Page 27 of Working for the Heiress

Lili went still. Then she put her hand on my chest, over my heart, and said, “I know. I felt it the second I walked into your hangar.”

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet.” She held my gaze. “I love you, Conrad. I think I was supposed to find you.”

I closed my eyes. Something enormous and terrifying settled into place inside my chest, and for the first time in years it didn’t feel like weight. It felt like an answer.

She put her hand on my face and kissed me, pulling me down to her on my couch. She laughed when I crashed onto her and the sound of that in my house, that had been silent for years—that noise broke the last thing in me that was still holding back.

I undressed her slow, kissing every stretch mark and fold I uncovered. I ran my hand along the soft rise of her stomach and the dimples on those luscious thighs. I found freckles on her knees and smiled at them while she ran her hands along my body, undressing me, too.

By the time we were naked, I was achingly hard, the tip of my cock weeping for her. “Conrad,” she gasped, “I need you.”

I smiled. “I want it to be so good for you, baby.”

“It already is. Ohh!” I slid a hand inside her, massaging the tender flesh I probably made sore yesterday. Christ, was that just one day ago? It felt like a lifetime already, the moment I entered her. Claimed her as she promised to light my world the right way.

Lili’s hand found my cock and stroked me gentle as I circled her clit. She moaned and wriggled beneath me, her hand falling open as she gasped. I felt the flutters inside her as I stroked a thick finger in and out of her pussy while I pressed on her clit. That tight bundle of nerves was like a throttle, and I knew just how to make an engine purr.

Lili came beneath me with my name shrieking from her throat, the roar of it louder than the sound of her palms smacking my shoulders as the pleasure ripped through her body. “You are so fucking beautiful,” I told her, shifting my position so I lay above her, ready.

She was soft for me now, puffy and warm and I slid inside easily. We both whimpered at the sensation, at the rightness of our joining.

I held still, forehead to forehead, and I said, "You're never leaving my side."

"I know."

"In my bed. In my life. In everything that comes next."

"I know, Conrad." She looked at me. The fire threw light across her face and her eyes were brown and steady and she knew exactly where I was going.

I began to move, slowly, tentatively. And then I realized, “There could be a child growing in you right now. Mine. Ours."

Her hand came up to my face. She smiled, and there was nothing scared in it.

"I know," she said. I thrust inside her and she moved with me, the bravest person I had ever known. She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me deeper and said my name like it was the first real word she'd ever learned.

We made love while the fire burned, and she came apart beneath me again. I held her, tangled in the blanket, with the last glowing light of the embers.

She ran her fingers through my hair and I closed my eyes and I listened to her heartbeat and I knew working for the heiress was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Lili

THREE MONTHS LATER

I leveled the tiny plane as we flew east over the ridgeline, and the New River Gorge opened up beneath us like a wound in the earth, green and deep and ancient.

Conrad's hand was on my thigh. He'd put it there somewhere over Kentucky and hadn't moved it since. He wasn't nervous — he'd flown in machines far less reliable than this one, maintained by mechanics far less meticulous than the woman currently at the controls. No, Conrad Holt had his hand on my thigh because he couldn’t bear to be away from me for a single unnecessary second.

His palm was warm through my jeans, his thumb tracing a pattern on my knee. "That's it," he said. "Down in the valley. Follow the creek south."

I followed the water. The Cessna handled the mountain air the way I'd known she would — responsive, light, precise. She was ours. The second I passed my final certification, Holt dumped his savings toward our new business in the form of a well-used plane that lived in his … our back yard.

Conrad had gone over every inch of her before he'd let me fly, and I'd let him, because watching Conrad Holt inspect an aircraft was really fucking hot.

"There," he said. "The clearing past the tree line. See the vehicles?"

I saw a cluster of trucks parked along a rustic runway behind a property backed up against the mountain.