Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1) Page 6

  My mother, the sex therapist, was a bit of a weirdo. But she was my weirdo and I loved her dearly. I just couldn’t handle her open-ended questions and virginity interrogation at the moment.

  I downed the rest of my wine and slammed it on the counter. “I’m calling it a night. I’ll see you on the flipside, Casshead.”

  “Night, Wheorgiebag.”

  Without wasting time, I did the usual bedtime routine—face washed, teeth brushed, and comfy sleep clothes applied—and happily plopped my tired ass into bed.

  But sleep refused to come.

  My brain had reached the hamster-on-a-wheel stage of insomnia. Thoughts raced and unanswered questions refused to leave. I kept replaying Kline asking me out, over and over again. And all I could think was, why me? What made him all of a sudden show interest in me?

  “And you’re fucking beautiful.”

  I wasn’t dealing with a shortage of self-esteem by any means. I considered myself an intelligent, attractive, confident chick. Now, I wouldn’t go as far as saying I was perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I knew how to highlight my strengths and downplay my weaknesses. Heavy makeup, spandex, and the color yellow were always a hell no. Long hair, red lips, and a pair of well-fitting jeans that accentuated my ass were always a hell yes.

  My confusion over Kline asking me out wasn’t about my attractiveness.

  I’d never had a man like him on my radar.

  We were total opposites.

  He had a chauffeur. I took the subway. He wore Armani. I shopped at vintage, secondhand shops. He had enough money to invest in things like hedge funds and annuities. I had a fifty-dollar bond from 1996 that my grandmother had gifted me on my birthday. Fingers crossed that baby would gain another two dollars and twenty-five cents this year.

  My life and his life were pretty much worlds apart.

  Or was Cassie right? Was I judging Kline Brooks by the fact that he had more money than God? Or was I just freaked out over the fact that my boss, the CEO of Brooks Media, had asked me out?

  My dating experiences hadn’t been the best. They generally ended on epically bad notes. So, what would happen if Kline and I dated a few times and the shitstorm that was my overall luck with men took over?

  Fuck.

  I had to do something to take my mind off things. It was time to take things into my own hands. Literally. There was no sleep aid better than a climax-induced coma. Just one shot from the orgasm bottle and I’d be out like a light, racing thoughts and restless nights be gone.

  Grabbing my vibrator, I lay back, spread wide, and pictured Chris Hemsworth in all of his Thor glory. I’d been on a recent Avengers kick—Captain America, Thor…hell, even Black Widow when I was feeling frisky. Scarlett Johansson in that black leather suit could make a lot of women switch-hit.

  A few minutes into my fingerbating session, Thor’s hammer was hard and ready. Things were feeling good. Real fucking good. Muscles were tight, fingers were moving at the perfect pace, and Amen for my vibrator, the glorious little clit tickler that he was. I was on the brink, white spots dotting my vision, and then, Thor and his hammer cock slowly morphed into someone else. Someone I had never fantasized about before.

  Kline.

  He was hovering over me, his hot, naked body mere inches from mine. That body—good God, that body. Lean, tight, toned muscles. So many fucking muscles. Washboard abs and that perfect V pointing right down to his…um…yeah…Big-dicked Brooks.

  Hot damn, Cassie was right.

  He had the kind of cock you could make a five-second GIF out of and never get tired of watching it on loop. I was convinced, somewhere down the line, Kline’s dick had a great-great-great-great grandfather dick, and it was that exact shaft that had inspired some woman to pull down a guy’s pants and say, “Oh yes, I need to suck on that.” This was a history-making, Nobel Prize award-winning cock. The sole reason the blow job was an actual thing.

  “I can’t wait to taste you,” he whispered, sliding my panties down my legs.

  Yes. Hell. Yes. Taste me.

  “God, you’re fucking beautiful.” He licked across my stomach.

  “Your cock is beautiful,” I said.

  He kneeled between my legs. “Tell me how bad you want my cock, Georgia.” Blue eyes scorched my skin as he stroked that perfect dick.

