Chapter Four
Iris
“You shouldn’t have left me, luv.”
“Callum?” I shot up in bed and stretched my neck out.
It was pitch black in my room. As a kid, I’d always slept with a nightlight, but I’d outgrown that habit by the time I’d hit high school. Allison was still off with Mr. Goth, and I regretted for the first time in a long time that I had no nightlight and had left my cell phone on my kitchen table when I’d bumbled into my apartment. What was I thinking?
Maybe I’d been thinking that a powerful CEO and billionaire wouldn’t follow me home and let himself into my apartment.
“You shouldn’t be here.” My voice came out as a squeak, as a small, panicked echo that came out as pathetically tiny in the space of the room between us. “I…you have to leave.”
He sat down at the foot of the bed and stroked my cheek. My heart raced, but my clit pulsed again, and my breaths came in short, ragged gasps. I couldn’t deny how much I wanted him. I’d failed in his office and embarrassed myself on the dance floor. Even though he’d snuck into my home and was here in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t deny him now. I’d been trying so hard to be the good girl, to play the role my father ordered me to do.
I’d worked hard to be on the right path toward valedictorian at Trinity, and it had led to sleepless nights locked in the basement of the oldest library on campus. I hadn’t tasted life, was still a naïve virgin, but here was the hottest man in all of Dublin, and he wanted to help me change all of that.
“You really should go.” My voice waivered, and even I didn’t buy the small protest I was making.
His hand snaked down to cup my breast through the thin fabric of the nightshirt I’d chosen to sleep in. My nipples pebbled and hardened automatically under his touch. “You don’t want that, do you, luv?”
I swallowed. “No. I…stay, Callum. Make love to me.”
I winced and expected him to mock me, to remind me that he didn’t make love but tended to “fuck,” to leave girls like me in his wake. But he didn’t. Tender hands cupped both my breasts, kneading them with a skill I’d never felt before. I moaned under his touch. Callum grinned and gripped the hem of my shirt. I wriggled as he pulled it off over me, freeing it so he could, in turn, free my body.
“You can do whatever you want to me.”
He licked his lips, and I had the strangest urge to do the same thing to the dimple in his chin, to run my tongue over it and make it mine. “I intend to, Iris. I’m going to make you scream, make you come a hundred different ways that you’ll be begging for more. I’ll make you pant, and you’ll fucking love every minute of it.”
“Sounds amazing,” I admitted.
“It’s bloody more than that,” he said, bending low and covering my left nipple with his mouth.
He was slow at first, just taking me into his mouth and suckling at my nipple. My areola was already so sensitized from his touch that just having my nipple in his mouth made my whole body shake. My clit throbbed again. I crossed my legs underneath me to try and keep myself from coming. I wanted him to do it, needed my first orgasm in his presence to be because he gave it to me. To be because I begged him for it like a dog in heat.
Then he moved to flicking his tongue quickly over my left nipple while stroking and teasing my right with fingers that worked me better than a concert violinist worked a Stradivarius. I bucked against him, and then when my orgasm hit, like fireworks exploding behind my eyes, I screamed.
I screamed again.
And was hit in the head with a pillow.
Ow, what the hell?
Blinking up, I found myself still in my t-shirt and with my thick down comforter curled around me. My legs were wet, and I realized that I’d had the most delightful and naughty of dreams, but that was all it was. Instead of having mind-blowing foreplay with Callum O’Brien, playboy extraordinaire, I’d spent the evening at home alone. Now I was being regarded with maximum confusion and pity by my roommate.
“Um, uh, hi,” I mumbled.
She snorted gleefully as she leaned against my door frame. “Oh, you don’t get to just ‘hi’ me, Iris. That was a freaking crazy dream you had. Or was it just a coincidence you were moaning a certain billionaire’s name and looked like you were having the best sex of your life?”
Blushing, I clutched my pillow to my chest. “I was not having the best sex of my life or any other sex in my dream.”
Just really great foreplay.
“Sure, and you weren’t moaning the big boss’s name either,” Allison chirped. Then her expression sobered. “Girlie, it’s okay for you to move on from Mr. O’Brien and go and find some other guy. I won’t tease you again.”
“I doubt that.”
“But if you really want to follow your heart, then I’ll support you there too. We spend so much of our lives locked into plans. We’re already deep in figuring out where to apply for MBA programs and making time tables for the best time to start a family with the perfect two-point-five kids and a dog. The best thing you can do for yourself and your final year in Dublin, hon, is do anything that makes you happy.”
“What if it’s a Goth boy?”
“Don’t knock one till you’ve ridden one,” Allison laughed.
