legs, yanked her feet free of her jeans and shoes, then worked his way back up her left leg, kissing and nibbling toward the juncture of her trembling thighs. By the time his mouth was tantalizingly close to her wet center, she couldn’t control the moans that filled the otherwise silent workshop. She threaded her fingers through his smooth hair, guiding him toward the juncture of her thighs.

“Do you want something, honey?” Gabe’s heated breath teased her sensitive clit.

“You.” The words came out half desperate plea, half demanding order. She didn’t care as long as he didn’t stop.

“You don’t have to ask me twice.” He grasped her full hips in his hands, pushed her back so her spine lay flat against the wall, and licked the silk material between her legs. “These have got to go.”

Kneeling before her like a man worshiping at the altar of desire, he pulled the delicate silk until the elastic strings snapped, leaving her naked and trembling before him. “Damn.” He muttered the raspy curse against her wet center, the feeling reverberating right through to her heart. His beard scraped against her delicate inner thighs, the perfect combination of hard and soft.

“Yes.” A current of sexual electricity shot through her, tension building with each stroke until she thought she might collapse under all the pleasure.

Gabe’s fingers slid in and out, spreading her open before him like a buffet while his flat tongue continued to take her higher and higher. He stopped, and she wanted to cry in frustration. But before she could exhale the groan, he sucked the hard nub into his warm mouth while his fingers thrust rhythmically against the bundle of nerves inside her.

Hot waves rippled up from the depths of her core, slow and steady at first and then increasing in intensity and speed. Every fiber of her being strained toward orgasm.

“Close, baby.” She pulled at his dark brown hair, pushing him deeper. “I’m so close.”

His thumb pressed just below her clit as he sucked her into his mouth.

“Gabe!” His name tore from her throat as her body constricted, and her climax roared through her like the thrum of a high-performing V-8 engine.

It took a few moments before the room around her came back into focus and she could uncurl her toes. When she could, she arched her back in a lazy, cat-like stretch, reached down to the man who’d just blown her mind, and pulled him up. “Get your clothes off before I lose my mind.”