Her Second Billionaire (8 page)

This itching was slowly penetrating her every conscious move, making her one big, non-stop twitch, and she’d only been conscious for an hour. Two cups of coffee hadn’t helped. Finally, Josie, who had finished four cups to Laura’s two, cocked her head and said, “What in the hell are you doing, Laura? You look like a nine-year-old boy who just had an ice cream fest and a few shots of espresso.”

“I am just not comfortable.” Understatement of the year.
Rub rub rub
.

“Did you pick something up from one of the two guys you fucked within twenty-four hours?”

Ouch.
“Oh please, it wasn’t within twenty-four…and you can’t get…oh, I don’t even want to go there. Shut up, Josie.” She reached behind and scratched her ass.

“You’re scratching your ass in public. I mean,
man
– ”

“We’re not in public – we’re in my apartment.”

“I am
public
. I am a human being.”

“No, you’re not. You’re my best friend.”

“You…what is going on?” Now Laura couldn’t help herself and start to scratch her breast. Her nipple was throbbing with the hot, torturous itch that plagued her ass as well. “Why on earth are you scratching your boob?”

“Because it itches.”

“Come on Laura, that’s not what I meant.” Josie’s exasperation showed in her tone and, finally, Laura couldn’t stand it anymore. She stood up, pulled her pants down, pulled down her underwear halfway and reached for the tube of hydrocortisone cream that she’d shoved in her purse to take to work.

“Laura, oh, my
God
.”

“What?” Laura twisted around and stared at her own ass. Yup. It wasn’t any better this morning. What had started out as a series of small mosquito bites was now a minefield of red, hot flesh, swollen up into these enormous hive-like bites. When she had returned home from her date with Mike, she’d realized pretty quickly what had happened. While making love outside in nature, in a field, on top of a mountain, with the most incredible view possible – both of nature and of Mike’s body – had been earth shattering, quite literally, the reality of nature had set in.

In her butt.

She had about fifty mosquito bites all over her ass down her legs, up her chest, and one had managed to land on her left breast areola. Those zaps? Those
zings
of pleasure? Not arousal! Nature’s vampires.

As she smeared the hydrocortisone cream all over the top of her ass, Josie just shook her head and laughed, folding in half as she held her gut, tears streaming down her face.

Laura tried pointedly to ignore her but couldn’t help it. “It itches.”

“Oh, Laura, that is awful. On your boob.”

“Yeah, I know.” She pulled her pants up and went over to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. “How do you think it feels?”

“Well, I don’t know how it feels. I’ve never fucked somebody on the top of a mountain where a bunch of mosquitoes decided to feast on me.” She snickered. “If a mosquito bites you in the ass is that some way…is that nature’s version of oral sex?”

“Oh, stop it.”

“You don’t have any on your, you know – on your
hoo-ha
?”

“Hoo-ha? Who calls it a hoo-ha?”

Josie fanned herself.“You know me. I was raised in Virginia, I’m a good old Southern lady.”

“Lady? Yeah, right. Like
you’re
a lady.”

“Take some Benadryl for that, you’ll thank me.”

“But Benadryl makes me sleepy.”

“Really? I mean, because, if you don’t do something more drastic you’re going to go to work and you’re going to look like a hyena who ate twenty-five Mexican jumping beans. You’re a lot better off looking like you’re just a little sleepy or hung over on antihistamines.”

Laura thought about that one for a minute. It’s not like she had a really busy work day. Could she just call in sick? Oh, no. The monthly management meeting was today. Shouldn’t really have to do anything, but she had to be there.

“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe if I take some Benadryl, it’ll make it easier to get through the monthly meeting anyhow.”

Josie nodded. “So, Laura,” she laughed. “Was it worth it?”

Laura reached down her V-neck into her bra and found the offending bite, scratching it furiously, knowing full well that at this rate, she was going to break the skin but at least that would give her some sweet relief. “Yeah. It was worth it, but next time I’ll wear a bug spray instead of perfume.”

Mike sat in bed staring up at the ceiling, counting the little holes in the tiles yet again, for what felt like the thousandth time. Actually, it probably
was
the thousandth time. He’d done it over and over and over ever since Jill died a year and a half ago. Except this time, he was doing it to keep his mind occupied, not to keep his mind distracted.

He was doing it because it was something habitual, something rote, something that he just could slip into so that he didn’t have to deal with the actually messy emotional aftermath of his date with Laura. It had gone so much better than he ever could have expected. He never intended to sleep with her. And he certainly never intended to make love to her at the top of that mountain on that blanket.

Yet he had and he was glad.

The last time he and Jill had made love had been right there. While he wanted to reclaim the space with someone new, he hadn’t planned to do it in quite that manner. Laura moved something inside of him. Her soft curves, her joyful laugh, the way that she focused and her face melted into passion as she came. It all was so overwhelming and too intense.

Mike needed to talk to someone about Laura. How intoxicating. How calm. How lush. How sweet. How –
him
. It was as if someone had hand-sculpted the perfect woman for him and forgotten to tell him that this was what he really wanted. No, she wasn’t Jill. And no one ever would be Jill. That was OK, because it had to be OK. He didn’t have a choice.

Always assuming he would never, ever fall in love again, Mike hadn’t considered the idea that he might find a different love – one that was no more, nor less, than what he and Dylan had with Jill. Could life with Laura be as good? Better? Different? The sex had been astounding, though he could do without the damn mosquito bites. Next time he would take her to his cabin.

