Chapter 21: Davis
Once the long day at FundRight ends, we drop Marvin and Stephen off at the D-R office. They spend most of the drive chattering away excitedly about how things went, and I would be lying if I said that their offer to go out for a drink wasn’t a tempting one. In any other situation, I would want to celebrate this moment: FundRight would be a colossal win for the company. A game changer. Gregory Davenport would probably write me into his will, somewhere below Gray and his sister Elizabeth, but above Peter. The acquisition isn’t a sure thing yet, but we left FundRight’s offices with a beaming Gus Winter telling us that he’ll call me by the end of the week to “figure out how we move this shit forward.” I’ve been through enough deals to know that this is a very good sign.
I would also be lying if I said that Olivia wasn’t the lynchpin for our success.
Olivia.
In response to the drinks offer, I make up an excuse about getting work done back at the hotel, which Marvin and Stephen don’t question because they’re too high on victory. Conversely, I’m high on the incomparable woman seated next to me who doesn’t seem to understand that I’ve just developed a boardroom fetish. She was perfect. Hell, she was more than perfect. She was the blueprint—the kind of asset that I needed today. For the rest of my career, I’ll be judging people’s performance on these kinds of deals in comparison to Olivia and how she handled Gus Winter like he was nothing more than a drunk-ass college guy in a bar in Amsterdam.
The ride back to the hotel feels like decades, rather than a few minutes. The walk through the lobby and the trip upstairs in the elevator feel even longer. By the time we walk through the door of our suite, I’m shocked that I’ve managed to make it into the room without pulling Olivia into my arms and taking her against one of the public hallways.
As soon as the door closes behind us, I press her up against it—a habit that I recently developed with her, and haven’t been able to shake. I crowd her smaller body with mine and cage her in my arms, wishing it could always be like this.
“You were incredible,” I say as I kiss her, missing her mouth a couple of times in my rush. “Absolutely incredible.”
“Was I?” she inquires between kisses.
“Like a pro.” I begin to undo my shirt and tilt my chin up at her, surprised that I even have to tell her what I want at this point. “Get naked.”
“Now?” she clarifies, green eyes wide as she watches me strip. To be fair, the question is valid. It’s dinnertime, we literally just walked into the suite, and she did spend the entire car ride back to the hotel studying the passing landmarks like she wanted to go out tonight and explore London.
Soon. All of that soon. But for now…
“Right now,” I confirm, forcing my tone to be authoritative even though I kind of want to laugh with how giddy I feel. “I need to be inside of you. I can’t wait.”
To my relief, she giggles as she unzips her dress. “Looks like London will have to wait another time.”
“I’ll take you around the world if you want, but right now I need you.”
Olivia shrugs off her dress, revealing one of the bras that I gave to her—and nothing else. I groan as I see her bare mound, realizing that she was commando for the entire meeting.
“You do realize that you’re playing with fire, right?” I ask, unable to look away from her flawless figure. “That one of these days, I’ll end up fucking you at work if you keep forgetting to wear underwear.”
Smiling smugly, she undoes the bra and tosses it to the side. “They get in the way of you being inside of me,” she declares before she leaps into my arms—actually leaps into them. I catch her, maneuvering her magnificent, naked body so that her legs are wrapped around my waist. We teeter a bit before I can guide us into the bedroom, where I allow us to fall backwards onto the bed.
The kissing grows frantic, like neither of us is sure if we’ll have a chance to do this again. It’s a desperate urgency, but one rife with absurdity: I know so little, but I know for damn sure that this is far from the last time that Olivia Nolan and I are going to screw each other’s brains out.
Savoring that thought, I reach up and palm her bare breasts, enjoying their softness against my hands. She’s curvy and supple in just the right places—but then again, no curve on her could ever be in the wrong place. Touching her freely is a privilege that I don’t deserve. When she groans in response and begins to rub her bare mound against my erection through my pants, I’m certain that I must have been a humanitarian icon in a past life because my karma is absolutely sterling.
“I want you so much,” I tell her as I shift my hands from her breasts to her back. “You have no clue.”
“If your desire is even a fraction of how badly I want you, I know it’s a lot,” she replies as she begins to kiss along my jawline, planting one after another on my chin and my neck.
Her words send a surge of desire and calm through me, stoking my need for certainty. My need to know that she actually wants me and not just the money I give to her. For once I don’t doubt it. For once I don’t wonder if these are the sly words of a woman who knows how to handle men like me. For once I savor it, the same way she seems to savor the taste of my skin as she kisses her way down my bare chest.
“Shit,” she mutters as her body suddenly flinches in my arms.
Alarmed, I hoist up on my elbows. “What’s wrong?” I demand, raising my hand to place it on her cheek, a move that feels like the most natural response to seeing Olivia in distress.
Letting out a small laugh, she shakes her head as she releases a reassured exhale. “Nothing. I scared myself. Your phone fell out of your pocket and I had this horrifying image of me rolling on it and accidentally butt dialing your father or someone at work.” She hands my phone to me, somehow managing to make even that simple gesture look insanely sexy.
“Can you imagine?” I ask as I look at my phone, equally relieved to find that the camera is off and no calls are in progress. “We’d both be done for. Even worse, imagine if I accidentally filmed us…”
I trail off at the same time that Olivia raises an eyebrow and tilts her head to the side. Her expression shifts from embarrassment to something conspiratorial. For a prolonged pause, we stare at each other, both of our minds racing.
She breaks the silence first, asking only, “Would you…”