Mr. Big: A Billionaire Romance (17 page)

The intensity of the passion between them felt as if it knew no bounds, and she was astounded by the ferocity of it. Their emotions were riding high, and their bodies were reacting to each other, to every single thing that they felt and wanted, and it was overwhelming to her as she succumbed to it, and to him.

His hands moved from her breasts down over her belly to the warm soft flesh at her core, and her eyes flew open and she gasped as his fingers entered her, manipulating her and drawing fiery heat to her thighs. Her breath was short and shallow as his fingertips rubbed at her firmly, pressing into her deeply and bringing hot moisture to his hand.

She moaned in need and he responded, lifting his hand from her and replacing it with his rock solid erection. Slowly, tantalizingly slowly, he pushed her legs further apart and slid himself into her, inch by inch, waiting as her body stretched around him, until he was fully inside of her, and neither of them could hold back their burning desire for one another.

Mia arched her back and began to move with him and against him, rocking her hips and drawing him all the way into her, and he held her tightly to him, burying himself in her over and over until she cried out his name and clung to him desperately in pleasure and bliss.

Alexander covered her breasts, her neck and her mouth in his kisses, drinking her in as he made love to her, driving her to the brink of ecstasy for what seemed like hours, until she could not hold anything back from him, and she came hard, her body stiffening, her heart pounding, and he whispered to her as he kissed her.

“You are mine, Mia… aren’t you?” he asked, his body still filling her as he looked into her eyes.

“Yes!” she cried out softly, her arms locked around him.

“Do you love me?” he pressed, his eyes intent on her as they moved together.

She felt her heart catch in her chest. He was asking her. He wasn’t going to let her get away with not telling him. There was no way she could avoid it, nowhere to hide, no stopping the truth from being said, finally.

She bit her lip and closed her eyes, hoping for a way to escape it, but he kissed her hard and looked at her again.

“Do you?” he demanded. “Say it… if you do… say it to me now,” he insisted.

She couldn’t hold it back from him any longer. Not in his arms, not while he was making love with her.

“I love you,” she breathed, her eyes closed and her heart wide open. Then she looked up at him as the sound of hearing her own spoken words freed her from them. “I love you!” she repeated, looking deeply into his eyes as she said it.

Relief and happiness flooded his face and he smiled at her and kissed her softly, “I love you, too, Mia, I love you with all of my heart.”

He moved more swiftly in her, unable to hold himself back then, and as the fires of new love erupted in them, so did their pleasure and they both felt their orgasms taking over until the climaxes locked them both together around each other and they lost themselves in one another completely.

Breathless and blissful, the intensity between them began to relax, and they collapsed into each other’s arms, kissing softly and touching tenderly.

He stared at her as she laid with him, his finger tracing her cheek. “I never thought I was going to hear you say that,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “I never thought that I was going to say it to you!” she admitted. Emotion rose up in her throat and she swallowed hard.

“Why did you make me say it to you?” she asked quietly.

He blinked at her. “I wanted to know! I needed to know. I needed to hear it and I needed to tell you that I love you, too.” He looked at her in surprise.

She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. “No, that’s not what I mean.” She bit her lip for a moment and he leaned in and kissed her tenderly and then looked into her eyes again as she searched his for some kind of answer.

“I mean… you’re with Emily now. You moved on. Why would you come all of the way over here and why would you make me admit to you that I love you while you’re with her?” she asked, her heart threatening to break as she spoke the words.

He blinked at her and then laughed, pulling her into his arms and holding her close. “Oh Mia… my Mia.” Then he looked down at her and slid his finger beneath her chin, lifting it to look at her with a mirthful smile on his rugged handsome face.

“Emily is my sister,” he said quietly.

Mia stared back at him and then laughed, closing her eyes and feeling relief flood all throughout her. “She’s…. she’s your sister,” she repeated not quite believing it herself. “I didn’t know. I thought when I saw you two at the restaurant…” she paused and he laughed with her.

