Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (40 page)

His cool fingers slipped over the heated skin between her legs. Flutters trickled over her body, and Rox whimpered. His lips opened farther, and his tongue ran over hers, licking her tongue while his fingers slipped in the same rhythm over her clit.

She curled against him, craving every second of contact between his hand on her ribs and waist and the other one between her legs and needing to believe that he was alive, that she was alive, and that her world hadn’t ended with a sniper’s bullet or the explosion of a car crash.

He tore his mouth away from hers and dove for her neck, lifting her from under her thighs and crushing her between his hard body and the wall. Rox cinched her legs around his back, pushing her slim skirt up farther around her waist.

One of her high-heeled shoes fell off behind his back, clattering on the Spanish tile floor.

He held her waist with one arm and fumbled with his pants with the other, and Rox tried to help by moving her leg but she kissed his jaw and his face, holding him around his shoulders, and breathed in the faint vanilla and spice of his cologne. His suit jacket and the collar of his white shirt kept getting in the way of where she wanted to lick and bite his neck, so she grabbed the knot of his tie and pulled, loosening it. His afternoon stubble felt like rough sand under her lips. When she nipped the tender skin over the pulse in his neck, his body jerked in her arms and between her legs.

Her legs were locked around his waist, and there was no way she could take her panties off now. He dragged the thin silk out of the way, and she felt him pushing at her core.

She threw her head back and moaned, knocking her head against the wall as her body took his cock inside. He growled against her neck, holding her up with his burly arms and pushing himself inside her. She slid down over him, taking him all inside. His hard erection filled her.

Casimir pumped hard into her, growling and biting her neck and shoulder where he had pulled her blouse aside. Rox squeezed her eyes shut, panting and calling his name,
“Casimir,”
over and over while he thrust into her.

“Rox.”
His hoarse voice grated like he was forcing air out of his throat as hard as he forced himself into her body. “Rox, I love you. Rox, come with me. Rox, come
now.”

She ran her mouth over his neck again and up to his face. As her lips found the little bit of scarred skin on his cheek, his head twitched back, but she grabbed him around his neck and forced him back so she could kiss that scar, too. “Casimir, I love you. Casimir, all of you. Take me. Take me
hard.”

He did, pinning her against the wall and grinding up into her. His lips were drawn back, baring his teeth, as he shoved himself inside of her.
“Come now.”

Every hard thrust of him rubbed her clit and that soft, sensitive streak inside, each shove filling her and spiraling her harder and tighter as she clung to him, crying out his name.

She was clawing at him, claiming him, clinging to him as he grunted, his cock deep inside of her. His polished shoes slipped on the Spanish tile as he shouted, jabbing into her as his muscular body spasmed.

The violence of the orgasm slammed into Rox, blinding her and forcing a scream from her lungs as she clung to him. Waves pounded through her body, and a deafening silence blasted into her.

When she could breathe, when she could see, Casimir was holding her in his arms, stroking her hair. Her mouth was open and slack as she gasped for air. He murmured, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

She whispered, “I know.”

Casimir carried her to the couch, cradling her in his arms, and told her, “I almost lost you today.” His arms tightened around her sides, and he whispered, “I want to marry you,
now,
tonight, but we can’t. But I want to. I am desperate to.”

Rox sat up and shoved him backward. “Are you serious?”

He looked straight at her with those emerald-green eyes of his, not laughing, not joking. “I asked Arthur to fly us to Las Vegas last night.”

“What, the plane didn’t have enough gas in it?”

He smiled a little on the left side of his mouth. “So you would have said yes?”

Her head swirled, shocked and yet it was so right. She didn’t want to just date him like all the other women had. She couldn’t have survived if he had ghosted on her.

“I, well, I don’t know.” She let herself smile back at him, just a little. “You didn’t even ask me to marry you. That would have been pretty presumptuous, just ending up in Vegas and expecting me to marry you without even asking.”

“You know that I’m arrogant as all Hell. I think that’s how you have put it, dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times.”

