Mr. Big: A Billionaire Romance (8 page)

“So, what are we doing at the lake?” she asked curiously. “Is this where we are going to picnic?” she perked up brightly.

His laugh was as lilting as the warm golden sun lambent on the waves and he nodded. “We can, if you like this spot, but we aren’t picnicking just yet.” He raised a teasing eyebrow at her and walked over to the boatman nearby them.

A short time later she was sitting opposite him in a row boat as he held the oars firmly in his hands and stretched his body back and forth, rowing them out into the water. She couldn’t help but see the hard, toned muscles in his arms and chest that the material of his shirt pulled tightly over as he moved, pushing and pulling the oars.

She tried to stay focused on their conversation, but with every movement she was distracted and the more she watched him, the warmer her body grew as she began to imagine those arms around her, that chest pressed against hers, and his strong hands caressing her body. She found her breath growing steadily shallower and she did her best to keep it even as she struggled to keep her eyes on his when he looked at her. More than once she realized that he had caught her gazing at his body, and biting at her lip. He didn’t say anything to her, but the smirk on his mouth let her know that he was holding back a bit of a laugh and a smile.

She looked around them at the wondrous beauty of nature in all its spring glory; all the varying shades of pink and white blossoms, the daffodils and tulips that dotted the shoreline in clusters of brilliant color, the baby ducklings that paddled around after their mothers in the water, the sounds of children laughing in the distance, music playing from some far unseen place, people strolling along the pathway around the lake, and the deepening blue sky, scattered about with puffy white clouds and dotted with colored kites. It was a perfect day, and as she took it all in, she realized something and she turned to look at Alexander, just to find that he had been watching her again. The butterflies in her went wild.

“I have to tell you,” she grinned at him, “this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I didn’t even realize how much I missed things like this until just now. It’s so perfect. Thank you so much for bringing me here today. I love it,” she told him earnestly.

He nodded and smiled back, setting the oars down finally. They were far out into the lake. “I’m really glad to hear you say that. I had hoped that it would be like this for us today, and even if I could have planned it out myself, I couldn’t have made it any better than it is. I needed this day, and there’s no one else I would rather have shared it with.” He winked at her and she felt her heart skip a few beats.

Alexander turned and reached behind him into the basket filled with their picnic supplies. He pulled out couple of small personal sized bottles of champagne, popped their corks, and poured each one into a glass champagne flute. He handed one of them to Mia and toasted her.

“To this perfect day with you, and hopefully to more that will follow,” he said with a smile and lingering look deep into her eyes.

She felt everything in her jolt with an excited thrill, and she silently scolded herself, reminded that she was only in it for the single purpose of finding out if the rumors about him were true. She lifted her glass to him.

“Cheers!” she said happily, and after touching the rim of her glass to his, she sipped slowly from it and savored the golden bubbles that danced over her tongue and down her throat. She closed her eyes as the sound of a trumpet floated over the water and the moment wrapped itself around her like a glove.

Sighing, she opened her eyes back up and looked at him. His eyes were taking her in once more, and he slowly moved toward her until he reached her, never once rocking the boat. She was surprised that it was so still and he was so careful. He placed his glass of champagne in her free hand and reaching both of his hands up to her face, he cupped her cheeks and drew his mouth to hers, touching his lips to hers softly, making her gasp as they began to taste one another and he slowly set her body on fire from the inside out.

His lips parted hers and his tongue began to trace over hers in sweeping circles and twists, making her forget everything but that heated connection between them. Her heart began to pound and her breath grew shallow and short as his kiss deepened and she lost herself in the rapture of the taste and feel of him.

Carefully wrapping her arms around him—each hand still holding tightly to a flute of champagne—she hugged him to her body and kissed him back with as much sensuality as she had in her, and she could feel the effect it had on him when he matched her kiss. After long moments, he finally pulled away from her slowly, his breath ragged, his eyes locked on hers, and he reached his fingers to hers, brushing them slowly over her skin as he slid his champagne flute out of her hand and moved back to his seat in the boat.

He took a deep breath and she saw him let it out slowly as he shook his head. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you just…” he paused and stopped shaking his head, “…you take my breath away,” he told her softly.

Mia felt the heat in her catch fire and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to reach her arms around him and show him just how much he made her feel the same way. She smiled coyly at him and looked away for a moment, feeling her cheeks warm before she looked back at him and lifted her glass to her lips, sipping the champagne and wishing that she was feeling her tongue on hers again, rather than the bubbles that tickled her.

He grinned as he finished his own champagne and then put the glass back in the picnic basket. He picked up the oars and began to row them around the lake. He directed the boat beneath some of the trees, and as they passed under them, a flurry of pink and white blossoms spiraled down toward them on warm air, and she found herself in a shower of them as they landed on her, dotting her clothes and brushing against her skin. He laughed lightly and she loved the feel of every one of them.

They passed baby ducklings and as they passed another boat, they nodded and waved to the two men in it. Alexander took them beneath a bridge and she felt like she was gliding through a dream somehow; some magic fantasy that could not be real, but there she was, right in the middle of it. There was sun on her skin, gentle air moving through her hair and against her cheeks, and the feeling that nothing could be more perfect than that moment with him there in the boat on the water beneath the beautiful blue sky and the spring blossoms that spun in the air around them.

After a long ride around the lake, he finally took her back to the shore, returned the boat to the boatman, and they went to a grassy spot beside the water, just underneath a wide tree dressed in brilliant pink petals. They set up their picnic and ate together and she poured more champagne for them.