“I took her there for her birthday. She came to stay with me for a week to visit me. She wanted to see the new office since Liam finished it, and it just happened that she had her birthday while she was here, so I took her out to celebrate. She was staying with me at my home.” He paused.

“I saw you, the day that you were across the street; the day that she left, I saw you and I tried to stop you from leaving. I wanted to talk with you. I wanted to hear what you had to say, but you disappeared. You vanished so quickly and I couldn’t keep up with you. You were gone. I thought that it must have been an accident that you were there that day, instead of you coming to talk to me like you said you wanted to do.” He looked a little sad.

She furrowed her brow. “You said you never wanted to see me again; you never wanted to hear from me again!” she insisted. Confusion twisted itself in her heart and mind.

“I was angry at you for what happened, and if you care to explain all of that, I’m ready to listen, but the anger went away. I don’t stay angry. I saw you at that restaurant with Logan and it drove me crazy. It was so hard sitting there watching you with him, and then when you went to the bathroom, I thought I might have a chance to talk to you, but then we fought, and I was frustrated again… I just had to try to find a way to get it across to you how I feel about you, and I kissed you, and that was it.” He looked perplexed, but happy.

Mia knew that the time had finally come to explain to him just what happened. “Alexander,” she said softly, touching his cheek with her hand, “first, I’m so very sorry for what happened. I have spent so much time looking back over it in my mind, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what in the heck I was thinking or whatever made me agree to accept that ridiculous challenge, but I guess it started out as something shallow and simple. There was a rumor that you are nicknamed Mr. Big for your….” she hesitated, “for your size. I had some friends who wondered if the rumor was true, and they challenged me to sleep with you and find out. I can’t believe I agreed to do it, but I did. I thought that it would be simple. I thought it would be like a one night stand, which most men are okay with, I think. I would get you into bed, find out if the rumor was true, and if I did it and came back to my friends to tell them, they were going to give me the ticket to get here.”

Alexander watched her quietly, his expression unreadable as she explained.

“The only thing was, you aren’t like most guys. You didn’t want a one night stand. You wanted to wait. You wanted to get to know me, and I’m not used to any men looking for any kind of depth like that. I had to keep trying, had to keep spending time with you until you decided it was the right time for us to be together, and then a funny thing happened. It was unexpected. The more I got to know you, the more I wanted to know you. The more I wanted to be with you. I couldn’t keep you off of my mind. I couldn’t keep you out of my dreams, and then when you and I were finally together, I had the answer I was looking for and it seemed like things were going so well between us. I thought that maybe we could keep going, but you happened to walk into my office at just the wrong time, and you found out about the challenge, and by then it was too late to tell you; too late to explain, and you left.”

The memory of it ripped at her and she took a long, slow, deep breath before she continued, and he watched her silently, his emotions still impassive.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, and that it changed partway through; I mean, at first it was just about the challenge, but then I didn’t care about the challenge that much anymore, I just wanted to be with you, and the more I got to know you, the more important you became to me. I fell in love with you, and I hadn’t realized it yet. You walked out of my office and my heart broke right in half. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe that I’d lost you. Nothing helped. I only dated Logan because I was trying to get over you. When you kissed me at the restaurant, that was the last of the heartbreak that I could stand and I decided I had to get away. I had to leave. So I used the ticket to come here to try to recover and find myself again… to try to get over you, and Liam called me to check on me. He knew all along how I felt about you, but he didn’t say anything. At least, he didn’t say anything until I was over here, and then he made me admit to myself and to him that I am in love with you, and then he told me that I have to tell you, and I said I would when I got back to the states, but I guess you fixed that for me.”

She laughed and ran her fingertip over his lips. “I can’t believe that you’re here. I can’t believe you came all the way over here for me.”

