Her Billionaires(9)

Pretty soon, just seconds later, he was down to a block, half a block, and he took his hand out of his pocket, giving her a wave. Then she realized that he had been talking to her the entire time and she had no idea what he was saying.



“Laura? Laura? Hello, hello—are you there? I can see you and you’re just standing there. I am waving at you right now... Laura, have I mistaken you for a human being or are you a really hot store mannequin?” He heard her laugh. Aha. Keep going, Dylan told himself. Recover from the terrible joke.

“Or part of some performance art thing like that guys like me don’t understand? Were you Andy Warhol’s protégé? Or is this some sort of flash mob set-up and nineteen naked members of the Pirate Party are about to appear and don Mickey Mouse masks in some geopolitical protest?” She suddenly folded and bent over laughing. He breathed a sigh of relief. Sweet!

That was it—she was forcing him to use every remaining brain cell in his body to process basic bodily functions as every red blood cell rushed to his groin. He couldn’t stop raking her body with his eyes. He couldn’t stop eating her with his retinas. She was some kind of Dylan magnet. Her entire appearance was luscious and her eyes—as he got closer he saw the kindness, the sweetness in them and there was a beauty, a full body, full-fledged gorgeousness about her that made him hard instantly.

“Stupid business casual,” he muttered to himself, mouth tilted away from his phone. He was wearing the kind of pants where his arousal could become very obvious.

Now that he stood in front of her, no more than a foot and a half separating them, he felt like the biggest idiot on the planet for even joking about not dating her. She was stunning, all curves and woman and he wanted to smell her, bury his face in that sweet neck, feel her in his arms and listen to her breath as he made her happy.

What did her cries of ecstasy sound like? Would she turn her face away? Bite the pillow? Rake lines of ownership into his back with those glossy nails?

Later. Later, he would find out. The same confidence that had always been there for him told him so. Like a second person living in his head, it just knew. She was his, and she didn’t know it yet. But she would, and he had all the time in the world to teach her that.

With his tongue.

He just stood there and stared at her and didn’t know what to say; he couldn’t recite what went through his head as his eyes roamed over the perfect topography of her body. She stood there and stared back and didn’t seem to know what to say, either. This silent dance needed a better beat.

One he could drive home with his—

Finally, she said, pointing to the door, “That is a great restaurant you picked,” her voice as breathless as he felt. Except she was actually talking and he was standing there looking like a fish out of water, his mouth opening and closing as he tried desperately to get something like a linear thought going. Where the hell was that confidence now? He wasn’t awkward or worried or any of those namby-pamby feelings Mike always described having. It was more that his brain had gone blank at the sight of her and everything but his arousal went into hibernate mode. She smiled and seemed to expect something intelligible to come out of his mouth, but first he had to dig his way out of the enormous, gaping hole of lust he’d just tripped into.

How in the hell was she still single? Why hadn’t someone snatched her up?

“It’s this whole Asian fusion thing. My friend told me it would be a good idea to bring a first date here and it might be a place to impress somebody.” And the food is supposed to be amazing, but that’s secondary. She seemed so nervous, those glittering eyes wary, already on guard from his lame attempt at humor on the phone.

He felt like an ass, could sense he was losing her, and his charm system went into overdrive, not the shallow Dylan so used to getting a woman to step out of her pants within an hour of their first drink in a bar, but the slower burning Dylan who stumbled across Jill in college years ago and who felt sucker punched and euphoric all at once.

“So impressing me is more important than the food?” Laura laughed and looked at him with an uncertain caution in her eyes, a caution that he actually did not like but that spoke of something he couldn’t put his finger on.

“Yeah,” he said, a slow grin stretching over his face, the word more a promise than an answer.

“I don’t think you have to worry about someone like me,” she replied, looking away with a bashful smile, her blond ponytail sliding down the side of her creamy neck as if guarding her, creating a safe barrier and holding her in place.