Billionaire Bad Boys: A Collection of Contemporary and Paranormal Bad Boys Page 27

  Matthias set his wine cup down. “Your wish is my command.”

  Before I could stop him, the wine cup was yanked out of my hand and I was hauled up and out of my seat and against Matthias’ chest. His very warm, very muscley chest.

  “Oof,” I said. That was me. Eloquent at the best of times.

  His face loomed above me, intense and quiet. “We are in a pickle here. I’m a smart man, but I don’t see any way out of this.”

  I licked my lips in nervousness. His gaze focused on my lips. Much like a lion does a gazelle when there’s about to be some devouring.

  “Ummm,” I said.

  “I’ve always had this motto I live by. Do you want to hear it?” His voice was a low whisper. A hum against my skin.

  I nodded mutely.

  “When trouble gets under your skin, you should scratch the itch.”

  I blinked. That made zero sense, but seconds later Matthias’ mouth was covering my own and all thought flew out of my head. The only thing I could think about was the feel of him against my skin, the heat of his mouth against mine, and the feeling that I was drowning with zero desire to come up for air.

  His fingers tangled in my hair and with a strangled laugh he extricated them only to reach down, cup my rear and haul me up. My legs wrapped around his waist and Matthias stumbled the few steps until I was smashed against the wall. And him.

  He kissed me like I was everything. The only thing he ever wanted to kiss. I wanted to drown in his touch. His fingers trailed down my skin, leaving fire wherever he touched. I gasped as his hands dug into my hips.

  “Ava,” he groaned against my mouth.

  “Shut up,” I whispered back. My fingers tentatively traced the edge of his jaw and up into his hair. I fingered the soft strands and broke the kiss to trail my lips down his neck. His fingers tightened as he clutched my hips with desperation.

  Neither of us heard the door slam open.

  6

  “Well,” a musical voice right next to my ear said.

  I jerked in surprise. Matthias shouted a curse, and I slid down the wall landing in a boneless heap on the floor.

  Portia Kadish, my mother, and the founder of Midnight Cove stood there, hovering over me, an amused smile playing on her generous mouth. “I never thought I’d meet my daughter while she was right in the middle of a heated makeout session, but my life has never been all that normal.”

  She was shorter than I thought she would be. Way curvier and had a face that was way too friendly to ever be considered beautiful. Which made her beautiful in an odd sort of way. Her smile widened as I perused her from my ungracious position on the floor. Her hair was blonde, wild and curly - an exact duplicate of mine. Her eyes were wide, bright green and tilted up at the edges. Her nose was pert and delicate and her mouth was wide and generous. She had a heart-shaped face, but it was prettily rounded due to the extra fifteen pounds she was carrying around.

  She was...stunning. Yet she had the kind of face that children would dream of when they dreamed of fairy tales and the good guys. She had curves for days.

  My mom was a hottie. Big time. The more I stared at her, the more I thought I might know what my father saw in her.

  “You finished?” she asked as she extended a hand to help me up from the floor. Matthias was still standing there staring at my mother with his mouth wide open, his hair all akimbo and his shirt unbuttoned. I didn’t remember doing that, but I was in a horny daze, so I guess I had.

  I nodded and let her help me. Her hand was warm and dry but slightly calloused. My mother worked for a living. It couldn’t have been the dating agency, but something made her hands strong.

  My mother and I studied each other unabashedly. We favored each other. From the look on Matthias’ face, we favored each other a lot.

  Portia sighed a deep exhausted noise. "Shall we retire to your quarters?" she asked.

  I blinked. How did she know I lived here?

  She rolled her eyes. “I built this town, Ava. I know everything about everyone.” She sashayed off to the back and from the sound of the beaded curtains clanking against each other, made herself right at home inside of my living room.

  “She’s like Big Brother,” Matthias whispered.

  “In a tiny package,” I whispered back. We were both too stunned to discuss or even worry about what had just happened between us. He followed me to the back and as we pushed through the curtain, we saw my mother clanging around in my kitchen looking through every drawer and cabinet.