He smiled at her a little. “I had to. Liam called me and told me everything. He told me about the challenge and he apologized. He told me how you had fallen for me and how hurt you were that we were broken up. He said that you had come over here to get over me and when he told me that, I couldn’t just stay in Manhattan. I couldn’t stand the thought that you might try to find some other man over here to be with to push me out of your mind. I was scared that I might lose you for good, and I lost you once already; I couldn’t do it again. My heart couldn’t take that either.”

He kissed her lips softly and tenderly. “You can’t imagine what you mean to me. It’s incredible to me that it happened so fast, but you are such a beautiful woman on the inside and on the outside, and you are such a good woman, that I couldn’t help but fall in love with you. I was devastated too, when I overheard everything in your office that day, and I thought I had lost the love of my life, but when Liam called and explained everything to me, I knew I had a chance to get you back. I knew that I had to try. I had to tell you how I felt and see if there was any way that we could salvage what we have and try to rebuild it.”

He traced his lips over hers again. “Will you do that with me? Will you try to rebuild it with me?”

She closed her eyes and kissed him tenderly. “I will. I promise you that I am never going to hurt you like that again.” She whispered, looking into his eyes earnestly.

He smiled at her. “I love you,” he told her again.

“I love you, too,” she answered with words, and then she answered with another kiss, and before long she was making love with him again.

Epilogue

The autumn colors of New York blazed all over the city, but nowhere as beautifully as they did in Central Park. The trees that had showered the lake and the shoreline with soft pink and white blossoms in the spring were covered in varying shades of red and gold, green and brown, rust and russet, as the warm September sun made every leaf glow more brightly.

Rows of chairs were lined up in the brilliant green grass, decorated with ribbons and bows, flowers and greenery. Each chair was filled with a person dressed well and smiling, and most of them talked amongst themselves as a string quartet played just off to the side of them.

Down the center aisle of the rows was a long white carpet that ended at a pulpit, bedecked with flowers and fronted by an archway that was covered in blooms and ribbons. Alexander Daniels stood at one side of the arch, looking as he always did in a tuxedo, like a James Bond hero.

Beside him was a slightly smaller thinner man; Liam wore a tuxedo as well, and was beaming blissfully as the two of them looked around at the guests who had come for the fall wedding.

The music changed, and every head turned to the end of the aisle to watch as three women began to walk up the carpet toward Alexander and Liam.

The first woman was Emily; elegant and refined with her brunette hair pulled up in a chignon at the nape of her neck and a bouquet of flowers in her hand. Her burgundy colored dress gently brushed the carpet as she walked over it. She came to a stop at the other side of the arch, looking over at her brother and giving him a wink.

Next came a voluptuous blonde. Ava grinned happily as she strode down the aisle, catching a few men’s eyes as she passed them, coming to stand beside Emily. Then it was Maddie, her red hair pulled into a French twist on her head, her chin held high, and her smile broad as she stepped down the aisle and came to the edge of the carpet nearest Alexander. She smiled at him and winked at Liam who shared a tender grin with her.

All of them turned to see Mia as she stepped from the tent beneath the tree where she and Alexander had shared their picnic one sunny spring day. She was dressed in her wedding gown; white and flowing, covered in lacy blossoms and pearls, her veil frosting her dark hair and skin. She walked toward her friends and her lover, wondering in amazement that the day was even happening, grateful for it that it had finally come, and excited that she was going to spend the rest of her life with Alexander, always to be his.

She reached the end of the carpet and he took her veil and lifted it from her face, staring at her and shaking his head slightly at her breathtaking beauty. They turned then, facing the minister who spoke of their love and asked them to repeat the vows that he said.

They promised to love one another all of their days, to cherish and strengthen each other, to remain faithful and true no matter the circumstance, and to keep their promises until the day they parted the earth.

Both of them vowed to love much longer than that. The minister pronounced them man and wife, and Alexander took Mia into his arms and kissed her softly and tenderly for a long while before he finally let her go and grinned down at her.

She knew that all of her dreams had come true, and that every single day that was coming to them would each be one part of the best of their lives. As they turned to face their family and friends, he leaned close to her and whispered,
“You are my happily ever after.”