by Elise Faber
A grin tugged at his mouth. “So, no to shopping, yes to future mutual fashion shows, and no to the touristy spots. Where does that leave us?”
“Aren’t you going to ask what my fantasy is?”
Well, that was a really good point.
He rolled to his back, tugging her so she was sprawled across his chest. Her hair bounced forward, tickling his face. He tucked the strands behind her ears and laughed when they bounced right back.
“It’s impossible,” she said, leaning forward and shaking her head, tickling him again. “This crazy mop doesn’t cooperate, especially in the mornings.”
“I like your crazy hair,” he said, running his fingers through the strands.
“Maybe,” she said.
The blanket slid down from her shoulders to her waist, affording a very nice view of her braless state. Fuck, but his mouth watered to taste them again.
“So, are you gonna leave your guy hanging?” he asked, his voice a little rough.
“Hmm?” Her fingers trailed down his bare chest, and he had to force himself to focus, to not yank her tightly against him and kiss her senseless.
“Your fantasy,” he rasped when her fingertips teased the hem of his boxer briefs. “What is it?” Not the smoothest, but fuck, her breasts were in his face, her fingers were close to the motherland, and his cock was ready to break in half.
“Oh.” She leaned close, pressing her breasts to his chest, tilting her chin up so that she could whisper in his ear. “My fantasy is for you to strip me naked and then spend the entire day making love to me.”
He flipped their positions between one heartbeat and the next, her legs coming up to wrap around his hips.
“You sure?” Bas asked, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from hers.
“Yes, I’m sure. Please, Bas, stop worrying about me and all the shit that happened in the past. Let’s . . . not forget it exactly, because I don’t think that’s possible.” Her hands came to rest on his shoulders. “But can we stop making it the focus and center of everything and just move forward? If something hurts, I’ll tell you. If I don’t like something, I’ll tell you.” Her eyes locked with his. “And I hope to God you’ll promise to do the same.” She tilted her pelvis, pressing her pussy against the erection tenting his underwear. “But today—now—I’m healthy, I’m horny, and I need you inside me.”
“I love you,” he said. “You’re so deeply sewn into my being that I don’t think I could ever deny you anything.”
Rachel’s lips curved. “Those are dangerous words to tell a woman.” She tugged him down, mouths almost touching. “Also, I love you, so, so much.”
He kissed her, and then they spoke in touches and caresses, in strokes of their tongues, in nips of their teeth, in brushes of their fingers, rather than words. He stripped off her tank top, slipped off her pajama bottoms, and then traced every part of her with his lips, his fingers, his tongue.
Bas memorized every freckle and scar, teased the spot behind her ear that never failed to make her shiver. He kissed down her sides, gentle over those still-healing ribs, down over her hips . . . and in between.
She writhed against his mouth, groaned when he slipped a finger inside, but then she pushed him roughly away.
“Not now,” she gasped. “Not this time. I want you inside me, Bas. Please.”
As if he could deny her anything.
He reached for the nightstand and withdrew a condom then slipped it on and pushed aside.
Fuck.
That was—she was—he was beyond ready to blow and in seriously dangerous territory.
“Baby?”
Bas peeled back his lids then promptly had to grit his teeth. Rachel was flushed, her lips kiss-swollen, her brown eyes liquid chocolate. “You okay, sweetheart?”
“Can you move now?”
Fuck yes, he could move.
He laughed, but that quickly turned into a groan when she squeezed some internal muscle that had stars flashing behind his eyes.
But he moved, dammit. He moved until she bucked against him, until she screamed his name and exploded around him, until he lost his battle with control and called out her name.
Collapsing next to her, Bas rolled to his side and pulled her close. Both of them were panting and covered in sweat.
“I’m out of . . . shape,” she gasped.
“I have ideas how to fix that.”
She snuggled close. “I bet you do. But this is my fantasy.” She nipped at his jaw. “So, I’m giving you fifteen minutes to recover yourself, and then we’re going for another set.”
He pretended to consider that. “Workout instructor and disobedient student. I can work with that.”
Rachel smacked his chest, but she was smiling, and Bas found that this start to the day, just waking up next to the person he loved, joking around with her, smelling the floral scent of her shampoo, watching her eyes warm as she looked up at him when he was just being himself, not some version of Sebastian he’d thought he needed to be, but just her Bas . . .
Yeah, he wanted to be Rachel’s Bas more than anything else in his life.
More than a job.
More than any outside approval he’d thought he needed.
More than surpassing the ridiculous standards he’d set for himself.
He wanted this woman. Forever.
“I’m keeping you,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” She pushed him flat on his back and straddled his hips, then adopted a really horrible Arnold Schwarzenegger accent while flexing a bicep. “You’ve been a bad boy.”
“When does Arnold say that?” he asked, attempting to control his laughter.
“I’m improvising, okay?” She coughed, tried again. “I’ll be back? It’s not a tumor? Hasta la vista, baby?”
