EXES - A Second Chance Billionaire Romance Novel

by Aria Hawthorne

  That explains a lot because I tend to date a lot of jerks.

  Well, okay then…one more thing to get out in the open from the start: no dating this jerk.

  Deal—because I much prefer our current arrangement.

  Sexting without regrets? He teased her.

  Definitely without regrets, she confirmed. And…

  Harvey’s phone abruptly fell silent. He watched and waited, then exhaled in exhilaration when she completed her text.

  …without limitations. So tell me…how far down are your pants unzipped?

  He’d been stroking himself the whole time, but he wasn’t going to confess it.

  Tell me first about how wet you are…now, after your bath. And whether or not you’ll let me onto the bed to help keep you that way.

  There was hardly a beat before she answered him. I would prefer that you kneel…

  Harvey relaxed and smiled. He knew exactly where she wanted him to take it and he was more than willing to oblige. He texted her back with sly calculation. He knew she liked it when he took it slow—descriptive and sensual, occasionally dirty but never disrespectful. Within moments, he was at the foot of the bed, slipping his hands beneath her bare luscious ass and running his lips over the tender curve of her waist. As in their past sessions, he took full control, parting her knees, spreading her thighs, and dismissing her insincere protests that maybe they should stop before they took it too far.

  Too far? Unlike revealing the details of their personal lives, there were never any lines drawn or rules made regarding their sexting affair; there was only an understanding of what they had done thus far and what they hadn’t. If she had texted him to stop, he would have. But she never did, and tonight was no different. Instead, she told him that there was a draft in the room and she needed to feel his hot breath between her legs. He told her to prepare herself because she was going to feel a lot more than just his hot breath.

  Yes, she was definitely granting him a gift—the gift of pleasuring her fully and completely in a way that he hadn’t before. He wanted to honor that gift; he wanted to make her quiver and moan and come without accepting anything from her in return. He would climax on his own, just by imagining her on the bed, exposed and butterflied open, offering her glistening sweetness to him while she writhed and groaned from the invading intimacy of his every lustful stroke. But it was rare for him to find a woman who made him want to please her more than himself. That was her effect on him. It wasn’t just about the sex for him. It was about their mysterious bond and the trust that seemed to be growing between them.

  It was an intimacy that had been absent in his life. A trust and understanding, that even he—Harvey-fucking-Zale—needed in his life. And right now, she was the only one capable of fulfilling it.

  Chapter Two

  “I cannot believe you did that!” Alma shrieked.

  “What’s the big deal?” Alma’s younger sister, Conchita, dismissively waved her hand from the other side of the diner booth. “You’re freaking out like I just borrowed a pair of your favorite shoes without asking and stretched them out with my monstrous size ten feet.”

  “Borrowing my shoes without asking is totally forgivable,” Alma replied.

  Conchita fluttered her fake eyelashes. She wasn’t so certain.

  “But—” Alma insisted “—posting my profile onto VenusDatesMars.com without my permission? That’s an unforgivable invasion of my privacy.”

  “How can it be a bad thing when you’re being courted by a stud like this?” Conchita flashed her phone’s screen at Alma who scanned the image of a bare chested man in tighty-whities, sprawled across a red velvet bed.

  Alma read aloud his profile name in horror. “KardashianButtLover82? Ohmygod, Conchita. What have you done?” Pulling her turtleneck sweater up past her nose, Alma shrank lower into the booth.

  “I’ve found you a man.” Conchita purred with interest, flicking her long black hair over her low-cut cotton candy pink mohair sweater. “And one who loves big butts is definitely top of my list.” Her long fake fingernails, studded with gold beads, swiped the screen through all the details. “Oh là là. Look at this close-up. Come here now, ButtLover, and help me scratch my kitty itch. Meow.”

  “Ugh!” Alma groaned and covered her ears. “Forget borrowing my favorite pair of shoes. It’s like borrowing my only lingerie set and returning it—unwashed.”

  Her sister grimaced. Alma frowned. Then, they both simultaneously shivered, realizing that…no, nothing could possibly be that bad.

