Chapter Forty-One
Damion
Blake warns me about the hell waiting on me before I ever exit the office.
I step onto the sidewalk to cameras flashing, and by the time I’m at the apartment to pick up Alana, they’re waiting on us there, too. I’ve almost talked myself out of this public show until Alana greets me at the door, looking positively stunning in a knee-length, form-flowing red dress, her hair silk splaying around her shoulders, obviously ready for our night out. And holy fuck, she is every wet dream I ever had—quite literally, in this one moment, years of fantasizing about her, years of wanting her. I would not complain if this night ended with her hair splayed on my belly either, my cock as at attention as I am. Not that anything with Alana is just about sex, but holy fuck, I want this woman. I will never stop wanting her.
“Tonight,” she says, wrapping her arms around me, all her sweet, tempting curves pressed close to me, “I want to try the mac n cheese.” And when her lips part in a pretty red smile to match her dress—a genuine smile after all she has been through, and just because we’re together—all I can say is yes. Tonight, she’s getting her macaroni and cheese.
I slide an arm around her waist and fold her tighter into me. “We have company, though.”
She eases back and gives me a furrowed-brow look. “Please tell me it’s not your father.”
“Like that would ever happen. No, baby. The press is everywhere.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good, right? We’ll be printed everywhere tomorrow, and the board will see it before the vote. I kind of love how easy that happened.” She dips her brows all intense and orders, “Now take me to dinner. I’ve been trapped in this damn house all day, and I hear the plan is for me to repeat that the next two days. But word of warning—someone is taking me to the gym tomorrow to pay for tonight’s meal. I talked to Candace. She said I could go over to her place. They have a full gym.”
“You and Candace are getting along well.”
“We are,” she says, a pleased lift to her voice. “She’s the first friend I’ve had in a long time. Since college, when I got picked for the top thirty under thirty and my friend Kristie did not. She hated me for that. I knew that meant she wasn’t a real friend, and I don’t know—her, my parents—it started feeling like we’re all on an island by ourselves, pretending to be otherwise.”
But she was never alone. I always was one phone call away, yearning to be closer. The problem is, she had no idea.
My mind flashes back to the night she’d walked into the party and how she’d rocked my world. I’d watched her shine, even as I’d known her well enough to know she felt she was mud in a crystal blue swimming pool, dirtying things up. That night, I knew I couldn’t let her walk away. I knew I would never let her walk away. It had been the first night I’d touched her—really touched her. The first night I’d considered she could be mine, but my father had figured it out, had his snitches talking, and he’d sent me away the next day.
I’d been too young to fight back.
I’d decided it was for the best.
God, she’d been beautiful that night, as beautiful as a diamond glistening in a perfect light, and as far as I’m concerned, every light is the perfect light for Alana.
Regret fills me, and Alana’s hand settles on my face, dragging me back to the present. “Where’d you go? Come back to me.”
“I was thinking about that night, the party to celebrate the list.”
“It was a good night until the next morning.”
“When I left,” I supply, but then I chuckle. “Or tried. You handed me my ass.”
“You deserved it. You made me feel—”
“I was just trying to take care of you. And I thought maybe getting that gambling debt off your father would actually be the end of that trouble.”
“I know, Damion. Believe me, I know. Every time I paid off his debt, I thought it was the end of it.”
“Have you talked to your mother?”
“Not at all. I asked Walker to tell me if he goes to her house or calls her, but so far, she’s left him messages and he doesn’t return the calls. He’s either done with her or being cautious because of the press.”
“Maybe both, and that’s for the best.”
“I heard the Russians are helping, but not much more about the details.”
“I just got the rundown myself. Blake wouldn’t talk about it until we were in person. The Russians are going to start a blackmail campaign for the company’s money. We hope his out will be that he’s no longer in charge, and they need to talk to me.”
She crinkles her cute little nose. “Wait. Will they really come after you?”
“No. Walker has it under control. I don’t know how, but I trust Blake.”
“Me too,” she says with a nod. “Me too. Anything from Caleb?”
“Radio silence,” I say, reaching for the door. “Let’s talk over dinner.”
She catches my arm and tilts a concerned look my direction. “I have this weird feeling something bad is about to happen.”
The calm before the storm , I think again, but I don’t say that. “We’ve waited a long time for a happy ending, baby. I think it’s pretty normal to feel a sense of apprehension. Let’s go enjoy a night out together.”
“While taunting your father?”
