Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (166 page)

They
arrived
at the top of the hill, and now it was clear that this was a modern version of
a castle.
 
It wasn’t something that
had been built in the eighteenth century or anything.
 
There were huge glass windows that
looked out but also allowed her to look in and see bedrooms, a living room, and
a modern kitchen.

“Holy
crap, this is where you live,” Kallie
muttered.

“Yeah,
one
of the places.
 
I also have a place
in L.A. and apartments in New York and Tokyo.”

“Must
be nice.”

“It
is,”
he said, “but not as nice as making that drive just now with you in the car.”

“Sure, sure.”
 
She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“I’m
serious,
Kallie.
 
You think I’m trying to
impress you with all of this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,
well—is it working?”

She
didn’t
answer him and just got out of the car instead.
 
She turned three hundred and sixty
degrees and looked at the view from the hilltop.
 
“You must love waking up in the morning
when this is what you see each day.”

Hunter
nodded.
 
“That’s pretty much why I bought the
place.
 
I thought, this is a place
where I can really appreciate this life I’ve been given.
 
And you know, feeling closer to the
sky—it kind of reminds me…” he trailed off.

“Reminds
you of what?” she said.

His
eyes
grew far away.
 
“It just helps to
remind me that I need to appreciate each and every moment.”
 
He shrugged as if to dismiss it, but
Kallie felt as though he hadn’t told her the real story behind what the house
meant to him.

They
walked to the front door and he took out
his key ring and put a key in the lock, opening the door to his “castle” like
they were going in some ranch house in the suburbs.

“You
don’t have any crazy security system or
something?” she asked.

He
laughed.
 
“This whole place is wired for closed
circuit TV, pretty much.”

She looked at him to see if he was joking.
 
He didn’t laugh.

As
they entered the very open, very modern home,
she wondered again just what Hunter’s deal was.
 
Nothing about him was obvious, she
couldn’t tell what was real and what was fiction.

It
actually
reminded her a lot of the novel he’d written—especially some of the
qualities of the main character.
 
Maybe
there was more truth in his book than she’d thought when she’d been reading
it.
 
Assuming it was pure fiction,
she was starting to wonder if maybe he’d put more of himself in those pages
than he did anywhere else in life.

Hunter
walked
her through various rooms, all of which had a different feel and color
scheme—but the one underlying theme was modern.
 
Minimalist, with just enough furniture
and creature comforts to make the space livable and even attractive, however
Kallie thought it was missing a soul.

It
felt
cold, she thought, as if Hunter had decorated it solely with his intellect and
completely left his heart out of the matter entirely.

“Want
to have a drink on the terrace?” he asked.

“You
mean,
the castle tower?
 
We won’t be
attacked by elves out there, will we?”

Hunter laughed.
 
“God, that would be so cool if we were,
wouldn’t it?”

The
sun
was starting its slow descent in the sky as they went out on the terrace with a
couple of beers gotten from Hunter’s minimalist fridge downstairs.

There
was
an iron railing surrounding the entire platform, and a small white table in the
middle, with two chairs.
 
Nothing
else.

Hunter
went
to the railing and leaned over it, looking out at the landscape below. “Every
time I come out here I just feel like—this is it.
 
This is why I’m here.”

She
wasn’t
quite sure what he meant, but it seemed like he enjoyed speaking in riddles, so
she didn’t bother to ask him to elaborate.

Kallie
joined
him at the railing, liking the feel of his arm next to hers as they looked over
the edge.
 
“Do you ever get scared
being up so high?” she asked, as her stomach did a little uneasy roll at the
feeling of being on the edge of a huge precipice.

“Nope.
I
don’t get scared of anything anymore.”

“Why not?”

He
looked
at her, grinning.
 
“Are you trying
to get in my head, figure me out?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you.”

He
sipped
his beer.
 
“Well let me ask you
something.
 
What’s the worst thing
that’s ever happened to you?”

Kallie
looked
at him.
 
“That’s a depressing
question.”

“But that’s what you just asked me.”

“I
did?”

“Yeah,
you
just didn’t know it.”
 
He smiled,
and it was as if the sun was shining on her.
 
His smile was so infectious, his humor so
endearing, that she was unable to think of why he sometimes made her uneasy.

“I
feel like every
question I ask you is a potential landmine.”

He
shook his head.
 
“Not at all.
 
But sometimes talking is overrated,
don’t you

think?”

“I
don’t
know.
 
Maybe.”
 
She felt as though his gaze had suddenly
grown more intense.
 
She could feel
the air change between them.
 
And
what did he mean by talking being overrated?
 
Was he somehow insinuating that he only
wanted sex, or was she the one with the dirty mind here?

“Sometimes,
when
I’m working with a screen writer,” he said, “I try to explain to them that
every word a character utters, needs to serve the story.
 
