Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (25 page)

7

Tonight, there’s a reception at the Grand Ballroom of the
hotel.

“Remember, it’s a snazzy affair, so you’ll have to dress
up,” Sam reminds him.

She’s anxiously fussing over her own hairdo. She’s frizzing
it up with some sort of spray, which accounts for the massive suitcase she made
him carry all the way from Chicago. She combs each strand and musses it up
again with gel, as if she’s trying to shape it into some sort of bizarre
corkscrew pattern.

He doesn’t see the point, since she’s got great hair. Not
that he would ever tell her that in a million years, of course.

He knows why she is so worked up about appearing good for
her sister. At least, he thinks he knows. If she is any extension of what she
was during middle school, then she would have had a hard time coming out of her
sister’s shadow. A sister, from all accounts, who is prettier, more glamorous
and more successful in landing big fish than she is.

He says, “I don’t know why you bother. Your hair never
going to resemble anything other a bird’s nest.”

As soon as it’s out, he regrets it. Why do you always have
to be such a goddamned asshole?

He sees the hurt blossom in her eyes. He curses himself.
But he has an unapologetic veneer to maintain, and so he spreads his mouth into
a cynical grin instead.

“And yours will never be anything but a total bedhead,” she
shoots back.

Ouch. He takes great pride in his hair. But he gives a lot,
so he’s equally good at taking it.

“So why are you so hung up about what your sister thinks?”

“Huh?”

“The hair. Me. The fact that I’m here on this sordidly
deceptive weekend. Or should I say … deceptively sordid weekend?”

“Oh, that.”

She locks eyes with him in the mirror. His breath catches.
Her eyes will always be her best feature. He can well imagine those eyes being
smoky with desire, gazing adoringly up at him from a horizontal position as she
writhes sexily under his heaving body.

His dormant cock begins to stir. He shifts on one leg.

Careful.

He watches as a plethora of complex emotions flit on her
face.

She sighs. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s complicated.
Anyway, you don’t give a damn what anyone thinks or feels, so why do you care?”

He splays his hands. “Hey, I’m just askin’. No need to bite
my head off.”

“Not that you’d ever understand what it feels like to be a
dork.”

You’re not a dork, he thinks.

He says, “Some people just have dork genes, I guess. So
which side of the family did yours come from?”

Her features turn apoplectic.

“Oh,” she splutters, “just go and do whatever … Cassie
will be here any minute.”

“What? To play dress up Barbie?”

‘Get out.”

“Touchy.”

He waltzes out of the door.

“But don’t do anything to embarrass me,” she throws at him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“No picking anyone up either. This is a small town and word
gets around.” She glares at him.

“Not when I’m a total stranger.”

“For all you know, the whole town might be invited tonight.
And you promised. It’s part of the deal.”

“Yeah, so sue me.”

He slams the door behind him. He hasn’t had his daily,
emotionally meaningless sexual fix yet, thanks to Ms. Uptight and Prissy.

Now what is he going to do for sex?

*

Hartford is a small, small town. Apparently, the Buchners
own half of it. They also own the hotel, the mill, the lumber factory and the
bakery. Talk about diversification.

There’s a cafe called ‘Figero’s’ right next to the bakery.
And a strip joint. Brian waltzes into the strip joint. With his luck, the
Buchners probably own it too. With video surveillance.

Inside, a few tired strippers are dancing around metallic
poles. They look up as he enters. It’s five in the evening. A few older men are
guzzling beers and smoking cigarettes. Brian goes to the bar and plonks himself
down on a barstool.

“Is this place always this zombified or is this just the
graveyard shift?” he quips.

The bartender is cleaning a beer mug.

“What’ll it be?” he says gruffly.

“Stella.”

“She ain’t working tonight.”

“I meant the beer.”

The bartender fills Stella Artois into a chilled mug. Brian
lights a cigarette.

A stripper sidles up to him. She wears a bright yellow
thong and two equally bright yellow pasties on her nipples. The pasties are in
the shapes of stars.

Elegant.

“Hey, stranger,” she purrs, digging her fingers into his
hair. “Never seen you around here.”

“That’s original.”

“I can give you a lap dance if you want.”

Tempting, but she smells of someone else’s cheap cologne.
Probably the last guy she wanked off. Anyway, he rarely paid for anything.

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to be invited to an engagement
party by the Buchners tonight, would you?”

“Hell, no.”

“In that case … ”

He lets her kiss his mouth in an extremely provocative way.
And then his chin. And his neck. Meanwhile, her hands roam all over his body,
prodding his muscles and sliding down his abs to his expanding crotch.