“I think I’ll keep to my own style.”
She nodded and came to sit at the foot of my bed. “And does that style include tall, dark, and hella handsome billionaires who have massive real estate portfolios?”
I put my head in my hands and groaned. “It might, but that means I’m completely screwed. You know that I have no shot with him. None of this makes any sense at all. You get that, right? Everything I’m thinking is crazy.”
“Half of this city is crazy. If you’re not going to go for broke in your wild college years, Iris, when are you?”
I sighed and looked up at her. “I don’t know.”
***
I was able to spend the bulk of the day doing busy work. Anything Mrs. McCabe said do, I did. If there were a hundred three-ring binders to add labels to, I was there. If coffee needed buying for half the office, I was waiting in line at the local coffee shop. And I’d tangled with the copier three times already and lived to tell the tale. That was no small feat; that damn thing was a monster. I figured after yesterday and me “getting lunch on his dime” that Mrs. McCabe was working extra hard to be a bit of a chaperone and make sure Callum and I stayed separated. I think I appreciated that. After the dance floor and my crazy-intense dream, I had no idea how to deal with Callum.
I knew what I wanted, what I craved with every fiber of my being. At the same time, I knew it was impossible.
“Miss Kilshimer.”
“What?” I asked.
“Miss Kilshimer,” Mrs. McCabe asked, even though a pinched expression made her face look unusually haggard. “Mr. O’Brien has requested you this afternoon to take dictation. I offered to handle it myself, but he was quite insistent that you work with him.”
Great, the frown on her face couldn’t be more pronounced, and I hadn’t even done anything in the office. What happened in my dreams and in a dark club when we were both a bit tipsy could stay there. Yet, I was still being suspected as the easy gal on deck.
Perfect.
“That’s alright,” I said, picking up a pen and a legal pad. “I can always do something else. I think this floor was running low on supplies and—”
Callum poked his head out of his office suite. “I don’t want you, Frances. I believe I directly requested Miss Kilshimer.”
Mrs. McCabe sorted her look to neutral and then nodded. “I understand, sir.”
“See that you do in the future. Now, Miss Kilshimer, my time is precious. Hop to.”
I felt my palms grow sweaty as I slipped into the office. He shut and locked the door behind me, and I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to grip the pen with how nervous I was. Turning around, I eyed Callum. “About last night…”
“So, you were thinking about Hooligan’s too?” He smirked back at me and circled me as a shark would its wounded prey. “Because it’s all I fucking thought about last night. I went home to an empty bed, and I never do that. There’s no woman I’ve known in years who would turn me down.” He stopped circling and ran a finger down my throat. “It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“By saying ‘no,’ I made you want me more?” I said, my voice so quiet that I was amazed he even heard me.
“I’m saying that I went home and had incredible dreams, that I wanted nothing more than to fuck you insensible, over and over, luv. You’re a goddamn vixen, Iris, and you don’t even know it. You come off as coy, but everything you do can drive men absolutely wild.”
I swallowed. “I doubt that. No one in college has really paid that much attention to me.” High school either, but I’ll be damned if I admit that I’m a virgin to him. “I…you could have any woman you wanted.”
He leaned closer to me and this time, before he spoke, his teeth grazed over my earlobe, sending a direct electric jolt to my clit. It took everything I had not to scream with pleasure. God, that was the last thing I needed Mrs. McCabe to hear.
“I only want you, vixen. I want the way you make me feel, the way you require a chase.”
I took a shuddering breath and looked up into cool blue eyes. “The way you’re my father’s best friend? The way that this can only end as a giant clusterfuck?”
He ran a hand over my cheek and stopped at my chin so that he could force me to stare at him longer. With my chin pinned between his thumb and forefinger, I had no chance of looking away. “This can end however we want. We write this story, and I want you. I have since you fell over in my office yesterday. Maybe since the files first came over my desk about you, to be honest.”
“Is this a setup?”
“No, but what do you want, vixen? Tell me right now. Look into my eyes and say you only want to be boss and secretary, and I’ll never harass you again.”
“It’s not really harassment,” I admitted. Couldn’t be. Not when I wanted this too.
Then he said, his ice blue eyes boring into mine, “Do you want this?” He gestured between us. “Or do you want to give it all up and only be professional?”
“I want this.”
Until that moment, I wasn’t sure what answer I’d give, but it was out of my mouth in an instant. I knew then, consequences or no, that it was worth it, that this would be the wild ride of a lifetime.
I’d worry about the inevitable broken heart later.
He leaned down and kissed me, and that was when my world exploded into color and light.