Found (Bad Boys with Billions Book 2)

by Laura Marie Altom

  In Liam, I knew she’d found that and more, and the fact was killing me.

  Seating for the hundred or so guests was an assortment of gold-toned sofas, love seats and chairs that had no business being on a beach, but somehow seemed as perfect as the rest of everything Carol—Liam’s longtime assistant—and a pricey wedding planner had thrown together.

  I saw her now—Carol—standing on the opposite side of the aisle from me.

  Her pale blue eyes shone with unshed tears. The barely-there breeze stole strands from her elegant blond updo, streaming them like golden seaweed across her mouth, but she stood stone still, as though if she froze, maybe time would, too, and this wedding wouldn’t happen.

  She used to have a thing for Liam the way I did for Ella.

  Judging by her solemn expression, the way her full lips turned slightly down at the corners, I guessed she pretty much felt the same as I did—that this whole event sucked balls.

  The happy couple now delivered personally written, wholly heartfelt vows. Joy. I loved Ella. I should be thrilled for her, so why did I find myself gravitating toward Carol, then asking, “Want to get out of here?”

  For the longest time she remained motionless—a pale-skinned goddess whose gold-satin gown reflected the sun’s last gasp.

  “Carol?” The music swelled as if cued by Ella’s happy tears. How had Liam done it? Built riches so vast as to have his own wedding soundtrack?

  Carol finally looked at me. Her pain contradicted her beauty. Silent tears fell, polluting her cheeks with wavy black mascara trails. “Fuck me.”

  “No kidding, right? I’m happy for them, but for us, this whole thing seriously blows.”

  “Agreed—but I mean it, Nathan. Fuck me. Pound me so hard I forget tonight ever happened.”

  “Wait, what?” Gaze narrowed, I cocked my head. She didn’t flinch. “Oh shit, you’re serious.”

  She grabbed my hand, then dragged me down the shore, away from the wedding and toward the deserted house. After pressing the call button for the glass-fronted elevator that had been built into the Big Sur cliff, she shoved me against the nearest rock wall, slashing her lips across mine for a kiss far more brutal than erotic.

  But then I got into it, the whole anti-wedding, pissed-off spirit of the thing, and I returned her ugly kiss with bold strokes of my tongue. My dick roared, and I cupped my hand to her ass, tugging her against me. She was taller than Ella—a good five-foot-eleven with heels—and satisfactorily ground against my six-foot-two frame.

  The elevator signaled its arrival with a discreet ding.

  The doors opened and we plunged this shit show inside.

  Now, I took the lead, banging her against the car’s mirrored rear wall. I gave her neck a rough nuzzle before pounding the up button, then helping myself to the deep vee of her gown.

  She wore no bra and when I grazed her nipple, it hardened beneath my palm.

  I dragged my lips up her throat and along the tender underside of her chin.

  She groaned, grabbing for my fly, but the car lurched to a stop.

  When the doors swished open, we tumbled out onto the hardwood floor of what typically was a combo movie/game room temporarily being used for wedding gift storage.

  An ornate pool table with a red-felt top had been piled high with wrapped gifts.

  I released Carol long enough to shove them aside. A few plummeted to the floor. Judging by the muted jingle of broken glass or clanging metal, they didn’t fare well. Fucking oops.

  Right now, all that mattered was blocking pain with pleasure.

  I barely even knew this woman, but for my purposes, she’d more than do. By way of returning her favor, I’d give her a fuck she wouldn’t soon forget.

  My hands on her hips, I hefted her onto the space I’d just cleared, then leaned her back, all the while shoving her silky dress up her smooth calves and thighs. She has dancer legs, long and lean and rising for miles. She arched backward in an elegant tumble. Eyes closed, she was crying, and so I worked harder to stop her tears.

  Her glossy dress made it easy to glide her closer. She’d bent her legs, wedging the toes of crystal-covered stilettos against the pool table’s wall. But that was too easy for her, so I dragged her toward me until she gasped when her bare ass cheeks met the table’s cool wood frame.

  I knelt between her legs, resting the backs of her thighs on my shoulders while nipping her inner thighs.

  She raked her fingers deep into my hair and pulled.

  I punished her with a tongue-fuck that now made her cry for a whole ’nother reason.

  “Yes, yes . . .”

  Resting my hand on her waxed-smooth mound, I thumbed her clit.

  She came in about three seconds, so I did her again—this time, with my fingers so she was good and ready for the rest of the show. With her arching and bucking in answer to my every thrust, I shoved her dress high enough to give me access to her navel. I kissed and sucked her belly until she tensed and was yet again pulling my hair.

  Then it was my turn.

  I stood, fumbled through my wallet for a condom, rolled it on, then had my hands back on her hips to drive this thing home. She held her arms over her head and gripped the pool table’s far wall. As she’d requested, I pounded her until neither of us could recall our own names, let alone those of the people who’d rejected us and found us wanting. I pounded her until for these few all-too-brief moments, the two of us were king and queen and no one else existed outside our fragile, angry world.

  Needing her closer, needing this to be about more than just sex, I eased my hands under her back, urging her upright to wrap her legs around my waist and arms around my neck. I buried my fingers in the silken fall of her hair, angling my lips atop hers for what I hoped she took as a more tender moment of thanks.

  She tasted delicious. Sweet—of champagne and maybe a stolen taste of frosting. I loved that possibility, that streak of rebellious defiance. Even though I had no definitive proof, from what little I knew about this woman who had faithfully served and concurrently, I suspected, loved Liam for nearly a decade, she might have performed one last act of protest by secretly defiling the happy couple’s cake.