Next time
. He didn’t care that he was getting ahead of himself. But then…Dylan probably thought he had a next time, and Laura had shut him out. What was that about? He knew Dylan was tormented by her silence, but he couldn’t exactly ask her about it, now, could he? Not without blowing his cover. Cover?
What the hell, Mike?
he asked himself. This wasn’t some CIA movie or FBI plot. He wasn’t the center of a sting operation or an undercover drug bust.

He was, however, being deceitful, and that felt very, very wrong. Laura had no idea that he and Dylan were a – what? What were they, exactly? Explaining their relationship hadn’t been an issue with Jill. They just fell into their life as a threesome, as uncomplicated and easily as any other twosome. He and Dylan weren’t gay. Not quite. But they weren’t straight, either. They had tried, before Jill, to each date separate women but that first encounter, back in high school, where they both lost their virginity to the same girl had cemented their needs. What they wanted was the power of three, and it made them both complete.

Dating one woman, sleeping with one woman, was pleasurable. Hell, Laura had certainly proven that! Already, though, he felt a longing for more. He imagined Dylan did, too. The complication now, though, was that Laura was spurning Dylan and deepening her relationship with Mike.

In the short term this was fine, but in the long run…what could he do? How could he mend the relationship between Dylan and Laura to make the triad complete?

Worse, though, was a niggling fear in the back of his mind. His heart. What if she preferred Dylan over him?

Opening up to Laura would be a whole other mess. “Hi, Laura. My partner, Dylan, found you on that dating website and figured you might be open to a long-term threesome. And, by the way, we’re billionaires. So…can we keep dating?” The deception was already over the top, strung out too long. A week, though, really – how could a week create such joy and do so much damage? How could their lives change so abruptly, so deeply, in such a short period of time?

There was no choice here. Whatever Laura decided was final. He couldn’t read her – just knew she liked him. A lot. Had she liked Dylan this much, too? If not, why? What had driven her away from him and into Mike’s arms?

The only way out was through. Through his heart, and hers. And Dylan’s. He would have to come clean to him, and soon, before this spiraled out of control.

It wasn’t fear that made him keep his mouth shut. It was exhilaration. Excitement. The secret of
mine
. Mine. Laura was his, for now. Only his. While he knew that wouldn’t sustain him in the long run, just as Dylan’s dating her, alone, wouldn’t do it for him, either, there was a heady confidence that came from scooping Dylan. He could never have imagined, never dreamed that Laura would spurn Dylan and turn to Mike, but here they were. This was how it had turned out, and now the only concern he had was that Laura would hate him once she knew that they knew each other.

Wait, Mike,
he told himself.
Savor this
. After eighteen months of loneliness and pain, it was good to wake up in the morning with a smile on his face.

Even better, though, would be to wake up to two other smiles in his bed. God, the thought made him hard. Rock hard.

And so he found himself counting – 879, 880, 881, 882 –
counting, counting, counting
. And then he looked down and saw the tent on the top sheet.
Ah, shit. There’s only one way to deal with this. A run.

He left the bedroom and nearly slammed into Dylan, who was coming out of the shower. “Hey, hey man, how was that date last night?”

Mike felt his expression shift to complete shock and he tried to cover up his feelings.”Oh, oh yeah, uh, yeah it was good.”

“Great,” Dylan clapped him on the back, staring down at Mike’s erection. “Yeah, thinking about her?”

“Thinking about a lot of things,” Mike answered, still stammering on the inside. Fuck – what if Dylan guessed what was going on before Mike could confess it? This was just too much. He spent most of his life trying to craft as simple a life as possible, and now he’d created a huge romantic clusterfuck.
Way to go!

Dylan said, “Yeah, I have been too. But, well, anyhow…” He shook his head as if willing away something that was bothering him.

Mike knew he should ask, Mike knew that he should inquire, that this was Dylan’s way of reaching out, of being emotionally open, and yet he couldn’t. He just couldn’t muster the energy to deal with anyone else’s emotional struggles right now. Hell, he couldn’t even deal with his own. “Yeah, well, I’m gonna go for a run. I’ll see ya.”

“Alright, bye.”

They were just
so
articulate when it came to expressing their feelings. He could hear Jill’s words echoing in his head: “You two are about as good at talking about your feelings as I am at shaving my own balls.”

If he could get his feet pounding on the pavement, pounding on the trail, running in the dirt, the trees flying by, the buses groaning – whatever, wherever, whenever. Air in, air out, muscles up, muscles down. If he could reach that place within where everything disappeared and nothing was
all
– Mike knew he could figure out how on earth he was gonna tell Dylan that he had just stolen his girlfriend.

Dylan threw on a pair of shorts and some t-shirt from – he looked at the front – middle school? Yeah, middle school. He still had it. In fact, he never let go of any of his t-shirts; he probably had hundreds of them in various states floating around his apartment, everything from the Monsters of Rock t-shirt that he got when he was a kid from his older brother, down to the latest cheesy Daily Show shirt.

He opened up his laptop and he tried one more time. Clicking on Laura’s profile, he typed in the chat window, “Hey, Laura, are you there?” She had completely shut him out. He knew it had been a day,
one
day, that was it. Just a single day since she left his bed. But she didn’t answer his texts, didn’t answer his phone calls, didn’t respond to his chat window – nothing – and she had slunk out of his house in the middle of the night.