by Anne Marsh
“Liam?” My naked sleepover buddy shifts in my arms—why am I spooning her?—and murmurs my name. The sound is feminine, husky and not entirely awake, although she sounds like she’s getting there. She has the voice of a phone sex operator and both my dick and my brain decide that maybe we’re not dying after all. This may have something to do with the way her backside cushions my front as she stretches. I press my mouth against her throat and discover she tastes as good as she sounds.
As my brain isn’t entirely online yet, however, all that comes out of my mouth is an uninspired, “Right here, sweetheart.”
I’ll make it up to her with my tongue.
I swear.
My mystery guest responds with more garbled phone-sex syllables, clearly not averse to maintaining her side of the conversation, but the angry buzz of my phone drowns out her follow-up remark. I slap an arm in the approximate direction of the noise but come up empty. The buzz rapidly escalates to the volume of a horde of murder hornets. When I give up and crack an eye for a visual, I see strawberry-blond hair and the morning sun bouncing off a sea of crisp white cotton Frette that’s devoured my phone.
We’re in my bed.
I brought her upstairs, whoever she is.
I’m twenty-eight. I’m rich and single, and my external packaging is generally acknowledged to be A-plus. I like dirty sex and I refuse to pretend I’m doing anything but fucking. Romance is not something I offer, so getting out of this will cost me.
My companion fishes my phone out from underneath a pillow and helpfully dangles it behind her. “Here. Answer before whoever it is has an aneurysm.”
Slim, sun-kissed, with three freckles perfectly aligned like the stars in Orion’s belt, her arm is toned yet feminine. Do I know this arm and its owner? Eh. I could just roll her over and check. Sit up and know. But since that feels like reading the last chapter of a mystery novel first, I settle for taking the phone. She’s got great hands. Her nails are short and shapely, but completely without polish.
Which all seems unimportant compared to the enormous rock of a diamond nestled against a platinum band. My heartbeat picks up. Is she married? That’s a new low, even for me. I’d tell drunk me that he needs to acquire some standards, but he’s shameless.
Trying not to think about what I can’t remember—it’s counterproductive—I scroll through Leda’s messages, the ones that shouldn’t be blowing up my phone because I should have blocked my ex-girlfriend the moment I confirmed her duplicity three months ago:
I hate u.
U shouldn’t have ended things.
We were good together.
Fuck u.
Don’t be stupid.
U don’t get to replace me.
I’ll tell.
U know u miss me.
Fucking hell.
I roll over, away from Mystery Girl, my thumb hovering over the button that will block Leda. I deserve this for being stupid, for thinking words would work instead of numbers. Still, Leda’s growing impatience means she’ll eventually do something that even I can’t fix with a really big check.
There’s good news mixed in with the bad, though. My lab manager has shared more pictures of my baby Mars rover. The first mission won’t carry people or I’d sign up today, if only to get away from Leda and the shitstorm she’s generated. A planetary landing is still too risky as Mars lacks the ozone layer that keeps us comparatively safe here on Earth. Until we figure out how to deal with that, lethal doses of solar ultraviolet radiation would hit any astronaut who landed on Mars.
It’s a complicated problem and one some of the best minds in the world have been working on for years, so I’m not going to suddenly come up with the answer while I’m naked in bed. Not yet. But sue me, I still like to dream about it. Unfortunately, the board of Galaxtix knows that this passion project is my personal weakness, and they’ve threatened to shut the entire project down if I don’t reform or resign because my repeated educational forays into the birds and the bees are apparently costing them in terms of foundation donors.
When I asked if they were serious—it’s an educational foundation and I’m just conducting sex research of the Kinseyian variety—they informed me that I’d better meet their demands fast. And then they gave me a timeline and actual goddamned deliverables that included donating money to charities for puppies and kittens and never, ever making my sex life public again. They’ll collectively shit themselves when they find out about last night.
Which they will.
Because...internet.
Bare skin brushes mine as my companion shoves herself upright and swings her legs over the side of the bed with indecent energy. A soft sigh escapes the mouth I can’t see and don’t remember kissing, two issues that I also need to fix. In fact, my brain screams that compensating for that neglect is far more critical than making my Leda problem go away or even solving the intriguing challenges of a Mars landing. Stupid brain. Bleary-eyed, I roll back.
The room smells like sex.
Also? Mystery guest is stunning, with a tiny waist and a generous, pear-shaped ass that begs for licking and biting. I squint. Based on the physical evidence, that already occurred.
“Don’t go.” I mute my phone and shove it under my own pillow before curving a hand around her waist. She’s softly rounded where my fingertips stroke.
“No worries. You’re stuck with me forever.” Laughter fills her voice as she stands up. She’s short, but those legs of hers go on for days. Weeks. Multiple interplanetary cycles. All I can think about is that bare skin, so it takes a moment to process that she’s turned toward me, wiggling the enormous diamond on her ring finger in my direction as if it’s some kind of bizarre fishing lure. Diamonds aren’t my thing, but breasts...
Even better than a Mars rover.
