The Billion Heir (Billionaire Book Club #1)

by Nikky Kaye

  “What?” I shook my head. My listening skills had faltered as soon as the towel hit the floor.

  “Luke, do I look like Julia Roberts?” She dropped the dress back on the bed. The sight of her body mesmerized me as she picked up the towel to blot her wet hair a bit. What was she saying? Julia Roberts?

  I frowned at the question. “No. You’re more like, uh, maybe that blonde chick from The Ring.” Shit, that movie had scared me when I was younger.

  “Then why are you going all pretty woman on me?”

  What the hell was she babbling about? I just got her a dress.

  “The dress isn’t the worst part!” she screeched. I must have said that out loud.

  What the fuck was she yelling about, then? Judging by the fury in her eyes, I must have said that out loud, as well. She muttered something under her breath as she pulled her other clothes back on—not the stupid expensive dress.

  “Wait, what are you doing? We’ve got a dinner thing. You promised to come.” It was bad enough I was supposed to go, but I’d be damned if I was going to suffer alone. “If you hate the dress, then I’m sorry.”

  She’d gotten as far as zipping up her professional-looking gray trousers before she sat on the edge of the bed. I got past the distraction of her tits to see her anguished expression. Her face was still red, but I didn’t think that the dampness on it was from shaking her wet hair around. Aw, shit. I’d made her cry.

  “Honey, I’m sorry. What the fuck did I do? Is it the dress?” Well, that was the last time I chose fancy clothes for a woman.

  She sighed, shaking her head. A bead or two of water trickled down her bare back from her hair. At any other time, I would chase them with my tongue. But now was not the right time, I was guessing.

  “Lucas, you are as dumb as a bag of rocks,” she announced. Yeah, definitely not the right time.

  I buttoned up my shirt with stiff fingers, holding my tongue. Usually I was a pretty easygoing guy, but every man had his limits. She hated the dress, was bailing on me for this fucking dinner, and now she called me stupid. I wasn’t sure what all I’d done to deserve this. There were a lot of names she could call me—god-like came to mind—but I wasn’t stupid.

  “Alexis, I don’t know what crawled up your ass—” I broke off as she held out her open handbag. “What?”

  “Did you put that there?” A handful of hundred dollar bills waved from the top.

  Shit, busted. “Well, okay, yeah…”

  A shiver wracked her shoulders. Maybe she was cold? I handed her the short-sleeved sweater I’d taken off her earlier, but it sat like a lump in her lap. Though her chest was heaving spectacularly with her breathing, she silently took out the money and dropped it on the bed beside the dress. Then she calmly zipped up her purse before hurling it straight at my head.

  “Ow! What the fuck?” It wasn’t a small purse, and it had corners. It clipped the side of my cheek as shock slowed my reaction time.

  “What? Leaving the money on the dresser was too clichéd for you?” she spat out.

  What was she harping on me about now? Leaving money on the dress—oh. Oh shit. Pretty Woman. The dress? The money I snuck into her purse? Motherfucker.

  “That’s not how I meant it.” I held up my hand. Yeah, that was a mistake. Generally speaking, it wasn’t a great idea to treat your girlfriend like a paid whore. I winced at myself.

  “Then how did you mean it?” she asked dully, staring at the floor.

  My hand still outstretched, I approached her like she was a feral animal. I didn’t think she’d sniff my fingers, but I also didn’t know if she’d bite them off. Besides, the only things within her reach to throw at me now were fucking heavy.

  Her hair was curling at the ends as it dried, like little swirls of butterscotch on the creamy sundae of her naked back. The flush in her cheeks was receding, but the pained look in her eyes made my heart just about snap in half.

  Sniff my fingers if you need to. It’s okay. I’m friendly, I swear!

  “I’m so sorry, honey. Honest to god, I didn’t mean to—” Relatively sure that I’d be able to keep all my body parts, I sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. “I just wanted to help.”

  She hunched her shoulders as she looked down at the floor. A tear ran off her nose and dotted her pants. Shit!

