The Billionaire’s Secret (His Submissive #6)(3)
Author: Ava Claire

“Please,” I whispered, my voice rough. Unfamiliar. “I’m so close.”

He pulled his mouth away but his fingers quickly took its place. He centered on my bundle of nerves, his tongue swirling, propelling me toward the edge. All he needed was to say the word. To release me.

The swirls became slow, methodical licks that made me groan and he sighed against my quivering flesh. “Take me, Leila. All of me.”

He could have asked anything of me and I would have done it. I just didn’t want him to stop.

I leaned forward and reclaimed him with my mouth and he returned to my warmth. I pushed myself, forced myself to take more of him, ignoring the pangs of discomfort at his massive manhood stretching me wider, pushing further. He matched my ante. Tongue swirling wilder. Fingers burrowing deeper.

I felt him tighten before he exploded with a cry of abandon and somewhere in the moans, the curses, he told me to let go.

I melted and I swore I was flying, soaring into the arms of bliss. I didn’t want to come down, to sink back into my bones because in that shimmer, everything else faded to black. It was only our bodies doing the thing that felt so right. So perfect. It was only me and Jacob.

I climbed off him, playing hopscotch around fragments of porcelain. I turned back to him, feeling playful. Feeling like maybe, just maybe we’d be okay. When he refused to look me in the eyes, the smile dropped from my face.

“I’m gonna take a shower.” He walked past, suddenly in a hurry.

I pushed away the whispered voice in my head that said he was consumed by regret. That he wanted to scrub off the feel of me. The taste.

I decided to prove it wrong, taking a step in his direction. Please prove it wrong. “If you want company–”

“I don’t.” He didn’t even stop his ascent. “Please show yourself out.”

****

Saturday morning came streaming through the musty Super 5 Motel curtains despite my best efforts to keep it at bay. I blinked my heavy eyes, gunk and lack of exhaustion turning something effortless into hard labor. Once I pried them open, I realized that I’d really been better off in the dark.

The room was the very definition of sketchy. Cracked walls were unintentionally two toned where someone half-assedly tried to touch the paint up but ended up making it look worse than before. Every piece of furniture in the room had seen better days. The bedside table beside me had an inch thick layer of dust and the rinky dink lamp perched on it had cobwebs hanging from the yellowed shade like delicate, disgusting earrings. The tiny AC unit sounded like it was on its last leg, circulating sour gusts of air that added to the musty, toxic odor that flooded my nostrils. My first thought was too pull the cover over my head so I wouldn’t have to look at my last minute digs, but as soon as I saw the comforter was speckled with god knows what, I changed my mind.

It was more than my accommodations that bothered me. Before Jacob, family trips were spent in motels just like this one, sucking it up and enduring because spending lots of money on a room wasn’t an option if we wanted an actual vacation. The thing that made me sick to my stomach was the fact that it was a new day, sun beaming, highway buzzing outside the window and all–and my romantic situation was even more pathetic than when I went to sleep.

I’d text and called Jacob and absurd amount of times since he kicked me out of his place, swearing I wouldn’t go to sleep until we talked this through. Instead, my inbox was filled with one-sided, borderline psychotic texts. My ‘or else’ ultimatum didn’t inspire him to finally talk to me and I woke up with my phone in hand, cheek drenched in drool.

A double tap echoed at the door and I kicked off the covers, glad for the excuse to get out of bed, even though I put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ tag on the knob.

I flung open the door and my jaw dropped. "Megan?"

She looked just as shocked as I was, her bright green eyes taking me in. "Oh my."

Megan Scott was the kind of person who would go toe to toe for those she cared about. It made her a hell of a teacher and the best friend anyone could ask for.

Her strawberry blond hair was held back with a pair of oversized glasses and I could tell from the dark, puffy semicircles beneath her eyes that she hadn’t gotten any sleep. I didn’t think it was possible, but I officially sunk lower. Apparently after I got tired of drunk texting Jacob, she was next on the list.

I picked at my dingy, crumpled blouse before I stepped aside so she could come in. “I’m so sorry, Meg.” For some bizarre reason I started scooping up trash. “If I knew you were coming–”

“You would have disposed of the evidence?” She held up an empty Bartles and Jaymes carrier. “Even if you didn’t text me at one in the morning, I was planning on camping out in front of Whitmore and Creighton until you finally talked to me.”

My parents weren’t the only people I texted from the car on the way to Italy. My mother’s response was a mixture of shock and glee when I told her I was leaving the country with Jacob. Megan’s was more along the lines of, ‘WTF?!’

I’d been planning on meeting her for coffee once things quieted down. Apparently a wine cooler or six gave me the guts to reach out to her and explain the whirlwind my life had become.

She walked to a rusty chair beside the dresser then thought better of it, standing awkwardly beside the bed. “I’m glad you’re back stateside. With a famous boyfriend apparently.”

I raked a hand through my hair, pushing my wild, curly locks from my eyes. “Not so sure about the boyfriend thing.” I glanced in her direction, expecting to see annoyance at the fact that he was my boyfriend at all and she was the last to know. Instead, her patrician features were soft and empathetic. That sent my shame-o-meter into overdrive. I had no right to have friends like Megan or a boyfriend like Jacob.

I dropped my body onto the mattress. “I screwed up.”

She hesitated, clearly wanting to avoid contact with anything in the room. She drew a breath, steeling herself and surprised us both by sinking onto the bed beside me. She folded her hands in her lap. Ready to listen–if I was ready to talk.

I still wasn’t sure I was. With my thumb and index finger pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to hold back the tears that lay waiting, threatening to rush past my defenses. I knew if I laid out all the dumb choices I made in the past twenty-four hours, there’d be no stopping them. Once I started crying, I’d be no good to anyone.

So I decided to go further back.

“I barely had time to catch my breath before I was whisked to the airport.” I paused, letting the subject change sink in. If she tried to steer us back on the road to why I was in a budget motel surrounded by Doritos and booze, I’d reluctantly veer back on course. I owed it to her because she was here on Saturday morning, there for me even when I was so wrapped up in Jacob that I kept her updated via scarce texts.