Hers are fantastic. Round and lush, perfect martini-glass-shaped handfuls with pale pink nipples. I don’t remember these breasts, but her voice—
No.
I’m a filthy bastard but even I wouldn’t have—
There’s no chance—
I shoot upright, alarm sirens wailing in my brain. “Hana?”
“Liam.” Hana beams at me. My brain whimpers.
The one woman in the world who should never be able to pick my dick out of a naked lineup is in my bed. I might have gone above and beyond on my plan to incite maximum self-loathing come morning.
Hana is naked.
And also—married.
I’m strangely hurt she didn’t invite me to the wedding, although I guess that would have been weird since she had the biggest teenage crush on me. I’ve known for years, of course—in a strictly hypothetical and entirely abstract way—that Hana Valentine had grown up to be a stunning woman. When we first met, however, she was twelve to my seventeen and she blew raspberries on my arm.
There was zero attraction between us.
Zero.
I’d carried that attitude over to her teenage years when she’d developed boobs and then a crush on me. Eventually, she’d learned about the wonders of the bra and now she’s clearly outgrown her puppy love if she’s got a husband tucked away somewhere.
I glance around just in case I’ve developed a brand-new interest in ménage, but it appears it’s just the two of us in my bedroom.
I don’t have many rules, a character flaw that helped make me a billionaire before the age of thirty. Still, I’ve always respected the golden rule of friendship: thou shalt not bang thy friend’s little sister.
Said off-limits little sister shifts.
Onto her knees, my dirty brain supplies. There are possibilities.
She ups the smile wattage as if today is just the best day ever.
I end up watching her because it’s hard not to stare at Hana. She’s always happy—it seems to be her perpetual condition—and when she smiles, she lights up the room. I give he
r a head tip while my brain scrambles for the right thing to say.
Her breasts jiggle.
And I panic. Because I look down and then over. Up. Anywhere but at the amazing, new-to-me rack that’s right there at mouth level. Her eyes still crinkle at the corner when she’s happy. That hasn’t changed in the six months since I last saw her. We’d been wining and dining her brother in some weird vegetarian Berkeley restaurant she’d chosen for his birthday party. I’d dutifully tried to look like a meatless family dinner was my idea of fun while Jax laughed at me. I don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck Hana’s doing here, but I need her to go away until Jax’s next birthday. And find some clothes.
And stop.
Being.
Naked.
She’s rocking a serious case of sex hair—Christ, what did we do?—but her brown eyes twinkle happily at me. She still has the freckle she loathes on her cheekbone and a spray of less loathed, smaller freckles on her throat.
She complains about those freckles all the time, but they’re like a kissing road map, a deliciously sexy detour that I’ve never noticed and I’m absolutely, 1,000 percent not taking. Ever.
But because I’m bourbon-weakened, my eyes make an involuntary dip south that I blame on the tiny black-and-yellow tattoo of a bee pollinating a daisy inked above the soft curve of her right breast. How long has she had that?
Bees are Hana’s jam and her avowed first love. She earned a degree in entomology from the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California and now she harvests socially responsible honey that she sells at farmers’ markets and online. She has both a bee farm and a mortgage, which makes her a grown-up in the eyes of the world and the IRS, although I have my doubts, doubts Jax has echoed more than once. Frankly, neither of us understands the whole working-hard-for-a-pittance approach to life. It seems counterintuitive, so I’ve suggested strategies to better monetize her product whenever our paths cross. The last time, she’d sent me a paperback copy of Men Are from Mars bristling with sticky notes. Message received. I’d stopped offering unsolicited business advice that other people pay me for, although I had set up an anonymous weekly order for two cases of honey.
Jax’s Hana is a cheerful dork, a granola-to-the-bone, outdoorsy, justice-and fairness-oriented person. She truly believes that as long as her bills get paid on time, she’s good, and that it’s bad karma or something equally woo-woo to want more than you technically need. Plus, she’s an introvert and Jax swears each Christmas that he’s going to buy Walden Pond for her so that she can officially become a hermit. She barters—and she doesn’t always come out ahead financially because she believes feelings should get factored into a deal. Do I understand her? Not at all.
Something else I don’t understand? Why she leans in and brushes a kiss over my forehead. An off-limits, naked body part skims my arm and I glance down.
No.
Erase.
Hana isn’t hookup or spank bank material. She’s younger than me, she’s my best friend’s little sister, and honestly she drives me nuts with her organic, do-gooding, naive approach to life. I’m a negotiator.
“How do you feel?” Concern slowly replaces happiness on Hana’s face. Just imagine the sun ducking behind a cloud.
Heavy drinking always hurts, which is the whole point of doing it. “My head is pounding, my mouth is drier than the Sahara, and I have a bizarre urge to find the nearest twenty-four-hour diner and order obscene quantities of waffles and fried eggs.”
Her brows draw together. She has a new eyebrow piercing, a delicate gold hoop that winks in the morning sunlight. It’s cheerful, which is typical Hana. “I meant about last night. Us.”
