by Shayla Black
In the previous century, pictures of the numerous Gallagher soirees graced the newspaper society pages. But now, his grandfather’s health was declining. While he was still strong enough, they wanted one last magnificent party.
And she was right, there was a lot still to finish up, even though there’d been constant banging and clanging on the property for more than a week. Massive air-conditioned tents had been erected. All the pool decking had been power washed. A hundred potted plants and palms had been wheeled in. Fairy lights—how they were different than any other damn thing—he didn’t know—draped from his live oak tree and were threaded through all the fencing. As if that wasn’t enough, there were lanterns, and God knew how many other vendors had traipsed through to manicure the lawn.
Almost all of the furniture from the main level had been moved into storage, the dining room set belonging to his grandparents, as well as the contemporary pieces he preferred. Rugs had been rolled up and hauled out, and pocket doors had been pushed all the way open so that the living room and parlor became a ballroom, as per the home’s original design.
Tall tables had been brought in and draped with white cloths and adorned with floating candles—since he had no idea what they were, he’d take the party planner’s word for it—and tiny vases of flowers. All of that had been irksome, but not as annoying as the hammering and pounding as a stage for the quartet had been erected. If he was smarter, he would have moved to a hotel for a couple of weeks.
However, none of the preparation explained why the very attractive Lizzie Ryan was in his closet. “As far as I know, my grandparents aren’t planning to give private tours of the master bedroom.”
“You’re right, of course.” Her cheeks flamed, and she held his tie in a death grip. “I’ll just…”
He waited a full ten seconds before prompting, “You’ll just…?”
“Finish up here.”
“I asked what you were doing, Lizzie.”
“I heard you. I was ignoring you and the question.” She took a step back, but the shelving halted any further retreat. For as long as he wanted, she was trapped.
A pulse hammered in her throat, and it was maddening how much he liked it.
Braden moved toward her with purposeful intent, only stopping when he was mere inches from her. Desire, as carnal as it was forbidden, plowed into him. “Do you often come into my bedroom when I’m not here, Lizzie?”
“I…” Her voice cracked, and she took a breath to compose herself. Then, after a few seconds, her tone even, she went on. “This is the first time.”
That was probably the truth; after all, she hadn’t been here in years. At least not that he knew of. That didn’t stop him from fantasizing, just for a moment, that she’d been here before.
No doubt his imaginings were nefarious and her reason for being in his bedroom was innocent.
She held his tie between them, as if trying to put distance between them as she explained herself. “This was under the couch in your living room.”
Is that where he’d dropped it? Then he remembered. Jennifer Pollis. The evening had been interesting. Well, right up until the moment that she mentioned the ways she might want to remodel the kitchen.
Before the evening had really gotten started, he’d fetched her purse. Even as she protested, he’d called for a driver to take her home.
“Instead of telling my mother what I found where, I decided to put it away myself. You could thank me for doing you a favor, but you won’t.”
He wondered how that quip didn’t draw blood. There was no doubt she’d grown up. In front of him was a confident woman, unimpressed by his money or…frankly, him.
Truthfully he shouldn’t be embarrassed that it was obvious he’d had sex in the living room. He was a grown man, and it was his house. And still, it did make him uncomfortable that she’d been the one to find it.
With her chin tipped back, she looked at him. “There’s plenty of work still to be done this evening. If you’ll excuse me?”
She shoved the tie at him.
“Did you try my drawers?” What the hell was wrong with him? He should let her go. But he had to know what she’d seen, and she was making no attempt to get past him.
Something was happening here, and he wasn’t sure what the hell it was. He was caught in an undertow, and he wanted to take her down with him. “Did you?”
“Yes.” The word was part whisper, part confession.
God help him, it made him hungry to hear vulgar words fall from her beautiful mouth. “So you discovered it doesn’t go in my top drawer, with my underwear.” The relatively few pair he wore. Mostly tight fitting and moisture wicking for when he worked out. “Or in the second one, with my socks.”
She nodded.
“Did you open the one after that?”
“You came in before I got that far.” Her answer was quick. Far too quick.
Lizzie, the girl who’d become a desirable woman, was a pretty little liar. The way she glanced at the dresser—nervously and repeatedly—proved it. “Maybe you should see if that’s where it goes.”
“No.”
He grinned, a lightning-fast, triumphant response that he failed to hide. “So you do know what’s in there. You saw them, didn’t you?” The floggers, restraints, blindfolds, gags. And no doubt, also the rope that would wrap exquisitely around her tiny middle.
“Look, Braden, I’m here to help my mother with a very big job. It was never my intention to invade your privacy.”
“Lizzie. Lizzie. We both know the truth. It started that way. But it turned into snooping. It makes me wonder why.”
Her blush deepened.
“I have a tie rack.” He reached over to push a button nestled on the wall. A board filled with neat, flat, U-shaped hooks slid out. “For future reference, it goes there.” He hung it in place, right above a selection of whips and paddles.