  “Bad. So bad,” I begged.

  “Be patient, sweetheart.” He smirked. “I can’t wait to fuck you, but right now, I need your taste on my tongue.”

  Kline gripped my thighs, spreading me wide, while his head was between my legs doing everything a guy should know how to do with his tongue.

  “Oh, fuck,” I moaned, gripping his hair and following the movements of his mouth with my hips.

  “Come for me, Georgia,” he demanded.

  And like a goddamn romance novel cliché, I came on command…on my boss’s face.

  I was panting. Drained. Sated. My muscles were lax, skin peppered with a sheen of sweat. I had thoroughly worked myself over. When I opened my eyes, I realized I had just gone to a place I could never come back from.

  Kline Brooks had just been inaugurated into my spank bank rotation.

  And he’d given me the best orgasm I’d had in a long fucking time.

  “So the Sure Romance contract went through as expected. Martin folded like a fitted sheet at the threat of…” Georgia recited as if rehearsed, her attention drifting from the lights overhead to the paperweight on my desk, out the window, and back again.

  She’d been trying her damnedest not to look at me since she’d knocked on the door of my office two minutes ago.

  “Wait,” I interrupted, startling her enough that her eyes found my face. “Aren’t fitted sheets hard to fold?” I kicked one corner of my mouth up in a grin, adding, “Mine sure as hell are. Is there some secret I’m missing out on?”

  Bewilderment forced her eyebrows together and her plump bottom lip out.

  I could see the thoughts race through her eyes one after the other, wondering what we were talking about and why we were talking about it at the same time she questioned the likelihood that I was the one who actually folded my sheets, rather than a maid, a butler, or several servants, perhaps.

  Once she realized I was teasing her, the lines of her face transformed from confused to punishing.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, easing from a grin into a full-blown smile. “Continue.”

  “Right.” She huffed adorably. “As I was saying, Martin…”

  Her words muffled into a simple rhythm of soothing sounds as my concentration transferred to my thoughts.

  Two years of listening to Georgia Cummings talk about product placement and commercial budgets didn’t hold a candle to one fucking day of actually talking to her. The flustered, less professional, overtly female version one simple encounter had turned her into, that is.

  She was still poised, as always, knowledgeable, and completely on top of her tasks and obligations. But her looks lingered longer—when she forgot to think about being awkward—and her humor lived at the surface, just at the tip of her quick-witted tongue, instead of buried under layers of propriety and boss-employee relations.

  Put simply, I looked different to her, and, with her hair swept up off of the smooth, slim column of her neck and her eyes bright with mischief, she sure as fuck looked different to me.

  “Mr. Brooks!” she called, fiery and peeved that I wasn’t listening to her with full attention.

  “Kline,” I corrected, thinking about the way she’d sounded singing about her pussy and the faces I thought she’d make while I finger-fucked it, and then waited for her to agree with popped brows.

  “Fine,” she consented. “Kline.”

  God, I needed to hear her say that while she came.

  I smiled again and fought the urge to adjust my tightening pants under my desk.

  “Good.”

  She didn’t seem nearly as amused. I forced my mind to the mildly professional side of its coin when she crosse
d her arms over her chest and tapped a toe on the tile. After years of keeping every exchange with employees above board, I’d never felt such a blatant need for betrayal by my eyes. They wanted to be bad. They wanted to be really bad. And my stupid cockblock of a brain wouldn’t let them.

  “Look, I trust you.” Her feathers unruffled slightly. “Do I want to know that the deal went through? Absolutely. Do I need to know the details and question your every move? Not so much.”

  She unwound her arms from her chest.

  “In fact, I’m headed to L.A. tonight, and I need someone to hold down the fort. Can you handle it if I tell everyone to report to you?”

  Her spine straightened involuntarily, outrage at having to be asked tensing all of the muscles around it. “Of course I can.”

  I studiously ignored her irritation.

  “I’m not expecting you to solve every issue that comes your way. Just keep the ship afloat and the piratelike crew members from setting her ablaze.”