  “Glad you lovebirds decided to join me. Where’s your skillet?” she asked.

  “Uhhh?” I responded.

  She rolled her eyes. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those progressive women who thinks she’s too high and mighty to know how to cook a homemade meal.” The sneer on her generous mouth told me exactly what she thought about the “progressives”.

  “No,” I said slowly. “I just don’t know how to cook.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Even worse,” she said decisively. “How about a pan? You have to have one of those right. Just to heat up your grilled cheese?”

  A snort of laughter escaped me. I pointed to the cabinet to the right of the stove I rarely used.

  My mother flashed a grin and bent to dig through the disorganized mess that was my cabinets. “Voila!” she said a few moments later and brandished the only pan I had in the air.

  Her nose wrinkled in distaste and she headed over to the sink to wash it out. “Not even grilled cheese, eh?” She asked.

  I shrugged in response.

  She muttered something and turned on the water to drown out the rest of what she was saying. Matthias bumped me with his shoulder. When I turned to look at him, he was barely suppressing his mirth. I rolled my eyes and watched as my mother dried the pan and then plowed through my fridge like Columbus discovering America.

  “What the fuck?” I mouthed to him silently.

  He shook his head, but I could tell he was trying really hard not to laugh.

  “So,” Portia said as she took basically everything I had out of the refrigerator and tossed most of it in the trash, ignoring my squawks of outrage. “Relax,” she said, “if you’d eaten that cheese, you’d be in Midnight General right now getting your stomach pumped. It expired two years ago.”

  I blushed crimson and Matthias burst out laughing. My mother waggled a finger at him. “Don’t think you’re off the hook either, Mr. Silver Spoon. Ava may not know how to cook, but she never had a personal chef catering to her every whim.”

  Matthias cheeks colored and he pressed his lips together. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

  “Now,” she said clapping her hands together, “please describe in great detail exactly what the hell you were doing when you dug into my records at your parents’ company?”

  I watched as Matthias’ throat worked and he struggled to come up with an explanation.

  “It’s my fault,” I said once I couldn’t watch him struggle anymore. “I had no idea, Mrs. Kadish. No idea at all.”

  Her emerald gaze speared me. “Mrs. Kadish, is it? You rummage through records locked down tighter than The Black Grimoire and you say you have no idea?”

  In my defense, I didn’t rummage at all. But I knew I needed to ask Matthias exactly how much rummaging he had done when he found out who my mom was. “I merely wanted to know what my DNA was. I didn’t realize my DNA would trigger something like this. I had zero reason to suspect anything of this magnitude.”

  “No reason at all?” she asked, curiosity in her voice.

  My brow wrinkled. “Should there have been?”

  Something like disappointment flickered in her eyes. “No,” she said abruptly. “It was as it should have been. Though it should have been forever.”

  Hurt speared through my chest. “You didn’t want me to know?”

  Her face fell. “Oh, darling, I didn’t mean it like that.” She grabbed a towel and dried her hands off. “I met your father
many, many years ago. It was at the beginning of all of this.” She swept her hand out and I knew she didn’t mean just my house. She meant Midnight Cove. “He had just married Kaylan the week before, but there was a connection -” She stopped and met my gaze.

  “Go on,” I said, waving a hand at her. “I want to hear all of it, even the not so flattering parts.” Matthias’ hand reached out and grabbed my fingers. I gave them a quick squeeze. The gesture did not go unnoticed by Portia.

  Her lips twisted to the side. "We had a connection and unfortunately your mother noticed it right away. I'd asked him to help me with some of the more difficult aspects of the town. The architecture and aesthetics of it. I noticed he always had a good eye for it. His house was one of the few not created by me and there was always something so...different about it. Unique and startling in its design, it made me think about how cookie cutter everything was going to look when it was finished so I reached out to him. We worked together for a time with your mother there almost every day, but eventually, she got bored of the work." She turned away from me, grabbed the carton of eggs she'd taken out of the fridge and started cracking them into a bowl. "This was when your father and I were really able to spread our wings and do some amazing things with this place." She sighed and fell silent for awhile, the only sound the rhythmic cracking of the egg shells. "A few months later we were in a full-blown affair."

