Free Master Class: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (+ Bonus Book 'Silent Daughter 1') by Linnea May Page A

explain. "I failed, again and again. I failed at things that didn't matter in the end, but I also failed in things that mattered. And now I've become someone who can help others through those inevitable failures along the way. Because I know what I'm doing - and because I have money."
    "Mhm," she mumbles, showing no sign of admiration.
    "I could help you, too," I say, trying to make things a little clearer for her. "But I'd have to know what it is you want to achieve."
    "Why do you think that I need your help?" She wants to know.
    "I think you do."
    Our eyes lock onto each other for a few moments, before she breaks away to finish her coffee.
    "Why do you care?" She asks, her eyes low on the table between us.
    "Because I do," I say, watching her fingers trail around the empty cup of coffee. Her hands are so petite and delicate, they almost look like they belong to a child and not a graduate student, a grown woman.
    The thought of seeing them wrapped around my hard cock sends painful shivers through my core. The conversation took a different path than I had anticipated. The way she's feeling now, contemplative and diffident, doesn't allow for approaches of a physical nature. I'm sure I could get her back there by getting rid of my sweater, but I don't want to do this to her right now. She needs this, she needs to think about these things.
    So, I'll leave her with something else.

CHAPTER NINE
LANA
    W eeks have passed since that fateful thunderstorm announced the definite end of summer - and the beginning of my weirdly intimate interactions with Mr. Portland. I can't get him out of my head, and it doesn't help that I'm confronted with him every Monday morning.
    He's getting to me on more than one level. I don't understand why his words stuck with me the way they did. Is it just because he is who he is? It's obvious that his surreal attractiveness has an impact on me, as shallow as that may seem.
    His face, his eyes, his muscles. How can a man look like that and put his eyes on me the way he does? He looks at me as if I was the one with the alluring appearance, when it's so obvious that there's nothing exceptional about me, especially not my looks.
    But it's not just that. The things he's saying stir something within me, an omnipresent dissatisfaction with the direction my life is going. He's opening doors that I thought to be securely shut for years. Doubts that haunted me years ago, but not since I pushed them aside. I thought they had disappeared the same day Olivia left my life.
    In fact, Mr. Portland reminds me of her. She was the only real best friend I ever had, we were inseparable during junior high school. We were young and naive, dreamers who swore to do something great in life, something special, something crazy. We made an oath never to become like our parents - mine, the ivory tower scholars, and hers, the narrow minded lawyers. We were the perfect hippies - anti-everything.
    And then, Olivia's family moved away, across the country, a killing stroke for a junior high school friendship. We kept in touch for a while, but quickly grew apart, as teenagers do when they live on completely opposite coasts.
    Before she left, we wanted to make sure to exchange gifts, something that would help us remember each other and the promises we made. Of course, friendship bracelets were too mainstream for us, so we went to a local jewelry shop and picked out black ceramic rings.
    "I've never seen anyone wear a ring like this," Olivia exclaimed. "It's perfect for us! Perfect!"
    I agreed.
    Now, I'm sitting on the bed of my dorm room at an Ivy League school, majoring in the same subject as my mother and following a path that will eventually lead to the one thing I swore not to become: my parents.
    The ring is still there. I don't know why I never took it off.
    Maybe, because it reminds me of her, of our dream, of the person I used to be, before Olivia's contagious free spirit left my life. I know that she didn't forget about it, she