Banking the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 2) (44 page)

“This gives a whole new meaning to having an animal in your pants.”

I laughed as she pushed my shirt up and over my head, leaving me completely naked, save the pig and pants around my ankles.

She shoved off the door with her palms to get us moving, and I stumbled, nearly going down in a tangle of epic proportions. Squeals pierced my ears from her and Phil.

I laughed and righted myself before shuffling down the hall with her ass in my hands. She giggled and threw her hands in the air as I licked at her neck.

When we finally made it to the bed, I dumped her down with a flourish and stood back with my hands on my hips. Her eyes gleamed as they locked on my dick.

“You’ve got on way more clothes than I do,” I told her. “Way too many clothes.”

She smirked, sat up, and grabbed the hem of her tank top, pulling it up and over her head. I watched as her tits held until the last second and then bounced down, bare and pebbled and perfect.

My dick jumped.

“I could have sworn you were wearing a bra tonight,” I told her, reaching out to tweak one nipple with a finger and a thumb. She pushed her chest closer to me and moaned through a smile.

“It’s built in to the tank top,” she explained as I closed a nipple in my mouth.

“What?” I mumbled.

She laughed. “My bra. It’s built in to the tank top.”

A drop of precome leaked from the tip of my cock as I pictured my dick between her tits.

“Thatch!”

“What?” I said with a laugh. “Bras are blasphemous. Don’t ever mention them in this house again.”

“You brought it up!”

Laughing, I pushed up off the bed, sadly away from her tits, and pulled a squealing Phil from between my legs. He took off running as soon as he hit the floor, but he was the last priority on my list right now.

Making quick work of the fabric around my ankles, I shoved it all down and off at the same time as my shoes and socks, and put my knees to the bed on each side of Cassie’s hips.

“I think you’re forgetting something.” She laughed, gesturing to her still-fastened pants with a jerk of her head. But I shook mine as I climbed to straddle her, skimming my way up her body until my dick lined up with her chest.

“Don’t worry, honey,” I told her. “I’ll get to those eventually.”

“Thatch—”

“Unbutton them, baby. Touch yourself while I fuck your tits for a minute.”

Her chest heaved, and my pupils dilated.
Goddamn
.

“Do whatever you want,” I instructed, the game coming to me in an instant. “Slow and steady or hard and fast, work that clit and pump that pussy however you want until you come.”

Her eyes flared, and she licked her lips.

“I’ll fuck your tits until you get there. It’s up to you how long I get.”

She reached out quickly and pumped my dick twice and hard.

I looked over my shoulder as she reached between my legs and undid her pants, shoved them and her panties to her thighs and pushed her finger into her pussy to gather moisture.

When she brought it back out and started working it, I looked back to her.

Her eyes gleamed as she grabbed my ass and pulled me to her tits. “Come on, baby. I’ll go slow.”

I licked a path between her tits and straight down to her pussy, where I lapped at the top to tickle her clit.

She shivered and shoved at my head, breathing heavy with exhaustion.

“I’m gonna make you touch yourself every fucking time.”

She laughed and swatted at me.

“Licking your finger clean after you came on it was the hottest thing I’ve ever fucking done.”

Her smile curved all the way to her sleepy eyes. “Okay,” she admitted. “That was pretty hot.”

Climbing back up her body, I pressed a soft kiss to her lips and then fell to my side beside her, settling into my palm with an elbow in my pillow.

Cassie patted affectionately at my cheek, so I grabbed her wrist, fell to my back, and pulled her over on top of me. Her eyes moved from mine like a river, curving down my jaw to my neck, and then pooling on the tattoo across my chest. “What’s this one for?”

“The tattoo?” I asked, and she nodded, settling her chin on my chest and bringing her gaze back to my eyes.

“
Mi Vida Loca,
” I recited. “It means ‘my crazy life.’ I got it when I was twenty-seven. When it first hit me that I’d done it. That I’d succeeded in all kinds of things, and I was in complete control of my destiny. I never expected any of this. The success, the drive. I’m pretty sure everyone thought I’d be doing something menial or nothing at all.”

“You were that wild?”

“Yes. But it was more a lack of focus.”

She laughed and looked down at my chest contemplatively, tracing each letter slowly. “Yeah, I can relate to that.”

She skimmed her fingers across my chest and over to the praying Mary on my arm. “What about this one?”

“That one is for Margo. Well, it’s about her, anyway. I got it a couple of years after she passed, from Frankie, right after he opened the shop. I think it was sort of cathartic for both of us to put ink to skin to embody all the things we hoped she’d found in heaven that she’d yet to find on earth.”

“Like what?” she whispered.

I ran a thumb under her eye and twisted her hair between two fingers. “Peace. Contentment. She was still so young and restless. Searching for everything and coming up with nothing.”

Her nod was unhurried, and her eyes studied mine. I was sure she was looking for some kind of sign that I was over it all, but to me, I never even had to think about it anymore.

