I Choose You (The Billionaire Brothers Series)

by Cole, S. Ann

  Like a moralistic grandfather, he’d carped about me showing off “too much skin”, and I’d obdurately refused to change. This was me; he’d either take it, or leave it.

  Reluctantly, he gave in but continued to cavil about it during the entire drive to the dock. Aptly dressed for a sunny day out on the sea, I wore white low-rider jeans shorts, a white bandeau top, and a blue-striped crop-jacket covering just an inch more than the bandeau top, showing off my platinum navel ring that glistened under the sun’s glare.

  Tilting back my head to look up at him from behind my oversize sunglasses as we walked along the dock with our fingers interlaced, I laughed at his peevish expression. “You said we were going sailing, right? What more clothes than this do I need?”

  “Krissan … ” he began in a disputatious tone, then shook his head and abandoned whatever argument he was going to put forward.

  He was rather difficult to read at times. In a nanosecond, he could slip from calm to serious to irascible — just like that, sans warning. We were just going sailing with his family, so I couldn’t understand what he was so miffed about. His brothers were both permanently taken, of that I was positive.

  I wriggled my fingers in his as a signal for him to stop walking and give me his attention. When he did, I smiled coyly and said, “Kiss me?”

  He watched me skeptically as if trying to figure out my motive. He was clad in a red T-shirt, white cargo shorts cropped mid-calf, a pair of white Gucci loafers with a killer red and navy design — which were dope as hell, by the way — and a red ball-cap folded and shoved part-way inside his back pocket. Instead of covering his eyes, his Ray Bans were on his head, holding back his indecisive dark hair from his face.

  Dressed this casual and youthful, he was damnably, deliciously hot. The man could put his shit together, had to give him that.

  When in his suit, behind his desk, in his master office, he owned a commanding, domineering, ruler-of-the-world look, but out of suit, he was nothing short of a hotshot heartthrob. Sometimes he was a suit, sometimes he was a rocker, and other times, such as now, he was a playboy.

  Answering my request, Trevillo grabbed me up and kissed me, and my hands automatically slid around his neck.

  Typical Trevillo style, he dragged out the kiss in a never-ending continuum of tongue-passion, and I had to tug my lips away from his, giggling, “I said kiss me, not maul me.” Though, there was something about being in his arms — up in his arms — that I loved.

  Cocking his head to the side, he studied me for a beat, then, “You’re doing something to me, you know … ”

  Head shaking with denial, I whispered, “Nope. I think it’s the other way around.”

  He allowed me to slide down his frontal and back on my own feet. He closed his eyes and, rubbing his forehead, he murmured, “I don’t think you understand, babe.”

  His hand shot out to grab my wrist, and he propelled us down the dock before I could utter another syllable.

  Being just a little past noon on a Saturday, the dock was a bit quiet, aside from the cooing of the wind and the lapping of the water against the sides of the yachts. Save for two dockers, there weren’t many people around, and I liked that. For all I knew, this was the Nelson family’s own dock.

  Soon, we were nearing a ginormous yacht, maybe the largest I’d ever seen, with the words Sweet Sins in bold black letters on the side.

  “Holy waow,” I muttered in wonder. “Is this yours?”

  “Nah. It’s Love’s — my little brother. Two hundred and twenty-two ft. You like?”

  Lifting the sunglasses from my eyes, I kept looking at the yacht as I answered, “Like? It’s freakin’ astounding.”

  Trevillo chuckled at my childlike admiration and tugged me farther down the dock. Pointing to the yacht next to it with the word Hopeless on the side, he apprised me, “That one’s mine. One hundred and seventy-five ft.” Moving on, he pointed to one beside his with the word Sadie on the side. “That’s Natalio’s — my other brother. Same length as mine.” Continuing down, he pointed to one next to it. “And that’s my father’s. One hundred and eighty-four ft.”

  So I was right earlier: the dock was for the Nelsons, seeing these were the largest boats here and all. Overwhelmed, I studied the line of luxury-on-water before me, feeling like an ant in front of a mountain. You ever know someone who’s filthy rich, and, you kind of don’t care, really, you don’t … but then you see something as astounding as a string of impressive gigantic yachts and you’re like ‘dang!’? Yeah, we can act as indifferent as we want to others’ wealth, but we can’t deny the fact when actually confronted with it, we get freaking awed.