  Conchita reprimanded her with a tsk. “Don’t even joke about that. Lingerie is sacred. Silly fake social media profiles are frivolous entertainment. And besides, you already have a profile on VenusDatesMars, so it’s not like I’m guilty of identity theft. I just wanted to…you know, spice you up a little bit. And trust me, Alma…the results are pretty darn panty melting. Prrrrr...”

  Conchita rolled her Rs and licked her frosted pink lips while shamelessly ogling KardashianButtLover82’s profile. “Come on, you’re a fine arts antique expert. Appraise this masterpiece of a man.” She flashed her phone again at Alma.

  Alma adjusted her red-framed glasses and skeptically eyed the photograph. “How do you know those photographs are even real? I mean…look at that? Is it even possible to have that many abdominal ribs?”

  Conchita twirled a strand of her hair. “Those aren’t ribs, they’re abs. It’s called a washboard stomach for a reason. And if you’re really lucky, he’ll let you soap them up and rub your dirty laundry up and down them.”

  Conchita shimmied in faux ecstasy as she imagined Suds Washboard standing there in front of her.

  Then their waiter appeared.

  “Can I get you ladies something to drink?” He flipped back a fresh page of his order pad.

  Conchita sighed and fanned herself with her phone, quickly diverting her attention off its screen and onto the hunky waiter. “Definitely something cold and icy.” She smiled brightly and batted her distracting fake eyelashes. “A chocolate milkshake, please. Extra chocolatey.”

  Alma knew that look. She had seen her sister display it a thousand times and get exactly what she wanted every single time.

  “With whipped cream?” The waiter asked.

  Conchita cracked her gum. “What do you think?”

  Alma rolled her eyes. From the waiter’s angle, she was fairly certain he could see down Conchita’s low-cut V-neck sweater—exactly how her sister liked to play it. Unfortunately, the waiter was clearly a student—easily college-aged, probably undergraduate. Cute with his blonde hair and athletic build, but way too young for her shamelessly flirtatious sister.

  “Milkshake. Extra chocolate. Extra whipped cream—on the house,” he said, flashing Conchita a sparkling smile. She smiled back, propping her elbows onto the table and squeezing together her cleavage while simultaneously trimming her waistline. Alma watched them undress each other with their eyes. Meanwhile, she tightened her turtleneck around her own neck, gagging as she strangled herself with a conspicuous cough.

  “And you?” The waiter finally said, turning away from Conchita with a faint exhale as if she had just given him a hand job.

  Alma was used to it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still bother her. Feeling insecure and undesirable, she took off her glasses and glanced through all the items on the menu.

  The waiter turned his attention back to Conchita. Over the rim of her menu, Alma barely made out the blurry images of her sister and the waiter easily trading smiles and small talk. A hot surge of blood rushed up through Alma’s cheeks. She wasn’t jealous that her sister was hitting on their waiter. That was just Conchita—her younger, sexier, spunkier sibling who could get away with anything and routinely did. There was no stopping her. But that didn’t mean Alma wasn’t frustrated at herself for wishing—in even the smallest of ways—that it could be her.

  “I’ll just have the same thing,” Alma awkwardly answered, realizing she was helplessly blind without her glasse
s and equally ridiculous for caring what an underage boy-band-wannabe student waiter thought about her appearance.

  When the waiter finally left, Conchita rotated her phone’s screen back to Alma who replaced her glasses and tried to visualize KardashianButtLover82 as a date. She failed. “You do realize it’s supposed to be me going on these dates and not you?”

  Conchita sighed through her nose ring. “Yes…painfully aware of it, actually. I do love Mario and our sex life is amazing, but I had no idea creating an online dating profile for you was going to bring home so much hot succulent bacon.”

  Only Conchita could so flippantly reveal how amazing her sex life was with Mario—her boyfriend of only two weeks—as if she was commenting on the weather or the color of Alma’s new eyeshadow shade. TMI was not in her sister’s lexicon.

  “Look at this one…” Conchita rotated the screen to Alma again.

  Alma narrowed her glare onto his profile name. “RomeroLuvsItSlow?”

  “Sizzle, sizzle,” Conchita sighed again.

