Baby Fever Bride: A Billionaire Romance Read online

  Not Hayden: Come on. Be serious.

  Hayden: I've never been more serious in my life, love. I know you want it rough, but you've never had it. Know more about how you're begging to be fucked than I do about the rest of you. Never even got your name.

  I'm stunned. He's actually read things I wrote. Everything I was stupid enough to throw down on a page, without ever worrying about who else would find it one day.

  I have to bite my lip and think. Do I really want to give my name to a man who's just told me he has a superhuman dick and he knows exactly what to do with it because he's read my fantasies?

  I should be horrified, tell him to fuck off, and ask for an address where I can send his phone as soon as I get my little black book back.

  Why can't I think like a normal person? My fingers start moving, tapping a response. I just want to get this over with, whatever it is.

  Not Hayden: Later tonight. You pick the time, anytime after eight. We can meet downtown, maybe the espresso and wine bar connected to your huge tower.

  Hayden: Good girl. I see you've been doing your homework. How about nine at the bar? I can get my phone back, and show you I know how to build a whole lot more than a hundred stories made of glass.

  I'm biting my lip like a schoolgirl. He's crude, direct, and so smug it hurts. Everything I'd reject if he wasn't a billionaire wearing a guardian angel's looks. Then again, I've met very few men who have ever talked to me like this, and the ones who did were bad news.

  I doubt that's much different the higher up the chain a woman goes, and he's near the top. Maybe I'm not ready to admit it to his face, much less anybody else, but I already know the truth.

  Hayden Shaw excites me. He interests me with his risk, his charm, his gunshot honesty, his not-so-subtle promise to take me over the edge into pleasure I've never imagined.

  But there's another reason, too. I let his phone slip down against my purse, resting it so I can take a good, long look around Katie and Will's neat home.

  There's no reason they deserve more happiness than I do. I don't have to wait for Mr. Right, or wait for my ovaries to burn out because of a fucking Caribbean zombie virus.

  I can have a home someday, if I meet the right people, and keep working hard.

  I can have the right man. It probably won't be Hayden, but he'll help show me what I'm really looking for, what I absolutely need in a man and what I detest.

  And yes, I can have a baby, too. It isn't too late.

  I can make one with whoever I want. He doesn't have to be my boyfriend, my husband, or even a perfect list of qualities from a sperm bank. Flawless attributes wouldn't help me anyway as soon as my blood test shows positive for Zeno.

  The phone buzzes again.

  Hayden: Still waiting. I'm not a very patient man, love. Waiting for that name, too.

  Not Hayden: It's Priscilla, but everybody calls me Penny. And yes, nine o'clock will work.

  Hayden: I like it. Almost as much as I'm going to enjoy pulling your red locks while your lips are wrapped around the best cock you've ever had. See you tonight.

  I'm smiling. Not simply because he's sending lightning through my thighs, forcing my legs together a little tighter. Not because he's everything I don't need right now, one more stick of dynamite ready to ignite the falling pieces of my life blown out at the doctor's office yesterday.

  I don't know Hayden. I don't even know if I'm ready to jump into bed with him, or spend more than an hour talking over drinks.

  He isn't long-term material, and he wouldn't be interested in a woman like me, anyway. But if I can help him with his problem, the one Brie mentioned, maybe he can help me with mine.

  If there's anything I've learned today, just sitting here, talking to my spoiled sister and her timid husband, it's that I don't have to settle. I don't have to accept the verdict delivered by Zeno, promising a barren future.

  No, I'm not looking for a billionaire boyfriend. I don't want flowers, or candy, or a diamond ring with a personal inscription praising our eternal love, although all those things would be miraculous under the right circumstances.

  I'm vetting Hayden for something else. Not because I need Mr. Mysterious to be Mr. Right. A smart, handsome, enormously successful baby daddy, on the other hand...

  Well, I just might be in the market.

  4

  Quid Pro Quo (Hayden)

  This girl needs to fuck. Bad.

  I'm flipping through her diary again while I'm getting ready for our date. It's hard to stop smiling at this lens into her inmost desires, all the nasty, secret, decadent dreams she's hidden behind her innocent looks and librarian red hair.

  The man I want, the right man, he'll know. When to kiss me like it hurts, when to throw me down, when to rip off my clothes. He'll read me when I want his hands, his tongue, his cock, and I won't be able to hide anything.

  One of many lines in her little black book. She can't possibly be a virgin...right?

  The insane power play going through her head and spilling out in ink makes me wonder. My more sober side says she's just high minded, desperate for a man who isn't afraid to let his balls give the orders. And yeah, maybe she ought to come with a warning label: freak inside.

  There are plenty more choice lines, of course.

  No, I don't want to be your delicate flower. I don't want to whither away with a sweater and a make believe smile, while you tell your parents and your friends what a wonderful, loving girlfriend I am.

  I want to be your consult. I want to be your fire. I want to be the one you throw down, fuck, and own because you can't resist.

  And finally, just make me come again. Even when I say I can't. Shut me up with another breathless kiss and a thrust that makes me quiver. Show me there are no limits. Prove me wrong with your love, and then with every vicious stroke of your hips.

  I can't believe this chick's words. They're wild, wanton need bled across the pages in dark purple curls. They make me smile, while my dick grows hard as granite.

