Billionaires Dollar Series

“I can,” he says, pressing a kiss to my skin. “And I was prepared to stay here for a lot longer than that.”

“Did you mean what you said?” My question escapes before I can think it through. “While you were…”

His smile turns into something wholly masculine, pride and animalism combined. “Yes. Hell, yes.”

“Good God.”

He climbs up my body and I tug at his clothes, because how is he still clothed, and he laughs at my eagerness. It makes me even more eager-that he’s here in bed with me and laughing with eyes that are lighter than I’ve ever seen.

He’s so big, sprawled on my bed. The body of a fighter rather than a polished CEO. The animalism that always exudes from him, the one that’s given him an edge in business, is graceful here.

I run a hand over his back and he turns, pulling me close, his hands ghosting over my skin. I lift my leg but he just slides his own under.

Reaching down, I grasp his hardness in my hand. It’s still impressive, rock hard and velvety and impossibly girthy. It makes sense, I suppose. He’s a larger-than-usual man. Why wouldn’t that be reflected here?

“You’re sore.” He speaks through gritted teeth. “We don’t need to practice every time, Blair.”

“I want to,” I murmur back. “Don’t you?”

His laughter rumbles through his chest and into me, and as I stroke, he twitches in my hand. “What a question.”

“We can go slow.” My lips find his neck, and then I’m twisting, trying to get my leg over his hip so that we’re better aligned.

Nick presses me close and flattens his hands against my back. The words he murmurs against my hair are half-muffled. “Women never want me to be gentle.”

I frown, even as I pull him closer. What kind of women has he been with before? Riley, for one, who I’d seen today. The women I’d once generalized as only wanting his money. Perhaps they wanted his reputation, too. The idea of him-the vulture, the business tycoon, the man who destroyed businesses on a whim-didn’t go hand in hand with soft sex.

His hands trace my spine with a tenderness that makes me want to break. “You can be gentle with me,” I murmur.

And he is. He flips me over softly, settling between my legs, kissing my lips, my cheek, my neck. Reaching down, he guides himself in slowly, letting my body adjust to the size of him again.

Both of us release the breaths we’d been holding when he’s finally buried completely. His hands reach for my thighs, hooking them around his elbows, thrusting slowly. And when it’s too much, he comes down on his elbows, his face against my neck.

It’s deep and slow and sensual, and when he breaks apart, I wrap my legs around him as well as my arms. Not going to let you go, I think. Not ever. Not now.

I doubt I could.

If we’re still communicating with our bodies, his is saying the same thing. It comforts me more than any of his words ever could.

When he rises up on his arms and pulls out of me with a soft wince, he doesn’t disappear, either. He lies right next to me and pulls me into his side.

We don’t speak for a long time, his hands tracing lazy patterns on my back. I rest my hand on his chest and enjoying the feeling of his hair through my fingers.

“You know,” he says finally, “every woman asks about the scars on my palm. Every one. And I always tell them.”

It takes effort to make my voice light, but I manage. “You didn’t tell me when I asked earlier.”

“No, I didn’t. You’re the first woman I didn’t use them with.”

“Use them?”

He sighs. “I got them when I was seventeen, and an absolute idiot. It was the last really bad fight I got into. I’d been asking for it, too, and antagonized the wrong guy. He pushed me through a window. I landed badly and had to brace myself on broken glass. Had to get stitches in both palms.”

It’s more than he’s ever told me about his past. “That sounds painful,” I say carefully.

“It was, a bit. My pride hurt more. I got a sound ass-kicking.” He chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “And when women ask about it, well, I usually leave that part out. I just say that it’s from fighting. And then…”

He doesn’t need to continue. I understand-I can see the vision clear enough. They come to him seeking one thing, only knowing one thing about him, and he delivers. He gives them the narrative. Scarred palms, intense demeanor, rough sex. No relationships and no strings attached.

For a moment, I waver between pain and pity. I settle somewhere in the middle, reaching out to grasp his hand in mine. “And they don’t want you to be gentle.”

And perhaps there’s more we don’t say. They don’t actually want me, he might add, were he a more talkative man. They want the fiction. I might have asked more, if I had been braver. But for now, this is enough.

I rise up on my elbow and trace a finger along his brow, down across a nose I now realize must have been broken at some point, over his lips and the rough cut of his jaw. “You said earlier that you stayed away from me out of self-preservation.”

“I did,” he says.

“I can’t promise I won’t hurt you, either. No one has that power. But… I don’t want to. I don’t want to come between you and Cole. I don’t want anything we do to affect your business.” My words run out, my mouth widening into a smile. “All I can say is that the time when you were my biggest source of irritation is long, long gone.”

“Funny, that,” he says, pulling me closer. “You’re not so irritating anymore, either.”

“No?”

“No.” He kisses my still-smiling lips, silencing any further comment. I don’t mind. Kissing is far preferable.

And for the first time, he spends the night.

Blair’s hair takes up the better half of her pillow. In the low sunlight streaming in through her window, it’s gold over white cotton, gleaming. One bare shoulder peeks out from underneath the cover. Despite the lateness of the season, her skin still carries the summer’s tan.

She’s breathtaking.

I turn my gaze away from her sleeping form to the overflowing walk-in-closet. The cacophony of colors and fabrics and sequins feels like an apt description of Blair herself. Overflowing with ideas and sparkle.

I run a hand through my hair. Spending the night at a woman’s place. When had that happened last? I honestly can’t recall-and this hadn’t even been a conscious decision. I must have drifted off and then slept like the dead. It should leave me well-rested, but the idea is unsettling.Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

I feel disarmed.

Pushing back the covers, I walk out of her bedroom and into the colorful living room beyond.

Coffee. Phone. Focus.

I find a coffee machine in the kitchen and my phone in the pocket of my discarded jacket. There’s a text waiting for me from Cole.

I push the phone away without looking at what he’s written. The coffee washes some of the guilt away, but not all, the taste bitter and acidic.

He would not react well to this. The knowledge feels as obvious to me as my own name, as clear as the scars in my palm. Being with Blair would irrevocably change our friendship. Even if he grows to accept it-by some miracle of God-I’d always be the friend who went behind his back. Who didn’t tell him straight up.

And if Blair ever had to choose between her brother and me…