  “So why are ButtLover and SlowPoke Romero even responding to my profile anyway?” Alma lifted her phone from her purse and scanned through the profile she had created for herself on VenusandMars.com. “0” responses glared back at her.

  “Because I lied.” Conchita shrugged. “Duh.”

  “You lied?” Alma echoed, frowning in disappointment, as if for a moment she thought her sister had the power to unlock some secret social media trap door of fun and frivolity that had always been hidden from her.

  Conchita passed her phone over to Alma who swiped through its screen until she arrived on her sister’s fabricated personal description of her. “Flight attendant who would love to climb beyond cruising altitude with just the right co-pilot. Loves hot tubs, back rubs, and naughty trips to the cockpit.” She stopped reading aloud. “Are you seriously kidding me?”

  Conchita shrugged again. “I thought about including, ‘bonus frequent flyer miles for smoothly taking off and landing—every time.’ But then I decided it was just easier to select the number of times you enjoy having sex as twice a day.”

  Alma covered her face with her hands, controlling her deep, visceral urge to scream. “Please tell me you did not do that.”

  “What? Is that too conservative?”

  Alma suddenly felt the need to retch. “If that’s what it takes these days to get a response from a man, I’m going to join a convent.”

  Conchita squinted through her spider eyelashes as if she was imagining Alma in a Catholic nun’s habit. “That’s actually a brilliant idea. I bet you’d get loads of requests from all sorts of guys thinking you were a virgin looking for your first true fu—.”

  Alma held up her hand. “Stop, please. Thank you for trying to help me, but no thank you. I love you, Conchita. But some days, I have no idea how we are even sisters.”

  “Oh, whatevah,” Conchita drawled like she had heard it all before and it was equally nauseating. “Don’t give me that crap because you’re right—I am your sister! So I know all your dirty secrets that you’d probably love to forget about, including the time you fucked Mateo Jones in the woods during half time at your junior prom.”

  Horrified, Alma corrected. “Third. Base. Only!”

  “And what about that time you dirty-talked Xavier Costello into his first orgasm. Remember? We still had landlines back then, and I eavesdropped on the entire conversation from the phone in Mama’s bedroom.”

  Alma gave her sister the evil eye. “I always knew there was someone else on the phone.”

  Conchita tittered with delight. “How do you think I learned so much about sex by the time I was thirteen? I learned it from watching you!” she dramatically cried out, reciting the infamous line from the public service announcement.

  “That was high school,” Alma replied, crossing her arms, pleading no contest. “Who isn’t boy crazy in high school? I’m in my thirties now. Things are harder and men are—”

  “The same little boys with bigger penises?” Conchita interjected, swiping through her screen. “The point is…don’t try to play me like I’m one of your uppity University of Chicago friends or one of your fancy antique clients. Yes, I am your sex-crazed sister who also happens to know you. The real you. And underneath those baggy worn-out overalls and ‘Oh-dear-I-could-never-do-that’ façade is a sex goddess waiting to be unleashed on the right man with enough stamina and cojones to handle it. So yes…God and Mama forgive me because I do, in fact, think you deserve to be boinked twice a day like a virgin nun by AngelisyourDevil45.”

  Conchita flashed her phone at Alma, revealing the photo of a handsome Latino man wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, and chaps, straddling a mechanical bull.

  Deferring to her sister’s points, Alma fell silent. It was all true—well, at least, partially—she just didn’t feel like admitting it. Instead, she adjusted her glasses and twirled her ponytail. “I’m not like you, Conchita. I can’t date that kind of man and you know it.”

  Sighing in resignation, Conchita laid her phone onto the table. She did know it, but they had finally arrived to the heart of the problem.

  “Then what kind of a man can you date, Alma?”

  “Someone who’s willing to take the time to get to know me before I have to ride him like a mechanical bull.”

  “But that’s the whole point of dating. It’s not death-do-us-part. It’s just supposed to be casual and fun. You are supposed to ride him like a mechanical bull before you have a chance to find out how bad his feet smell or before he figures out how bitchy you can be before your morning coffee.”

