Tributary: A Billionaire Romance (Oak Creek Book 2) Read online

  “And when might we expect to see you back here in town,” she asks. I can already see the gears turning in her head—maybe if she offers me a cocktail reception I’ll come back with a few more million bucks for the hard sciences at OCC.

  “Depends on what Hunter gets accomplished up there,” I tell her, gesturing upward. I finish my eggs and rise from the table. “Rose, Daniel, thank you again for your hospitality. I’m going to wander around town and stretch my legs before I catch a train home.”

  “Do you want company?” Rose hustles to stand up and join me, but I know she has work to attend to up the hill. Lord knows what trouble the undergrads got themselves into given the snow day. I eventually convince her and Daniel that I’m fine to explore their town alone.

  I feel much more myself walking through the quaint streets of Oak Creek in my own clothes, although I do make note that I’ll have to have my Berlutis treated after crunching through the salty sidewalks. I start to wonder if Daniel and Rose really bought my story of looking for a newspaper at the co-op. I could give two shits about getting a pastry to go at the bakery.

  I’m drawn back toward Diana’s shop, and I try not to hurry as I walk there along the sidewalk she shoveled herself. The only place I want to be is inside the tiny little Houseplant Haven, where a beautiful woman is oh-so-carefully splicing plants in the sunshine that pours through the front window of her shop. She bites her lip, concentrating as she wraps the delicate stems in twine. I watch her work until I can’t take it anymore, and then I push into the door.

  The bell tinkles above my head and she looks up. “Wexler,” she says, turning her face back to her plants. “You get lost looking for the train station?”

  “I came to see your research,” I tell her. And I came to see you.

  She snorts. “I told you. I don’t show people my lab. My clients don’t even go back there.” She brushes off her hands and holds two separate pots up, smiling. “These, you can look at,” she says. “It’s witch hazel.”

  “witch hazel is a real thing?”

  She laughs again, a sound I could bottle and pipe through my house. “Nature’s own astringent. I sell a lot of it at the co-op for teenage acne. And the Acorns buy it to treat their hemorrhoids.”

  “Do I even want to know what that means?”

  She shakes her head and I reach for the little pot, examining the yellow flowering shrub in the light. It smells clean and sharp. “What other plants do you Frankenstein together?” I step a notch closer, gauging her reaction, and she doesn’t back away from me entering her space.

  She grins and wags her finger. “I told you, you’re not getting into my lab. And I don’t mess around too much propagating herbs. But I grow a lot of useful plants.” She walks around the front of the shop, showing me small pots of herbs I’ve never heard of: nettles, gooseberry, comfrey.

  “You might just be a witch after all,” I tease, sniffing something fragrant and purple. I squint to read the tiny, handwritten name tag. Hyssop.

  “Maybe I am,” she counters. She snaps a leaf from a potted plant and the smell of peppermint wafts toward my face. She offers the leaf toward me, asking “Do you need something to cool you down?”

  I step even closer to her and decide I don’t want to wait any longer to quench my thirst for this woman. Instead of taking the leaf with my hand, I dip my head and lick it from her finger, sucking a bit as she gasps at the contact. She meets my eye and I see she’s as turned on as me. Her pupils are fully dilated and she’s breathing heavily as my tongue moves over her fingertip. I box her in against the counter, one arm on either side of her warm body. “I think I’m under your spell,” I tell her, and I lean in for the kiss.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Diana

  I REALLY WASN’T going to get involved with Asa Wexler. He’s in business with my family. I’ll have to see him again. He breaks all my rules. But he’s intoxicating and, damn it, he’s good at games and interested in my plants and that turns me on so much I can feel my jeans melting off my thighs.

  When he leans in to kiss me, I sink my dirt-covered hands into the lapels of his designer coat and pull him against my body. Not caring that I have a glass store window and I’m sucking face with a billionaire for all the town to see, I moan into his mouth as he deepens the kiss. And my god. Asa Wexler can kiss.