  “It’s my fault you lost those clients. I didn’t want you to, well, I dunno. I just wanted to take care of you.” It was such a no-brainer. She needed money. I had money. If only I’d had the ability to do that for my mother when she was sick.

  I flinched as Alexis Kincaid, former socialite and social media star, dissolved into a hot, sobbing mess. Somehow my life had turned into a goddamn reality show. I held out my hand to her, panicking a little at her tears.

  “Shit, honey, don’t cry! What should I do? I just wanted to help.”

  “I know you did. I’m sorry for being such a…” She sucked in a deep breath then let it out in a wobbling wave. “Bitch!”

  “You’re not!” Even if I thought so, even a bag of rocks knew to keep his mouth zipped on that score. I rubbed my neck. “I wasn’t trying to treat you like… that.”

  “I know. At least, I don’t think you were trying,” she said morosely.

  “Gee, thanks.” I grabbed the damp towel she’d thrown on the bed and handed it to her.

  She raised an eyebrow at me, sniffing again. “A towel? Really? I’m not crying that much, Luke.”

  “Closest option.” I dared to take her hand in mine, trying not to grimace when she blew her nose into the white bath towel with the other.

  She looked at my hand locked in hers then up at my face, and her eyes swam again. Ah, shit.

  “Tell me what to do here, Lex. I’m not comfortable around money; you know that. I’m still learning how to deal with all this shit. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, polite or bullshit. You’re the one who’s been teaching me that.”

  “I guess I’m doing a bang up job.” She rolled her red, swollen eyes.

  “Hey, I may be a yokel, but I’m not stupid—or dumb as a bag of rocks.”

  She blushed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I’m an insensitive horse’s ass, but not an idiot. It was a mistake, and I’m really goddamn sorry that it came across that way. But, uh…” How did I put this nicely? “You kinda got a hair trigger there, honey.” I hadn’t checked the mirror yet for damage from her projectile purse, but the top of my ear stung a little. She’d overreacted, in my opinion.

  Her chin wrinkled as she chewed on her lip. I waited. And waited. Tried not to stare at her naked torso. I was more successful with the waiting.

  “I don’t have money anymore, Luke.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to, of course. But I’ve been the ‘poor little rich girl.’ I don’t want to be anyone’s charity case again. I work hard.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I know that’s not what you meant. And maybe, just maybe, I’m a little bit oversensitive about it.” She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder. “You know that’s what Michael Cohen did? The year everything… happened, he sent me a Christmas card with a check in it—like I was his token good deed of the season.”

  She tried to laugh it off, but it wasn’t hard to imagine her younger self’s bitter humiliation. I’d been there, myself, trying to get help from Chuck the Sperm Donor for my mother’s hospital bills. What was worse? I wondered. Accepting the handout, or having to beg for it?

  “He’s not such a bad guy, even if he is an attorney.” I wasn’t trying to defend the dude, but I wanted to believe he wasn’t a complete douchebag—especially since he was holding my man-purse strings. “His heart was probably in the right place.”

  “Well, his guilt was, anyhow.”

  “You survived, right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.” Her soft exhalation told me the rest—that it was hard, humiliating and probably still in progress.

  E
ven though only her side was pressed up against me—and pretty soon I was going to have to insist on her putting a top on—I ached to surround her entirely. I wanted to protect her, take care of her, help her the way she’d helped me. Okay, maybe not exactly the same way, but whatever way I could.

  If only she’d let me.

  Sexy Lexi Kink-ade, however, had a bee in her bonnet about looking like a spoiled diva again. If I tried to help her out, her kneejerk reaction might be to knee this particular jerk in the balls. Neither of us wanted that, especially me.

  I gingerly put my arm around her and squeezed. It was a friendly hug, a comforting and compassionate one. It was not a “you know your nipples are pointing out right now?” kind of hug—mostly. When my fingertips touched her upper arm, though, she gasped and looked down. That was when she realized she was still half-naked.

