Chapter 28 #2
To mark my words, I make his chair roll back and climb on his lap to snuggle against him. He allows it, assisting my drunken and clumsy enterprise with his strong hands and arms. Tucked against his chest, I breathe him in, flooded by a sense of familiar safety.
“Thank you for allowing me to have this little gathering tonight.”
“Allowing you? I’m not your boss anymore, freckles. You’re free to do whatever you want—as long as you don’t put yourself in danger.”
“I promise I won’t.” I kiss him, needy and amorous. “Ugh, I love you so much,” I profess.
“How much?”
“To infinity and beyond. You’re so perfect. And you make the best margaritas. And you’re so patient with me. I need to step up my game.”
“What do you mean?” he wonders, moving back to look me in the eye.
“You’ve been the best partner ever, and I feel like I’ve been an ungrateful brat the whole time.”
Given his disconcerted frown, he either doesn’t agree or doesn’t get what I’m trying to say. “I don’t—What? I don’t think you’ve been ungrateful. You have been a brat, yes, but it’s one of the reasons I love you, so I have no complaints.”
“What else do you love?” I whisper, craving more of his approval and reassurance.
“There are a thousand things, Andrea. You love deeply and unconditionally, which is something incredible to me. Even my mother never loved me this much. But you do. You risked your own freedom to get me out of jail, and your life to save mine. I don’t think I know a single person who would have done the same for someone they loved. ”
“You don’t know the right people, then. What else?”
“I love that you know what you want and aren’t afraid to fight for it.
You were right. I could have stayed in Canada for twenty years and been perfectly fine with it.
But you wanted your life back, and to fight so we could be ourselves again.
I fell in love with you because you’re a force of nature, and I hope you’ll remain one through the years.
I also love the way you care about me, above anything else.
You have so many love languages, and you shower me with them constantly.
You’ll pack an extra snack for me when we go hiking, or bring me a drink when I’m being an antisocial troll locked in my office.
Or you’ll pull me out of my corner to do my nails. ”
“It looks good on you, by the way. It gives you an alt edge I really like,” I say, grabbing his hand to look at his dark blue nails. I kiss his knuckles, one by one.
“This is something else that I love. You touch me like you can’t stop yourself, like you need it like air, and no one has ever been like that with me.
You have so much blind trust in me, you would give your whole body to me, which is so fucking generous, I don’t even have the words.
And you express your love vocally daily, sometimes hourly, which, for someone who’s barely ever been shown love in his life, is so damn precious. ”
I’m not sure if it’s the alcohol, his words, or the nearness, but I’m suddenly overtaken by a surge of adoration and pure, unaltered love for this man.
I want to crawl into his skin, to claim him forever, to be one with him until the end of time.
He’s so. Fucking. Perfect. And he’s mine, but not fully yet.
Lifting my head, I run my lips over the warm and thin skin of his throat, enjoying the tickling of his stubble on that tender part of me. With a hand cupping the side of his face, I bring him closer so my mouth is right by his ear.
“Will you marry me, Alexander?” I whisper into it.
My body reacts to the question before my mind has even processed it, tightening my hold on her and shivering from head to toe. She’s drunk and feeling particularly in love tonight, but it doesn’t matter to my frenzied mind.
Despite the tequila loosening her tongue, I know she means it. Wholeheartedly.
While I try to get a hold of my emotions, she busies herself by dropping tiny kisses on every inch of skin she can access. When I haven’t answered in several seconds, she whispers, “It has been so long, baby. I want to marry you now.”
The warmth of her breath on me drives me as insane as her weight on me and her perfect little body in my embrace. “We haven’t known each other for a full year yet.”
“But almost. And I feel like I’ve known you my entire life. Every cell in me longs to be yours, and I want you to be mine,” she insists, kissing my Adam’s apple just as I swallow hard.
“I’m yours, Andrea. Irrevocably, entirely, and until death claims me.”
She looks up at me through her lashes, her brown eyes hazy. “Then say yes, Lex.”