Right. Somehow we’ve ended up in bed together, naked and spooning. Tread carefully. If I’m lucky—and unfortunately I believe in opportunities, not luck—then we’ve just had a harmless sleepover because there was nowhere else in my fifteen-bedroom mansion for her to crash. Or clothes to wear.
“What exactly happened last night?”
The furrow between her brows achieves Grand Canyon-like depths. “You don’t remember?”
Do I?
I flop back on my pillow. I’m sure my party planner picked some suitably exotic theme for last night’s sex party, but I can’t remember what I approved. I do recall a circus tent (what the fuck?), a clown (again—WTF?), someone’s hands holding mine and mine holding hers, and then some disconnected flashes of lips, boobs, a great ass, and coming like there was no tomorrow. I spend an extra six seconds with that last memory because as sex memories go, it’s a good one and today is shaping up to suck.
She huffs out a breath. “Do you remember riding the Ferris wheel with me?”
“No.”
More loud exhalations. I’m pretty sure that not only is her memory working perfectly but she’s about to hold each and every one of those memories against me.
“So you don’t remember getting stuck at the top? Or what I promised if we got down?”
“No.”
Christ, I hope we didn’t have public sex under the big top. If we did that, the pictures will surface shortly on the gossip sites because that’s how my life has gone lately. It won’t matter that there’s a strict no-pictures-and-no-phones rule at all my parties or that I hire security to enforce that policy—someone will have bent the rules. That beeping sound is the Karma Bus backing up over me.
“Or how you swept me off my feet when we were back on solid ground?”
From the slightly dreamy look on Hana’s face, sweeping is 100 percent euphemism and the actual activity involved orgasms. Jax is going to kill me. This is his sister. His sweet, innocent little sister.
I need to kill me.
“Can you please put on some clothes?” I grab the sheet and tuck it around myself like a six-hundred-thread-count toga. We haven’t even touched on the wedding ring she’s sporting because I’m not ready for that conversation. I would have said I don’t sleep with married ladies, but clearly last night was a series of truly abominable firsts for me. I may have just hit the bottomest bottom of the moral abyss otherwise known as my soul.
Her gaze catches on my waist and dips downward. Is she checking me out? And what the hell? This Hana seems remarkably different from the one I’ve known for years. More self-possessed, less tongue-tied and blushing—although just as wholesome.
She chews on her bottom lip. “No.”
That’s also different. I don’t recall Hana being utterly unreasonable, despite her adamant dislike of all things corporate and that bizarre love of organic farming. This makes her refusal to do as I’ve asked unexpected. Frankly, she’s hero-worshipped me from her tween years onward and my few suggestions have been solid gold commands in the Hana-verse. Since it was cute and useful, I’d taken shameless advantage to keep her safe. What the hell happened to her?
She rolls her eyes. “When did you turn into a prude?”
“I’m not a prude.” Normally when someone accuses me of holding back sexually, I do something particularly, publicly dirty like fuck on a San Francisco cable car or visit one of the city’s many sex clubs. Since this is neither a childhood game of one-upsmanship nor the moment to explain just how dirty I am, I practice self-restraint.
Okay. I try to.
I can practically hear the board of Galaxtix laughing their collective asses off.
Hana looks right at me. “We had sex.”
What’s left of my conscience goes supernova.
She can’t be serious.
Fucking hell.
I mean, I’m naked, I’m in bed, and I was looking to hook up in the most inappropriate way possible, but I guess I’d been holding out hope that I still had some secret, well-hidden shred of decency and I’d had amazing, mind-blowing sex with someone else before my drunk ass passed out next to a naked Hana. Her expression tenses, her cheeks flushing. Unless she’s really changed,
that pretty pink color is a dead giveaway that she’s about to lose it. She doesn’t get mad often, but when she does, it’s best to not be in the way.
“I shouldn’t have done—that.” I wave the hand that isn’t clutching the sheet to my abs like I’m a vestal virgin. A nice person would apologize and provide aftercare for any dirty things I’d done to her last night. What are the chances that we had sweet, innocent sex and I haven’t scarred her for life?
Low.
“You’re unbelievable.” She hops off the bed, bare knees bumping against the edge of the mattress. Jesus Christ, why is she still naked in my bedroom?
“I get that a lot.” I wink at her reflexively, the words shooting out of my mouth before I remember that this is Hana and not some casual hookup. I can’t flirt with her. She’s off-limits.
“Unbelievable,” she repeats and saunters across the room. Slowly. Still naked. Still clearly ready to rip my balls off and feed them to me for breakfast.
“So about last night—”
She turns and shoots a look at me. Usually, Hana is all smiles and laughter. She’s a California girl through and through, sunny and warm and level-headed. I’d have said she’s my honorary little sister except that would put last night’s bedroom activities squarely in the realm of Victorian pornography and that’s an even harder no for me.
“Show and tell,” she announces. “Show.”
She yanks at the rings on her hand and sends them flying through the air toward my face. I catch them automatically with my left hand. A hand, now that I’m paying attention, that sports a matching band. A big, shiny, new gold ring.