  She shot off the bed like it was on fire, looking around for the sweater that had fallen from her lap to the floor. The floorshow was over. As she scurried around the room gathering her things, I wondered how we got here. I didn’t even know how I got there.

  At that moment I sat on a bed in a thousand dollar-a-night hotel room, wearing most of a tuxedo. A beautiful, tearstained, half-naked woman hopped around in front of me. On the bed was a dress—which I’d bought via a fucking text message, no less—that was worth more than my first car, and the sheets were still rumpled and smelling like sex. And in a week I was supposed to stand in front of a board of strangers and accept an extraordinary legacy that I didn’t want.

  It was no wonder I was feeling dazed. I was living in a second-rate F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

  Goddamn.

  Crazier than any of that, I’d fallen punch-drunk in love with the scandal-surviving C-list celebrity trying to wrestle her bra back on three feet away from me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lexi

  Something was different the next day, and not just because I’d dreamt about that dress all night after leaving Luke’s hotel. That itself was a change from dreaming just about Luke, as I’d been doing for weeks. When I woke up in the night and rolled over in bed to find a cool spot on my pillow, I jolted awake with surprise that he wasn’t there beside me. Weird.

  What was stranger was that he was wearing the dress in my dream, and it fit him perfectly. It wasn’t hard to find the cool spot on my pillow, or on the rest of my bed, because I was completely alone. Had I been spending so much time with Luke that it felt odd to sleep alone, now? The possibility was distracting, but it bothered me more that it didn’t bother me more.

  I found myself sitting up in bed with my laptop until noon, looking for job leads. Well, to be brutally honest I was mostly wasting time on social media, and pretending it was work. I sat up a little straighter when I got a notification that Luke had been tagged in a post, forgetting at first that we set up his accounts for me to administer them for the time being.

  Automatically, I clicked through to see a picture of Luke standing beside his cunning cousin Frederick at the dinner I’d bailed on. I examined the photo, realizing with a start that it looked totally normal. He didn’t look out of place. He’d perfected a socially appropriate smile, one that was gracious but didn’t meet his eyes.

  It was more evidence that my “optimization” of him had been successful, but it rubbed me the wrong way. There was nothing extraordinary about him in the picture at all—which surprised me, considering how extraordinary the man was.

  Lucas Knox had been right about me when I first met him. I took an awful lot of things for granted and made assumptions about people, even now. How much had I really changed since my father shot himself? In some ways I was clinging to a ‘poor little rich girl’ identity.

  Letting out a grunt of self-loathing, I shoved my computer off my lap and onto the bed. I scooted down under the covers, imagining Luke beside me. On me. In me. My body warmed with illicit muscle memory and idle fantasies. When I pressed my lips together, I recalled the pressure of his mouth devouring mine. When I wrapped my arms around myself, it was nowhere near as strong and comforting as his embrace.

  I stiffened with the realization that Luke had been the one pushing me out of my comfort zone instead of the other way around. Sure, I took him to the Met and the Billionaire Book Club and paraded him around town, but he was the one who actually learned from the experiences. He was the one who could talk to anyone, from the doorman to the donors. What made me think I was the end-all, be-all expert on society? I had shown nothing but contempt for it at the same time as angling to be included.

  I snuggled in my bed as the sun moved over the sky. Spending an entire day hiding in bed was something I hadn’t done in years. It was like self-medicating with blankets, despite the guilt eating away at me for not being a contributing member of society for a day.

  I’d just about fallen into a lazy nap when my door buzzer went off. I scowled, deciding it wasn’t worth getting out of bed at four in the afternoon for—until it buzzed again, and again. It was Luke. My annoyance soon turned to nervous anticipation as I told him to come up.

  “Hi.” His smile was contagious.

  “Hi,” I said shyly, ushering him in.

  He did a double take at the old t-shirt and boxer shorts I was wearing. “Were you sleeping?”

  “Kind of. So, what have you been doing all day, Mister Knox?”