“Uhm. I’ll be sure to remember that if I ever find your clothes on the floor after you’ve had a night of debauchery.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone use that word.” It was as brave as the tilt of her chin.
If she’d been scandalized when she opened his third drawer, she would have dropped the tie and run. Instead, she’d stayed. “Are you in the least bit curious?”
“Not at all. You have kinks. And that’s okay. They’re nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Ashamed?” He sure as fuck was not. “A taste for BDSM, a little tie-me-up, tie-me-down is fine, as long as it’s between consenting adults.”
“Agreed. No argument from me. As a member of your staff, you can count on my discretion.”
That was the last thing he wanted from her. “Stop the bullshit. You’re not staff.”
“Your signature is on my mother’s paycheck.” Her shoulders were straighter, like she’d donned an invisible set of armor. “She serves at your pleasure, and I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
“Over you being in my closet? You think I’d fire someone who’s essential to my family, who has been with me since I was a child, who at times was more caring than my own mother…” Anger seared, fed by her thoughtless insensitivity. Eileen Ryan had wiped his tears, helped him through his grief, showed up once for a parent-teacher conference after his dad had left and his mother was in bed for the third day in a row and he, a nine-year-old, hadn’t understood why. “What the fuck kind of man do you think I am?”
“You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your own home, even when your housekeeper—”
Lizzie’s soothing, placating tone pissed him off.
“Honestly, Braden, all I wanted to do was put your tie back where it belonged. Not cause upset.”
He’d fucking heard enough.
Braden grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up, until her prim-and-proper little heels were inches off the hardwood floor. “Don’t you ever, ever say anything like that again.”
Her mouth parted, and she sucked a tiny breath in through her mouth.
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“Your mother can work here as long as she wants. She’s more than a damn employee to me, and you know it.” At one time, the two of them had sat across the kitchen island from each other, drinking milk and eating chocolate chip cookies after school. But now, this woman had the face and body of a goddess, and she was cursed with the tongue of a hellcat. “You’ve dealt me the greatest insult I’ve ever received.”
“Braden—”
With his mouth, his kiss, his absolute fucking anger, he silenced her.
He used his tongue to press past her sealed lips and determination to demand entrance.
Braden knew what polite society said behind his back. They didn’t know that life had made him hard. Maybe some thought he had everything, but he’d never received what he needed most. Love. He’d seen it, all right, been blinded by its intensity, even. But never—ever—had that emotion been meant for him.
What he’d gone through had hardened him. To cope, he’d walled off his emotions. He didn’t care about the women he slept with. Oh, he treated them well. He wasn’t capable of anything else. He wooed them, but he didn’t make promises. In fact, he was known as cold. That was likely true. And he was happy to throw calculating in there, as well.
He thought the world of women, and he enjoyed everything about them. Vanilla sex, woman-on-top, even. But his passion was BDSM. The sweet sigh of a submissive’s surrender was the most beautiful sound in the world.
His reputation preceded him. Scandalous was perhaps his favorite word. And right now, mouth-fucking his housekeeper’s daughter was about as scandalous as it got.
Lizzie—Elizabeth—gave as good as she got.
At first, he tasted the tang of her resistance. Her eyes were wide, and she kept her body rigid. And then…
He softened the kiss.
At heart, he was a lover.
It wasn’t just his heart that he kept caged. It was his entire range of human emotion. Anger was a rare occurrence since he found it wasn’t worth the expenditure. Braden much preferred to channel that capital into making money. In fact, he rarely even showed his displeasure. He’d rather work on changing the things that annoyed him.
But in under five minutes, she had pissed him off and simultaneously intrigued him.
He no longer wanted to punish her thoughtless words. Instead he hungered to know more about her. Was she as passionate as she was standoffish? Was she at all curious about what she’d found in his closet? Would her capitulation be as mind-blowing as he imagined it might be?
In his arms, Lizzie moaned. It was soft, more a whimper than anything, and yet it stoked the flame inside him.
He pulled her closer and tasted her deeper. She no longer resisted him. Instead, she leaned into him.
Braden was there for her, pressing one hand to the small of her back. With the other he tugged the pin from her hair and sent her brunette tresses cascading over her shoulders and down her back.
She was the sexiest woman he’d ever had in his arms.
Earlier, she might have had a glass of wine. There was sweetness from the grapes, and perhaps the drying bitterness of tannins all rolled into one and wrapped in her response.
Like a dying man, he was mad for more.
Braden plundered her mouth, and as the moments passed, she linked her hands behind his neck and offered herself to him.
She met his thrust with her parry. What they shared was heated with an intensity unlike any other…threatening him with combustion.
He wanted surrender as much as her demands.
Finally, when neither could breathe, he pulled back a little. But even that was too much. Instantly, he claimed her mouth again, and her blazing response seared him.
She kissed him back, as demanding as he’d been. She wasn’t the aggressor. Not at all. Instead, what she offered was a timeless acknowledgment of the passion between them.
