Chapter 18
I’m in real fucking trouble here.
I unfasten her seatbelt and then my own, holding my jacket in front of me in a way I hope looks casual—even though there’s nothing fucking casual about my gigantic fucking hard-on.
Amelie kisses like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Like a wildcat is locked up behind the saucy little virgin facade. I wasn’t joking when I said it was my first kiss too. I finally know what it means to feel.
And I’m feeling it so fucking hard right now I’m having trouble controlling myself.
With one glance, I was hooked. With one kiss, the entire mechanics of my brain have been rearranged.
It’s disorienting and borderline unhinged.
I want everything. The passion we can barely control.
The white dress and the fairy tale wedding.
The life together. The house full of little red-haired, hazel-eyed children.
The sitting on the porch holding hands when we’re eighty.
She’s the one.
And, since I’ve never been able to stand even being in the same room with a woman for more than a couple of hours, it feels strangely like the Earth’s orbit has been radically thrown off course—or is finally at long last on course—because of the power of Amelie Thibodeaux’s gravitational fucking pull.
I want to give her everything I have. I want to spend all my billions of fucking dollars on her.
With a suddenness that’s shocking to me, all the old priorities of my life have completely lost their shine.
The non-stop work. The hedge funds and the shareholders.
The bull markets and the fucking keynote speeches.
I don’t care about any of it, not without her.
My old obsessions have been knocked off their perch.
Once, they served a purpose. They drove me since the day I read that newspaper’s financial pages when I was seven years old. But all that changed the moment I sat down at the bar on a random Friday night in the Hotel Thibodeaux.
Now, I have different priorities.
Amelie Thibodeaux.
Not a single thought exists in my head right now except the ones that are consumed by the shape of her mouth, the sweep of her long eyelashes, the curve of her full breasts under her dress. And figuring out exactly what I need to do to keep her.
She’s mine.
“Be careful, Boo,” I tell her as I help her take the one stair down from the helicopter. I like the nickname. It fits her. We’re only around ten steps to the limo, but a weird sense of rage fringes at the edges of my awareness. “You okay?”
I don’t know where the fuck the Sasquatch tendencies are rising up from, but right now I might as well be a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal.
A manic need to shield her and protect her consumes me.
To keep her safe. To pamper her and treat her like the goddess she is by giving her every single fucking thing she wants and needs.
She blinks at me in an almost-smile, reading my intensity with a mixture of curiosity and something close to amusement. “I’m okay, Wilder. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Even though I’m not fucking fine at all. I’m losing my mind. I’ve already lost my mind.
I’m in love with her.
You can’t be. It’s not possible to fall in love this fast.
But that’s exactly what’s happened. I’m as sure of it as I am of my own heartbeat, which is lurching in my chest like it’s overflowing with hot, twisted-up love-lust.
I put my arm around Amelie in the limo, resisting the raging urge to pull her onto my lap.
I know that if she’s on my lap, cradling my cock with her squirming little body, I’ll have to kiss her again. And if I kiss her again, there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to stop until she’s naked and crying my name. Covered in my cum and coming hard around my gigantic, spilling cock.
I want to come inside her. Now. Tonight.
Jesus Christ.
I really am losing it.
I don’t want to be a fucking lunatic about this, but I have no control over how much I already need her.
So I content myself instead—as much as the new beast in me can be contented—with gazing at her like a love-drunk wretch while trying not to be obvious about it.
“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.
” I love this about her. She’s a sassy New Orleans version of pure sunshine.
She’s genuinely one of those glass-half-full people and I haven’t met many of those in my life.
Maybe I just don’t travel in those kinds of circles, but I find it wildly endearing.
“This definitely beats spending the morning cleaning hotel rooms.” She laughs.
“God, did you see Ellen’s face when she walked out?
She was irate about letting me go for the day.
I dread to think about the jobs she’ll make me do tomorrow, but who cares. It was so worth it.”
Her sweet-as-molasses accent really does kill me. And something about the way she enunciates her words reminds me of how young she is.
And gets me even harder than I already fucking was.
Amelie doesn’t know that she’s not going back to work tomorrow.
Or the day after that. It feels too soon to announce to her that I’m taking her back to New York with me, when she’s ready.
I need to ease her into the idea and make sure she doesn’t feel rushed.
But it is happening. And I can’t resist. “Actually, I told Ellen you wouldn’t be at work tomorrow either. ”
Her eyes go wide and her full, pink, insanely-tempting lips form a small O.
Fuck, she’s gorgeous.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
She gets a tiny furrow between her blondish-red eyebrows.
“I’ve already forgiven you once because of the day we’re having”—in air quotes and with a hazel glimmer, because it’s our new little inside joke—“but it’s insanely presumptuous of you, to just go ahead and tell her that.
” Like she’s mad at me. “You realize I’ll probably lose my job over this, right?
I can’t just take time off like that. You should have asked me. ”
“I did ask you.” All I can think about is, sex with her is going to be fucking fireworks.
Every time she gets mad at me, she lights another match to the wildfire of obsession coursing through my bloodstream.
“You said no because you weren’t allowed to take days off.
Even though, legally, you are. So, I fixed your problem for you. ”
She’s in too good a mood to hold a grudge, but she’s still annoyed.
“You fixed it for you. But I’m the one who will have to deal with the fallout, just saying.
I’m not a full-time employee, technically speaking.
She doesn’t have to give me time off.” The pout is fucking killing me.
She shrugs a little. “It’s still worth it though. ”
“I already told you I took care of it. You’re not fired and there won’t be any retribution, if you do choose to go back.” I say it dismissively, like it’s a sure thing that she won’t. Which it is. She hears this in my tone. And I can’t help adding. “Which you won’t.”
Her huff is almost petulant. “Sure. Of course I won’t.”
“As I said, I’ll take care of you.” We’re pulling up in front of Maison Rêve. “Now stop protesting for five minutes while I do exactly that.”