“You bet your butt, I have.”

He gathered her back into his arms. “You know me too well.”

“Yeah, I do.” She wrapped her arms around him and held on. “And I still haven’t said yes, yet.”

“Duly noted.” He sighed, his muscled body deflating in her arms. “There are some legal hoops to jump through first, anyway.”

Rox could only think of one legal impediment to marriage. “Are
you
married to somebody else? I didn’t think to ask
that.”

Casimir chuckled. “No, I’m not married and never have been. I’ll explain in a minute. I want to make sure we’re properly locked in here. Stay away from the windows.”

A wall of windows and French doors looked out over the ocean and sky. “I’m not sure that’s even possible.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Rox dragged her skirt down and curled up on the living room couch, watching the churning Pacific ocean for any sign of a submarine or a helicopter coming to attack them. She gathered all three cats into a pile on her lap while Casimir paced the hallways and rooms, rattling every window and door to make sure it was locked.

The cats were unsure why Rox was insisting that they all sit on her. Speedbump kept weakly lunging with his bum leg to get away and follow Casimir around the house. Rox had owned cats all of her life and knew just how to grab at the scruff of his neck to keep him on her lap. Speedbump kept jumping just a little just to see if he could get away, but he stayed.

Pirate sighed and swished his fluffy tail, gazing up at her with his single eye, but he seemed resigned to the fact that he was going to be sitting on her lap for a few minutes. She scratched the back of his neck, digging her fingers deeply into his thick fur, and he went limp.

Cash paced through the living room again, opening the door to the garage to check that the garage doors were down and locked, and then setting off for the guest room wing to check those doors and windows.

On his fourth time through, before he could leave again, Rox said, “Casimir, honey, why don’t you sit down here with me for a minute?”

When he glanced at her, he must have realized the futility of checking the doors and windows for a fifth time, so he flopped beside her on the couch and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The cats wandered away to lie around them. “I almost got you killed today.”

“No, you didn’t. Don’t be silly, Cash.”

“Casimir,” he said.

“Okay,
Casimir
didn’t almost get me killed, either. Some sniper almost killed both of us, but this wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have had security here.”

“Look, you’ve obviously got quite a bit of money, but most people don’t have hot and cold running security guards. Other than Maxence, evidently.”

“Maxence and I have a lot in common. Right now, I need to call in professional security services.”

“Wow. Mr. Fancy Pants can call in professional security services with just a phone call.”

He looked down at her from the sides of his eyes without turning his head. “When I get done with this, we need to talk.”

“Seriously? That offended you?”

“I’m not offended in the slightest, but we should talk.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and told it, “Call Ana.”

Rox wanted to tease him that he was calling his sister like he would call his mommy, but he was on the phone. She could do it later.

And maybe Ana was actually a lady mercenary. You never knew.

Casimir spoke Dutch to his sister on the phone, so Rox couldn’t even properly eavesdrop. He kept glancing at her though, and she was pretty sure that she heard her own name a few times. The Dutch language sounded kind of like German but with more
who’s
and
hee-oo’s
in it.

She definitely heard Ana squeal at least once.

He tapped the screen to hang up the call. “All right, we’ll have security forces arriving tomorrow afternoon. We’re to stay put and away from the windows.”

“Is your sister in the army or something?”

“No. Well, technically I suppose she is, but nevertheless, she is sending people to retrieve us. They will evacuate us to Amsterdam tomorrow. Do you have your passport with you?”

“Yeah, in my purse.” She and Casimir had flown to meet clients overseas with an hour’s notice more than once.

“Good.”

“What about the cats?” she asked, stroking Pirate’s scarred head.

“I’ll ask my housekeepers to take care of them. They’re very dependable. We should be gone for about a week. By the time we get back, we will have submitted the charges and evidence to the ethics committee, so all this will have blown over. It will be too late to stop the charges, so surely whoever hired the sniper won’t pursue us after that.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Either way, we will have a significant security presence when we come back. No one will be able to touch us.”