Minutes ago, they might have had a verbal parry and thrust, but this was as honest as it got. Lizzie—Elizabeth—was as interested in him as he was her. She hadn’t run when she saw his implements of pleasure and pain, even though she lacked the courage to admit her curiosity.
There was something here. Something neither of them dared do anything about.
If he didn’t have morals, he’d close the door behind him, lock it, then strip her down. She’d let him, too. The sexual hunger in the air told him that.
He’d wrap her wrists with his red tie and then secure her to the clothes bar above them. After he’d aroused her, he’d spank her ass and fuck her hard from behind. He’d take everything she offered and even some she didn’t.
At the end of it all, when he released her, she would have no doubt who owned her, and the only sound from her mouth would be her gratitude.
But, damn it all, he cared about what she thought of him. He couldn’t fuck her and send her on her way like he did countless others.
Lizzie Ryan deserved to be treated like the princess her mother believed her to be. And by God, he would do that.
Even though, right this moment, he would rather die instead.
The dress wasn’t for Braden. How many times have I told myself that?
Lizzie reminded herself that she was attending the event as hired help, and nothing more. And she had three or four garments in her closet that were suitable for this evening’s party.
No doubt she would have pulled something off a hanger and thrown it on as she left her house…except for the fact that the world’s most annoying billionaire, Braden Gallagher, had lit up her entire world yesterday.
It had been years since she’d seen him, and her reaction to him had shattered her.
In her late teens, on the cusp of womanhood, she’d had a crush on the much older boy. What girl wouldn’t? Especially one who came from a much poorer background.
Braden had it all. He was gorgeous, came from a perfect family, had a beautiful home where everything, air-conditioning, even heating, worked perfectly at the flip of a switch. Every part of his life was charmed. Not only did he get good grades, he was the captain of the football team. It seemed he had a different girlfriend almost every week. And numerous colleges sent him coveted acceptance letters.
As if that hadn’t been enough to capture her schoolgirl fantasies, he was kind to her. She didn’t see him much, mostly because he wasn’t at his home when she was there with her mom. After school, Lizzie’s aunt would sometimes drop her off at the Gallaghers’ house. Once Lizzie finished her homework, she helped cook dinner. If he didn’t have a game or practice, he’d hang out in the kitchen, too.
One time, he’d arrived home from graduate school while she was showing off her prom dress for her mom.
She’d been embarrassed when he came in with a couple of friends, but he’d told her how pretty she was and how lucky her date was.
He and his friends had grabbed water and sports drinks from the refrigerator before heading out to the pool, but he’d stopped at the door, looked back over his shoulder, and smiled at her.
Lizzie had almost swooned. His words, quick as they were, gave her more confidence than she’d known in her entire eighteen years.
Even though she had a degree of her own and a successful career, she was shocked to discover he still held enormous power over her.
Having him find her in his closet had been humiliating. If she were smarter, she would have pushed past him and escaped back down the stairs.
Instead, she stayed, every part of her wanting to be near him, soaking up his attention.
Braden was impossibly tall, so much broader than she remembered. And he was unbelievably fit, without an ounce of fat anywhere. His eyes were a grayish color, not quite green and not really blue. They were more like steel when it glinted in the sun. And power? He wore that with as much ease as he did his tailored suit.
He was right, also, when he accused her of snooping.
She had been, and her lie had been brazen, and of course, he’d seen right through it. While she had no real-world experience with
the things in his third drawer, she was curious. A few of her friends were into it, and the ones who were married seemed to have authentic and deeply connected relationships. But she’d never met anyone she was interested in trying it with.
If Braden had arrived a few seconds before he did, he might have found her tracing her fingers over the skeins of silky white rope.
That hadn’t been what kept her awake for most of the night. His kiss had done that.
His anger at her words had left her reeling. She’d been reminding them both of her station in life, as well as seizing on any excuse to get away from him. The more she talked, the angrier he’d gotten. The first demanding moments when he’d held her tight had thrown her world into orbit, and she hadn’t known how to react. No man had ever been that physical with her before.
Because she’d seen how hard her mother had struggled to make their lives better, Lizzie had kept herself focused on school, then work. She hadn’t avoided men intentionally. Rather, she refused to let herself fall into emotional traps. Her girlfriends did plenty of crying over boys who hurt them and some of them continued to do so. She was looking for love that led to marriage and babies, and she let her dates know that.
Which made her reaction to Braden even more unfathomable.
He was the absolute last man on the planet she should kiss.
Behind his back, he was called the Scandalous Billionaire for a reason. He was often featured on gossip blogs, paired with different women. Rumors swirled about his liaisons, and once, he and a female companion had been caught in a compromising situation as his limousine had arrived for a massive Mardi Gras party on Galveston’s Pier 21. Unexpectedly, a hired greeter had opened the back door before Braden and his companion were ready. Though they brazened it out, pretending nothing had happened, there were pictures, fortunately blurry enough for the couple to deny that it was them in the photo.
If Lizzie was going to choose someone to break all of her self-imposed rules with, she should select someone who was much less of a cad.