Page 9 of Billionaire Corruption

I wondered about what it would be like to be in a relationship with Clarissa. I had another sip of my drink and felt my worries about work recede. I knew Clarissa’s family and she knew mine, we came from similar backgrounds. Yet, I’d always held back when she seemed interested in taking our relationship beyond casual hook-ups.

We had another round of drinks and Clarissa chattered on about a wedding venue she’d recently scouted out in California. She talked about how she would like to elope her second time round, after the big hoopla of the first wedding.

“So, you want to get married again?” I asked her with a teasing smile.

She seemed bashful. “Well, I don’t know. Yes, no. Maybe, I don’t know!”

She was quiet for a while.

“I mean, I want to be with someone, you know? I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.”

A note of loneliness crept into her voice. She smiled quickly to hide it. “I think the mojitos have gone to my head!”

“It’s hard to find someone,” I suddenly said. “Isn’t it?”

My longest relationship had been with a surgeon in the city. Theresa and I had been together for five years. It had been a serious relationship, both of us were invested in our careers, but we were good together. Theresa got a good position at a children’s hospital in Boston, and she wanted to take it. I told her that I didn’t think it would be good for our relationship and she said she would stay if she knew it was going anywhere. She wanted me to propose and, for some reason, I couldn’t do it. We were good together, but somehow, I felt pressured into taking things further.

When she’d moved out, I had felt relief. But over the years, I’d struggled to find that kind of connection with anyone else.

“It is hard, especially for people like us,” Clarissa said.

“People like us?”

She didn’t continue, maybe not wanting to put it into words. I knew what she meant though. The breeding, the good family name, the expectation that came from our families to do well and make the family proud. Clarissa had told me that her mother kept introducing her to new beaus, each older and richer than the previous one.

“The last guy was some oil baron from Texas. Can you imagine living out there?” She shuddered dramatically. “The weather is dreadful.”

She touched my arm, lightly stroking it. “I prefer the weather here.”

There was no mistaking her tone, she wasn’t talking about the weather at all.

“Even though it is often miserable and cool?” I asked, in the same tone.

She smiled at me, her perfect teeth sparkling.

“Why don’t we go somewhere a bit warmer,” she said, looking down at her breasts, the hardened nipples showing clearly through the sheer fabric.

“I seem to be getting cold.”

With a grin, I put my arm around her, steering her towards the steps. We were heading down to my car, a sports car I’d bought only a few months ago. I helped her into the passenger seat and closed the doors as I headed for her apartment.

As I waited at the traffic light, Clarissa looked at me and winked and I smiled back at her, anticipating an evening of sensual pleasure between her silk sheets. Then, completely uninvited, an image of Grace popped into my head. I thought of the way she had stood in my office earlier that day, the way she had looked at me, her beautiful blue eyes on me.

I knew that I wanted her, not Clarissa.

The sexual tension that I thought was building between me and Clarissa all evening had really been all about Grace, simmering below the surface since that morning. The moment her face was in my mind, I could not stop thinking about her, about our kiss in the elevator and the desire that we clearly still felt for each other.

This was not something that I could, or would, ignore.

I would have to find a way to see her again.

Soon.

Tomorrow.

“Paul?”

I snapped out of my thoughts. “What?”

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