“So men with guns will protect us from the other men with guns?”

“They can be surprisingly effective.” He paused and took both her hands in his. “I’ve done this all wrong.”

“I told you that the sniper wasn’t your fault. How could a
sniper
be anyone’s fault?” she asked him.

“Not that.” He slid off the couch and stood on one knee before her, still holding both her hands in his. Behind him, outside the French doors, the ocean frothed gray. “I’ve done this all wrong. Let me do it right. Roxanne Dolly Neil—”

Good Lord, he had remembered her middle name from that time they had gotten so drunk in Québec that she had admitted it to him.

“I have dreamed of this moment. I have loved you for years, and I finally have a chance to hold you, to show you how I feel, and I want to marry you.”

He had carried her to her hotel room that night, and she thought that she had dreamed that he had kissed her on the forehead before he had gone through the adjoining door to his own room, but now she suspected that she hadn’t been dreaming.

“
Lieveke,
will you do me the honor and privilege and become my wife, my princess, and I will love you and stay with you all the days of our lives?”

Rox drew in a breath to say yes. Her body was still trembling from him taking her against the wall. Her hands were shaking in his.

Everything that he said calmed her fears and let her heart beat again.

Movement.

She looked over his shoulder at the French doors and the ocean outside.

Outside the windows, something flashed in the sunlight.

Past the glass of the windows, something dropped like a bird crash-landing on the deck.

She pointed over his shoulder. “Casimir, what’s—”

He twisted to look back where she was pointing and saw the little bundle lying on the deck.

He leapt across the couch at her.

She gasped, “What—”

His shoulders shoved her chest, flattening her on the couch. His arms closed around her head, and he crouched over her.

Fire blasted through the doors and into the room.

CHOICE

Scalding pain rushed over Casimir’s back.

The fire flash was gone in an instant, but smoke was already rising in the house, and it stung his nose.

Screams burst all around him, driving into his ears. Shrieks blasted through the air as the fire alarm raged.

“Run.”
He pulled Rox to her feet.
“Run!”

She stumbled, stunned by the blast. One of her shoes was gone, but she was moving toward the door to the garage.

Water showered down on him as the sprinklers sprayed, but the fire on the wall grew, crawling across the ceiling.

Casimir took a step. Something was under his foot. When he looked down, matted fur lay beside his shoe.

He grabbed the cat—Speedbump from the look of his sorry gray fur—and slung him over one arm. The cat struggled weakly but didn’t claw. Another step, and he found Midnight, the black cat, crouching behind the arm of the couch, pressing his face against the upholstery and trying to hide from the blaring alarm and shooting water. He grabbed Midnight by the scruff of his neck and tucked him next to Speedbump in his arm.

“Go!”
he roared at Rox.
“Run!
Get the garage door open.”

Rox ran for the door, hesitating to scoop up her purse and his briefcase from the floor on the way out.

Casimir still held the two cats, Speedbump and Midnight, under one arm.

Just two.

Pirate.
The last cat, the hideous cat with one eye and chewed-down ears, had to be around here somewhere.

The curtains around the windows had caught fire, blazing and boiling smoke across the ceiling. The smoke was burning his eyes, and he scrubbed them with the back of his free hand.

A cat streaked across the floor, running for broken windows and the fire.

Casimir sprinted after him, reaching for his neck but missing. The other two cats clung to his arm, claws deep in his flesh, but they didn’t struggle to get away.

Pirate, however, scrambled in a panicked run toward the fiery wall.

He sprinted after the cat.

The heat from the burning wall washed over him, singeing his eyebrows and eyelashes and scraping the skin on his face.

Casimir ran, chasing the fleeing animal. He crouched, grabbing at air. Finally, his hand found the fur behind the cat’s neck, and he held on despite the cat’s thrashing and clawing to get away.

Sparks popped from the wall near him, landing on his cheek above the scar from the car accident. He held the two other cats with that arm. He couldn’t brush the sparks off.