  “So, basically the youngest in the family has the biggest … ” I mused.

  “The most money, too. Likes to show off. Fucker,” Trevillo said, chuckling. “We’re sailing on Sweet Sins today.”

  As we turned and headed back towards Sweet Sins, I asked, “Where are we sailing to?”

  “Nowhere specific.” He shrugged. “Just out on the sea and back. These assholes are much too happy for my liking. Forcing me to come sailing when I could be at home … fucking you. Hard … or fast … or slow … or however you’d beg for it. Wouldn’t matter to me, I just love being inside you.”

  He jumped off the dock straight onto the landing of the yacht to turn and hold out his arms so he could help me down. Once I was successfully there with him, I took off my sunglasses and looked up at him, eyes squinting. “Do you have to be so … so … sex?”

  Trevillo’s lips twitched at the corners, and I knew he was holding back from laughing at me again. “Sex is a noun, babe.”

  “I know that,” I whispered, maybe a bit too breathy. “But there’s no adjectives available to best describe you. You’re just so … sex.”

  Reaching out, he hooked two fingers into the front loops of shorts and tugged me forward, causing me to crash up against him. “You don’t like that I’m … sex?”

  Oh God.

  My breathing quickened, and my heart pounded at the sudden warmth of his hard body against mine. “No. I-I love it.”

  He leaned down, made a leonine lick of his tongue up my neck, and gruffly whispered, “Then quit fucking complaining.”

  Abruptly, he removed his fingers from my pants loops, grabbed my wrist, and propelled me into the boat, giving me no time to retort. Not that I would’ve been able to form a cognitive response, seeing I was all but melting against him and would’ve turned into a human puddle, had he kept up the tongue action.

  Trevillo led me through a narrow opening where we entered directly into a grand lounge area with beige club chairs, sofa sections, and tables. There was a group of people — the Nelsons — all chatting and laughing. Recognizing his brothers, Natalio and Lovello, I became somewhat nervous, seeing them, in the flesh, for the first time.

  “Here’s the asshole,” someone shouted. “A brother’s gotta beg your ass to come sailing with the fam, then wait a goddamn eternity for your arrival?”

  Uh oh, the tardiness was my fault, not Trev’s.

  “Don’t give me any shit, Natalio,” Trevillo grunted. “I’m here. Now shut the fuck up.”

  “No swearing today, Trev. I mean it,” warned the other brother, Lovello, who was sitting relaxed in a club chair with one foot propped up on the other. “Think I’m gonna start spiking your drinks with bleach. Filter.”

  Trevillo snorted. “Then why the fuck would you invite me when you already know I’m gonna fucking swear? Fuck. Fuck. Motherfuck.”

  “Jesus Christ!” his brother barked in exasperation, throwing up his hands.

  Trevillo made a taunting laugh. “Alright, little brother. I’ll try to tone it down.”

  “Gracias!”

  “You’re fucking welcome,” Trevillo acknowledged with a serious face, and everyone burst out laughing.

  “You like taunting your brother, don’t you, Devil Boy?” one of the women asked through her laughter.

  “What?” Trevillo asked ba
ck. “We’re on a yacht called Sweet Sins, for shit’s sake.”

  A dark-haired girl sitting on a sofa section beside a cleft-chinned man with his arm around her waist sneered at Trevillo. “I can’t imagine how you make it through those formal circles or break those big business deals with that mouth and attitude of yours. I can’t imagine how you make it anywhere with that mouth. Yet you appear on Hardy’s Top 40 Richest Men in the World? The only thing decent about you is your suit. Such an embarrassment to the family.”

  Trevillo cocked an eyebrow at her. “And I still can’t imagine how you find shoes to fit those size twenty feet of yours. It’s like fucking Big Foot trampling the goddamn forest here. The lions hear you coming and run, not roar.”

  The woman’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment and her toes curled in her sandals as she opened her mouth to counter, but Trevillo continued the taunt. “To make it on Hardy’s list, I’m pretty sure they go by the billions and not by the swear words.” He looked at her feet in mock disgust which were, in all veraciousness, freakishly big for a woman. “Seriously, how is it even possible that you can walk? Aren’t your big toes, like, heavy? And those crooked, hairy fingers — ”

  Natalio, barely containing his laughter, squeezed out, “Dammit, Trev. Leave your sister alone!”