  Ugh, Alma sighed. It was going to be harder than she thought…this dating thing.

  “Look, nobody wants the truth when they’re first dating,” Conchita continued. “They want the fantasy. The roses, the courtship, the romance, the sexy times. These big ideals of yours—truth, honor, true love, soulful intimacy—sure…those things are great, but they’re the kind of things you want in a marriage, not in a first date fling.”

  “I just got out of a marriage, Conchita. I’m definitely not interested in getting into another one.” Alma tried to sound convincing, but both she and her sister heard the waver in her voice. Somehow, she thought if she said it aloud, it would ring true.

  But the truth was Alma had never engaged in anything frivolous, and they both knew it. Everything in her life was a conscious choice—a result of careful planning and thoughtful deliberation. Even her recently failed marriage had started as a relationship in college, which she naively expected to last her entire life because she had fallen in love with someone who had come to know her better than she had ever known herself.

  “I guess I just like to pretend that there’s still a chance to meet someone the old-fashioned way.”

  “Which means what?” Conchita pushed back.

  “Oh, come on, you know,” Alma replied, exasperated. “We meet by chance in the park. He’s playing Frisbee. I’m walking my dog.”

  “You don’t have a dog, Alma.”

  “Okay, then…I’m just going for a long walk, just to think.”

  “That, I’ll buy.”

  “Okay, good. Now, we see each other, and there’s a connection, you know? But I can’t explain it, except that it’s just something…special.”

  “In the park?” Conchita raised a manicured eyebrow. “And you’re feeling woozy and seeing stars because you think he’s ‘the one’ and it’s not because he had bad aim and hit you in the head with his Frisbee or something?”

  “It doesn’t have to be the park. It could be anywhere. On the bus, or in the grocery store while both of us are picking out our produce.”

  “Oooh, okay…is he squeezing the mangos a little harder than he should?”

  “Come on, Conchita. Work with me here. I just mean…is it so wrong to want to meet someone based on that spark or soulful connection that only he and I feel and crave and understand?”

  “It’s not wrong at all,” Conchita conceded. “I just thi
nk we’re talking about the same thing by two different names. You’re calling it romance. And I’m calling it romgasm.” She slurped up the last bit of her chocolate milkshake to emphasize how good it felt to indulge in something supremely gluttonous.

  In contrast, Alma glanced down at her barely touched milkshake, realizing she had lost her appetite. Acknowledging they had exhausted every angle of the conversation, her sister changed the topic to their routine family gossip.

  “So what’s happening today at the shop with Papi?”

  “Nothing much. He’s re-organizing the basement and I’m spending most of the day restoring an antique Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass window.”

  Conchita flopped her head forward and snored. “Zzzzzzzzzz…”

  Alma rolled her eyes, ignoring her. She knew it wasn’t worth discussing the details of her job with Conchita, who never understood why anyone would pay good money for something preowned and made by dead people.

  “Really, how do you expect to find a date working in that tiny little shop with Papi?” Conchita said, returning to the original topic like a dog with a bone.

  “I guess maybe I don’t expect ever to fall in love again.”

  “Exactly…which is why you need someone like me helping you out.”

  Abruptly, Alma’s phone pinged with a message. She peered down to read it.

  I can’t stop thinking about last night…

  Alma’s cheeks flushed. She pulled away the sweater from her neck, seeking cool air to soothe her burning skin.

  “Because you know if I don’t get involved in your love life,” Conchita continued, “you’re going to end up a brittle sexless old maid with only a bunch of dusty antique vibrators to help keep you company at night.”

  And I can’t stop thinking about you until I know when I’ll have a chance to do it to you again…

  Slowly tuning out her sister, Alma crossed her legs, quelling the tingle rising up between them. It was her one dirty secret that she hadn’t confessed to anyone—not even Conchita. She was actually engaged in a sexual relationship, just not a conventional one, or one with a man who she even knew at all. But that was the irony of her secret. No one would have believed her if she told them she was sexting with a complete stranger. In fact, she almost couldn’t believe it herself until he texted her, just like that, suddenly expecting her to resume the role of his forbidden mistress.