Billionaires Dollar Series

“Are you on birth control?” I ask instead. A question I should have asked earlier, but seeing as I was doing everything wrong, what was one more mistake?

Blair nods, rising to her elbows. Her cheeks are flushed.

“Good.” I wince slightly as she shifts and I slip out of her heat. She stretches out beside me, her hand running along my stomach. I close my eyes and let her explore.

It’s perilously close to cuddling, this, and even more of a bad idea than what we’ve just done. I’m still not strong enough to move away, the feeling of her soft hand on my skin like magic.

So I don’t. I lie there instead, looking up at the ceiling and trying to catch my bearings. In two days, I have slept with her exactly twice, and I’m still no closer to being sated. If eight years of admiring her from afar had resulted in anything, it wouldn’t be undone in a few bouts of passion.

But the facts remain.

She’s my only friend’s little sister.

She’s not interested in anything long-term.

And I’m decidedly not the man likely to succeed in long-term.

I close my eyes, as if the darkness beckoning can chase those facts away. It doesn’t, but her hand on my skin very nearly accomplishes the same thing.

“You’ve disappeared,” she murmurs. I should move away. I should leave.

I can’t bring myself to do either.

“I’m thinking.”

“What about?”

I open my eyes. She’s on her elbow beside me, the smile on her face sweet and kind and so much more than I deserve. She might not have a crush on me anymore, but I’ll be damned if she gets hurt in any way because of this, because of me.

“About what way I’m going to give you your third orgasm,” I say.

Her smile widens. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

Gripping her around the waist, I pull her against me. How can a body be so supple, strong and soft at the same time? “Well, my favorite method is off-limits for now. I guess I’ll just have to use my imagination.”

Her laughter of delight as I flip us over banishes my negative thoughts entirely. There are some times in a man’s life when he can’t be anywhere but in the present, and at present, that’s a pretty damn good place to be.

“I should get going.”

“Okay.” Blair stretches out on the bed beside me and watches as I get dressed. “You don’t have to leave right away, you know.”

“Yes, I do,” I say wryly, “or you’ll play twenty questions with me again.”

“And is that so terrible?”

She laughs at my emphatic response. “Fine, be a mystery then.”

“You like me like that.” I drain the brandy in one gulp and then curse myself in the next. Now I can’t drive home, and I’ll have to send someone for the car. She has me so rattled it’s hard to focus.

“I do,” she says, coming up behind me and wrapping her arms around my waist. I stand there for a moment, letting her hug me. “But I’ll crack you eventually.”

I break free from her hold and head to the door. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

“Yes, you will.” Blair leans against the couch, still completely nude, her crossed arms propping up her breasts. Does she know how the pose tempts me? Judging by the crooked smile she aims my way, she does, and it’s deliberate.

“Go to bed,” I tell her darkly.

“I will,” she says. “But…”

“Yes?”

“You’re coming tomorrow, right?”

I tug at the collar of my shirt. Tomorrow, when we have to spend yet another evening in the company of Cole and Skye. My nerves will be shot to hell after that experience-being around her brother now feels like lying. “Yes,” I say, but not with any real excitement.

Her smile widens. “Good. Come over here first.”

“Are you ordering me around now?”

“It’s a suggestion,” she offers. “But a good one. I take my practice very seriously, you know.”

I shake my head at that, but there’s no stopping the wry smile her words bring out. “I’ll be here.”

Seattle is quiet as I drive back to my apartment. The space looks different, somehow, seeing it with Blair’s comments in mind. I suppose it is sparse. The living room has a giant TV for sports games. The couch doesn’t have a single superfluous pillow.

Damn it. I’d never had difficulty finding female company. Not in my teenage years, not when I’d shot up like a weed and grown broad across the chest. Not in university, despite my poor grades and even poorer background. And not since I started making more money than I know what to do with.

But the women I go to bed with want me for my reputation. The name, the fame. They expect me to be dominant and harsh and big and strong. And for years, playing that role was enough. It was predictable. It was safe. It was shallow.

Blair is different. She’d laughed in bed with me tonight. Somehow, I was funny with her around. I go to bed with the scent of her hair still clinging to me and sleep deeper than I have in months. Funny how doing the wrong thing can feel so right.

When Cole had said that she used to have a crush on me…

The first thought was, What have I done? If this meant something to her-something real, something deep, something fragile-and I’d indulged in having her…

But she’d disavowed me of those illusions. She’d as good as admitted it was just one of Cole’s jokes. Exactly what I wanted to hear-I couldn’t in good conscience have followed her up if it’d been true. And yet, the first thing I’d felt when she said it hadn’t been triumph.NôvelDrama.Org copyrighted © content.

It had been disappointment.

“Come here.” The dark command in Nick’s voice is impossible to resist. I cross the living room to him, my hairbrush still in hand, and surprise him by climbing into his lap, one knee on either side.

“Are you going to make us late?” I ask.

“To an event I didn’t want to go to in the first place?” Nick reaches up and runs his fingers through my hair, undoing the hard work I’d just done with the large curling iron. “Yes.”

“Cole and Skye asked us both,” I point out.

“He asked me while I was half-dead, stumbling off the tennis court.” Nick’s eyes are locked on my neck as his thumb moves over my pulse. It quickens at his touch. “I’d near forgotten all about it until you reminded me yesterday.”