Dangerous Secrets: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (Dangerous Desires Book 3) (2 page)

She nestled against my side when I got into bed, but when I looked down, I saw that her eyes were distant.

“What is it?” She shook her head silently, and I frowned. “Catriona. Tell me.”

“I said I was yours,” she murmured, hunching her shoulders.

“You are mine,” I promised her.

“What does that mean?” Her gaze, when she craned to look at me, was profoundly troubled.

“You’re new to this,” I told her softly. When I saw the flare of embarrassment, I shook my head. “You were made for this,” I promised. “Every man who’s had you—” I had to swallow a growl at the thought “—has wanted it, but they didn’t understand what they wanted. I do.”

“But what does it mean?” She pushed herself up, and I saw tears trembling in her eyes.

I wanted to take her in my arms and promise her that everything would be okay, that she had nothing to fear from me. But I knew what I was, and I knew what was coming now that Hayes was making his move. I knew I shouldn’t have followed Catriona that day; she didn’t need to be caught up in this.

When the phone rang, it was almost a relief.

- Catriona -

The buzz of his phone against the bedside table jarred me out of my haze. I looked away, drawing the covers around myself as Dominick grabbed the phone and stood. He flipped it over, staring at the name on the caller ID for a long moment before accepting the call. He walked away without a backward glance, muscles rippling in his back and his legs.

I slumped back against the headboard, squeezing my eyes shut. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was supposed to say all those things, all the things he wanted to hear, but I wasn’t supposed to
mean
them. I wasn’t supposed to let my own feelings run away with me.
What does that mean?
Had I actually asked that? Had I been the woman asking what the one night stand meant?

We both knew what it meant. Just because I’d said all those things about being his and wanted them to be true, didn’t mean he wanted any such thing. Those were the sorts of things people said during sex.

Get a grip, Cat.
I needed to get ahold of myself before I went into the other room and told him everything. Because that was the worst part—now I wanted to. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, hard, trying to drive away the thoughts. Then I tilted my head to listen to what was going on in the other room.

His voice was low, but not the command he used with me, and now the quiet threat I’d heard him use with Russell Hayes. I frowned, straining to hear. It almost sounded as if Dominick was comforting someone…but surely that couldn’t be right. Dominick didn’t comfort. Dominick didn’t soothe. He wasn’t that kind of man.

But his voice continued, persuasive and tinged with warmth, and I shivered, alone and naked in his room. My mind was running wild with who this woman might be. It had to be a woman, right?

I was going crazy. I stood up, resisting the urge to bang my head against the wall, and began pulling on my clothes. My movements were jerky, angry. I was acting like a teenager. Dominick didn’t owe me a damned thing, especially not when I was here to try to ruin him.

I was brushing my hair out with my fingers when he came back into the room.

“You’re dressed. Good.”

I looked over wordlessly.

“Eric is bringing the car around.” Dominick went to his closet, not looking at me as he selected flannel pants and a shirt. I should have been amused that he hung his tee-shirts up, but all I could think was that he was sending me away. He confirmed it with a brief glance. “He’ll bring you home.”

“Of course.” I looked back to the mirror.

“Catriona.”

“Yes?” I did not look over as I finished with my hair—why was I even bothering?—and bent to pick up my coat.

“Is something wrong?”

For one moment, I allowed myself to think of all the things I could say: that he had fucked me and now he was sending me away without even asking if I wanted to stay; that he’d taken a call from another woman and he was just throwing me out; that I wanted to know who had called; that I wondered if he meant all those things he said about me being his, about me being made for him. I allowed myself to imagine, even for a moment, how it would go if I told him I’d meant what I said.

It would go horribly.

“Of course not.” I shook my head, slipped on my heels, and brushed past him to go into the main room.

I paused, staring around myself. Was I just supposed to leave, or was I supposed to wait for him to say goodbye? Or, given why I’d come here, was I supposed to turn around and ask if I could stay the night, and hope I could snoop on his phone to see who had called? When Dominick came into the room behind me, turning me with a hand on my shoulder, I wasn’t so much angry anymore as unsure. He blinked at the confusion in my eyes, his gaze searching mine, and then he stepped back with a businesslike nod.

“Eric will be downstairs by the time you get there.”

“Of course.” My lips felt numb, and all of a sudden I had no interest in playing this game—my game, his game, any of it. I turned and walked away, forcing myself to open the door slowly and close it behind myself without slamming it.

I bit back tears as I walked away, telling myself not to be a fool. When I heard the door open behind me, I only kept walking, hunching my shoulders.

He was not gentle when he pushed me up against the wall and kissed me. His thumb pressed under my chin, a promise of a different restraint, of a collar, of…

I moaned, weak at the knees, and when he stepped back, I saw the satisfaction in his eyes.

Mine.
He did not need to say it, and so he said nothing at all. He just smiled that lazy smile and left, and I tried to collect myself enough to walk to the elevator.

***

At my apartment, I climbed out of the car hastily. It was 3AM—there was no one here to see me, and even if anyone did, they wouldn’t care. But something about getting out of such an expensive car with my hair mussed, smelling of sex, made me feel ashamed. Like I should know better. Like I was just another woman who had been fooled and used.

What had I thought, that someone like Dominick Ellison might actually want me? I muttered a thank you to the driver and climbed the steps to my door, brushing my fingers over my lips. What did the kiss in the hallway mean?