I reach up to cup her cheek with tenderness and pass the pad of my thumb across her plump bottom lip. “Ask me again tomorrow morning when you’re sober,” I negotiate.
A pout purses her lips, and a scowl wrinkles her brows. “This is the second time you’ve refused a proposal from me. And I think this one hurts even more.” She tries to get off my lap, but I prevent it, keeping her right there.
“That time in prison didn’t count. As for right now, I didn’t refuse. I postponed it. You’ll get my answer tomorrow, sober and clear-minded.”
“This is ridiculous. I want to marry you even when I’m—”
I muffle her retort, the only way I know will work—by plastering my lips on hers. She lets out a small yelp of surprise, but her indignation quickly fades under the intensity of my amorous assault. Her hands fly to my head to hold me close as she responds to my savage intensity with matching vigor.
Looking for comfort and better access, I rearrange us so she’s sitting on my desk while I stand between her parted knees.
The loose silk covering her is smooth under my hands, but not as flawless as her skin.
That’s why, as I caress her perfect shape, I slip my hands underneath her pink pajamas to feel her all over.
When my palms wander a little too high, I don’t resist the urge to fondle her breasts, finding her nipples to pinch them softly.
“You should go back to your friends,” I mumble into our kiss.
“And you shouldn’t start something if you’re not ready to finish it.”
“I’d finish it if you were capable of not making a sound.”
A scandalized laugh bubbles in her chest. “It’s not my fault if you’re too good at this. But maybe we could stick to hand stuff.”
I pinch both nipples at once, twisting them just the way she likes. “Aah, fuck,” she moans.
“Who are you trying to fool, Andrea? We both know you can’t even stay silent for ‘hand stuff.’”
“Maybe we should make sure,” she breathes out.
My needy little dork …
One of my hands goes to her neck, wrapping around it and barely applying any pressure. But that’s enough to make her pupils expand as she swallows hard under my palm. “I wasn’t done telling you all the reasons I love you,” I say, my voice low.
“Tell me.”
“I love your impulsiveness and how unpredictable you are. You give meaning to everything. Because of you, I look forward to starting each day, just to see in what way you’ll surprise me, how you’ll find yet another opportunity to turn my world upside down.
And this time, you surprised me by asking me to marry you. How fucking amazing is that?”
“Not enough, since you refused,” she replies with a scowl.
My hand around her neck tightens, forcing her to look up at me.
“There are no words to express how much I want to become your husband, Andrea. I have never wanted anything more in my life than this. But we’re not starting our marriage in the middle of all this mess.
When we take that leap, when we start the rest of our lives together, I want our focus to be on each other.
I want that bliss to be free of complications. ”
“I want that too,” she breathes out. “So if I ask again, refuse.”
“Will do.”
“I want to be proposed to, anyway. I want to see how and when you’ll do it. But nothing too grand or public.”
“That’s not my style.”
“I know. Just making sure you know it’s not mine, too.”
“You think I don’t know you, freckles?”
She looks up at me with loving eyes, looking so fucking perfect my heart might combust. “I think you know me better than I know myself, actually,” she says.
We move in unison to kiss. It’s soft, and tender, and languid. By the time we pull away from one another, I’m tempted to take this further, but I don’t. We’ve spent two months together, and tonight, I must share her.
“Go spend time with your friends, my love,” I say.
“I will. But first …”
Her reddened lips trail up my throat, following the path of my jugular where she can probably feel my rapid heartbeat.
When she reaches my ear, she gives the lobe a tentative lick and then a soft suck, making my cock throb with need.
But she doesn’t take it further, lifting herself just a little higher to whisper, “Will you marry me, Lex?” right into my ear.
The grin that spreads on my face is involuntary, but it helps soothe the “No” I force myself to answer.
She pulls away, but instead of being offended like earlier, she’s smiling as broadly as I am. We’re both perfectly aware that I’ll marry the fuck out of her one day. But for that to happen, we need to be safe again.
