Phantom: Her Ruthless Fiancé: 50 Loving States, Kentucky (Ruthless Triad) Read online

  She shook her head. “Nobody ever asks me that.”

  He shrugged. “Guess I’m nobody then.”

  She laughed. And this time, it was appropriate, so he chuckled too—but more out of relief that the sad cloud hanging over her head seemed to have dissipated a little. “I’m originally from Uganda.”

  “Ever been back?” Phantom congratulated himself on that follow-up question.

  If he wasn’t mistaken, this was how small talk was supposed to go. And who cared if he already knew all the answers to the things he was asking. At least Olivia was talking to him about herself instead of making excuses for her douchebag ex.

  She nodded. “I go every year in May with my dad. He established a Glendaver Healthcare Center there before I was even born. That was actually where my birth mother delivered. But they only have white male obstetricians on staff and no one who focuses on women’s sexual health, so I do what I can for the couple of weeks I’m there. Especially for women with disabilities.”

  “So that’s your specialty no matter where you go,” Phantom realized out loud.

  She cast him a side-eye glance. “My birth mother was blind, and her pregnancy was due to rape. That and not being treated with special care made my birth very hard for her. Too hard…”

  Olivia dropped her eyes to the ground. “She took her own life shortly after I was born, which was how I ended up an orphan. From what I could piece together when I tracked down a few of my Ugandan family members to ask them about it, I think she probably had full-on postpartum and understandable depression. When I found out the story, the whole story, and came back to my stupidly big house in Kentucky, I felt….”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, just so incredibly sad that no one had been around to help her—that she hadn’t had other women there who truly took her situation under consideration. And my dad encouraged me to do something about it so that other women wouldn’t have to suffer the way she did. You know CEOs—very biased toward action over moping around their homes because of things you can’t change.”

  She looked back up to tell him, “So that was why I became a doctor as opposed to the wife of someone who has enough money to fund my charitable efforts. And why I never miss the May trip even if that’s been getting harder with the clinic’s growing popularity—wow, look at me, talking about nothing but myself and my problems.”

  She threw Phantom an apologetic wince. “I never talk this much. I’m sorry for monopolizing so much of the conversation.”

  “That’s okay,” he answered, meaning it. She was telling him all the in-between stuff you couldn’t get from far away. He liked that.

  “Anyway, here I am,” he said, stopping in front of his high-rise apartment building—which was pretty much the opposite of the cutesy brownstone she shared with Garrett.

  In his kind of business, places like that were out of the question. If he couldn’t have a reinforced house with gates and guards, then he had to live at the top of a high-rise building with coded elevators that made it hard as hell for The Silent Triad’s enemies to reach him.

  “Wow, look at your view,” she gasped when they entered his penthouse. She walked straight past the marble-top kitchen, built-in bar, linear electric fireplace, and all the other shit the real estate agent had insisted made this place so special to take in the nighttime view of the Hudson under city lights.

  Phantom stopped at the edge of the sheepskin rug and drank in the sight.

  Yeah, his place was totally opposite from hers. Yet, she looked completely at home with her long ponytail and evening gown, framed by the most spectacular view money could buy in New York City.

  Okay, enough of that.

  He forced his eyes away from the goddess standing at his window and said, “I can show you to your room, but first let me do something, okay?”

  “Sure. Is it okay if I make use of the facilities?”

  Goddesses. Just like us when it comes time to take a whizz.

  “Yeah, go for it. First door on the left, back where we walked in.”

  He entered the kitchen and watched her walked away out of the side of his eyes. Her hip swayed gracefully under the elegant gown, giving him some not-so-refined thoughts about all the curves he’d find if he took that dress off of her.

  Dangerous road, man, a voice inside of him warned. You promised her a safe space. Bring it back.

  He concentrated on the task at hand. Lucky for him, he found all the things he needed in the Scavolini cabinets above the marbled counters and in the drawer with all the take-out menus.

  By the time she returned to the living room, he had her surprise all ready: A glass of wine in one hand and a Chocolate Hostess Cupcake with a lit birthday candle in the other.

  It wasn’t much—just the best he could do at the last moment. But she clapped both hands over her mouth like she’d won the lottery as he began singing, “Happy Birthday To You.”

  “Sorry that douchebag forgot your birthday,” he told her after he was through. “But trust an expert, a hostess cupcake and a glass of wine will solve anything after a long day. Now come on, blow out this candle.”

  She lowered her hands from her mouth, blinked like she was in some sort of daze.

  But then she blew out the candle and smiled up at him, a beam of Southern sunshine in his cold, dark penthouse.

  “Did you make a wish?” he asked.

  She stared at him with the strangest expression on her face. Then suddenly, she grabbed him by the lapels of his suit…

  And kissed him.

  6

  OLIVIA

  I kissed him. I pressed my lips to his and clumsily shoved my tongue in his mouth, and he….he tasted the opposite of every guy I’d kissed before him, like danger, violence, and cold wind.

  He pulled back, ripping his lips away from mine. “Hold on. Stop.”