“Stop.” Bas shuddered. “I take back the workout instructor fantasy. Immediately.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” Rachel pouted then burst into giggles when he just raised a brow and stared at her. “Okay, fine,” she said. “It was horrible.” And she was so adorably perfect that he couldn’t resist kissing her all over again.
Love and laughter.
Yeah, he could build a life with that.
EPILOGUE
Bec
* * *
BEC CLOSED the file she’d been working on and stretched her arms above her head. Her shoulders ached, her eyes burned—she gone way over the thirty minutes her optometrist recommended—and she was the absolute last person left in the building.
Seriously.
Security had come by her office an hour before, telling her they’d locked up and the high-rise was empty.
Except for her.
She probably should have been lonely, being the singular human presence around, but Bec loved this time of night. It was after one, she’d been in the office since six the previous morning working on a case that was preparing for trial.
But fuck, did she love finding a legal loophole in a contract and then being the one to decisively close it.
Nothing was better than that.
Not being made partner several months before. Not having a slew of paralegals whose job it was to go line by line through all the paperwork pertinent to her cases and find loopholes like the one she’d just spent hours scouring for. Not the money or the power.
Those were all intoxicating in many ways.
But still, nothing topped the law itself.
The different interpretations, the way it morphed from based on a court’s or judge’s decision, how it changed from year to year to year.
It was a constantly shifting spider’s web—fragile and intricate and complex.
It made sense to her when so many other things in her world did not.
She logged off of her computer, grabbed a stack of files from her desk, shoved them into her briefcase, and then slipped on her suit jacket and black pumps.
Down the elevator, through the locked door to the garage, and into her car.
Quiet.
; So quiet.
She’d grown up in New York—or at least spent enough of her formative years in the Big Apple for her accent to reflect her time there—and felt more comfortable in big cities. San Francisco was a nice one, but it had a definite sleepy time . . . or at least the district that her office was located in did.
Normally, she liked that, preferred it over the way New York had always buzzed with activity.
But Bec had been . . . feeling weird as of late.
She was used to city life—the expensive rents, the exhaust fumes that hung in the air at all hours of the day, the horns and sirens and screeching brakes.
But this quiet . . . fuck, did it hit her straight in the gut.
Or maybe it wasn’t quiet so much as disquiet?
Bec was a simple woman. She didn’t censor herself, didn’t trouble over hurt feelings or someone’s toes being stepped on. She took care of business in the quickest, most efficient way possible.
That was Rebecca Darden. What she was famous for—at least in the legal world.
No prisoners. Decisive. Smart as hell and not a fucking pushover.
She’d spent a lifetime studying and working and losing sleep and clawing and fighting and struggling against the pressures of being in a male-dominated field to become that woman.
And yet . . .
“Fuck,” she muttered and turned on her car, making her way through the quieted city to her apartment. “I’m losing it.”
Because she couldn’t help but feel that now she’d finally met her goal of being partner, of being revered and feared and even sometimes reviled—all fine qualities in her opinion—that she was missing out on something.
There.
She’d said it.
She felt that somehow along the way of everything she’d missed something.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t figure out what the fuck that something was.
A bigger challenge?
Nope. She’d taken on a case with impossible odds and had just that evening figured out how to win it.
Longer hours?
Hell no. At this point, she was paying for an apartment she was hardly ever in.
More money? No. She had an obscene amount.
Better relationship with her parents? Things were fine at this point. Probably the most settled she’d ever been with them.
Different friends?
No fucking way. Her group of women and now a few men were the shit. They kept her sane and laughed at her jokes and were really incredible people.
She loved them and that was saying something, coming from her and her limited tolerance of bullshit. She didn’t like easy, let alone love easily.
And she loved every one of them.
So what?
That was the fucking problem. She didn’t know. Normally, she’d just turn that particular puzzle over in her mind until she figured it out, as she’d done with the contract that evening.
But she’d been turning this freaking enigma over in her mind for months and Bec was no closer to discovering the exact source of her unease.
“Boo fucking hoo,” she murmured, pulling into her parking spot and making it up to her floor via her private elevator.
The lift went directly to her penthouse—yes, the apartment she hardly spent any time in was a ridiculously expensive penthouse—and required a code to access it.
So Bec really didn’t expect to see another person waiting for her when the doors opened with a soft ding and she stepped off.
But there was another person waiting just outside her front door.
A person she never expected to see again.
Luke Pearson.
Her ex-husband.
It was one-fucking-thirty in the morning, and her ex-husband was sitting on the floor outside her apartment.
Asleep.
Fuming, she marched over to him and kicked his shoe. Hard.
“Luke. Why in the ever loving fuck are you here?”
His lids peeled back and sleepy green eyes met hers. “Becky,” he murmured. “You’re gorgeous as always.” The drowsiness began to fade from his expression. “Did you just come from work?” He glanced down at his phone. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Of course I know what time it is—” Bec bit back the words. Fuck, but wasn’t this conversation an exact replica of the broken record one they’d had way too many times over the course of their relationship?
