The Billionaire Bachelor (Billionaire Bad Boys Book 1) Page 19

  Then he tipped her jaw and covered her lips with his and kissed her for all he was worth.

  Chapter 13

  Monday morning, Reese surfaced from sleep when a soft sigh paired with tugging the covers from his shoulder reminded him that he had company.

  He usually slept on the couch next to the bed, save for the time after Merina had gone down on him and left him prostrate and dead to the world. Even then he hadn’t woken up next to her. She’d risen before him and he’d found her downstairs sipping coffee out of his favorite mug.

  Well, that and Saturday night after the retirement party. He’d gone from kissing her in that hallway (and getting busted by Bob) to going back in for the party until they could make their escape. After, they’d gone straight to bed, but then, too, Merina had been up and reading the Wall Street Journal when his eyes opened.

  This morning she hadn’t scampered out of bed, for reasons he guessed he was responsible for, and that made him proud. He felt her finger touch his lips and opened his eyes.

  “Cocky bastard,” she grumbled. Merina was rumpled and sleepy, her eyes barely open, her hair in complete disarray. And so gorgeous with the sun filtering in behind her, he had to blink to make sure she was real. “Do you always wake up smiling?”

  He pulled her close, because in his huge bed, she was too far away. Then he rolled, threw a leg over her body, wrapped an arm tightly at her back, and kissed her neck.

  “I wake smiling,” he said, kissing her ear next, “whenever the woman I go to bed with has six screaming orgasms.”

  “Six!” she protested, pushing against his bare chest with both hands.

  “Was it seven? I lost count.” He loosened his hold on her and pulled back to find her rolling her eyes.

  “Hardly.” She wiggled away from him, then climbed out of bed. She was wearing almost nothing: a barely-there pair of panties and a silky tank top. When she was on her feet, she grabbed a pillow and tossed it over his face.

  “I’m still smiling,” he said, his voice muffled.

  She grumbled something else and he moved the pillow in time to watch her fantastic ass wiggle into the bathroom. Then he rolled over, and despite the shining sun, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  An hour later, Reese emerged wearing a suit and tie, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to take over hotel chains and turn them into dust. Merina was dressed in her usual uniform of pencil-skirt-and-blouse but doubted she looked either bright or bushy. Unless you counted her hair, which she’d wrestled with for nearly twenty minutes before giving up and pinning it back in a low ponytail.

  “I was going to run this morning, but you wiped me out last night.” he said in greeting, moving to the coffeepot. His gaze strayed to the mug in her hands.

  “What?”

  “I have a cabinet full of mugs and that’s the one you choose.”

  “I like it.” She cradled her coffee protectively.

  “Of course you do.”

  “It’s comforting.”

  “Of course it is.”

  The black mug with gold writing on it was the last thing she’d ever expected to find in Reese’s sterile, clean environment. It added a touch of whimsy, which was shocking.

  “You mean this is…yours?” She turned the mug and read the message aloud. “‘Sometimes all you need is a billion dollars.’”

  Reese grinned and Merina almost had to reach behind her to grab the chair for support. He was ridiculously gorgeous, and remembering the sight of him between her thighs last night wringing orgasms from her made her want to grab his tie and lead him upstairs now too. And, yeah, her orgasms had numbered around seven, but she wasn’t ready to admit he could separate her body from her brain so thoroughly.

  “Tag bought it,” Reese said. “He thinks he’s funny.”

  At the mention of her brother-in-law, she hummed.

  Reese came to her, his own mug white and plain and boring. For the first time, she thought how that didn’t fit him. Which made her frown. She didn’t like that he kept surprising her.

  “What did he say at the party that pissed you off so much?”

  “It wasn’t what he said. It was…I don’t know.”

  But she did know. She didn’t want to admit it, but she knew. It was the way Tag instructed her to seduce Reese. The suggestion that what she and Reese had was for show…which it was. But she didn’t like to talk about him or what they had in such obvious, sterile terms. Tag had made their marriage sound cold, but with her, Reese wasn’t cold. That night, last night, and hell, even this morning, there was considerable warmth between them.