  My heartbeat sped up. “And my mother?”

  Her lips thinned. “She suspected. But it wasn’t until she dropped by unexpectedly and saw my stomach that she knew.” Tears filled her eyes and a lock of curls fell over her eyes, hiding the moisture there. “Kaylan flew into a rage.”

  You could cut the silence with a knife. My mother’s throat worked as she poured cream and shook a variety of herbs into the bowl. “She utterly refused to allow your father the right to be with me. Divorce in Midnight Cove was unheard of. She was mortified and unfortunately very powerful. At the time, more powerful than me. I hadn’t yet discovered the full range of my powers. Gaeleron convinced me to go along with it.” Her tongue darted out to lick her lips. “To give you up,” she whispered.

  “It wasn't until later I realized Kaylan was infertile. She took our pain and turned it into something she could use to better her station in our society." My mother gave me a wobbly smile. "Unfortunately, it was obvious almost right away that there was something different about you. I heard whispers all the way in my headquarters. Gaeleron came to visit and begged me to stay away from them and out of the public eye. He knew the similarities between you and me were too remarkable to go unnoticed."

  “So you did,” I said, my voice a low hush.

  She nodded her head once and violently whisked the egg mixture. “I did. I was afraid, Ava. Afraid for you and what she was capable of. There was nothing more that I wanted than to be with you. But time passed and with time the realization that if I swept in and took you, I would be taking you away from your father and the woman you’d come to know as your mother. In that time, I became convinced that I would be a monster if I did that to you.”

  I snorted. “My mother was never my biggest fan.”

  She nodded. “This was something I found out only recently. So it became much easier for me to start to plan how I would reveal myself to you.” She chuckled. “Only I didn’t have to. You were already on it.”

  “Have you spoken to my father?”

  Portia shook her head. “Not in years. This is the first time I’ve left the agency in years.” She frowned. “Well, the first time I’ve left as myself.”

  “Glamour?” I asked.

  "Yes. It's one of my many mixed talents." She gave a rueful laugh. "And you? Do you have any?"

  It was my turn for a rueful chuckle. “I have good intuition. That’s about it.”

  My mother frowned at me and rested the whisk against the bowl. “No. Ava, you’ve never tried to work with any of your power?”

  “I have no power,” I insisted.

  “I’m an angel and a succubus,” my mother said, “and your father is a powerful Architect and builder.”

  I knew this, but it didn’t help me. My father had the uncanny ability to create anything from the ground up. Buildings, libraries, restaurants, homes, etc., if someone could think it up he could build it within minutes. It was like he could pull something right out of someone’s head and make their dreams come true. As far as Portia, I had no idea what she could or couldn’t do. Except…

  “Your agency. You have the power to know who belongs together?”

  She cringed a little bit. "It's a little bit stranger than that. It's a little magic, a little science, and a lot of algorithms. It isn't quite perfect."

  Matthias piped up. “But your record is perfect.”

  She gave him an odd smile. “Not quite.”

  Both of us frowned at her. “What do you mean, not quite?”

  Her focus was on Matthias. “Your mother was very...insistent on Karina.”

  His fingers fell from mine. The edge of his jaw tightened imperceptibly and with a soft exhaled breath of fury, he spun on his heel and through the beaded curtains. I started to go after him but was stopped with a word from my mother.

  “Ava.”

  I turned.

  “He will work it out. I think a lot of people misjudge Matthias. He is much more than his pocketbook.”

  “I know this.”

  “I know you do. It’s the rest of this town that needs to realize it.” She turned the stove on to heat the pan and leaned against the counter, her green eyes fixed upon my face. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I snapped. “Matthias isn’t a child.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Matthias.” She came out from behind the counter and took a few steps toward me. “I thought about you every single day. What you were doing. What you looked like. Who your friends are. What your dreams were.”

