The Reckless Secret, Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire In Love BBW Romance) by Alexa Wilder Read Free Book Online

didn’t change that not too long ago, when he had the chance to get close to her, he wasted no time in ditching her and then spending the following night with the leggy blonde.
    The room had gone overwhelmingly silent in the moments she’d taken to wrap her mind around his statements, and he still looked at her now, unblinking, fiery-eyed, holding her gaze. She cleared her throat. “Then why…?”
    “My mother isn’t well,” he said at once, as if he’d anticipated the question. “She doesn’t want anyone to know, but… That night, our second date, she needed me. I couldn’t say no. And Trixie—she really is just a friend. That was a charity event. I took her home and I called you.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Don’t understand what?”
    She shook her head, frowning, her brain failing to believe what this all meant. “That’s not…”
    “It’s not how you built it up in your head?” he asked wryly, eyebrow quirked. At her hesitant nod, the smile he gave her was almost shy. “I’ve been crazy about you for years now.”
    It hit her like a brick to the gut and it winded her, and the floor lurched beneath her feet, and had he just admitted to wanting her for the past several years? Because in no universe would she ever have been prepared for that revelation.
    She half considered pinching herself to check she hadn’t slipped into a sleep sometime during the wedding. Instead she blinked a few times, shook her head, failed entirely to make sense of whatever the hell was going on here.
    For years ?
    “So you’re saying…” she said, her tongue feeling too thick for her mouth, her fingers twitching with the adrenaline suddenly racing through her veins—the overpowering delirium of knowing she could have this breathtaking man right now if she wanted him… “You’re saying you like me—”
    “Jesus Christ, Maggie,” he snapped, and then he closed the space between them and kissed her.
    It was hot, and it was deep, and she let him sweep her away in it for the length of a swelling heartbeat.
    But it was too much. She wasn’t ready for this, didn’t know how to deal with it—didn’t even know what her own feelings were, not beyond the simplicity of base desires.
    Because this sounded heavier than that. This sounded like it had weight, like it had history. Like it meant something .
    That he wasn’t just trying to sleep with her. Hit it and quit it.
    It sounded like…well, it sounded like he had some kind of feelings for her. And that made it all too real.
    Fantasizing about Declan Archibald from afar was one thing, but facing the very real possibility of perhaps letting him in, opening herself up to him, trusting him…
    “No,” she said, breaking away, catching the look of distress on his face as she wrenched herself out of his hold and stumbled towards the door. “No, I’m sorry. This isn’t—no.”
    She left before she could change her mind, every ounce of her being screaming at her to turn back, to give in, to take what she so desperately, achingly wanted.

6
Maggie
    H er hand shook as she fumbled her key card out of where she’d stuffed it in her bra that morning—had no idea what had happened to Aunt Constance’s; had she dropped it on the bed with the coats? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing except getting inside her own room and shutting out the world.
    She couldn’t breathe with the weight of how badly she wanted to go back and let Declan pull her apart in the most exquisite way.
    “Maggie.”
    She nearly dropped the key card, pulse thundering through her veins, the sound of her rapid breathing deafening in this silent hallway.
    “I’m gonna get changed and head home— shit .” She’d dropped the card.
    “Already? The night’s young.” Declan’s voice was almost begging.
    Bending to retrieve the card in the most undignified way possible—the dress not allowing ease of movement—she said, “I’ve had enough excitement for one day,” and stood, and