The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (4 page)

After about thirty seconds of that, he reaches up and aims the shower head away from us and at the tile wall. I look at him questioningly –
Why’d you do that?
– because we’re only getting a bit of reflected spray.

Then I understand as he grabs my ass with his other hand, lifts me effortlessly into the air, and presses me against the tile wall.

Ohhhhh…

The tile feels so warm against my back, and water is cascading down all around me. My legs are wrapped around his waist. But I’m up too high for us to have sex…

…which is why he lets me slowly slide down the tile, until I can feel the head of his cock line up with my pussy.

Oh Jesus –

I stare into his eyes, my face wracked with exquisite torment, as the head of his cock slowly enters me, aided by gravity as my body slides down the tile wall.

One inch… two inches… three inches… four inches… five inches inside me…

Deeper… deeper… oh
fuck,
even deeper… filling me up, getting thicker the farther I go down…

He kisses me passionately as he begins to rock his hips back and forth, slowly easing his huge cock in and out of me. I am suspended against the wall, legs wrapped around his waist, arms looped around his neck. I moan as he goes deeper with every slow, wet movement, the hot water rushing over me and the gorgeous cock inside me combining to put me in a hypnotic state of pleasure.

I’m wet –
so
wet. He begins to thrust faster, harder, deeper. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and bite his hot, damp skin, feeling it between my teeth. If it’s painful to him, he doesn’t let on, because it only makes him thrust harder. Soon I’m crying out with every stroke. The pleasure is building up between my thighs with an incredible intensity. I bite him harder, and suddenly I’m screaming as I come, that big, thick cock like a drug, a new pulse of ecstasy every time he moves inside me.

As the orgasm ebbs away, I gasp, “Did you come?” even though I’m sure he didn’t.

“Not yet, but – ”

“Put me down.”

“Wait – just a second – ”

“Trust me.”

He looks at me,
his
face the one wracked with torture now, but he relents. He pulls me up off his cock, then gingerly sets me back on my feet.

I put the shower head back in place and let it wash over his cock. I rub it as I do, getting it squeaky clean. Then I maneuver him so that he’s between me and the shower, the hot water hitting his back, and I bend over and take him in my mouth.

He draws in his breath raggedly as I envelop his head with my lips and begin to suck. Mm… he tastes so good, so clean. I run my tongue over the underside of his shaft and tease him with my tip. I pause and stand up to find the bar of soap, then work up a bunch of suds on my hands. With my mouth back in place, teasing, sucking, I use one hand to cup his balls – already tight and pulled up firmly against his body – and lather his dark, damp curls. With the other hand I soap up the shaft and glide my fingers up and down, careful not to get the suds too close to my mouth. No worry – there’s
plenty
of length before there’s any danger of that happening.

I suck and caress him with my tongue, and swirl my hands, soft and soapy. All the while I look up at him with doe eyes, making sure he’s watching me. He tries his best, but every so often he tilts his head up and groans.

I understand completely. I’m enjoying this a lot. Enough that every so often my eyes roll back in my head and I just enjoy the feeling of his swollen head and the first few inches of his cock filling up my mouth, my tongue swirling over the soft skin stretched so tight around that iron rod.

“Oh God, Eve, I’m going to come,” he moans.

I kind of want to feel him in my mouth… but I’m so turned on that I want more.

“Not yet,” I say, completely withdrawing both my hands and my mouth.

He stares down in disbelief and horror, like he can’t believe I’d be so cruel.

That is, until he sees me brace myself against the shower wall and offer myself to him, my ass pressed against his cock.

“Come inside me,” I whisper.

He doesn’t have to be told twice. He angles his cock down, lines his head up with my lips, and slides inside me with one long, golden stroke.

“Oh!” I cry out. He’s a lot to take in all at once, but I’m so turned on that the pleasure overwhelms any temporary discomfort.