  “Done.”

  She traced a circle on the front edge of my desk, and I could practically see her effort to be casual. “So you’re, uh—”

  She tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear. Not a single one had been out of place.

  “You’re headed to L.A., huh?”

  I bit my lip in victory. She was asking because she wanted to know. She wanted to go out with me, she just hadn’t accepted it yet.

  “Yep.”

  “Oh…okay. So, um—”

  “Quick trip,” I said, letting her off the hook. “Just a couple of investor meetings and then right back to the East Coast. I’ll be back in plenty of time for Friday night.”

  “That’s cool,” she muttered, clasping her hands together like she didn’t know what to do with them.

  I had a few ideas, but most of them came from the brain downstairs. And I didn’t think she’d be extremely welcoming of them at this stage of the game.

  “Georgia?”

  Her attention jumped from the floor straight to my gaze. The vivid depths of her eyes’ blue, swirling with a heady mix of excitement and uncertainty, nearly knocked the wind out of me.

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Looking forward to it?”

  “Friday night, with you.” Her clasped hands turned white with pressure, and a blush colored the apples of her cheeks. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Her face softened briefly, overwhelmed by a powerful look of longing. Fifteen seconds later, when determination replaced it, her sweet jaw flexing under the pressure, I wasn’t sure it had ever existed.

  In contrast to the harsh hue of her features, her voice was nothing more than a whisper. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  I considered her question carefully instead of firing out some bullshit answer. I knew the reason she was asking, and it wasn’t trivial. I was her boss, and for all she knew, I had plans to fuck and forget. There were no guarantees that anything would really bloom between us, and we’d both feel the fallout. She was an asset to my company, and I signed her checks. Everyone would argue she had more to lose, but I wasn’t as sure.

  Cynthia in HR would ride my ass for a decision like this—because, regardless of the absence of an actual no-fraternization policy, interoffice romance was always messy, especially when one of those employees was the boss. She knew it as well as I did, and I might have even known it better. But as I sat there looking at Georgia’s face, my big fucking desk in between us, the only thing I could think about was being closer, standing next to her, escorting her as I walked with a hand at the perfect swoop of her lower back—smelling the sweet curve of her neck and nibbling it with my teeth.

  Maybe I was blind, but as far as I could see, it was the best goddamn idea I’d ever had.

  Her gaze followed me as I stood up and pushed my chair back, circling the desk and settling my hips into it a mere foot in front of her. She wanted to move back, I could see it, but she held her ground anyway, ready to listen to whatever I had to say.

  I crossed my feet at the ankles and clasped my hands together in front of my thighs.

  “I get it.”

  Her bottom lip rocked as she chewed at the inside of it. My vision locked on to the movement like a heat-seeking missile. With effort, I forced my eyes back to hers.

  “I get why you’re nervous, and I get the kinds of things a leap of faith could cost you. All I can promise is that I won’t be a prick.”

  Surprised eyebrows ate up half of the distance to her hairline.

  “Whatever happens between me and you, Kline and Georgia, is a completely separate entity from what happens under the umbrella of Brooks Media between Mr. Brooks and his Director of Marketing. My employee is efficient, well liked, and boasts a seasoned track record of success. Mr. Brooks has seen it, paid attention to it, and appreciated it for a while now. But Kline…” I laughed. “Well, that guy’s been an idiot.”

  A small hiccuplike laugh bubbled up her throat and right out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  “Because Georgia Cummings is a beautiful, smart, intriguing woman, and until yesterday, he hadn’t seen her at all.”

  “Good God,” she muttered to herself.

  I smiled wholeheartedly, with nothing held back, and felt my heart jump in my chest when her eyes flared like she noticed.

  “Kline is like Mr. Brooks in some ways, though. He hates to be stupid. And now that he knows, he’s not too keen to be stupid ever fucking again.”

  She swung toward me on instinct, the movement excruciatingly slow and too fast to consider all at once. I grabbed her hips, squeezing them too hard, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. The thought of leaving my mark on her skin had my hands clenching again.