  Mortification—the kind that unrolls a set of blueprints inside your stomach with plans to build a forever home in the part of your brain where you keep all your cringiest memories—that kind of complete and utter mortification exploded inside of me.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, letting go of his lapels. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. Of course, you don’t want that from me. You were just being nice and truly thoughtful. Maybe it was the processed sugar—it’s been so long since I had it. I think it went straight to my head without me even having to taste it. Made me do something really stupid….”

  I trailed off because what else could I say? I mean, I could throw all the Chocolate Hostess Cupcakes I wanted under the bus, but there was no real explanation for my serious lapse in judgment.

  “Are you done?” he asked.

  “Yes—I’m sorry,” I added one more time. “But yes, I’m done.”

  He set the wine down on a nearby table. “Good. Then let me finish.”

  Okay, that would be a no. There was no way my heart could withstand whatever he was about to say next.

  “You know what, I’m just going to walk to my friend Eric’s place,” I told him, backing away. “I’m sure an evening stroll to the Lower East Side will be refreshing after everything that happened tonight. Thank you for your generous offer to host me.”

  I headed for the door—only to have him jump in front of me.

  He raised both hands.

  “Listen, I’m trying not to be that scary fuck. But you are making this shit real hard right now. Especially after that kiss. Can you just hold off on leaving until I say my piece?”

  “No,” I admit, my voice miserable. “I can deliver a breach baby in a bathtub to a mom who can’t hear. But I have no idea how to stand here while you tell me that I’m really nice, but you don’t see me that way.”

  “I don’t think you’re nice,” he answered, his voice frank. “I don’t think you’re nice at all. A nice person would have let me talk already.”

  I shriveled a little inside, knowing he was right. I was being unbelievably rude. Still…I canted to the left and tried
to dart around him.

  But he caught me around the waist before I could. “Okay, I tried. I tried to play it nice with you. Remember that.”

  And that was all the warning I got before he swung me up into his arms.

  “Where are you taking me?” I demanded when he started walking toward the penthouse’s other hallway.

  We walked past an open door with a neat queen-sized bed and no city views.

  “That’s the guest room. That’s where you would have been staying if you hadn’t kissed me and made this shit weird.”

  Before I could process his words, much less react to them, he kicked open the door to a huge master with the same kind of window wall as the one in the open-plan front room.

  I barely had time to register his space, though. He tossed me on the bed and loomed over me, blocking out everything beyond him in the room.

  “If you had let me talk, then I would have told you, ‘Hold on, I’ve gotta set down this glass because red wine is a bitch to get out of a sheepskin rug. Maybe I would’ve done some of that consent shit. Let you eat your cupcake and drink your wine in a leisurely fashion while I made sure you were sure about starting something with me. Because guys like me—we don’t make out. It’s all or nothing when you come at us like that.”

  My mind reeled, trying to catch up.

  “But you didn’t let me finish, so this is your consent talk,” he continued before I could form a reply. “You kissed me like your birthday wish was for me to fuck you. So now I’m asking, is that what you want? You want me to wish your pussy happy birthday?”

  I wasn’t wearing pearls—rather a diamond pendant necklace my mother had given me as a Christmas gift back in my twenties. But I clutched it. Boy, did I clutch it

  He was so unbelievably crass. No one. And I mean, no one had ever spoken to me like this before.

  “I’m going to need a yes or a no.”

  Holy moly, he actually expected an answer. A decision….

  But I couldn’t think. Everything was happening too fast for me to stitch together a proper response.

  Maybe that’s why the “Yes…yes, please” slipped out of my mouth without warning.

  He stilled, then crooked his head to regard me with those cold shark eyes.

  “Yes, please,” he repeated, his tone mocking and cruel. “You going to be that polite when you come all over my dick?”

  Was I going to be that polite when I….

  I couldn’t repeat the question. Not even in my head. But the shock of it loosened my tongue, and another truthful answer dropped out of my mouth: “I don’t know.”

  He smiled at me—actually, no, I wouldn’t quite call it that. Smiles are meant to be happy things, gentle and reassuring.

  This was more a slight lift of his mouth and a baring of his teeth that made me wonder if he had plans to eat me alive.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “How many what?” I asked, my voice breathless with confusion.

  “How many times do you want to come?” he asked, his own voice slow and careful. Like I was an idiot, not a grown woman with a medical degree.

  “Wha—what?”

  He scanned me from head to toe. And though I was still covered in pounds of evening gown, it felt like his gaze was stripping me bare as he said, “Tell me the truth. Mr. Forgetful never made you come on his dick, did he?”

  My entire face burned with embarrassment. “Contrary to popular belief, penetration isn’t the only way to help someone climax. You can have quite a satisfying sex life without it.”

  “How about once? Did he even take you there once without fingers and tongue?”

  Just fingers, actually. No tongue. What Garrett hadn’t told Leighton about my lackluster blowjobs was that I had become considerably less enthusiastic about giving them after Garrett confessed that going down on a woman “just wasn’t his thing.”

  As if refusing to give oral sex was some kind of lifestyle preference, like placing the toilet tissue up or down.