  “You never searched for me?”

  She let out a bitter laugh. "I didn't have to. I knew exactly where you were. It wasn't until later that I figured out I could keep an eye on you in a different way. When you were five and started school I had a teacher on my payroll. It was then I saw my first picture and marveled at your hair. We have the exact same shade and texture."

  I didn’t take a step closer. “You let me suffer,” I accused.

  “Perhaps,” she admitted. “But you grew up privileged. Your father doted on you.”

  “My mother hated me.”

  A sad look crossed her face. "She was never your mother. And I'm sorry for it. I truly am. I just...I caused difficulty in a marriage, Ava. Strife and heartbreak. I was ill-equipped for a child. I didn't even know if I could conceive. I was scared." She twisted her fingers together. "I still am."

  “Does my father know you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “No one does. I came here under a glamour and left a golem in my place back at the agency.”

  “Are you here just once? To satisfy your curiosity?”

  Her face fell. "How can you say that? I'm here. Now. Horribly late, yes, but I want to know you. I want us to have some kind of relationship and I'm desperate enough to take whatever it is you can offer." She turned to the stove and slid the food from the pan onto a plate. She handed it to me. My stomach growled. The smell of eggs, herbs, and cheese wafted up to my nose.

  My mother could cook. Good to know. She handed me a fork and I dug in. I didn’t speak for a minute or two. “My father might be furious,” I admitted.

  “Your father isn’t the one I’m worried about,” she said.

  “My mother doesn’t care enough about me to be mad.”

  Her voice softened. “I’m sorry for that. She may not be mad about you, but she will be angry that her secret might be exposed.”

  “Do you still love my dad?” I asked.

  Her eyes widened and she turned away from me. “Would it matter?” she asked after a moment.

  “Maybe. Have you ever thought ab
out rekindling what you had?”

  Her laugh was harsh. “It’s been over twenty years. There’s a chasm between us. One I don’t think can be breached. And honestly, I’m more worried about you than I ever was him. So what do you say? Can we have...something? Even if it’s coffee once a week?”

  “Are you really going to come out of hiding? For me?”

  My mother shrugged. “Maybe not at first. Maybe you could come to the agency and see what I do. But eventually, yes. I’d like to. We have to be prepared for the whispers, the questions, and the anger, though.”

  We both heard the shop door burst open. Seconds later, my mother burst into the room.

  Looked like the anger had already arrived.

  7

  “You,” my mother hissed, pointing at Portia. “How dare you?” My mother’s normally pristine cool blond hair was dangerously unkempt. Rage shook her fingers and her face was twisted into an expression I’d never seen on her before.

  “Hello, Kaylan,” Portia said mildly. “It’s been ages.”

  I stared at the two women, marveling at how different they were. Where Kaylan was willowy, my mother was curvy. Where Kaylan was light, Portia was bright. Kaylan was tall and thin, the picture of a Midnight Cove socialite. Portia was short and curvy, a dangerous addition to a town where uniformity occasionally ruled the day. The Elves and Vampires favored beauty and poise over all else. My mother seemed to be too free-spirited to care.

  “You were never to show your face to my daughter.”

  I snorted at this. Now she claimed me? I was a possession no more, no less.

  “My daughter found me,” Portia said.

  Kaylan turned her pale blue accusing gaze to me. “You?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Me.”

  “How could you?”

  “How could I what?” I asked, anger filling my veins. “How could I wonder if there was something more out there? Some truth to explain my differences? And your indifference? You never treated me like your own, Mother. You treated me like a possession to be hidden away.” Tears swam in my eyes as I remembered the months I spent sitting quietly on a chair while my mother hired scads of stylists to attempt to straighten my hair. The multiple nutritionists who put me on bland, strict diets in order to shave some of the curves off of my frame. All the attempts failed, and I always felt the weight of desperation from her as she was forced to take me out in public.