The Billionaire's Baby Negotiation

CHAPTER THREE

WHENHESAWOlive Monroe’s name come across his desk two months later, he was almost certain that it was a hallucination.

She had been haunting him, like a ghost, so it seemed in keeping with everything else. He woke up at night, tangled in his sheets, slick with sweat.

Gunnar did not do unsatisfied desire.

When he wanted something, he got it. Whether it was a chocolate cupcake or a woman. But thus was the longstanding issue of Olive Monroe.

There was no other person on the planet he understood quite so well.

And none who was buried so deeply beneath his skin.

Were he another sort of man, he might have called it...love.

But he was not that man, so he called it fascination, or even just protective.

From the time she’d been a beautiful eighteen-year-old girl, looking at him with hungry eyes and uncertain desire.

Because yes, he took what he wanted, but within the bonds of moral certainty. Women who knew what they wanted, and who wanted him. And who well knew the desires and needs of their own bodies.

He’d known what her desire was for. What it meant. He could have shown her then, but he’d...

He’d made his life a pursuit of being nothing like Magnus Ragnarson.

His father had been a bastard of the highest order, and the only thing worse than the man’s actions, had been the years Gunnar had spent idolizing him. Not realizing the manner of man he truly was.

It was his desire to be nothing like the kind of man who used and discarded young women, who engaged in morally bankrupt business practices that destroyed the environment, displaced families and paid workers piteous wages to work in dangerous factories, that had held him back from ever touching Olive.

And yet it had done nothing to dampen his desire for her.

His obsession.

He did not spar with her because he needed to indulge the public spectacle. He had no use for such things. He sparred with her because he enjoyed it.

He sparred with her because it was better than sex with anyone else.

Turning her away the night of her father’s funeral had been a feat of unhuman strength. Certainly, it had fueled a sense of moral superiority in him that had nearly been consolation enough for not tasting her sweet mouth.

He’d given in now, though.

And he’d considered calling her many times over the last two months. Why should they not have an affair?

Self-denial had so long been his virtue when it came to her that he’d resisted it out of habit.

But his body wanted a particular woman. And that was another thing about Gunnar. He did not take second. When he wanted something, he would have the first of it. The best of it. Or he would have none of it.

And so his lust had remained thoroughly unsated these past two months, because all his body wanted was Olive.

But no. It was not a hallucination. Olive’s name truly was on this memo, and his assistant was standing there fidgeting, the man looking utterly ill at ease.

“All of the information is here in this written memo,” he said. “But I feel also that I need to speak to you.”

“Make it quick.”

“Do you know how Olive was able to win the auto contract?”

It was no mystery to Gunnar. The simple truth was... Olive had destroyed his presentation. Hers had been better in every way. Her product was better. He had been...fiercely proud of her.