There’s something he has to remember before his brain gets
too fuzzy.

He says to the bartender, “Say, you wouldn’t happen to be
invited to an engagement party tonight by the Buchners, would you?”

“Fuck the Buchners. They’ve been monopolizing this town for
too long.”

“Good to hear.”

The stripper rubs her hand against his straining bulge.
“I’ll monopolize this.” She turns to the bartender. “Frank … what the fuck
is ‘monopolize’?”

There’s yet another something else he definitely has to
remember. Averting his head from her pink mouth, Brian scans the strip joint
again.

He turns back to the bartender. “Are any of these people
going to the Buchners’ tonight?”

“Damned if I know. What’s your obsession with the Buchners
anyway? You fuckin’ any of them?”

OK. So this isn’t going to work out in public. The stripper
nuzzles his ear with her quicksilver tongue – an exquisitely erotic
gesture that sends his groin into an extreme heat zone.

He whispers in her ear, “You have a back room?”

“Why, you are a naughty boy. Follow me, sugar.”

The bartender ignores them as she leads him by the hand to
a small, dark room behind the bar. There’s no one in there and she immediately
pounces on him again. She kisses him with sound and fury and passion and moist
interlocking lips and her hands roam here, there, everywhere up and down his
body, especially focusing on his crotch.

He responds in kind. He gropes her large breasts and feels
for the erotic points of her nipples beneath the pasties. Her body is young and
firm and hot beneath his large hands. He dives for her thong. She’s already
soaking wet as his fingers wrench the little yellow string away to reveal her
pussy lips. He burrows and wriggles into her sweet little hole, which
unfortunately isn’t as tight as he wants it to be, and she rips his shirt open
and seizes his nipples.

She lowers her mouth to his pointed tips. Her tongue leaves
a rotund trail around his areolas. He has always been amused when a woman sucks
his nipples.

He’s extremely aroused by the time she slides her wet
tongue down his belly – down, down the line of soft downy, barely visible
hair that traverses his midline, right down to his pubis. She seizes his belt.
A clack of metal against metal, and she has unbuckled it. She unzips his jeans.
He doesn’t wear underwear and so his penis springs out from its moorings
– a lever released.

“Wow,” she says. “You’re hung.”

“Glad you like it.”

“I more than like it. I – ” The rest of her words are
drowned as she takes him in her mouth and sucks.

He leans against the wall and closes his eyes. She has a
very clever mouth. Her tongue makes butterfly wing movements over and across
his turgid flesh, especially concentrating on the crown and the little slit at
the tip of his cock. Her cheek muscles pull at his column. His breathing
quickens. He clasps her head.

“Take it slow,” he says.

He wonders how much he has to pay her at the end of this.

Sam’s words echo in his head. No picking anyone up either.
This is a small town and word gets around.

How small is this town exactly?

And you promised. It’s part of the deal.

The stripper’s mouth is like an anemone – all moist
and intense suction. He finds himself tripping over the edge. Guilt riddles his
conscience.

Damn.

He’s not the type of person to renege on promises. Even if
he thinks it’s a stupid promise and a stupid bet. Which of course he lost fair
and square in trying to do his friend a good deed.

He says, “Um, maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.”

He gently pushes the stripper’s head away. His cock is
still as hard as a wooden block. It glistens with her saliva.

“What’s the matter?” she says, disappointed.

“I made a promise not to fuck anyone this weekend.”

“I can still give you a blow job.”

“No … fucking, sucking … I think they all go
together in the same time space continuum. I’ll take a rain check, OK?”

He fishes out his wallet from his jeans pocket and extracts
five hundred dollars from it.

“Here, buy yourself something nice to wear.”

The stripper’s eyes bulge at the largesse. “Wow, you’re
definitely not from around here.”

He zips up his pants after ascertaining that he can contain
his erection. When he walks out of the strip joint, he feels a lot lighter, and
he’s not talking about his wallet.

8

When he gets back to their hotel room, Sam is already
dressed. Brian flings open the door with such force that it slams against the
wall.

“Honey, I’m home,” he calls.

And freezes in his tracks.

Sam stands there, resplendent in a cerulean blue gown with
shimmers on its skirt. A pretty lapis lazuli necklace encircles her throat, and
she is radiant in her carefully mussed up hair with romantic tendrils floating
around her face in wisps. Her blue eyes sparkle, and her eye shadow is dusty
silver.

“What do you think?” She beams.