  His lips are soft and insistent. He smells like cold air and the combined aromas of the witch hazel and mint he just sucked off my finger. I could get lost in a kiss like this, as his tongue slips into my mouth and gently tangles with my own. He releases a small, deep moan into my mouth and I pull back. “This is just sex,” I tell him.

  “Just sex,” he says, bringing one hand to my hip, his big fingers curving around my body to stroke the skin of my back, his thumb teasing inside the waistband of my jeans.

  “I’m not showing you my lab,” I tell him, and then I gasp as his other hand snakes up my back and deftly unclasps my bra.

  “You want me to fuck you right up front, then?” He arches a brow at me as he starts to unbutton my shirt. My breath comes heavy and fast as he opens the worn fabric. I try to think about his question logically. I should not have sex in the front of my store on a weekday morning in Oak Creek. But then again, it can’t be much past eight, and people don’t trickle in until after 10 most days.

  By the time Asa shirks my top to the ground and yanks off my bra, I’m not thinking rationally. He lowers his head to my chest and begins to suck on my nipple, and I abandon all other thoughts.

  “Shit, Wexler, that feels good,” I hiss as his teeth clamp down around my skin. His tongue is cool from chewing the peppermint and the oils from the plant zing against my sensitive skin. One giant hand comes up to massage the breast his mouth hasn’t gotten to yet, his soft skin smooth against my tender flesh. That gentle tongue feels so fine as he circles the peak of my nipple, flicking it, teasing it until it’s so firm and sensitive I might come just from his tongue on my tits.

  “You like getting dirty where people might see?” He growls, moving over to the other breast while I just lean on the counter and let my head drop back.

  “Mmmm,” I moan. I don’t want to think about his question. I don’t want to think about anything right now. How long has it been since I went out hunting for a man to cool me down? This isn’t cooling anything. I feel heat radiating from his body through his clothes as he presses against me.

  Asa unzips my jeans and kneels on the floor in front of me. He yanks down my pants and my underwear in one rough tug until everything is pooled around my ankles, all caught in my work boots. But he seems not to notice that I’m dressed like a farmer, because he nudges my thighs apart and buries his fucking tongue in my pussy and I’m gone.

  This is not scratching an itch. Asa Wexler is delivering some next level, presidential oral and before I can even decide what to do, I feel an orgasm crashing through me like a meteor. “Holy shit,” I pant, “Oh, god, ohgodohgod. I’m coming. I’m coming.” I can’t feel my limbs. There is nothing in this world apart from his warm tongue, his hands pinning my hips against the counter, and my nipples still wet from his earlier ministrations.

  “I knew you’d taste like magic,” he says, pulling back from my body as I start to come back to earth. His hands are gentle on my legs, my belly, as my body trembles in aftershocks. And then, just as suddenly, he spins me around so I’m bent over the counter. I like that he’s taking charge like this. I don’t have to think. I’m too busy coming again as he pats my clit from behind.

  I gasp as he juts a knee between my legs, opening them as wide as they can go with my pants around my ankles. He nips my shoulder and tugs on my ponytail until I’m looking up into his blue eyes. He’s got a scruffy beard from not shaving this morning, and I like that. I like it a lot more when he kisses me and reaches around to stroke my wet folds. “You’re soaked,” he says, his voice gravely and low. I can only moan in return when he removes his hand. I hear him rustling around and when I turn over my shoul
der, I see him opening a foil packet.

  I watch as he unzips his designer pants, and I lick my lips when he pulls out the thick stem of his cock. He doesn’t even rumple his shirt, just lifts his shaft from his boxers and rolls the condom over his smooth, glistening tip.

  He grins a wolfish smile and puts one hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to fuck you now, goddess of the forest, and I’m going to ruin you for all the other hunters.” And then he slams into me.

  I grip the edge of the counter for support as he drives his cock into me deeper, harder, again and again. My tits start to shake from the force of it all and I feel totally out of control. There is nothing other than Asa’s cock and the way it stretches me, fills me. I grunt from the effort of bucking my hips back against him, but he doesn’t allow me to do that.