I step into her and capture her slender waist. “We can stay in. You will get no complaint from me on that point. You. Me. A pizza and no one else.”
“You know I want to go,” she says. “I’m all dressed up and ready for my mac n cheese with my future husband.”
Future husband. God, I love how that sounds.
Her hands settle on my lapels. “And if, as a bonus, we help our cause, which is to get your father out of the picture, so be it.” She captures my hand. “Now feed me already.”
***
The press swarms us as we exit the building, and Walker is ready for us and them, sheltering us even as I fold Alana in close to me. “Well, that was fun now, wasn’t it?” Alana asks as we settle into the SUV across from Joey.
Her light mood so close to her kidnapping is surprising, but she’s proven time and time again in her life to be resilient.
“We’re just pigs in mud, it’s so fun,” Joey grumbles. “Fucking piranha reporters.”
Alana smiles at his grumpiness and kisses my cheek. How many times is this woman going to steal my heart all over again in one night?
After a few detours on the path made by smooth-operating Smith, the reporters are left in the dust, and arrival at the restaurant is free of hassle. Once we’re actually in an intimate private room, sitting at a cloth circular booth with a view of the city lights twinkling before us and wine in our glasses, for just a little while, we’re able to just be us. It’s something we haven’t really been able to do since finding each other again. We laugh and talk about the old days and all the trouble we got into with each other—or I got her into, she claims. And of course, there’s the mac n cheese, which lights up Alana’s face the minute she takes a bite.
By the time we reach dessert, a carrot cake, we’ve turned the topic to the Hamptons. Alana stabs a bite of the cake and pauses. “I can’t wait to see it. I wish it were tomorrow.”
“Me too, baby, but the wait will be worth it if we end up celebrating new beginnings.”
“We’re doing that anyway,” she declares. “No matter what, we’re doing this—the you and me thing.” She waggles her fork at me. “We decided that. In this together. And everything here is so freaking good, but it’s still too expensive.”
“I’m going to have to convince you to stop looking at prices.”
“Never going to happen, but back to your house in the Hamptons…”
“ Our house in the Hamptons. And what about it?”
“I’m most curious about it because you saw it and had to have it.”
“Part of that was that my father hates the Hamptons. I knew I’d never run into him there, but I love the house, too.”
“I’d think he’d love all the money running around in the Hamptons,” she muses.
“He’s fucked enough of those people over to be hated.”
“But you’re not him.” It’s not a question.
“No, I’m not him, and aside from leaving you behind, the UK was a good move for me. I built relationships and revenue, not a list of enemies, and I plan to do the same in the US market. I sent Mary a text and told her I needed this week to work things out for her. Did you hear anything from the show after I left?”
“Not a peep, but when we’re all over the news tomorrow again, they’ll probably cook up some new ways to use us for advertisers and ratings.”
“You like doing the show though, right, baby?”
“I do. I love it.” She sets her fork down. “I just hate the uncertainty of every season. I think it plays on all the uncertainty I’ve felt in my life.”
Because everyone in her life has used her and left her.
And that includes me.
But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to spend a lifetime making it up to her. I’m going to make her a queen. I’m going to make sure she knows she’s loved.
***
The trip back home is uneventful, aside from a few reporters hovering about the door on our return.
We enter our apartment, our home, alone, no Walker on our heels, and I shut the door and lock it. Alana’s waiting on me as I turn, and I catch her perfect, perky backside under her dress and lift her. Her legs wrap my hips, and I carry her to our window, sit in one of our chairs, bringing her down on top of me with her thighs straddling my hips. It’s then, and only then, with her in a position of control and me submissive as fuck to anything she wants—I would give her anything—that I slide my hand under her hair, curving my palm to her neck, and drag her mouth to mine. “I’m never going to stop loving you. I’m never going to stop wanting you. And I’m never going to let you go.”
“I know,” she says, cupping my face. “ I know.”
Considering all that I’ve done to her, even with good intentions, those two words are everything to me, and fill me up in a way I would never have imagined possible even a year ago.
She presses her mouth to mine, and I kiss the sweetness of her in, slowly and luxuriously, savoring, tasting. We undress each other, taking our time, exploring each other. Eventually, we end up on the floor in front of the chairs, with her curled on her side and pressed against me. I wrap myself around her and hold onto her, not wanting to let go. In the distance, beyond the glass of the window, lighting streaks a yellowish-white path across the sky.
A storm is coming , I think once again, but I welcome it. Because that storm will be the end.
I will make sure of it.