I’d never be over the way it happened, but all I felt was Cassie. She didn’t leave any room for anything else.

She tapped the word “Trust” on my chest. “Why trust?”

“Because it’s the only thing I really need.”

“The only thing you need to what?”

“To live,” I answered simply. “I don’t need to know what’s going to happen, or how it’s going to happen, or even the why. I just want to know that whoever’s making it happen cares about me enough to give me that freedom.”

“Mmm,” she acknowledged.

She settled like she might fall asleep, so I tapped her on the nose, my heart in my throat. I wanted her to know something that I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone yet. “You missed one.”

She lifted her chin off of my chest, and her eyes opened again as she’d thought it over. She was convinced she’d studied my body enough to know. It hit her like a truck. “Of course!” She rolled off of me enough to free my arm and turned it over to expose the inside. “Evolve” scrolled across in fancy, rolling script.

“Okay,” she said as she traced it. “So what’s this one?”

I took a deep breath and blew it out. “That’s the first tattoo I ever did.”

Her startled gaze jerked to mine. “
You
did this one?”

I nodded. “Last fall.”

“What? How? I don’t get it,” she rambled.

I shrugged and looked to the comforter. “I’ve been apprenticing with Frankie. They make you do your first real run on yourself. You know, so you don’t permanently fuck somebody else’s skin up.”

“It doesn’t look like a first tattoo,” she said, excited. “It’s amazing.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh my God, yes. It’s really good!”

My smile would have blinded an airplane. “I was really fucking nervous about that thing for a while. I actually had to go to rugby practice the day after I did it. And of course, I ended up on the skins team. I had this gut reaction that everyone would give me a hard time for how much it sucked.”

She shook her head quickly and then leaned forward to touch her lips to mine. “Do you have any more stuff?”

“No more tattoos on myself, but I’ve got some drawings.”

The sheet left me in one smooth motion as she jumped up and wrapped it around herself, demanding, “Show me now.”

Up and out of the bed and boxer briefs on, I led her out of the room and to the second bedroom. When I opened the door, she stomped her foot.

“I can’t believe I hadn’t snooped in here yet! What is wrong with me?”

Chuckles shook my chest as I watched her spin in a circle, taking in the room. The walls were filled with drawings I’d done, and my notebook sat right in the middle of my sketch desk. She made a beeline for it and started flipping through the pages.

I had all sorts of different things in there. Original designs, sayings that stood out to me sketched in varying script, and even faces and places that I’d remembered vividly enough to draw.

“Holy shit, Thatcher.”

I walked up behind her and put my lips to her shoulder. “Have you ever thought about getting a tattoo?”

She shook her head slowly as she flipped through the pages one a time. “No. I’ve never felt like there was anything I felt strongly enough about to commit to my skin for life.”

I nodded there, right in the crook of her neck, until the tickle of my facial hair made her shiver.

She paused on one page, and I read it over her shoulder. One of my absolute favorite sketches filled my chest with new meaning.

She was crazy. Wild.

Chaos & beauty.

My heart.

Mine.

Vulnerable and soft, she whispered right out into the emptiness of the room. “I want to be yours.”

My eyes closed and love overwhelmed me. “You fucking are.”

Forever
.

T
he huge motor whined as we sped up through a hole in traffic. People barely moved out of the way, but despite our slow progress toward someone’s life-or-death situation, I couldn’t find it in myself to get angry. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, I was sitting shotgun in a fire truck, and I was in all my motherfucking glory.

“Thatch!” I shouted into my phone over the blaring sirens in the background.

“Cass? Where are you?”

“I’m in a fire truck cruising down 5th Avenue!”

“What?”
he yelled. “I’m having trouble hearing you. It sounded like you said you’re in a fire truck.”

“You heard me right!” The sirens increased in three loud bursts as the fire engine maneuvered through an intersection. “I’m saving lives and putting out fires for the day!”

I couldn’t hear his response because the truckload of firemen started to argue around me.

“Goddammit! Move out of the way!”

“Take a left, Ronnie! It’s faster!”

“Fuck off, Vin!”

A minute later, the sirens died down and we pulled up in front of an apartment building. The guys jumped out and headed inside while I stayed back in the truck. I was finding that not all emergencies were actual emergencies. Sometimes what one person might call a kitchen fire another would call,
Bullshit, just turn off your stove, moron.

“Are you still there, T?” I asked into the receiver.

“Yeah, honey,” he responded. “I thought you had a shoot today.”

“I shot a charity calendar for FDNY, and we finished a little earlier than expected,” I explained. “I convinced the guys to let me go on a few runs with them. Do you have any idea how cool it is riding around in the fire truck all day?” I hopped out of the truck and started to pace on the sidewalk. The adrenaline rushes from the last five runs had my body bursting with excited, nervous energy. “I think I want to change my career.”