  His hands hold my hips still until I’m totally at his mercy. “You like that, Diana?” He bites my shoulder again as he rams his cock into me. This is what I didn’t realize I wanted. To have all the decisions lifted from me, if only for a few moments. To just be present in this pleasure and let it roll through me like thunder.

  “Yes,” I moan. “Please.” And I’m not even sure what I’m asking him to do, but somehow he knows. He wraps my hair around one wrist and tugs my head back again, meeting my eye, fucking me harder. “Yes! Just like that,” I beg and shout, the air crashing out of me with each thrust until I feel the waves of pleasure crashing over me again. “Shit, Asa, I’m coming again. Holy god. Oh!”

  “You like when I fuck you out here, where anyone could see?” He grunts and speeds up, impossibly hitting deeper and deeper inside me as my body contracts and squeezes around him. “You like when I tug on your hair and bite you?”

  “Yes! Just shut up and fuck me.” I feel weak, like my arms will give out and I’ll sink through the glass counter, melt into the floor.

  “Fuck, Diana. Yes,” he moans. And then I feel his cock swell and pulse inside me as he spills himself into the condom. Both of us finally are still, pressing me against the counter. I feel like I could fall asleep here, naked against the glass with the buttery smooth cotton of his shirt pressed against my back, his necktie tangled in my hair.

  Our chests rise and fall together as our breath slows. I start to enter my brain again, gathering my thoughts as I come down from the high of the best sex I think I’ve ever had.

  “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen,” he says, wiping a smudge of dirt from my arm, his thumb stroking my skin gently.

  “Is that so,” I ask, gesturing down to my boots and jeans puddled at my ankles. “I wouldn’t have thought the farmer look was real popular on the Upper East Side.”

  He kisses the tip of my nose. “It’s not.” And then he stands and starts tucking himself back in, rolling off the condom and looking around for a trashcan. He spots the tiny wastebasket behind the counter and leans over me, smacking my ass with his free hand. “You’re not like those Upper East Side women,” he says, hoisting me to my feet so I’m facing him, still mostly naked and disheveled. “You might be a witch, but I’d still like to see you again the next time I’m in town. Even if you’re lousy at Scrabble.”

  I wrinkle my nose at him and cross my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling exposed. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea, Wexler,” I say, stooping to hoist up my jeans. “You’re in business with my brother…this was just—”

  I can’t seem to bring myself to say it was just sex, because we both know it was more. It was a new activity requiring a new vocabulary word. Whatever the hell that was, it wasn’t “just” anything.

  Asa bends to grab my shirt and tucks it around my shoulders. And then he grabs my hand and presses a soft kiss against my knuckles. “Until next time, Diana,” he says, and then he struts out of my shop into the sunshine, sparkling bright against snow.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Asa

  WHAT IN THE hell was that? I don’t even know what came over me in there. I just unleashed upon that woman like some feral wolf…and she seemed into it. I decide to take the train back to the city to clear my head. All told, it’s faster for me to walk to the station and jump aboard than it would be for Andrea to send the chopper to come and get me, let alone hire a driver or arrange a chartered flight from any nearby airport.

  The first class car of the train is a nice change of pace from my leather cocoon inside my town car, and I actually enjoy the passing scenery as I catch up on all the calls I should have made yesterday, trying to get the taste of Diana out of my mouth, the sound of her moans out of my mind. “Andrea,” I start, staring at the white-covered hills between Oak Creek and New York City. “I need you to obtain something for me. Immediately.”

  She laughs. “Are we doing earrings this time, or pearls?”

  “Nothing like that,” I snap, hating that I’ve become so predictable. “I need someone on the phone with a hops farmer in Germany. There’s a botanist in Oak Creek working on something interesting and I want a seedling in her hands before nightfall.”

  “A botanist? Weren’t you there to follow up with your artificial intelligence project?”

  I sigh, wondering if Andrea can tell that my interest in this woman goes well beyond business. “I…encountered her during the blizzard.”