Suddenly he’s thrusting into me, fast as he can go, his hips slapping against my ass, groaning with every impact. I moan and cry out and curse, it’s so good. I can feel the vibrations of our wet flesh smacking together, almost like he’s spanking me. Simultaneously I feel the head of his cock touching some insanely pleasurable spot
deep
inside.

I can’t hold onto any semblance of control anymore. He’s so good – so thick, so big, so
unh
– that he pushes me over the edge. I begin to scream as I come again, my legs wobbling, my knees threatening to buckle completely.

My cries push him over the edge, and he shouts as he comes, his cock bursting, filling me up with spasm after spasm.  

I moan and tremble as my own orgasm subsides. I’m still bent over at the waist, forcing myself to stay up by pressing my hands against the shower tile.

He slides out of my body, then pulls me up to a standing position and kisses me fervently, the hot water splashing over both of us.

He hugs me to him, and I rest my head against his chest, hearing his heartbeat hard and strong beneath my ear.

“…that was one hell of a quickie…” I whisper, my legs still quivering beneath me.

A little over an hour after we entered the house, we’re on our way. Our clothes are dry, and Grant’s suit survived in good enough shape, even if it is a little rumpled.

We leave the house in relatively good order. The owners will be quite surprised to find the parachute when they open up the laundry room, though – plus a couple of thousand dollars from the backpack.

We walk down the road in the dim light before dawn and find the Mercedes Grant mentioned. It’s got to be at least 20 years old. I heard once that Mercedes in Europe are like Hondas in America: one of the most common cars on the road. I silently hope that’s true, because it would work in our favor during the drive to Paris.

Grant easily opens the car door, but then he directs me to sit in the driver’s seat. “Put it in neutral and take off the parking brake.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m going to push it away from the house before I start it up.”

It takes a little while, but the road is flat and Grant is strong, and he’s able to get the car rolling enough to where it’s eighty feet down the road before long. We pull a switcheroo: I get in the passenger seat while he hotwires the ignition, and just like the old Nicolas Cage movie, we’re gone in 60 seconds.

I turn in my seat and watch nervously through the rear window. No irate, screaming Frenchman comes barreling out of the beach house.

Grant knows exactly what I’m doing. “You worry too much,” he teases me.

“Said the guy who wanted to push the car away before he started it.”

“I’m just cautious.”

“‘Cautious’? Remind me again –
who
has the serial killer after them?”

“As I recall, someone else in this car besides me.”

Damn it. As the French say,
Touché.

We pass a couple of signs that, even though I don’t speak French, seem to suggest we’re in a place called Neuville-lès-Dieppe.

“It’s too bad we don’t speak French,” I muse, “otherwise we could stop and ask for directions. I guess we could just look confused and say, ‘Paris, see voo play’?”

“I speak French,” Grant says.

“You do?”

Suddenly I remember that he knew the Baudelaire quote Epicurus had sent him:
Au revoir, mon hyprocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frere.
At the time, I had just assumed that someone else had translated it for him. Guess not.

“Yup.”

“Did you learn it in high school?”

“No.”

He doesn’t follow up, so I ask, “College?”

“Nope.”

“Then when did you learn it?”

“Oh… I spent some time in France years ago.”

I don’t know why, but there seems to be something slightly evasive about his answer.

“You did?”

He gives me a look. “Why do you think we’re here?”

“You said you had connections. By which I’m assuming you mean ‘less than legally upstanding connections.’”

“That wouldn’t be a bad assumption.”

“Sooooo… you indulged in some of your ‘hobby’ in France?”

By ‘hobby,’ of course, I mean cat-burgling.

“A little,” he answers.

“That’s the reason you spent time in France?”

“Partly. Some of it was studying the architecture. I also bought some property,” he says, then adds hastily, anticipating my objection, “Which we’re not going to use.”

“You have property in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Moscow, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City,” I say, reciting what I found out from my research after he stole my cell phone that first night. “Did you live in any of those cities, too?”

“No longer than a couple months at a time. And I wouldn’t say I
lived
here. I just spent some time here.”