  “I was just pissed about Gwyneth,” she fibbed.

  “Ah.” Satisfied with that answer, he nodded. “You handled her and Hayes beautifully, which was why you received so many presents last night.” He stole a kiss. “Like I said, I was going to go for a run today, but you let me sleep in.”

  “You needed it. We had a stressful weekend.” Though yesterday had been an almost lazy Sunday by comparison. Reese took calls, and she did some work on her laptop, but mostly, they sat in the sunroom and watched it rain. Magda delivered lunch to the room and had left a casserole in the oven for dinner. Merina and Reese ate at the counter rather than at the table and ended up going up to bed sooner than either of them expected for the sex he’d previously been bragging about.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me more about your sordid past?” She fluttered her lashes. She didn’t know the story behind Gwyneth and Hayes, only the bleached, censored version Reese had mumbled at the party. But as the woman who had thwarted Dumb and Dumber at the party, she was due an explanation.

  Reese disagreed.

  “Nice try.” He finished his coffee and put the mug in the sink. “I can drop you at work, but I have to go to a dinner meeting at eight, so you’ll have to find your own way home.”

  “No, that’s okay. I have to run a few errands while I’m at work. I’ll take my car.” Including an overdue therapeutic lunch date with Lorelei.

  “Okay. By the way, you should try that sometime.”

  She narrowed her eyes in confusion. He pointed to the mug.

  “Having a billion dollars. It’s handy.” He kissed her again, lingering long enough that she had to pull air through her nose. “See you tonight.”

  He left and Merina shook her head, worried that her current set of problems couldn’t be solved by a billion dollars. Arguably, her problems were caused by a billion dollars. Which was the reason for her meeting with Lorelei. Things with Reese were getting complicated where her emotions were concerned. And since she knew her best friend was re-seeing her ex-husband (though Lore had yet to officially admit it), she could help Merina compartmentalize when it came to Reese.

  Merina needed to keep her heart separate from the sex. Because the sex was great and she refused to give up the best perk to this arrangement.

  * * *

  “I’m in love with him.”

  Her fork halfway to her mouth, Merina lowered it back into her salad bowl and gaped at her best friend. “Malcolm?”

  “I know!” Lorelei hadn’t touched her salad, but she had downed a glass of Riesling in record time, and she never drank alcohol before five. She dropped her face into her hands. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “This is awful,” Merina muttered, abandoning the salad in favor of her own glass of wine.

  Lorelei peeked from her hands, an expression of devastation decorating her flawless brown skin. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “I meant for me. You were supposed to be the voice of reason. I came here to talk to you about keeping my heart out of the equation with Reese since we’ve…” She looked around at the restaurant and leaned in to say quietly, “Crossed a few boundaries.”

  Lorelei stopped looking devastated and started looking interested. “Boundaries?”

  Merina nodded.

  “Did he earn his hashtag?”

  “Lore! Seriously?” She lowere
d her voice when a pair of well-dressed women shot twin evil looks at her. “That’s what you want to know? Out of everything I said, that’s what you’re most interested in.”

  Lorelei folded her arms on the table and shrugged one shoulder unapologetically.

  “Yes, okay? Yes, he earned it and honestly, it’s terribly uninventive and a lame descriptor for what he’s capable of.”

  “Well, maybe you are the only one who knows what he’s capable of since he’s kept you in his bed for more than one night.”

  There was a thought. Merina bit her lip. Of everything they’d done together, she hadn’t stopped once to consider she was blazing some sort of trail. Reese was now a one-woman man after being a one-woman-for-a-night man. That was scary. She wasn’t ready to start a real one-on-one relationship. Not with the man she’d temporarily married.

  “Listen, you’re going to be fine.” Lorelei, bless her gorgeous lying face. She had snapped into lawyer mode, saying exactly what Merina needed to hear, and Merina was not going to argue.