  Heat settled in my palms and shot straight to my crotch as I caught a whiff of all that was her. A mysterious mix of fruit and flowers, her scent stabbed me right in the fucking chest like some kind of olfactory voodoo doll.

  I slid my hand up her side with little finesse before cresting her shoulder and forcing it into the tresses of her bright red hair at the back of her head.

  Her eyes were open and searching and a whole lot frightened, but her lips moved toward mine with purpose. My fingertips flexed in her hair of their own accord, and a cross between a whimper and a moan caught right at the top of her throat.

  “Kline,” she whispered emphatically. The puff of her hot breath on my lips was enough to push me right over the goddamn edge.

  “Knock knock,” Leslie called as she was pushing open the door.

  The two of us shot apart like Leslie’s arrival was a hell of a skeet shooter and we were the clay pigeon. At the sudden release of so much sexual tension, I would have sworn shattered pieces of me littered the room.

  My heart beat at double its normal speed, and Georgia’s cheeks were the color of cherry Kool-Aid. Though, given the fact that Kline had been milliseconds away from eating Georgia alive, I’d say Mr. Brooks’ and Ms. Cummings’ level of faux composure was impressive.

  “What do you need, Leslie?” I asked, straining to make my voice sound even, but she was clueless. Most of her attention focused inward, on herself, rather than the things going on around her. I swore it was the first and only time in my life I’d be thankful for that kind of woman.

  It had been one of those days where staying in bed and calling in sick would have been a better option than actually participating in life. Kline Brooks left his new intern, Leslie, under my watchful eye while he flew out to L.A. for the day to schmooze investors and impress potential advertising clients for TapNext.

  I was certain she had been sent straight from Hell. The devil might as well have wrapped a big red bow around her neck and attached a note.

  Dear Georgie,

  Have fun with this one.

  Love,

  Satan

  I’d seen more of her tits today than I had of my own in the past month. Either she had a severe body temperature control issue or she didn’t wear a bra. I didn’t c
are who was setting the dress code policy; nipples would never be considered business casual.

  Why Kline had hired her was a goddamn mystery at this point. And I hadn’t even brought up her predilection for selfies. Her social media was busier than a Las Vegas escort during March Madness. Which I guess was fine—if only she’d put the same amount of work into her actual job.

  Finally at home, I settled into my favorite pastime—sweatpants, a bag of sour cream and cheddar potato chips, and a DVRed episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Despite the ridiculousness that this family had made a fortune off reality television, I still found myself recording every damn episode. It was a true mind-suck of valuable time and brain cells, but I couldn’t deny my consistent guilty indulgence. What could I say? I was a true American—enjoying every trashy reality show produced for my viewing pleasure and shit-talking them the next day.

  Kim had just declared that women wearing the wrong foundation color is, like, the worst thing on the planet when my phone rang.

  Incoming Call Kline Brooks

  What in God’s name does he need now? He should’ve been on a plane headed home from L.A. His absence was the exact reason why I would have five pounds worth of potato chips on my hips and ass tomorrow morning. Two days ago, I would have told you he’d put stars in my eyes with swoony almost kisses and confidence in my ability. Now, after a visit to the depths of incompetency hell, the blush on my feelings had more than worn off.

  That cocky, demanding bastard damn well knew what he had been doing when he’d asked me if I could handle being in charge.

  After five rings’ worth of muttered curses, I decided to put him out of his misery. “Good evening, Mr. Brooks. What else can I assist you with today?”

  His hearty chuckle filled my ears. “I thought we were past the Mr. Brooks bullshit?”

  “Yeah, not after today we’re not.”

  “Rough day at work?”

  Rough day? Was he serious? I was still trying to scrub my brain free of the moronic comments Leslie had made all day. “Your new intern is a gem. Quite the asset to the company, I might say. It’s amazing how many selfies one woman can take in a fifteen-minute stretch, and yet, she can’t seem to make a single photocopy in the same amount of time.”