“Well, then, you can
totally
stop and ask for directions.”

“Nope.”

I roll my eyes. “Typical guy. Lost in a foreign country, and even though you’re fluent in the language – ”

“First rule of being an international fugitive, Eve: don’t stop at gas stations and ask for directions.”

“No. Just run out of gas on the side of the road instead.”

“Nope. Three-quarters full tank,” he says, pointing at the dashboard.

“What if you’re driving the wrong direction?” I ask him.

“I’m not.”

This is getting irritating.

“How do you know?” I insist.

He points to a sign, one of those highway mileage signs. It says
Rouen – 85 km.
“I’ve been to Rouen before.”

“Oh. How far is it to Paris?”

“Probably two or three hours from here, give or take.”

He’s close. As the early morning traffic begins to intensify, it about three-and-a-half hours to get to the heart of Paris. We go below the speed limit the entire time, so as not to draw any attention from the police.

We talk a lot over those three-and-a-half hours. Some of it is normal, road-trip chit-chat to pass the time. Some of it is life-and-death discussion about Epicurus and what we can do to escape his clutches. And some of the time is spent in silence as I watch the towns and scenery go past in the early morning light.

We talk about my past. My suburban upbringing in Oregon. My early obsession with computers. My decision to (more or less) walk the straight and narrow after my best friend in high school and fellow hacker Mailin got busted by the FBI and was forced to work for them in lieu of going to prison.

Then we talk about Grant’s past. His family: mother, father, two sisters, one brother. The private schools he attended as a child. The family vacations in Saint-Tropez and Bora Bora. The family company – an international construction conglomerate – he was expected to take over one day, but only participates in tangentially (to the irritation of his CEO father).

“How do you think they’re handling the whole ‘our son is a cat burglar’ thing?” I ask.

“Huh… honestly, I hadn’t thought about it. Been a little busy evading capture and death. What about
your
parents? What do they think about their daughter being linked to an international bad boy?”

My stomach drops. I haven’t been able to check any mode of communication – email, text, voicemail – since the news broke in the press.

“They’re probably worried sick,” I say, wracked with guilt. “They might even think I’m dead.”

“I bet they don’t think that,” Grant says, but we both know he’s just trying to soothe me. “Once we hook up with my connections, they can get a message to your family.”

I immediately think,
But then Epicurus might find my family and use them against me. Torture them or kill them.

But then I realize that if Epicurus knows who I am, he damn sure knows where my family is, too, and there’s absolutely nothing stopping him from going after the people I love.

He might have done it already.

I want to cry, but I can’t. I can’t let myself go down the path of
What if?
So I simply say, “Okay.”

Grant seems to know what I’m thinking. “We’ll warn them. I’ll make sure my family gets them to safety, no matter what.”

I nod mutely.

He reaches over and puts his hand over mine. “Hey… it’s going to be okay. They’re going to be okay –
we’re
going to be okay. I promise.”

The gesture is so sweet, the words so heartfelt, that I actually
do
cry. Just a little. I smile at him gratefully, and the smile he gives me is like sunshine through the clouds.

In that moment, I am struck by several things.

I am in love with Grant Carlson. There is no question in my mind anymore, and it terrifies me.

But – assuming that we survive the next couple of weeks – no matter how much I want there to be a chance for it to work out between us, I’m convinced that it won’t.

Because we come from two entirely different worlds. Saint-Tropez and Bora Bora as a kid? I camped with my parents in a tent in Siuslaw National Forest. Billionaire CEO father? My dad is an accountant who has never made more than $70,000 a year in his life.

All of that is small potatoes, though, next to my real objection: even though I’m in love, I have no idea of Grant’s true feelings for me at all.

In all of our conversation, there is a technical question to be settled, too. Grant waits to broach it until we’re well into Paris.

I’m transfixed by the scenery – a mix of modern apartments right next to monuments, statues, and buildings straight out of
Les Misérables
– when he finally breaks the news.

“I need to make a phone call.”