Page 24 of The Reluctant Billionaire

A bra that may be the ugliest, most industrial-level undergarment I’ve ever seen.

I gape at in confusion and then up at him. He’s quiet, those pale blue eyes watchful.

I fling it at him. ‘What the fuck is this?’

‘It’s a bra,’ he says, attempting to put it back in my hands, but I hold them up in aback offgesture. ‘It’s for you.’

He’s lost the plot. He’s actually insane.

‘It’s hideous, and you have no place buying me a bra. This is totally inappropriate. And also, you know, really creepy.’

‘I need you to wear it,’ he says, and I’m amazed to hear the pleading tone in his voice. ‘Seriously, Carlotta, I need you to put your fucking tits away, properly, in a proper fucking bra, once and for all. Or I’ll—’

‘You’ll what?’ I say. My voice is shaking, which is no surprise, because my entire body is also shaking. I’m trembling with rage, and shock, and the intimate, affronting and totally bizarre nature of this interlude with a man I do not know and yet feel uncomfortably attracted to.

He lets those eyes of his drift closed for a second. When he opens them, he looks straight at me. They’re as pale as ever. As beautiful. But instead of their usual ice I see heat. ‘I’ll be in very grave danger of doing something so fucking inappropriate that this, right here, will seem about as tame as a royal garden party.’

I swallow and press my thighs together. We’re so close. We’re a foot apart, max, and in these damn trainers I’m several inches shorter than him. I can smell him—sunshine, and sweat, and a kind of earthiness, and good, honest laundry liquid. I bet he shuns cologne, but he doesn’t need it, anyway.

He smells incredible just like this.

‘What would you callfucking inappropriate?’ I ask in a small voice.

He shrugs, but there’s nothing offhand about his voice when he speaks. If anything, he sounds hungry. Starving.

His gaze flicks from my eyes to my mouth to my boobs and back up again. ‘I’d stick a chair under the door handle and sit you up on that desk,’ he says, ‘and I’d pull off that stupid top. And then I’d slide that fucking useless sports bra off you, and I’d feast on your beautiful, beautiful tits. I’d go to fucking town on them. I’d lick those mind-blowing nipples of yours, and I’d suck them, and pull at them till you came just from that. Because I know you could. I have no doubt I could make you come.’

Our eyes are locked. My boobs and my clit are growing heavy, achy, at the mere thought of Aide ministering to them like that, with so much hunger and desperation. At the thought of sitting there, bare-breasted, while he devours me. Ravages me. Of taking everything he has to give me.

His voice is lower and rougher than I’ve ever heard it, and yet it feels like a caress. Hearing this stoic, gruff man put graphic, sensual language to the dark attentions he’s dreamt about lavishing on me is too much.

I can feel his mouth on me.

I can sense the wet warmth of his tongue, his lips, on my nipples. The pulls of his fingertips on my sensitive skin.

I can imagine the noises both of us would make.

I know just how it would be between us.

But even better than the picture he’s painted is the knowledge that I’ve driven him to this.

Me.

This guy gives nothing away. He’s as closed off as they come, from what I’ve seen. But, somehow, my boobs and I have worked him up so much in the past three days that we’ve driven him to go to a department store, buy me an actual—if revolting—bra, and express his darkest fantasies to me.

That’s almost headier than what he’s threatening to do to me if I don’t wear the bra. And yeah, it’s definitely a threat, not a promise.

Unfortunately.

I stare at him. He’s breathing hard through flared nostrils, and we’re so close I can feel the faint warmth of his breath on my face.

I wish I could reach up and drag my fingers through that dark, neatly clipped beard. Rake them through his hair. Pull his head down to mine and tug that full bottom lip between my teeth.

But he’s made it clear that, for whatever reason, he is intent onnotpursuing anything akin to that scenario with me.

Probably because, aside from my tits and my looks, he finds me utterly dreadful.

Although none of the above means I feel remotely compelled to play fair. So I open my mouth to say what I want to say, because we’ve pole-vaulted way over the line ofappropriatenow.

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