One Night With the Billionaire: Book Four (A Billionaire Romance) by Cassie Cross

CHAPTER ONE

    Kaia wakes to the sound of muffled voices, roused from a light, gentle sleep. Disoriented, she rolls over, reaching for Jason, who isn’t there. Her hand slides across cool sheets, which tells her he’s been gone a while.  
    A quick panic rushes through her, and she sits upright, the sheets falling across her waist. Her heart pounds against her ribcage.  
    “Jason?” she calls. She doesn’t get a response. Instead, she hears more muffled voices. Jason’s, along with someone who sounds a lot like Elise.  
    She looks over at the clock on Jason’s bedside table.  
    It’s 3:27. Kaia had fallen asleep in his arms not even two hours ago, after she’d done her damnedest to distract him from the events earlier in the evening. She’d been haunted by the look in his eyes as he pressed her against the wall of the building, blocking his body with hers.  
    He’d been so shaken afterwards, that all she wanted to do was feel his skin on hers, and make him feel so good that he forgot the panicked helplessness she’d seen written all over his face.
    He came three times before he finally fell asleep, exhausted.  
    Looks like it hadn’t lasted very long.  
    Jason’s raised voice reverberates throughout the apartment, and Kaia slides out of bed, slipping one of Jason’s old t-shirts over her head on the way out.  
    Muted light filters out of Jason’s office into the hallway, and Kaia follows the rumbling of voices. She doesn’t want to eavesdrop, but she also wants to be there for Jason if he needs her.  
    Elise’s loud, pleading voice is what makes her run to the door, desperate to see what’s going on.  
    Jason is standing on one side of his desk, his fingers threaded through his hair, his red-rimmed eyes looking at Elise in disbelief. She can feel his tension from all the way across the room. It’s written all over his body.  
    Elise sits in the chair across from the desk, looking completely defeated. Tears are streaming down her face, and her arms are outstretched, palms up, like she’s pleading. There’s desperation in her eyes, like her whole world hinges on whatever Jason does next.  
    “Jason?” Kaia says quietly, taking a tentative step forward. “Is everything okay?”  
    It takes him a few seconds to fully register Kaia’s presence, then his gaze flits to hers, and he looks like a drowning man. Completely, utterly lost.  
    Kaia slowly walks over to him, not wanting to do anything that will make him push her away, or retreat back into himself like she knows he’s accustomed to doing. The newfound openness with each other that they’ve shared since Jason shared his past with her is still so fragile.  
    Kaia doesn’t want to do anything to break it.  
    When she finally makes her way over to him, Kaia reaches out and slides her hand across Jason’s back. He relaxes against her touch; the tension that was there just seconds earlier melts away. Some is still there, but he’s more relaxed than he had been, and Kaia considers that a win.  
    “It’s okay,” she says softly, as her hand glides across his back.  
    When he looks down at her, still lost, he says, “It’s not okay.”  
    Kaia decides not to talk him out of it before she knows what’s actually going on. He and Elise have been arguing, that much is obvious. The tension in the air is thick, and she could hear them before she walked in here. Apart from how wrecked Jason looks, Elise seems ready to get down on her knees and plead with him at any moment.  
    “What’s going on?” Kaia asks.  
    “Elise was just leaving.”  
    Elise lets out a quiet sob, says, “Jason, please .”
    Kaia is completely confused. The whole reason Elise is staying at the apartment tonight is because she wanted to keep an eye on Jason after what happened earlier. And Jason had told Kaia that he felt better having Elise near.  
    Clearly, a lot has happened since she’s been asleep.  
    Jason brings his hand up and pinches the bridge of