The Billionaire's Conquest

Seven

Without hesitation, Marcus leaned forward and covered Della’s mouth with his, dipping his hands into the deep V of her robe to curl his fingers over her bare shoulders as he deepened the kiss. Her skin was warm and fragrant from her recent shower, and the soft scent grew both stronger and more delicate as he slowly spread open the fabric of the garment. He traced the delicate line of her collarbone to the divot at the base of her throat, then his fingers stole around to her nape, spreading into the silk of her hair. It was still damp, and tangled around his fingers as if trying to trap his hand there forever. He wished they could stay embraced this way forever. He would never grow tired of touching her.

Della seemed to sense his thoughts, because her hands fell to the knot in her robe and untied it before she cupped his face in her palms. Spurred by her silent invitation, Marcus moved his hand lower, skimming the backs of his knuckles over the sensitive skin above her breasts before dragging his middle finger down the delicate valley between them. She gasped as he curved his fingers under one heavy breast and lifted it, then opened her mouth wider to invite him deep inside.

His last coherent thought was that he was responding to her the same way he had the night before, losing himself to her with a velocity and intensity that surpassed every other reaction, every other emotion, he had. The moment he touched her, everything else in the world ceased to exist. There was only heat and hunger, demand and desire, all of it commanding satisfaction.

Della seemed to understand that, too—or maybe she was feeling the same thing herself—because she was suddenly working feverishly at the sash of his robe, jerking it free so that she could dip her hands inside and explore him. Her fingers fumbled a bit as he gently began to knead her breast, but she recovered quickly, pushing his robe backward, over his shoulders and arms, spreading the fabric wider still. The next thing Marcus knew, she was on her knees in front of him, one hand curving over his taut thigh, the other moving on his hard shaft.

He nearly exploded at the contact, closing his eyes and sucking in a desperate breath as she gently palmed him. For long moments, she pleasured him that way, making his heart pound and his blood race until the rhythm of his passion roared in his ears. And when he felt her mouth close over him …

Oh, Della … Oh, baby …

When his fingers convulsed in her hair, she must have sensed how close he was to coming apart, because she stood and she took his hand in hers, then led him to the bed. When she pushed his robe completely from his shoulders and nudged him down to the mattress, he went willingly, watching with great interest as she shrugged out of her robe, too. She joined him in bed, but when she tried to face him, he cupped his hands over her shoulders, gently turned her around and positioned her on her hands and knees. Then he moved his hands to her hips and knelt behind her. He splayed his palms open on her back, skimming them up and down as he slowly entered her, then leaned forward until his chest was flush with her back. He caught her breasts in his hands and held them for a moment, thumbing her stiff nipples and eliciting a wild little sound from deep inside her. Then he withdrew himself slowly and thrust forward again. Hard.

She cried out at the depth of his penetration, curling her fingers into the fabric of the sheet. Marcus filled her again, even harder this time, eliciting a response from her that was hot, erotic and demanding. So what could Marcus do but obey her? He had never been with a woman who was so uninhibited about sex. Della both commanded and surrendered in ways no other woman ever had. She rode astride him, wrapped her legs around his waist when she was beneath him, demanded he take her kneeling and sitting and standing. When they finally surrendered to the climaxes that shook them simultaneously, she was bent over the chair where they had started as Marcus pummeled her from behind again. They came together, cried out their satisfaction together, rode out the waves of their orgasms together. Then, together, they relaxed and reined themselves in, and collapsed into the chair.

For long moments, they sat entwined, Marcus on the chair and Della in his lap, neither willing—or perhaps able—to say a word. Della opened her hand over the center of Marcus’s chest, and he mimicked the gesture with her, noting how the rapid-fire beating of her heart kept time with his own. Gradually, it slowed along with his, too, until both of them were thumping along in happy, contented rhythm. At least, for now. Marcus suspected it wouldn’t be long before their desires overtook them again.

But there had been something different in this coupling that hadn’t been there before. He wasn’t sure what it was or how it mattered, but it was there all the same. Yes, the sex had been hot, intense and carnal. Yes, they had both been consumed by an almost uncontrollable passion. Yes, they had said and done things they might not have said and done with other partners.