  “So I’m going to say we start with three and take it from there,” the Dragon said.

  “There’s no guarantee I’ll come even once,” I warned him, sitting all the way up in the bed. “We’ve only just met again, and we don’t know each other all that well.”

  He looked at me. And for some reason, it felt as if he were making a decision when he said, “Alright.”

  “Alright?” I repeated.

  “I had a crazy day, but challenge accepted. I’ll make you come four times.”

  “But—”

  “Alright, five. You got it. If I were you, I’d stopped yapping and kiss me again to give me this consent. I’m not even sure your body could take six orgasms anyway.”

  I had been about to protest again, but that declaration snapped my mouth shut.

  Silence descended, and he stood there with an expectant air—waiting, I realized after a few confusing moments. He was waiting for me to kiss him.

  Awkward. I felt so awkward as I stood on my knees and hobbled over to him as best I could in my evening gown.

  This wasn’t like back in the front room. I carefully pressed my lips to his with no tongue, a chaste declaration of consent officially given.

  And in return, he promptly inhaled me into a deep kiss without any consideration whatsoever.

  7

  The Dragon pushed his tongue into mine with way more skill than I had into his. Invading and dominating before my mouth even got a chance to take full charge.

  He pillaged my mouth like a warrior in one of those historical romance paperbacks I loved to read before I went off to college—the kind that had words like Brute and Villain scrolled across their glossy covers in flowery cursive.

  No one had ever kissed me like this, with such focused intention, as if his goal was to consume me whole.

  But then he abruptly pulled back from feasting on my mouth.

  “You or me?” he asked.

  I shook my head, so helplessly confused.

  And he clarified, “Who’s undressing you?”

  “Oh, I…”

  The situation had gone from awkward to fiery hot, right back to awkward again.

  “Actually, it’s going to be the both of us,” I answered, once again knee-hobbling to turn around and give him my back. “Do you mind unzipping me?”

  His hands were large but surprisingly quick. He undid the top clasp and unzipped me with deft and ease. Holy moly, this man knew his way around a zipper….which made me feel even more self-conscious because I didn’t know the first thing about undressing a man.

  Garrett and I were more the get undressed, place your clothes carefully in a mesh dry-cleaning bag, and then meet each other in bed type of people.

  The gown was one of those heavy numbers with loads of hidden scaffolding underneath. So once unzipped, it dropped around my waist as if it were giving up the fight.

  Or maybe it was just this guy. I wondered how many men had dropped their weapons when they saw him coming. How many women had surrendered without putting up any fight at all?

  The Dragon abruptly brought all those self-conscious thoughts to an end when he twisted me onto my back and pulled the dress all the way off.

  He tossed it, and I heard the couture gown land somewhere with a heavy clunk.

  Then he looked at me for a few moments, just looked at me, his black eyes filled with hunger and heat.

  I still had on my underwear—a burgundy La Perla balconette bra with a pretty floral print and conservative briefs to match. But for some reason, my heart was beating so fast. It felt like it was pulsing in my ears. Am I really going to do this? With him?

  He didn’t give me time to reconsider and back out.

  One moment my panties were there, and the next moment, they just weren’t. He whipped them off my body the same way he’d rid me of my dress.

  Then his large hands shoved at the underside of my thighs, pushing my knees into my shoulders, and he attacked my pussy with even more hunger than he di
d my mouth. Opening me with a lewd, slow lick up my slit and circling his tongue around my clit.

  The sight of a man as large as him doing this to me, still dressed in his suit. The negative lizard inside my head instantly lost the fight to keep me self-conscious.

  I couldn’t feel anything but the animal feasting on my snatch. Couldn’t think of anything but the sensations building between my legs. Couldn’t do anything but fall back in surrender to helpless want, which eventually turned into a sweet pain that made me whine and moan with the need for relief.

  And suddenly, I was…I could barely believe it even as I announced out loud, “I’m coming!”

  Something gave way inside me, flooding me with pleasure and involuntary actions. I bucked my hips into his mouth, my body jerking like the nasty dances the etiquette teacher warned me against doing before my debut. “Lest you want people to think you’re that kind of girl.”

  But apparently, I was…I was that kind of girl. I ground myself into his mouth as I fell apart.

  “One,” he said, rearing back to wipe off the glistening mess I made on his face with the back of his suit sleeve. “Fuck, that was hot. Now hold on while I put on a condom so you can back that sloppy pussy up on this dick.”

  I was pretty sure I should hate the crass way he talked to me. Be alarmed when he flipped me over, pulled my hips back, and started to press into me with what felt like a considerable-sized dick.

  “You were fucking delicious, by the way,” he said, feeding me his cock, inch by inch. “I’m going to have to make you come on my mouth again before this is all done. I’ll bet you’ll squirt for me real good if I press the right spot.”

  Yes, I probably should have felt some sort of way about all the crude presumptions he was making. But dear saints in heaven, I started coming again, my pussy spasming around his dick.

  “Two,” he said above me with a low, feral laugh. “Look at you, beautiful. Coming all over this dick before I’m all the way in. Is that polite?”

  No, it wasn’t.