  I can practically hear her raising her eyebrows at me, but she doesn’t give me shit about it. “Send me the info and I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you. Oh, and Andrea? Get the courier to send you a picture of her receiving it. I want to know that it’s arrived.”

  She immediately pivots the conversation to our investment in a small publishing house that’s launching some new print-to-order technology for stores. Turns out some people still like to read physical books. I trust the data Andrea got from our team. I haven’t had time to read a book since undergrad. My thoughts flash quickly to Abigail and her novel, and then immediately jump to a fantasy of me standing behind Diana at a book release party. Shaking my head, I pull it together and work my way through my email.

  By the time I finish reading updates on all the clients I ignored during the blizzard, the train is pulling into Penn Station, and I feel more like a human man and less like a beast. This really was a pleasant way to travel. I make a mental note for next time as my driver meets me to take my bag at the platform.

  I still can’t stop thinking about Diana Crawford, and I can’t quite figure out why. She’s certainly less uptight than the women who usually attract me. I didn’t notice a lick of makeup and she was primarily wearing thermals and denim when we were together. Except when she was wearing nothing at all. The feel of her silken skin, stretched taut over her tight little body, is imprinted in my mind. I keep replaying the sound of her moaning my name, thrashing against that counter while I drove into her. Damn it, she might actually be a witch. I text Andrea to ask her if she’s ever seen witch hazel in real life, and ask if we can get some for my office.

  I decide it must be Diana’s independence that intrigues me. She runs her own business—and I promise myself I’ll find out what she’s really doing in there. She shovels her own snow. She takes care of her brother’s girlfriend while he’s off doing work for me. Yes, I think. Diana Crawford is a mystery worth solving.

  Andrea has a corner office opposite mine. She’s really the engine of Wexler Holdings. It comes as no surprise when she pokes her head into my office later in the afternoon to ask how I’d like the picture receipt. I take a minute to marvel that she’s achieved her mission so quickly. “Can you text it to me, Andrea?” I am neck deep in a financial report for a firm in Pittsburgh asking for seed money for a new cancer screening device.

  A few seconds later, when Diana’s face lights up my phone, I jump. She looks utterly stunned, her jaw dropped in surprise as she cradles the seedling. It’s just a hasty cell phone pic, blurry and a bit smudged, but it consumes my attention. I love knowing that I managed to surprise her, and I hate that I wasn’t there to hear the sounds she made when she opened the seedling, realiz
ed what it was. She has to know it came from me, and I like that I’ve caught her off guard.

  I don’t typically see women more than once or twice. These high society women bore me, even as my mother thrusts them toward me, hoping I’ll marry one and give her grandchildren.

  I chuckle, knowing Diana is going crazy since she has no way to contact me without going through her family to get my information. I imagine the sound of her voice, calling me to scream obscenities, and the frustration she feels knowing I’ve got the upper hand. Something tells me I won’t be hearing from her before I head back to Oak Creek.

  But I can play a long game. And Diana Crawford is a fine prize.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Diana

  I TRY TO forget that Asa Wexler came into my shop and fucked the wind out of me. That was equal parts unexpected and everything I needed to take my mind off of my work situation. I try to go about my business checking my plants, adjusting heat and temperature, but Enid, the town constable walks through the door and clears her throat.

  I look up from my laptop and clench my jaw. “What can I do for you, Enid?”

  She coughs again, shifting uncomfortably. “Look, Diana,” she says. “The thing is…” She looks around the front, where the shelves of spider plants and orchids sit waiting to be picked up by their owners who water them too much. “Well, dang it, Diana, people saw you.”

  I flush. “Which people?” Depending on her answer, this could either go away entirely with a peace offering, or land me in the Oak Creek gossip mill.

  I breathe a sigh of relief when Enid whispers that it was Aneke, the Oak Creek veterinarian. “She was all bundled up, rushing to get into the clinic and check on the fur babies,” Enid says. “She might not have mentioned it, except I went in to drop off Bruce—you remember I got a new dog named Bruce—and told her I was planning to thank you for shoveling out Ed Hastings, and…well…Aneke didn’t want me to interrupt anything.”