But there had been something else there that Marcus hadn’t had with other partners, too. Not just a lack of inhibition, but a lack of fear. As if coming together with Della was simply a natural reaction to feelings he’d had for a very long time. He didn’t know any other way to describe it, even though they’d known each other only a matter of hours. Sex with Della felt … right somehow. As if everything up until now had merely been a warm-up. Della felt right somehow. As if every woman before her had been practice. It meant something, he was sure of it. If he could only figure out what …

Marcus knew the moment he awoke that Della was gone. Even though it was still dark in the hotel room. Even though her fragrance still lingered on the pillow beside his own. Even though the sheets were still warm where she had lain. Maybe it had been the snick of the hotel room door closing behind her that woke him, he thought with surprising clarity for having just woken. Maybe if he hurried, he could still catch her before she made it to the elevator. Or if she had already disappeared into it, maybe he could hurry faster and catch her in the lobby before she made it out of the building.

But even as the thoughts raced through his head, he knew, too, that none of them were true. Because, somehow, he knew what had woken him wasn’t a sound at all. What had woken him was the simple awareness, on some subconscious level, that Della was irretrievably gone and that he was irrevocably alone.

Alone, he marveled as he jackknifed up in the bed and palmed his eyes. It was a familiar condition, but it had never felt quite like this. It had never bothered Marcus to live alone or eat alone or work alone or do anything else alone. On the contrary, he’d always preferred his own company to that of others. Well, except for Charlotte, but that was because she had been a solitary creature herself. Marcus had never really felt as if he had that much in common with others, anyway. If he wanted companionship, it was easy to find it. There was always someone he could call or someplace he could go where, in a matter of minutes, he would be surrounded. Sometimes by friends, more often by acquaintances he pretended were friends, but the point was, he liked being alone.

He didn’t like it this morning. Della’s absence surrounded him like a rank, fetid carcass.

He rose and shrugged on his robe, knotting it around his waist as he moved to the window. In the sliver of moonlight that spilled through a slit in the curtains, he glimpsed a piece of paper lying on the table between the two chairs where he and Della had sat only hours ago.

Something hitched tight in his chest as he reached for it, because he thought it was a note from her. But it was the paper on which he’d written his numbers for her the day before. She’d left it behind. Because she’d wanted to make clear to him that she wouldn’t be contacting him in the future.

She’d said she’d found trouble in New York. He couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble a woman like her could be in. But if Della said she was in trouble, then she was in trouble. And if she’d said he couldn’t help her …

Well, there she could be wrong.

Marcus crumpled the paper in his palm and tossed it onto the table, then pulled back the drape. The sky was black and crystal clear beyond, dotted with stars that winked like gemstones under theater lights. Uncaring of the bitter cold, he unlatched the window and shoved it open as far as it would go—which was barely wide enough for him to stick his head through—then gazed down onto Michigan Avenue. He’d never seen the street deserted before, regardless of the hour, but it was now, even though the snowplows had been through. People had yet to brave their way out into the remnants of the blizzard and probably wouldn’t until after the sun rose.

For some reason, Marcus looked to his right and saw the red lights of a retreating car disappear around a corner some blocks up. Another light atop it indicated it was a taxi. Della’s taxi. He knew that as well as he knew his own name.

As well as he knew her name, too.

Never had he been more grateful for his lack of decorum than he was in that moment. Had he not rifled through her purse, he would have nothing of her now save her first name. Well, that and the memory of the most unforgettable weekend he’d ever spent with anyone. Now there was another reason he wouldn’t forget it. Because he knew where to find Della Hannan. Maybe not in Chicago, but he did in New York. And that alone was worth its weight in gold. Provided one knew the right people.

And Marcus definitely knew the right people.

His cheeks began to burn in the freezing temperature, so he closed the window and retreated into the room. He scooped up his jacket from the back of the chair as he passed it, then sat on the side of the bed and dug his phone out of the inside pocket. He and Della had switched off their phones shortly after entering the room and had promised to keep them off, and he had kept that promise—at least where his own phone was concerned. Now that their brief interlude was over, he switched it back on. A dozen voice mails awaited him. He ignored them all and went right to his contacts, scrolling through to the one he wanted. A private detective he’d used a number of times, but always only with regard to business. Nevertheless the man had an excellent reputation when it came to investigations of a personal nature, too. Just how excellent, Marcus was about to discover.

He punched the talk button, and after three rings, a voice on the other end answered. Answered with a filthy epithet, but then, that wasn’t unexpected considering the source. Or the time of night.

“Damien, it’s Marcus Fallon.” He gave the other man a few seconds for the synapses in his brain to connect the dots.

“Right,” Damien finally said. “Whattaya need?”

“I need your services for something a little different from what I normally hire you for.” “No problem.”

“I have a name, a physical description and a former address in New York City. Can you find a person who’s now living in Chicago with that?”

