Page 36 of His to Cherish
“I mean it, Lilly. You and me. That’s what’s important.” I shake my head. “I’m such an idiot for not seeing it sooner. I should have made you mine ages ago. I was just nervous about exposing you to all my shit. But none of that matters. What I need is you.”
“I need you, too,” she tells me, eyes filled with fire. “I need all your sweetness. I need your protectiveness, even when it drives me crazy.” She winks at me, then her face grows serious, the fire in her eyes darkening in intensity. “And I need all the rest of it, too. I need my Daddy.”
I want to roar in triumph, want to pin her to the wall and take her right now. Hell, I want to drag her back to that conference room and have her right on the table, in front of the whole damn company. I need everyone to know that this woman is mine, body and soul.
And just when I think the world can’t get any more perfect, she presses a kiss to my mouth and whispers four words. “I love you, Ollie.”
I take her mouth in mine, plundering, owning, needing to possess every inch of her. “Come on,” I growl, when I manage to pull myself away. The breathless, needy look on her face almost changes my mind. “I’m taking you home.”
Her eyes widen. “You can’t leave. The company is in crisis mode right now?—”
“I don’t give a shit. I pay a shit ton of people a shit ton of money to handle these problems for me.” I grind against her. “But you’re the only one who can take care of this problem, baby.”
She grins, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Then by all means, take me home,” she says. “I need to make my Daddy feel better.”
“Holy fuck, Lilly,” I groan, grinding even harder. “You better watch yourself or I’ll be fucking you right here on the floor.”
She takes my hand, ignoring my groan when she exits my embrace and starts to pull me to the door. “Promises, promises,” she murmurs, voice filled with laughter. It’s the best damn sound I’ve ever heard. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make her sound just like that for the rest of our lives.
OLIVER
“Are you sure about this?” I ask.
Lilly rolls her eyes. “I’m every bit as sure as I was the last ten times you asked me.”
I frown at her. “I still don’t like it.”
She takes my hand from where it’s resting in the car’s center console and brings it to her lap, entwining her fingers with mine. “We’ve been over and over this,” she reminds me. “I don’t want us to live our lives in secret. I’m not ashamed of us, Ollie.”
“I’m not ashamed either,” I snap, temper rising. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t want you exposed to these fucking wolves.”
She leans over and kisses my cheek, her sweet scent nearly making me swerve into oncoming traffic. “I don’t care about the wolves. Not when I have my big, strong Daddy to protect me.”
“Lilly,” I warn. She knows it’s not a good idea to tempt me like this when I’m driving. More than once I’ve pulled off the side of the road and made her suck me off as punishment for not obeying my traffic rules.
She laughs softly. “It’s fine, Oliver. And your PR guys agree with me.”
“Fuck the PR guys,” I mutter, but I know she’s right. As soon as I told the team how I wanted to play this, they stopped arguing and went to work to make it happen. First the lawyers hired a PI to track down the informant—turned out it was some Dom I’d never even met before who saw me at Wyld—who just so happened to work for Zenith. The asshole had his submissive contact the paper claiming to be my girlfriend. They sold the story in an attempt to discredit me before the sale.
Turns out that was a pretty dumb move, since we were able to directly link him to the article. That made Zenith look bad in the public eye. It also meant that the informant was slapped with a lawsuit for breaking the strict confidentiality terms at Wyld. By the time the club is through with him, he’ll regret the hell out of taking that money from the gossip site.
Gretchen wanted us to pin it all on him. She thought if I just kept out of sight for a while, we could pretend like he’d lied about the whole thing. There was no proof I was actually a member of Club Wyld, since those records are so fiercely guarded. I’d been inclined to agree with her, but Lilly wasn’t having it. She didn’t want to hide away from the world, didn’t want to act as though there was anything seedy or wrong about our relationship.
And the lawyers and PR guys agreed with her. As it turns out, the story hasn’t actually hurt our bottom line in any way. In fact, I’m far more well-known and well-liked than I’d been before. Apparently, there are entire blogs dedicated to me and the rumors about my extra-curricular activities. Women, in particular, rated me very highly on the likability surveys the PR team commissioned.
“This just goes to show there are a hell of a lot of women out there not getting what they really need from their vanilla relationships,” Lilly had said, somewhat smugly. No one would ever confuse her sex life as vanilla these days.
It was her idea to go out like this tonight. She says she’s tired of sneaking through the back every time we want to go to the club. I warned her that there’s the possibility someone will see us going in—I’ve had photographers following me more than once since the story, and Club Wyld has had to hire extra security to keep the curious away—but Lilly insists she doesn’t care.
I love her so fucking much.
In spite of the headache at work, the last two weeks have been the best of my life. I go home to Lilly every single night, wake up next to her every morning. She’s being stubborn about selling her townhouse, but I’m working on getting her to agree to move in with me officially.
I know I’ll get her there sooner than later. My babygirl is very eager to please her Daddy.
In spite of her insistence that she doesn’t care if anyone sees us, I notice her pull a compact from her purse as we near the club. “You look gorgeous.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Could my hair be any crazier? This stupid humidity.”