She crossed her arms. “Never mind that.” A glare that had withered balls much bigger than Luke’s “Why did you break into my apartment?”
He stood. “First, I didn’t break into your apartment. This is the hall. Second,” he hurried to say when she opened her mouth to argue semantics, “I didn’t break in. You used our anniversary as the code.”
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Well, she was changing that tomorrow . . . today . . . fuck, yesterday, now that—
“Go away, Luke,” she said, pushing past him and unlocking her door while blocking his view of the keypad that was identical to that of the elevator. Her front door’s code was not the date of her anniversary with her ex.
But Luke probably already knew that, given that he had been sitting on the floor of her hallway rather than on her couch, beer in hand, feet making prints on her glass coffee table.
Men.
Fucking men.
She slammed the door closed behind her and threw the dead bolt. The knock approximately one second later did not surprise her. Bec dropped her briefcase to the floor then opened it just enough to shoot angry eyes at him through the narrow gap the dead bolt allowed.
Serious green eyes fixed onto hers. “We need to talk.”
“Luke,” she snapped. “I’m exhausted. It’s the middle of the night. I wouldn’t have any patience to talk to my best friends right now, let alone my ex-husband.”
“Funny story about that,” he said, his lips curving. “Turns out that I’m not actually your ex-husband.”
* * *
—BAD DIVORCE COMING JULY 7TH, 2019. Get your copy here.
Did you miss any of the other Billionaire’s Club books? Check out excerpts from the series below or find the full series here (My Book)
* * *
Bad Night Stand
Book One
(www.books2read.com/BadNightStand)
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
“IF YOU WERE A CHICKEN, you’d be impeccable.”
I swirled the sip of rum and Coke in my mouth in an effort to not spit it all over the bar.
Then I swallowed carefully and rotated my head so I could see my friend Seraphina on the next stool over. She was currently holding court over a group of men.
Beautiful, tall, thin, and with a pair of boobs that could knock a man out—quite literally, they had once knocked a man unconscious. Okay, well, the sight of her impressive cleavage had caused the man to do a double take and promptly run into a large and extremely hard brick pillar in this very bar, but the point was still there. Seraphina was goddess gorgeous, and she was my very best friend.
“Get it?” the man who’d elbowed his way to the front of the crowd surrounding Seraphina asked. “Im-peck-able.”
“She gets it,” I muttered. “It’s just so horribly im-peck-able that only an idiot like you would dare use it.”
Seraphina’s lips turned up at my caustic complaint.
“Hush, you,” she murmured before raising her voice to address the man. “Puns. I do have a certain . . . fondness for them.” Her reply started him talking, drowning on about different languages and double meanings. It might have almost been admirable, the sheer quantity of words orally puking all over our ears, if it wasn’t so sad and pathetic.
Whew.
I took another sip of my drink. A bigger one because . . . bitter much?
“I’m sorry,” Seraphina whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “I don’t know why this always happens.”
“You’re Barbie,” I said, bumping her arm with my shoulder. “It
’s not your fault.”
My friend had that elusive je ne sais quoi. Unspoken charisma that drew men to her like flies to honey.
And if I was being honest, sometimes that made it hard to be her friend.
I didn’t mind being in the background; I preferred it, actually. Given too much attention, I froze and inevitably made a fool out of myself.
But drawing a crowd of slavering men every time we went out made it difficult just to have a drink with my best friend, never mind a full meal.
“I’m sorry,” she said again when Bad-Pun was displaced and another man slid forward to attempt to claim Seraphina’s attention. “I honestly thought the jacket would help.”
I grimaced. “The jacket is what’s doing it, I think.”
A bomber made of black leather, it hit just beneath her breasts and managed to emphasize both the bounciness of that particular portion of her anatomy and the slimness of her waist.
“Next time, drinks at my place and takeout.”
I saluted her with my glass. “Agree completely.”
“Should we go?” she asked, tilting her head to the door.
“No.” I nodded at the Y-chromosomes dotting the space around her like flowers in a planter bed. “Prince Charming may be here.”
One blond brow rose. “I doubt it.”
“You’re the one looking for a happily ever after.” I nudged her shoulder with my own, knowing my friend was a romantic and, despite her beauty, also very lonely. It was hard for her to find someone who saw her as more than the sum of her parts.
And Seraphina was desperate to be more for someone.
“I’m not so sure happily ever after exists,” she said.
“Oh, it definitely exists,” I held her stare, willing her to believe.
Because happily ever after had to exist.
For some people.
Of the goddess variety.
Because if Seraphina couldn’t find it, then what chance in hell did I have?
Not that I was looking, thank you very much.
I was just fine with my laptop and my cozy socks and my books.
“Now get on finding that HEA,” I said, using the code word from our favorite genre of books—romance, of course. Because what the heck was life without fictional eight-packs and alpha males who actually cared about the women they slept with.