Nothing. None of it meant anything, and none of it changed anything.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, so I took my time showering. My wrists still showed the marks of the rope, and my shoulders were sore. I let the warm water ease them as I washed, trying not to remember Dominick looking at me, kissing me. I could still smell the faint, clean scent of him, and I felt a stab of awareness when I remembered his mouth between my legs, his fingers inside me.

At least I hadn’t told him who I was.

I was careful with my hair and my makeup, spending all of the time I usually wished I had. Then I wrapped a robe around myself and paced while I waited for the sky to lighten. I should be thinking about Sebastian reappearing, or about the way Dominick kept thinking I was there to bring him down.

Instead, all I could think about was him: every smirk, every kiss. By the time my alarm went off in the other room, I was shaking with desire again. I dressed, buttoning my blouse with trembling fingers, and studied my face in the mirror. Would anyone else see the exhaustion in my eyes? I had to hope not, although the idea of trudging through another meaningless day of office politics was enough to make me want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head.

To my surprise, Nate was waiting for me outside Breck Tower. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me, looking over my outfit, and fell into step beside me.

“So did you find anything out?”

Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t told him where I was going the night before. I’d thought I was covering my bases, making sure someone would know where I’d gone if I disappeared. Now it felt like Nate held some power over me. Worse, I knew what I was supposed to say: that Sebastian Ellison was back, that Dominick clearly suspected Russell Hayes of conspiring against him, that things were as dangerous as we had always thought. I should be glad to share that information; it was exactly the sort of thing we needed to stay one step ahead.

But the thought of telling that seemed like a betrayal of Dominick. Whatever I did or didn’t—probably didn’t—mean to him, even the moment of worry I had seen in his eyes seemed like something intimate, something I wanted to protect. I lifted one shoulder, as if I hadn’t heard anything useful.

“And did you…” Nate paused.

I looked over at him.

“Did you actually let him, you know…”

I tried not to roll my eyes, or to blush, and I only succeeded on the eye-roll. There was something dirty about Nate’s interest, something that made me feel unclean.
Don’t you deserve to feel unclean?
The voice of shame spoke quietly, gleefully, and I swallowed.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said firmly.

“Oh, come on, Cat, you—”

But the elevator door opened to an uproar, and both of us swung our heads around to look. People were running, actually running, from desk to desk with stacks of paper, phones were ringing off the hook, and Emma waved us in impatiently as soon as she saw us.

“There you are.”

“What’s wrong?” My concern was genuine, which only sparked another stab of guilt—but it would have taken a heart of stone not to be moved by her look of quiet desperation.

“It’s nothing.” She waved her hands. “Well, it’s…” She took a deep breath. “It’s going to be perfectly fine,” she said, composed once more. “Sebastian Ellison has come back to New York, and Russell Hayes has called a board meeting to discuss replacing Dominick as CEO.”

Nate gave me a sharp look that I returned with a bland shrug.

“What do you need from us?” I asked Emma.

“I’ll bring some things over to your desk soon,” she told me. “We are keeping this
quiet.
We are going to play it as a perfectly normal event. We are
not
going to endanger any of our contracts for this.”

- Dominick -

I leaned my head back on the chair and gazed out the window.

“—called last night,” Jack was saying. “But I never thought he actually knew where Sebastian was. When he said he—”

“How did Hayes find him?” I interrupted, cutting across the stream of panicked words. There was silence on the other end of the line, and I waited. I waited for a good ten seconds. “Well?”

“I’ll find out.” Jack was too experienced a second-in-command to say that he didn’t know, even when we both knew that was what he meant.

“Good.” It was what he should have offered when he called, and I wanted him to hear that in my voice. I didn’t need panic, I needed information. “Will that be all?”

“Yes.” We both knew he had called to disavow all knowledge of this, but

“Then get me facts, and get them quickly.” I hung up the phone and considered my options. There was nothing to do at this juncture but wait, and I had never been good at waiting.

Thankfully, Russell Hayes relieved me of that responsibility by striding into my office and slamming the door open.

I smiled at him. I’d been spoiling for a fight since Sebastian appeared, and unlike the rest of the board, Russell wasn’t pretending to be on my side. The gloves could come off.

“I found—”

“So you found Sebastian.” I interrupted him, and smirked when he broke off. “Was there anything else, or did you come to say that?”

“Do you really think you’re going to get out of this alive?” His gaze was incredulous. “Do you think for a moment that—”

“Did you just ask if I thought I was going to get out of this alive?” I sat back in my chair, studying him, and he paled.

“You know what I meant.”

“Do I?” The hunt was on; I could almost smell his sudden fear.

“Are you actually suggesting that you think I would have you killed?” He was trying to bluster his way out of this, and it failed miserably.

“You’ve brought Sebastian back.” I leaned forward on the desk now, smiling. “Ask him what happened six years ago. And get out of my office.”

He hesitated, but he had raised the stakes—and he knew it. I saw a visceral fear in his eyes before he left. He did not make threats. He did not trust himself to do so anymore. It was too much to hope for that he would make a misstep, fatal or otherwise, but I hoped nonetheless—life would be easier if Hayes took care of himself.

There was little enough to do now before the board meeting, and I needed a distraction. A distraction like…

“Sir?” Sarah appeared in the doorway. “Kelly’s here to see you.”

“Excellent. I’ll be right there.”

Come to my office.
A simple message, typed quickly. Then, smiling lazily at the thought of her bent over my desk, I stood and walked out into the main room, adjusting my cuffs.