If the characters are just talking for
talking’s sake, it’s not worth keeping.
 
It’s just a waste, and most of the time it’s better to tell the movie
with action, rather than dialog.
 
That’s true not just in movies, but in life.”

“But
you
just used a lot of words to explain that theory.”
 
Now it was her turn to take a sip of
beer.

“Damn,
I
like a girl that can keep up with me,” he said, admiringly.
 
He moved a step closer.
 
His eyes were intent on hers.

“Are
you
testing me with all of this, Hunter?”

“Say my name again.”

“What
do you mean?”

“Just,
use my name in a sentence again.”

“Okay.”
She
giggled and took another big sip of beer.
 
“You’re making me kind of nervous, Hunter.”

“Am
I really?” he asked.

She
shrugged.
 
“You’re just unpredictable.
 
Like how you said you’d call and never
did.”

He
slid another step closer.
 
“I already apologized for that.”

“If
you’d
really been interested in me, you would have called.”

“How sure are you about that theory?”

“Pretty
certain.
 
That’s like, relationships 101.”

“Oh, thanks professor.
 
Sorry I came late to class.”

“No problem.
 
You’ll just lose attendance points.”

He
smiled,
moving closer still.
 
“You really
can keep up, it’s not just a fluke.”

“And you really are testing me.”

“I
don’t
see how a student can give the teacher a test,” he said, leaning towards her
now.
 
His lips were practically
touching hers.

“I
think
you’re being disruptive,” she said.
 
“You might need to be suspended from this class.”

“Let
me
make it up to you.”
 
And then he was
kissing her, which was what she’d been wanting all along.
 
It was practically all she’d thought
about since that first night they’d met, and now it was happening again.
 
And it was better than she’d imagined.

His
tongue
danced along her lips, playfully, but then he would drive his mouth so
passionately against hers—she could feel the intensity of his
desire.
 
It was like a tiny candle
flame suddenly blossoming into a conflagration, all-consuming, before dying
back down again.

She
wanted
to match him but was frightened of where this could lead.
 
Her body was betraying her mind at this
point.

The
fact was, Kallie didn’t really believe
that Hunter was interested in anything more than a hookup.
 
He wanted her sexually, but everything
about him told her that he was a player.

She
didn’t
want to just be another notch on his belt, and yet she couldn’t seem to help
the way his touch made her feel.
 
She wanted him to touch her more than she wanted to be treated well.

And
that, she knew, was a problem.

Soon
the
kissing had progressed.
 
His hands
were holding her hips, pulling her body into his, and when their bodies
connected, it felt like a puzzle piece clicking in.

Kallie
gasped
at her own fierce arousal.
 
She was
wet.
 
Not just regular wet, but
drenched down there.
 
Astonished and
a little worried by her own sensations of excitement, she tried to slow down,
pulling back from him.

He
responded
with renewed intensity.
 
He reached
up and grabbed a fistful of her hair and held it, his other hand on her face,
bringing her towards him again.
 
He
kissed down her neck.

The
top
she’d worn today was very thin, and she’d also chosen to wear a bra that was so
lacy it was practically non-existent.
 
The end result was that her nipples were showing in stark definition
through her shirt, and she was very conscious of it, as he kissed down her
neck.

Part
of
her wanted to pull away and tell him to slow down, but a much bigger part of
her wanted to tell him to go further—wanted to beg him, actually.

The
hand
that was holding her hair let go, and now both hands slid down to her waist as
he kissed her neck and the top of her cleavage.

Hunter
picked
her up off the ground as if she was light as a feather, carried her to the
table, and then he sat down on one of the chairs with her on top of him.
 
She moved so that she was straddling
him, and her crotch was pressed against his.

He
moved
beneath her, his hips swiveling in a way that gave her just an inkling of what
things might feel like if they progressed a few steps further.

She
liked what he was showing her, liked it
too much.

Hunter
took
her by the hair again, this time with both hands, and pulled her in to kiss
him.

Kallie
was
losing herself now, losing those thoughts of what might constitute a mistake,
what might be considered going too quickly.

Coming
from
a large, conservative Catholic household—this was beyond fast. She’d
already gone ten steps beyond what she was supposed to do for the first six
months, in only the first six minutes.

But
she
found that the more Hunter kissed her and touched her, the less she really
cared.
 
She was just in too deep
with him, and at some level, she accepted that fact.

They
kissed
for a long time, as the sun continued to set, and the sky around them turned
shades of purple.
 
She felt as
though she’d stepped into some futuristic science fiction dream, where girls
kissed boys on spaceships that landed on mountaintops, and as the sky grew
darker, she was emboldened.

It
felt
so private, so isolated, and nobody would have to know what she did with Hunter
this night—not her family back in Ohio, not Nicole or Red, nobody would
have a clue except her and the man she was with right now.