  Like a recalcitrant child, he shot back, “She started it.”

  Still laughing and shaking his head, Natalio tried to change the subject and jerked his chin toward me. “Who’s this?”

  Trevillo peered down at me, then tossed his arm around my shoulders and yanked me into his side. With his free hand, he knocked his shades from the top of his head so that they fell in place over his eyes, causing his untamed hair to fall on his forehead. Ignoring his brother’s question, he began his introductions by pointing at each person: “This is Lovello, biggest hypocrite alive. Try to have a conversation with him, and you’ll walk away quoting the Bible verbatim.”

  There was a collective bout of laughter at that.

  “This is Natalio, biggest asshole alive. He’ll have his men chop your limbs off if you so much as mispronounce his name.”

  Natalio, tall and handsome with sapphire blue eyes and raven dark hair, gave his brother a death glare, but Trevillo ignored him and continued.

  “That pregnant witch over there is the hypocrite’s fiancée: Axia. Careful with her, she’s got teeth sharper than a shark’s.”

  Axia was stretched out on a beige L-shaped sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles, flipping through a fitness magazine. She wore tiny jeans shorts and a white tank top that stretched over her pregnant stomach with the words ‘Yes, I’m a bitch. HIS bitch’ emblazoned across her copious breasts. I knew her as the magnate Vince Blacksille’s incomparably beautiful daughter. But not in a soft way. Without even looking up from the magazine, she flicked up her middle finger in our direction.

  “That mermaid over there is Sadie, the asshole’s wife. She’s the best of the bunch. Have at her.”

  Wearing a cute, strapless, fuchsia-pink romper, Sadie was curled up in a club chair with a glass of red wine in her hand. She smiled sweetly at Trevillo’s kind words about her. I knew her to be a fashion designer who blew up out of nowhere. I even had quite a few of her pieces in my closet.

  “This snarky one right here is my sister, Princessa, and that double-chinned constipated looking fuck beside her — whose name I can never seem to remember — is her husband. I have no idea why either of them are even here. Seriously, they walk around with their heads so far up their asses, that when they talk, you smell their shit instead of hearing it.”

  “Screw you, Trev!” his sister venomously hissed.

  In a red bikini with a sarong around her waist, Princessa was lithe and slender with long dark hair and a graceful beauty — save for the hideous big feet. Her husband sitting beside her looked a bit snotty as he made a point of ignoring Trevillo’s jab at him.

  Then Trevillo looked down at me, and even though I couldn’t see the intensity in his eyes because of his shades, I could feel it. In a definitive tone, he told them, “Nelsons, this is Krissan … ” He leaned down and gave me a quick kiss, then turned his face in the general direction of his family. “Girlfriend.”

  Quiescence fell over the room for about sixty long, agonizing seconds. Everyone was staring at me, faces frozen, words unformed, while Trevillo hid behind those damn shades. Then I heard a faint cough, then a louder cough, then someone clearing their throat.

  Natalio was the first one to step to me with a smile, even though his eyebrow was arched in curiosity and his blue eyes twinkled with astonishment. “It’s … nice to meet you, Krissan.”

  I shook his hand and returned his smile. “Likewise.”

  That seemed to get everyone else to snap out of their stupefaction, as they each got up and came to hug me or shake my hand, telling me how nice it is to meet me.

  Everyone, that is, except Lovello, who just sat there in a club chair with a weird expression on his face. When the greetings were done, and everyone was looking at him, no doubt wondering why he was still sitting there without so much as a ‘Hi’, Lovello slowly shook his head, then leaned forward and dropped his forearms on his knees.

  “Hold up … Hold. Up … ” he dragged. “Am I the only one who thinks this moment is frickin’ EPIC?!!”

  Another long moment of silence.

  Then all at once, everyone burst out laughing, doubling over and nodding their heads in agreement. So much that even I started laughing. It seemed they were just taken by surprise because their brother had never dated a younger woman before. Note the word ‘dated’. Let alone introduce me as his ‘girlfriend’. Yep, I could understand the epical essence of the moment.