  “Hit me.”

  “First off.” Lorelei held up a finger. “Malcolm and I were married.” Her smile fell. “Of course, so are you and Reese. Maybe that’s a bad place to start. You know what I mean. We were really married. Like, for real.”

  “I’m with you.” Merina waved a hand. She didn’t feel better yet, but she had faith her friend would arrive at a point.

  “Malcolm and I have a relationship that is volatile,” Lore continued. “You know, the kind where everyone has a quip for everything. Bickering became like foreplay with us.”

  Merina sighed. Yeah. Not helping her feel better at all.

  “Plus he had a rep before he met me of being quite the ladies’ man. Once he met me, he quit those bitches cold and I was the only one he had eyes for. He went from player to a good husband and the only reason we split was because I was too stubborn to—” Lorelei cut off her own speech, seeing the same thing Merina saw: that Lorelei’s and Malcolm’s story was eerily similar to Merina’s and Reese’s.

  And Lorelei had fallen back in love with Malcolm.

  “Sorry, honey.” Lore offered her condolences with a hand over Merina’s on the table. Then she waved over the waitress and ordered two double chocolate mousses and espressos. “It’s not for sure yet,” Lorelei said when Merina’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe he’ll turn back into a dick. Like…Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. Give him time and he’ll give you a reason to hate him.”

  “Okay,” Merina said, but that didn’t make her feel any better. Because maybe…just maybe, she was enjoying herself too much. Enjoying Reese too much to be willing to hate him.

  If she ever had.

  * * *

  “With the exit of Alex, we’ll be deciding who to appoint within the next month,” Bob said at the board meeting.

  Reese fisted the pen in his hand, willing himself not to throw it like a dart and hit one of them with it. Any of them. He wasn’t picky.

  “You know my preference, gentlemen,” Alex said, leaning back in his chair. How did he do that? Always look so damned calm? “Reese is my number one. He’s been groomed for this role since he was a young man. He’s good at his job. He works hard.”

  “We’re aware,” Frank, the blowhard, said.

  Reese looked to his left, but Tag’s chair was empty. Usually his younger brother’s careless expression was calming. Tag was visiting the Crane Hotel resort in Hawaii to assess the bar situation the board had bellyached about. Nitpicking bastards.

  “I will say,” Bob interjected, casting a smile of encouragement at Reese, “that the few stockholders I’ve spoken to have been impressed with his recent turnaround.”

  “Yes, and the few I’ve talked to,” Frank said, “are suspicious of this sudden marriage and abrupt change in Mr. Crane’s behavior.”

  “The state of my personal life has nothing to do with my business ethics,” Reese growled, unable to play nice any longer. At his right, his father sighed in resignation. “Leave my wife out of this.”

  “And yet, you’ve been sure to include her at the most opportune time,” Lilith said. “Don’t get me wrong, Reese, I’m all for a reformed man, but who’s to say this isn’t a ruse to earn favor and land the CEO?”

  It was on the tip of Reese’s tongue to ask if that would be so bad, but he was relieved of that urge by Bob’s interjection. “Come on, Lilith. You saw them at the retirement party.”

  “Could be an act,” she said.

  Reese’s nostrils flared.

  “Well you can’t expect them to consummate on the boardroom table for you to see how serious they are,” Frank, who hated Lilith, replied, oddly on Reese’s side.

  “Over the line.” Reese stood and pressed his palms into the table. “If you think I’d pander to you or the stockholders, you’re out of your mind.”

  He may have married Merina for favor, but that had since changed. No longer was it a show. The hugs and kisses—the sex—everything between them had shifted from pretend to real.

  “My father is right. I’ve been groomed for CEO my entire life. Lilith, as someone who used to be friends with my mother, I’d think you’d have more respect for my choice of woman to settle down with. She would approve.”

  “She would,” Lilith said gently.

  Alex put his elbow on the table and stroked his hand over his mustache, probably to keep himself from interrupting.