That’s why we need to find out what Becker’s dirty little secrets are. And just so I can one day be married to this incredible woman, I’ll have no rest until we give that man the reckoning he deserves.
Andrea’s friends stay a little longer than intended.
Kate was always meant to sleep over, but not Mason, Tamika, and Mouly.
Andrea seems delighted by the change of plans, though, and we all share a massive brunch that they all cook together.
Once they’re all gone, I’m quick to go to the hidden office and get the search started on our blonde friend.
While the program looks for her across several databases, we clean up the mess and return my apartment to its usual state. We’re having lunch together when Iris tells us the software found something. A match. Two, actually.
We leave our plates to check on the results.
One of them is Lorelei Madsen, a student at Columbia University in New York City.
It looks like she’s on her way to becoming a brilliant environmental scientist, top of her class, and assiduous.
Our second result is Lola Wilde, a high-end escort whose services are reserved for the wealthiest of men.
Both are clearly the same person, so we immediately gather she’s found a way to finance her expensive studies in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
She seems to be a remarkably private person, which makes her valuable in her line of work.
Her professional website is minimal, with a black-and-white picture of her lingerie-clad body, and a contact form over it.
On top, the “About” button leads us to a page where she explains her services.
Her strength is her brain, and she prides herself on being more than arm candy.
She’s an escort in the original sense of the word, a pretty and cultivated woman to bring to high functions and look good, rather than an expensive prostitute.
We spend the rest of the day repurposing Andrea’s Trojan horse virus to use it on Lorelei Madsen, and we send it through an email disguised as a Columbia University notice. Then we wait for her to open it and download the documentation attached.
Lorelei does it the next day, which gives us an in.
Luckily for us, she uses the same computer for her moonlighting persona, which allows us to find out more about who Lola Wilde is.
It’s clear to us that this is the version of her who was with Becker that night, and this is a better way to put pressure on her.
She’s a very selective and very pricey woman who has the luxury of choosing which clients she can accept or refuse.
During her courses, she seems to reserve only two evenings a week for her side hustle, and the rest is dedicated to her studies.
But since it’s summer break, she’s working full time.
Or at least, she intended to. It looks like she cancelled three weeks of clients, including a trip to Dubai with a man who wanted some time away from his wife and kids.
“What do you think happened there?” Andrea wonders.
“Could it be whatever Becker did to her?”
“That would explain why she cancelled it all right after being with him.”
We easily find the email she received from Becker to set up their encounter, but there’s nothing of value in it.
He asks to have her for an evening, and they agree to meet at a lounge bar near his penthouse.
It looks like he made her sign an NDA beforehand, which means she’ll likely be unwilling to talk to us.
“Do you think she’d accept a phone call?” Andrea wonders.
“For the right price, yes. Especially since she’s had to cancel on her clients since Becker.”
“You could pretend to be interested in hiring her. Get her guard down. And then, when she doesn’t suspect it, you ask what Becker did to her.”
“The problem with a phone call is she could hang up at any time.”
“Not with all the information we have. We have her clients’ list. I saw the names of politicians there. Married men. If you threaten to leak the list, she’ll talk. It’s either that, or her side gig is over, and her name will forever be tainted.”
“You’re okay with doing that to her?”
Andrea winces. “No, but she doesn’t have to know that. We can bluff, and she won’t know any better.”
I look at the screen again, going over everything we have. “Blackmail should work, yes.”
“Then fill out the form on her website. Ask for a phone call to help you decide if she’s the right fit.”
I follow Andrea’s instructions, and we go over the form one last time before hitting send. We both lean back in our chairs as we stare at the confirmation screen.
“Now, we wait,” Andrea says.
“I’ll keep watching Becker’s security feed. In case there’s a new development we can look into.”
“Good idea.”
She reaches over to take my hand in hers, intertwining our fingers together. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever it takes to get rid of him.”
I turn to meet her eyes. “Yes. We tried my way, hiding, and it didn’t work. Now, we’re doing it your way. We’re fighting.”