The Billionaire's Fantasy - Part 2

HE’D NEVER HAD a woman stay the night before. He rarely brought women back to his place; the penthouse suite of The Black Book had always suited his purposes admirably.

He was breaking a lot of his rules when it came to Louise Jensen, Jaiven thought ruefully, and not without a small surge of alarm. Rule breaking was dangerous. It could crack open things inside him that made it easier to care, and he couldn’t care. Didn’t want to go down that damaging path. He’d been there before and he’d prefer not to have a return trip, thanks very much.

But he didn’t care about Louise, he decided as he gazed down at her sleeping next to him, her knees nearly brought up to her chest, one hand flung up by her face. He didn’t know her well enough to care about her. They’d had some glorious sex and very little conversation, and that was exactly how he liked it. No danger of falling for someone when you had no idea what was going on in her head.

Except somehow the sex was revealing more of Louise, and maybe even more of himself, than he’d expected, or was comfortable with. Telling someone your fantasies was a little exposing, even if he hadn’t meant it to be. And finding out what Louise’s were…

He didn’t think he’d ever forget the look of panicked determination on her face when she’d thrown open her coat. Or the glare when he’d asked her if she wanted to remove it.

The memory made his mouth twitch in a smile. She’d been magnificent, in all sorts of ways, last night. He hadn’t enjoyed himself, and not just sexually, in a long, long time. He’d actually had fun.

Which made breaking the rules justifiable, in his mind. He was enjoying himself, and he was pretty sure she was too, and yet neither of them were going too deep or engaging emotionally at all.

At least not much.

All right, so he was starting to see how the sex—and the fantasy—was liberating for Louise. How she needed to reclaim her confidence, her boldness and sass. He wondered why and when she’d lost it.

And as for him—she brought up all sorts of feelings in him: protectiveness and admiration and a sense of pride that she needed him, at least for this. But she didn’t really know him, and it needed to stay that way.

Because if she found out…

Well, he just wasn’t going to go there. Ever.

So it was fine, he decided as he smoothed his hand down Louise’s back. She had the softest skin he’d ever touched. Totally fine and completely under control. And he was going to enjoy his time with her to the hilt.

He’d start by waking her up—and he knew just how to do that.

* * *

Louise woke to Jaiven nuzzling her neck. It was, she decidedly hazily, a very pleasant way to wake up. The next half hour was even more pleasant.

In fact, pleasant didn’t even begin to cover it, she thought when they finally made it downstairs in search of some breakfast. Sex with Jaiven was unbelievable. Incredible. Addictive.

It was going to be hard to give up, she acknowledged, whenever that happened. Probably pretty soon, judging by Jaiven’s track record. She doubted he’d been with a woman for longer than a week. They’d had three days, if she just counted the times when they’d seen each other. That meant possibly just four more encounters. Four more fantasies, if she could think of that many. Maybe Jaiven had something up his sleeve, or maybe he was bored with her already.

He hadn’t been bored a few moments ago, but he’d rolled away from her pretty darn quick and said he was starving.

Now she slid onto a high bar stool as Jaiven moved around the breakfast bar to a state-of-the-art kitchen that looked as if it saw little use.

“I hope you like eggs,” he said as he rummaged through the fridge.

“Why?”

“Because it’s the only thing I make.”

“You’re going to cook me breakfast?” She was, stupidly of course, touched.

He poked his head around the stainless steel door of the refrigerator. “I did promise you breakfast.”

A smile tugged at her mouth. “Coffee and a bagel, I thought.”

“I’m out of bagels, but you can have toast with your eggs.”

“You’re too kind,” she teased, and hooked her bare feet around the rungs of the stool, propping her chin in her hands as she watched him cook. She wore one of his T-shirts that came to midthigh; he wore only a pair of navy boxer briefs, leaving the rest of him quite gloriously bare. She’d had ample time to explore his body over their past few encounters, and besides the tattoo and the once-broken nose she’d seen a long, puckered scar along his abdomen. It added to his rough, rugged sexiness, but now she wondered about it. About him.

“So how did you get that scar?”

He glanced down at his middle as if checking it was still there. “This? Really bad shaving accident.”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “Seriously.”

“You’re always so serious.”

“It’s a serious scar.”

He shrugged, his broad back to her as he cracked eggs into a bowl. “Stupid accident, that’s all.”

She heard the faint note of repression in his voice even though he spoke casually, or tried to. Okay, so he didn’t want to talk about his scar. Apparently even that was too personal. Too emotional, maybe. It made her wonder all the more, which of course was both dangerous and stupid. She shouldn’t have engaged him in conversation at all, she supposed, but you couldn’t have sex while making breakfast, and she wanted to talk. She wanted to get to know him just a little, whether that was stupid or not.

“I have a scar,” she said suddenly, and then wondered why on earth she’d mentioned such a thing. She certainly didn’t want to talk about that.

“I know you do,” he answered. He turned back to her with a glint in his eyes as he tossed the eggshells into the trash. “It’s tiny, though, right by your eyebrow.”

She felt as if he’d suddenly swung a magnifying glass onto her. “I didn’t think you’d have noticed.”

“I’ve noticed everything about your body, Louise.” He stirred the eggs and then poured them into the frying pan heating on the stove. “So how did you get it?”