  “And, Frank, unless you’d like the entire room to imagine what you’d look like having sex with that twenty-eight-year-old wannabe actress you’re dating, I’d thank you to never paint a visual like you just did about Merina. As for the rest of you serpents, if you could call on whatever professionalism still clinging to your recently shed skin, you might consider my talents, my motivation, and my work record rather than who I take to bed every night.”

  Reese straightened, buttoned his jacket, and scooped his phone off the table. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for a real meeting this evening.”

  No one added anything, not even his father. Reese all but strutted from that room, mentally picturing his own mic drop.

  Merina would have been proud.

  * * *

  “What a bunch of cockroaches,” Merina commented after Reese told her how far south the meeting had slipped. She opened a drawer, then another, then one after that. “Where is a knife in this kitchen?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know?”

  She gave him a bland look.

  “Does not require a knife.” He lifted his glass of scotch. “Anyway, Magda does all the cooking around here, don’t you, Magda?”

  “Top left, next to the refrigerator,” his housekeeper answered as began filling the dishwasher. The woman was crazy efficient.

  “What are you doing, anyway?” he asked as Merina carved into an avocado.

  “I’m making guacamole.”

  “Why?”

  “Why am I making guacamole?” She quit carving and gave him a confused, possibly miffed look. She was too damned attractive.

  “I don’t want to know why you’re making guacamole. I want to know why you don’t have Magda make guacamole? She likes to make things. That’s why she works here. Right, Magda?”

  Magda, who’d known him nearly his entire life, smiled one of her supremely tolerant smiles. “I do indeed, Mr. Crane. It’s nice to cook for someone again, seeing as how you’ve been away from the mansion for so long.”

  He tilted his head and arched an eyebrow, hoping she read his silent communication to curb that discussion. Not that there was a need. Magda wasn’t one to gossip.

  “Sometimes it’s fun to do things for yourself,” Merina said, halving the fruit…or was avocado a vegetable? Something to ask Siri later.

  “But most of the time it’s nice to have things done to you,” Reese said. “I mean, for you.”

  Merina shot him a glare, catching his intentional reference to the things he’d like done to him. Things she did with her mouth and hands,
involving her wearing a hell of lot less clothing than she was now.

  “You weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Crane.” She pointed at him with the tip of the knife. “You were born with an entire cutlery drawer in there.”

  Magda chuckled and Merina smiled in triumph. He abandoned his scotch and stalked to his wife, lashing an arm around her middle and pressing her against the counter from behind.

  “What was that?” he rumbled into her ear. She smelled good today. She smelled good every day, but today there was something light and intoxicating about the fragrance on her neck. “New perfume?”

  “Yes, you bought it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “No, you’re welcome,” she breathed.

  “Magda, I’m going to need a moment with my wife.” He lowered his lips to Merina’s neck and she dropped the knife with a clatter, her hands gripping the edge of the counter. He closed his hands over her hips and squeezed.

  Merina rubbed her ass against his crotch.

  “Second thought, take the evening off,” he told Magda, not wanting to expose his housekeeper to more.

  “Just like your parents.” Magda tsked and pressed a button to start the dishwasher. “Good night.”

  That comment was one he chose to ignore.

  Once Magda was out of sight, Merina turned to face him and this time rubbed her front against his front. He wound his fingers around her ponytail and dragged the elastic from the strands, freeing her hair, enjoying the soft feel of every part of her and the easy attention she gave him.

  “Why is it”—he lowered his lips to hers—“that when you sass me, all I want to do is fuck you?”

  Her hands rose and spread over his chest, sending an answering heat flooding his veins. Because Merina liked sex, because she’d initiated it, and because she’d made it a point to show her enjoyment, he didn’t have to mince his words. He could tell her what he wanted, and she would respond.

  She brushed her lips against his, but instead of kissing him, whispered, “What did Magda mean we’re like your parents?” Then she grinned, knowing his balls were aching. She lifted herself to sit on the counter. “Tell me. I want to know.”