  Our kisses took a curious turn toward desperation—as if the sheer act of dragging out our inevitable parting would somehow make the night yet to come okay. Of course, we both knew it wouldn’t. If healing broken hearts were that easy, there would be no more sad love songs or fleeting moments like the one Carol and I had just shared.

  The act we’d committed had been selfish and raw and all about one very specific thing— revenge. Only the joke was on us, because on the shoreline beneath this wondrous house, my Ella and Carol’s Liam had by now completed their vows. If they somehow learned of our mutual betrayals, the news would be nothing but an amusing side note to their otherwise flawless night.

  Plain and simple, Carol and I were on the most pathetic of all possible rebounds. Her past with Liam was ancient history, and mine with Ella was nonexistent save for a lone kiss I’d stolen and for which I’d subsequently been slapped.

  I hugged Carol, breathing her in. She smelled like orange blossoms—I knew, because when my mom was dying, I’d bought her a little orange tree. She’d loved it, but it died not long after her. Because of that, I usually shied from the scent, but on Carol, the lush sweetness laced with a crisp edge somehow seemed right.

  “What now?” I set her back on the table’s edge and pondered how to save face while performing the awkward business of disposing of a used condom with no tissue.

  She leaned backward, tearing a chunk of pearlescent white paper from the nearest gift.

  “Here.” She nodded toward my shrinking cock. “This might help.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” She arched her head back and sighed. “Think they’re done?”

  “With the vows?” I nodded.

  “It really was awful, wasn’t it?” She fluffed the ribbon atop the nearest gift. “I thought I was prepare
d, but there’s no manual for seeing the man you love marry another woman—don’t get me wrong. I like Ella—a lot. I just . . .” She glanced down at her dress, the way the fabric bunched around her waist and one of her breasts had sprung free. Laughing, she hopped down to cover herself. “Christ, would you look at me. I’m a hot mess. No wonder he wanted her over me.”

  “Knock it off. Liam being with Ella has way more to do with him than you.” I cupped my hand to her cheek, brushing the mascara trail with my thumb. “You’re smart and beautiful, and any guy would be lucky to have you.”

  “Things guys say when they want a Get Out of Jail Free card after an awkward fuck?”

  I kissed her. “Things I say when I’m sorry for taking advantage of a woman I never meant to screw, but am damn glad I did.”

  “Idiot. I took advantage of you.” Her laugh caught me as off guard as her original proposition. “Look, what’s done is done. No harm, no foul. We’re good. Let’s get cleaned up, get this god-awful night behind us, then be on our mutual merry ways, so we can spend the next fifty years pondering how to complete our lives without them.”

  I winced. “Think it’ll take that long?”

  She shrugged before turning for the bathroom at the end of a short hall.

  I stood with my dick out, staring at the view—or rather, the lack of one. The sun had long since set, and now, where the ocean had once been there was only my faint reflection superimposed on darkness. I worked myself back into my boxers, then closed up shop.

  I still tasted Carol—and craved more, only she was as far out of my league as Ella.

  Even if she hadn’t been, she deserved more than to be some guy’s rebound.

  She emerged from the bathroom, backlit by soft incandescent light. Her hair was once again upswept and her gown appropriately clinging to her curves.

  “You’re beautiful.” I gazed upon her reflection rather than directly at her.

  “Thank you.” Head bowed, she smoothed the front of her dress. “Lately, I’ve felt anything but pretty—especially inside. You know Ella’s pregnant, right? That’s why they had to fast-track the wedding.”

  Pregnant? I clamped my hand over my mouth.

  No. I hadn’t known. Now that I did, I wished myself back to when I hadn’t. Over the coming months, watching Ella’s belly swell with Liam’s child would be brutal. Up until this moment, I hadn’t realized how much I’d secretly wished her marriage to fail.

  “She didn’t tell you.” Carol’s radiant heat warmed my back as if she were a cold night’s bonfire. “I’m sorry—for both of us. But hey, at least now that we know any hope we might have had with them is well and truly gone, we can get on with our own lives, right?”

  “What life?” I clasped my hands over my forehead. “I stock grocery store shelves and take a few hours online at a community college. Yay, me.”

  “If you’d ask, Liam would give you a scholarship to any—”

  “Screw that. There’s no way in hell I’d ask him for a goddamned thing.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “I’ve gotta get out of here,” I said more to myself than her, already heading up the winding redwood staircase leading to the upper floor. The news about the baby wasn’t sitting well. I felt cold, hot, clammy-sick. I loved Ella, but now—once and for all—it was time to let her go. Only the real pisser was the fact that only in my imagination had she ever been mine.

  For Margaret Daley—master plotter and bestie for life!

  Thank you, thank you for holding my hand through all of my emergencies both big and small.

  Lost

  Found

  Need

  Want

  Photo: Brenda Horan

  LAURA MARIE ALTOM is the author of more than seventy books in three different genres. Now that her kids are grown, Laura spends her days writing and chasing after a menagerie of pets: a mini long-haired dachshund named Coco, a Yorkie named Chewie, a mutt named Yeti, and Domino—a black-and-white stealth cat she rarely sees. She’s happily married to her college sweetheart (go, Hogs!), and when night falls, Laura steals a few romantic moments for herself with her own hunky cover stud.

  www.lauramariealtom.com

  Found is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Possess by Laura Marie Altom

  Copyright © 2020 Found Second Edition by Laura Marie Altom

  Excerpt from The Escort by Laura Marie Altom copyright © 2014 by Laura Marie Altom

  Excerpt from Need by Laura Marie Altom copyright © 2020 by Laura Marie Altom

  All rights reserved.

  Second Printing Published in the United States by Fulton Court Press.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Need by Laura Marie Altom. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  www.lauramariealtom.com