You’re gorgeous, he thinks. He’s used to gorgeous women,
having bedded more than several hundred in his lifetime. But Sam is radiance
incarnate, like a blushing bride unveiled for the first time. To him, at least.

Outwardly, he shrugs. “You look OK.”

She seems disappointed. Maybe she was fishing for
compliments.

“You’re late,” she accuses. “Where have you been?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“You promised not to fuck anybody.”

“And I didn’t. So quit nagging, OK, Mom?”

He strides into the room and flings open his travel bag. He
takes out a Gucci suit and a black Prada shirt. He begins to shuck his clothes
off.

“Can’t you go into the bathroom to change?”

“If you can’t handle me being your boyfriend, then why ask
me to tag along this weekend?” He rips his shirt off and starts to unbuckle his
belt.

She hasn’t taken her eyes off his body. “We’re not really
not boyfriend and girlfriend, so save the striptease routine for your fuck
buddies, OK?”

“Now that’s one term that’ll never apply to you.”

As soon as he said it, he regrets it. But no apologies, he
tells himself firmly as he pushes down his jeans.

This time, she doesn’t turn away. She stares at his
semi-erect cock.

“You know, you haven’t changed one bit.”

“I’d like to think I’ve grown longer and broader.”

“You know what I mean. You were a bully in middle school
and you’re still a bully now.”

“You’re the one who punched me in the face when you met me.
How’s that for a middle school reunion?”

“I’ll do it again in a second.”

He grins as he walks closer to her – naked
– his cock bobbing up and down. He towers above her, all six feet two
inches of him.

“So hit me again,” he says. “Get your own back at me. Go
on, I won’t flinch.”

She takes a step backward and peers at his cock.

“I know you think you’re hot stuff. But frankly, I’ve seen
better.”

“Frankly, I don’t think you’ve seen many. Live, that is.”

“Stay back,” she warns.

“Or what? You’ll yell ‘My boyfriend exposed himself to me?
In the same bedroom that we’re expected to be fucking in?’”

Her eyes narrow. God, but she’s magnificent when her irises
flash like that. He feels his cock stirring again – a most unwelcome
prospect considering the situation they are in, where nothing on him can stay
hidden.

“Get dressed,” she says. “We’re going to be late.”

“What? You’re not going to punch me?”

“You really are an arrogant, contemptuous asshole.”

“Ooooh, big words.”

She brushes past him, and he catches her by the arm.

“What?” she says irritably.

“This is to put you in the mood.” He seizes her body to his
and bends his head down for a savage kiss on her mouth.

He doesn’t know what he’s thinking, only that he’s just
reacting to how he feels – dangerously in the mood after his botched
fellatio. He meant to tease her with the kiss. To get you into the rhythm of
what we’ll be doing later in front of your darling overachieving sister. But
the kiss seems to take a life of its own.

He finds himself falling into it. Meshing lips against
lips.

He expects her to pull back, to slap him on the face as he
deserves – but instead, she folds into him, kissing him back with fervor.
His penis fills aggressively. He’s taken aback at her passion. She seizes his
face and kisses him open-mouthed. His tongue instinctively probes hers even as
his hands roam down her body.

He’s aware that he is completely naked and his arousal is
very obvious and stark. His cock presses against her clothed belly. He wonders
what she thinks of this, when they have been fighting only seconds before. Her
hands start to slide down his neck, and then his shoulders, his arms … his
back … down, down to his bare buttocks.

He breaks the kiss before he can get too consumed by it.

I only meant to tease.

Her eyes are misted and glazed with desire as they part.
She looks up at him in both wonderment and surprise.

Quick. Say something snarky. Anything to dissipate this
mood. But his tongue is tied. For once, he is at loss for words.

Not for long though.

He says, “What? Taking advantage of me? You must be really
sexually deprived.”

And immediately regrets it. But snarkiness has so much been
a component of his makeup – his built-in defense mechanism – that
it has become commonplace now. Push them away before you can get hurt.
Relationships suck. Always remember that.

A glimmer of anger comes into her blue eyes.

“Oooh,” she says, shoving him away with heat. “How dare
you?”

He’s not sure if she means how dare he say those things to
her … or how dare he kiss her.

She eyes his erection witheringly. “Get dressed. If you
can.”

“With pleasure.”

“And you’re really not all that great at kissing.” Her face
flinches slightly, which suggests that she doesn’t really believe in what she
says.

“Likewise, sweetheart.” His heart is still thudding from
the encounter but he can slowly feel his erection waning.

She waits, her face a black mask as he slowly puts his
clothes on. Together, they leave the room without speaking.