He laid back on his elbow and sipped from his glass, looking out over the lake thoughtfully before he turned to her. “This day could not have been more perfect,” he said softly.

She smiled at him and leaned close to him, hungry for another taste of him. “Well, it’s not over yet…” she said silkily as she pressed her lips to his and began to kiss him slowly and sweetly.

He reached far behind him and set his glass down, and then slid his arm around her and a moment later she found herself beneath him as he kissed her in return, his mouth moving over hers with an ever growing need as his arms and hands tightened on her body.

Heat flooded her from her core, stealing through her veins like liquid fire as his tongue invaded her mouth and his lips pressed against hers more ardently. She wound her arms around the strong solid muscles of his back and she was able to touch and feel the form that she had admired so much while they were rowing in the boat on the lake earlier. His muscles were hard and warm beneath her fingers and she closed her hands tightly around them, pressing her fingertips into them as he aroused her even more.

His lips left hers and trailed slowly along her cheek to the hollow beneath her ear where he paused to breathe her in before brushing his mouth softly over her neck, kissing and sucking gently as he moved lower toward her throat. She lifted her chin and tilted her head back, riveted by the powerful gravitational force pulling her to him with mounting need.

A soft moan escaped her parted lips as he reached the base of her neck and she longed to feel his mouth on the curves of her breasts and her hardened nipples that were straining against the dark red sweater she wore. Her hands moved hungrily from the firm bulk of his shoulders to the back of his neck where her fingers threaded through his thick hair and she lifted her chest toward his mouth, breathlessly.

He groaned and traced his lips tantalizingly over the bare skin that showed at the neckline of her sweater, but then he raised himself up and kissed her mouth softly for a long lingering moment, savoring her lips, and Alexander pushed himself up away from her and leaned back, looking up and taking a deep breath as he closed his eyes.

She slid her elbows back behind her and pushed herself up, staring at him in surprise. She had not expected him to stop something so hot and delicious as the kisses they had just shared.

“Are you okay?” she asked, lowering one brow in confusion.

He drew in another slow breath and exhaled gradually, then turned to look down at her, giving her a smile. “I’m good. I’m better than good… you are an amazing woman, and you really bring out a desire in me that I haven’t felt in a while.” He leaned over her, hovering at arm’s length and reached a hand to her cheek, trailing the tip of his finger over her cheekbone.

“I loved kissing you. Thank you,” he said quietly, the corners of his mouth curved upward, his chocolate brown eyes steady on hers.

She began to have a sinking feeling in the depths of her that he was doing just what he had done in the car and she felt a wave of panic. She pushed herself up to him swiftly, and when she was not much more than a breath away from his face, she curved her hand around his cheek and touched her lips to his softly, kissing him sensually.

He closed his eyes and kissed her mouth lightly for a moment and she raised her eyes and looked up through her eyelashes at him. “Alexander… I want you to come home with me today. I want you to spend the afternoon with me in my bed.” She whispered as her hand drifted from his cheek down his neck to the open collar of his shirt. Her fingertips circled in the dark hair peeking out of his shirt at the top of his chest. “Come with me…” she breathed as desire burned at her.

Alexander sighed and pressed his lips together, closing his eyes for a moment before looking back at her and raising his hand to close it gently around hers, moving it from his neck down to the small empty space between them.

“Mia… I want you too, you can’t imagine how much I would love to say that I could go to your bed with you, but this is too soon. It’s our second date. You barely know me. I want to know more about you. As truly tempting as spending hours in your arms would be,” his eyes fell to her mouth and he hesitated and then looked back up into her dark eyes again, “I have to be the voice of reason. I don’t want you to regret anything between us. If that does happen between us, there needs to be more to it than just lust.”

He spoke simply and honestly, and she felt everything in her crash down. He wasn’t going to give in to her. He wanted more than just simple sex. She’d never heard a man say that he wanted more than just sex. She’d never had a man turn her down even once, let alone twice, when she said she wanted to sleep with them. It was both a blow to her ego and to the rapidly growing yearning for him in her body that he had put her off again, yet at the same time she found that she was bewildered and astounded by the man before her. He was a man like no other that she had ever met. He found value in what lay beneath the surface of everything, from his building to his employees to even the women he chose as his lovers.

Mia had no idea what to do. Part of her was intrigued with him and wanted to delve deeper into all of the mysteries of him that confounded her, and part of her wanted to walk away right then, simmering with frustration, and just buy her own plane ticket to Italy. She had never found herself in such a strange situation and it was all that she could do to just keep her cool and try to figure out how to react to him at that moment.

She blinked and sighed in frustration; air gushing from her as she tried to exhale all of the frustration in her. “You want to wait…” she said in a low voice.

He nodded. “I think it would be best for both of us if we waited,” he told her earnestly.

She shrugged and pushed herself away from him. “Then I guess we wait,” she said with a disappointed sigh, looking down as she pulled her hand from his and rested it in her lap.

He reached for her chin and placing his fingers beneath it gently, lifted her face to look in her eyes. “Mia, I do want you. Making myself wait to be with you comes at no small sacrifice to me, and obviously to you, but I don’t fall into bed with women at the drop of a hat. I take my time and I make sure that the women I do love physically are women I would want to be with whether we were intimate or not. You are most assuredly one of those women, but there needs to be more than just mutual desire. You are worth that, and so am I.”

He smiled and let his hand go from her chin and she stared at him in awe, her mind whirling at his words. She was worth waiting for. Of course she was worth waiting for. She knew that. She just didn’t believe that she had heard a man tell her that. Surrealism crashed over her and she blinked again at him and remained silent as her thoughts and emotions reeled in new directions.