  Lovello, still laughing, got up and came to wrap his arms around me, effectively removing me from Trevillo’s hold. He lifted me off the ground in a spin. “More than a pleasure to meet you, Krissan,” he said, as he set me back on the ground. “You’re so small. Can I call you Tiny?”

  Grinning back at him, I nodded my consent. Meeting Lovello Nelson in the flesh was a ‘pleasure’. He was labeled the most beautiful man in San Francisco. Dear God, he was beautiful, with stunning slate-gray eyes and unkempt, inky-dark hair. So beautiful, it was just plain wrong. On so many levels. Women would give a kidney to get laid by the guy. But all of a sudden, at twenty-eight, he was off the market. Engaged and in love with a baby on the way. Now that was epic.

  Trevillo shoved his brother away from me and yanked me back to his side. “Keep your fucking hands off her, Love. I’m dead serious.”

  Lovello stared in disbelief at his brother. “Are you kidding me?” As if shocked to the core, he looked from side to side, then back to his brother. “Are. You. Kidding. Me?!”

  “Nope,” Trevillo answered, calmer than a granny on Valium. “Serious.”

  His brother stammered, seemingly lost for words. “I … you with Axia … me … and now? … What the fuck?”

  “Thought you said no swearing today, brother?” Turning his head to look down at me, he grinned wickedly. “See? Told you he’s the world’s biggest hypocrite.”

  Trevillo knew how to effectively push each of his siblings’ buttons. He was such an egregious hellion, I had to wonder why they even bothered inviting him anywhere with them. They must like being pissed-off.

  Lovello opened his mouth to retort, but stopped when his pregnant fiancée wrapped her arms around him from behind and peeped her head around to wink at Trevillo, commenting, “You’re being unfair, Trev.”

  Her fiancé shook his head again and peered down at her. “Can you even believe this asshole, beauts?”

  “I don’t give a shit what either of you have to say.” Pointing a threatening finger at Lovello, he spat, “If you think you’re gonna charm her in your corner like you did Sadie, then you have another think coming.”

  A smirk formed on Lovello’s lips as he ignored his brother’s words and shifted a pair of mischievous gray eyes to me. “Whenever you can pry f
ree from his imprisoning grasp, come find me. I have a video I would be delighted to show you. I promise, it has nothing to do with the Bible.”

  Shaking with discernible irritation, Trevillo turned to Natalio, and I could tell he was glowering. “I paid you to get rid of that video.”

  Natalio seemed nonplussed. “I did get rid of it, Trev, I swear.” Shifting his confused gaze to Lovello, he started to ask, “How — ”

  Lovello cut him off with an arrogant scoff. “I’m the only genius here, remember? When I asked you to send it to me and you refused, I hacked into your files and sent it to myself before you could get rid of it. That video is too ego-shattering and defaming to not have as a weapon against him.”

  Natalio looked back to Trevillo and shrugged. “Sucks having a hacker for a brother.”

  “Genius,” Lovello corrected.

  Tired of their bickering, I wanted to know, “What’s on the video?”

  As Lovello started to speak, Trevillo beat him it, disclosing, “Axia kicked my ass in arm wrestling.” To Lovello, he hissed, “No points for you, dickwad.” And I was half-expecting him to stick his tongue out.

  “Twice!” his brother quickly shot back, he just had to get his points. “My fiancée kicked your ass twice.”

  Before I could begin to question the veracity of a woman kicking his ass at arm wrestling, he stalked off from his brothers, his arm around my shoulders as he took me to a circular bar on the opposite end of the lounge area. “Don’t ask me about it,” he warned, then, “Drink?”

  “Recommend me something,” I told him, keeping my laugh repressed. Men and their stupid egos.

  Trevillo hoisted me up and settled me on a barstool. “Sit here and behave while I invent a drink just for you.”

  “Oh my God,” I groaned, “you have to stop doing that. Always lifting me from the ground.”

  “Nevah,” he grinned, as he rounded the counter and got to work in the bar. “It’s too much fun.”

  Elbows propped on the counter, I dropped my chin in my hands and dreamily watched Trevillo behind the bar, thinking he was, hands down, the hottest bartender I’d ever seen. Right there and then, I began entertaining inappropriate, wayward thoughts of him throwing me across the bar and undressing me and licking alcohol off my body and …