“Sure.”

“Can you do it soon?” “Depends.”

“On what?” Marcus asked.

“On how bad the person wants to be found.”

“How about on how bad I want the person found?”

It took another few seconds for more synapses to find their way to the meaning. “How much?” Damien asked.

Marcus relaxed. This was the thing he did best in the world. Well, other than the thing he and Della had spent the weekend doing. He started to turn on the bedside lamp, then remembered he would only see an empty room and changed his mind. “Tell you what,” he said, “let’s you and I negotiate a deal.”

Della had been forced to part with a lot of things in her life. Her family, her friends and her home—such as they were—when she left the old neighborhood at eighteen. Jobs, offices and acquaintances as she’d climbed the professional ladder, moving from one part of Whitworth and Stone to another. An entire new life she’d built for herself in Manhattan. Soon she’d be parting with everything that had become familiar to her in Chicago.

But she didn’t think any of those things had been as painful to part with as the crimson velvet Carolina Herrera gown and Dolce & Gabbana shoes, not to mention the Bulgari earrings and pendant and the black silk Valentino opera coat. Not because they were so beautiful and rich and expensive. But because they were the only mementos she had of the time she’d spent with Marcus.

The only physical mementos, at any rate, since she’d left behind the paper on which he’d recorded all of his phone numbers—something for which she was kicking herself now, even if she had memorized all of them. It would have been nice to have something he’d touched, something personal in his own handwriting.

And when had she turned into such a raging sentimentalist? Never in her life had she wanted a personal memento from anyone. Not even Egan Collingwood. That was probably significant, but she refused to think about how.

Besides, it wasn’t as though she didn’t have plenty of other reminders of Marcus, she thought as she watched Ava Brenner, the proprietress of Talk of the Town, write out a receipt for the return of the rentals. Della had her memories. Memories that would haunt her for the rest of her life. The way Marcus had traced his fingertips so seductively over the rim of his champagne glass when they were in the club. How his brown eyes had seemed to flash gold when he laughed. The way his jacket had felt and smelled as he draped it over her shoulders. How the snow had sparkled as it had fluttered around him on the terrace and came to rest against his dark hair. The way his voice had rumbled against her ear when he murmured such erotic promises during their lovemaking

But mostly, she would remember the way he looked lying asleep in their bed before she left him.

He’d been lying on his side facing the place where she had been sleeping, his arm thrown across the mattress where she had lain—she’d awoken to find it draped over her. He’d been bathed in a slash of moonlight that tumbled through the window from the clear sky outside. His hair had been tousled from their final coupling, and his expression, for the first time since she met him, had been utterly, absolutely clear. He’d looked … happy. Content. Fulfilled. As if he’d learned the answer to some ancient question that no one else understood.

She’d tried to write him a note, had tried to capture in writing what she so desperately wanted to say to him. But when she’d realized what it was she wanted to say, she’d torn the paper into tiny pieces and let them fall like snowflakes into the tiny handbag that now lay on the counter between her and Ava. They had been silly, anyway, the feelings she’d begun to think she had for him. Impossible, too. Not only because she’d known him less than forty-eight hours. And not only because he was still carrying a torch for someone else. But also because Della wasn’t the sort of woman to fall in love. Love was for dreamers and the deluded. And God knew she’d never been either of those.

“There,” Ava said as she finished tallying everything. “If you’ll sign here that we agree to agree that you returned everything safe and sound, I’ll return the full amount of your damage deposit.”

“But I’m late getting everything back,” Della said. “I was supposed to be here at opening on Sunday. Not Monday.”

Ava made a careless gesture with her hand. “I was supposed to be here Sunday, too. But Mother Nature had other ideas for all of us, didn’t she?”

Boy, did she ever.

“So Monday morning is the next best thing,” Ava continued. “I appreciate you being here so promptly.”

Yeah, that was Della. Always perfect timing. Especially when it came to anything that would thoroughly disrupt her life. Had she been five minutes later meeting Egan on New Year’s Eve, she would have missed seeing him with the woman she would learn was his wife. Had she been ten minutes later to the office on New Year’s Day, she would have missed the memo to her boss that had set everything into motion. She would still be living her life blissfully unaware in New York. Even if she’d ultimately realized Egan was married, and even if she’d quit her job because of him, she would have found another position elsewhere on Wall Street in no time. She would still be picking up her morning coffee at Vijay’s kiosk, would still be enjoying Saturdays in Central Park, would still have the occasional night at the Met when she could afford it.