  His silent shrug could have meant anything. Had he slept in then jerked off in the shower? Had he looked at apartments, gone shopping, met with Cohen, wandered aimlessly through the city? Any and all of those were possible, but for once I hadn’t been at his side.

  As he surveyed my shoebox of an apartment, I realized that this was the first time he’d been in it. My studio was small, even by Manhattan standards, but it felt microscopic with him in it. Just his presence filled the space before he walked in the door. I mostly used my bed as a couch, so I wasn’t trying to be seductive when I sat on it and beckoned him over.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said as he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over a wooden chair tucked into a postage stamp-sized table. His plain black t-shirt, jeans and boots reminded me of our first meeting.

  “Me too. You were right—I totally overreacted.” Had I really thrown my purse at him? Oh god! I covered my heated face with my hands.

  The bed bounced as he sat down beside me. Gently he pried my fingers away from my eyes, turning my chin so he could look in them. “Lex, I just wanted to take care of you. I’m not going to apologize for that.”

  I threaded my fingers through his, bringing them to my lips to kiss. He was so… Luke. He was just telling it like it was. No filter, no agenda—just the honest truth. Having immersed myself in social media as a profession, forthrightness and transparency was not something I was used to anymore.

  “I appreciate that,” I managed to get out. “But do you understand why it’s hard for me? To let someone take care of me?”

  He nodded slowly. “Let me ask you something. Do you think money is the only way to take care of somebody?”

  “No, I—” I broke off.

  Shit, maybe I did think that. I’d grown up with only money providing comfort. My father had been too busy, and the housekeeper had been paid to take care of me, really. As epiphanies go, it wasn’t very reassuring.

  I tilted my head at Luke. He hadn’t had a lot of money growing up, but his mother took care of him. How? While I puzzled through this emotional conundrum, he kissed my fingertips.

  “We all have human needs,” he said after nipping the fleshy part of my hand below my thumb. “Food, water, shelter, sleep. But those are just the basics.”

  He drew a line up my forefinger with his tongue before sucking the tip of it into his mouth. “Then there are things that we don’t realize we need, like security.”

  I took a shaky breath in. He was right about that one—I hadn’t realized how much I needed it until I lost it. My heart slammed against my ribcage as he moved down the list and to the next finger.<
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  “Friendship, self-esteem, stuff like that is all more important than we think.” He looked up at me, his eyes darkening to the color of his jeans. He held my hand in his, curling all my fingers down until just my middle finger remained.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Luke?” I nodded at the “fuck you” gesture he was making with my own hand.

  He smirked in response. “Are you listening?” He took my fist and my finger and traced his own lips with it. “Most of us are lucky enough to have all that stuff. So what else do we need?”

  I shook my head. All my nerve endings were aflame, focusing on his soft lips on my fingers.

  “What do we—what do you need, Luke?”

  “That’s the two billion-dollar question, isn’t it?”

  A gasp escaped me as he took my finger deep into his mouth and sucked hard. He laved his tongue around me, too tenderly to be obscene but so, so, so hot. My insides clenched, a sharp spasm of arousal ripping through my core. He scraped his teeth along my knuckles as he withdrew my finger. Then he tapped my trembling finger against his own mouth, as though he was thinking hard.

  “You know what I want, Alexis? What I think you need?”

  I could only blink, afraid that anything I’d try to say would come out as a whimper. My hard nipples chafed against my soft t-shirt, and I was slowly soaking my sleep shorts. If I thought my apartment was tiny before, it was even smaller now that my whole world had been reduced to the size of my bed. I swallowed hard, managing to croak out, “What?”

  He let go of my hand, capturing me only with his gaze. “Love.”

  Now I whimpered.

  Pinned by his intense gaze, he took both my hands in his and leaned me back on the bed. “Let me take care of you, Lexi. Let me love you.”

  I didn’t know there were tears in my eyes until they rolled into my temples. Luke loomed over me, promising wordlessly to meet all my needs. And my neediness knew no limits when it came to him.