  It's a tragedy she's waited so long to meet a man who knows his way around a woman's body. It's a sad, bland story inside her little black book.

  So much wanting. Not much living.

  No more. Tonight, her story gets a happy ending, and so does mine, but only after I show her what happiness truly means from midnight to sunrise.

  I'm waiting for her with a glass of wine next to me, nursing it like it's the priceless vintage I had a couple years ago on a trip to Marseilles. My father was alive then, trying to groom me to break into the international market, an expansion that's been put on ice by other more recent developments.

  I had the time of my life, roaming the French countryside when our meetings were over. I bedded my share of foreign girls at our hotel, and left several asking about me for months after I left.

  European girls have a certain charm, but they're missing something, too.

  None of them had the same spark Penny sends down my spine every time I think about doing a tenth of the things I did overseas with strange women in foreign beds.

  What is it about this girl? I'm more concerned with having my hands all over her than I am with getting my phone back again.

  Maybe it's because the phone is just the key to problems I don't want to deal with. She, on the other hand, offers nothing but relief. A distraction on two long legs ending in an unbearable ass I want to tame.

  Tanning her hide raw sounds like heaven. Then I need to spread her apart, taste her pussy, and fill it over and over and over again.

  As many times as it takes to get her out of my system. I can't think clearly with Kayla at my throat, and not with this strange new obsession I have for a woman I barely know either.

  She shows up about a minute later, while I'm tasting my wine. Another burgundy sweet sip slides down my throat when I see her coming toward me, decked in heels and an evening dress redder than her hair.

  Sweet fuck. My dick salutes her in my trousers, hungry to have everything my eyes are sampling.<
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  “Here it is. I wondered if you'd show up personally, or send your butler,” she says, smiling through a perfect shade of matching red painted on her lips. Her little hand offers me my phone, and I take it, stuffing the small device into my pocket.

  I reach into my pants pocket, pull out her little black book, and start to hand it over. Her fingers touch mine, and I jerk it away at the last second. She gasps, narrowing her eyes. “Really?”

  “You've learned a few things about me. If you've read all about my empire, then surely you've seen the tabloids, too. Sit. Stay for awhile before I hand over what you came for.” I raise my wine, taking a long, steady pull as she sits down next to me.

  When I'm after a woman, I own the bullshit they say about me. My eyes go up and down, studying the sweet V-cut going up one hip in her dress.

  Christ, I want to spread those legs. I want her on this table. I'm losing it here, wondering if she's as curious as she said in her journal to find out how much a big, thick cock can make her curves bounce.

  “Sorry, I'm not really the type to go chasing down your old nudes,” she says, trying to muster up the courage to look me in the eye. “I like some things left to the imagination.”

  Damn. Perhaps she's more subdued than I think around me. Certainly more shy.

  The redness lighting up her cheeks before she's taken the first sip of the green appletini she orders tells me this girl isn't easily lured into the bedroom. I'll need more subtlety, whatever it takes to chisel through her innocent exterior.

  “Yeah?” I'm taking a quick look at my phone. “Looks like imagination didn't stop you from going through my contacts, or checking my messages. Good news: I'm a very forgiving man.”

  Shame dances with the raw attraction on her face. Then she looks up, defiance wiping away the shame. “Awesome. Then maybe you'll understand it was only fair, after you decided to treat my diary like an amusement park.”

  Fair? I don't know the meaning of the word while I'm sitting with her through the most torturous hard-on I've had in my life.

  She sips her neon green drink halfway down before she answers, clinking the glass against the counter. “I don't normally snoop, Hayden. Honest. That woman, Brie, she can be very persistent.”

  “True, when you don't ignore her,” I say, taking a quick scan at the texts she sent, posing as me.

  It's a ridiculous conversation. The kind that would have infuriated my impatient ex. I can't help but smile. There's a cynical part of me enjoying the fact she riled up my ex with false hope better than I could've done.

  I haven't replied to her crap in weeks. We've gone no contact since I made it perfectly clear we were done.

  Penny's diary rests under my hand, and I catch her fingers crawling toward it. She snatches her hand away when she notices, lifting her drink again, taking a long pull.

  “This isn't the way I wanted this to go,” she whispers, staring into her drink, swirling the liquid with a little jerk of her hand. “You read my diary, sure, but I guess you didn't intrude on my life like I did, sending those texts. You must think I'm a terrible person.”

  “You're human,” I say, draining the last of my wine. “You've had a unique opportunity to learn a lot about me, Penny. I barely know anything about you, besides how bad you want a man's tongue between your legs, spelling filthy things on your pussy with the same mouth licking you into submission.”

  Yes, that's almost an exact quote. I know I've gotten it right when I see the red blossom on her cheeks. It takes her forever to look back at me, and then she takes her eyes away again when she sees me smiling.

  “What else is there to know? It's a tough act, following the sex stuff. I work in the building you own, about twenty floors up. I'm poor by your standards. I've never so much as flipped a studio apartment. I'm sorry, this is stupid. If you want me to go, just say it. We don't have anything in common.”

  “Nonsense,” I say, taking my hand off the black book, letting her scoop it away at last. “If I didn't want to see you again, you're right. I wouldn't be here in person.” I reach for her hand.

  She stops, stares, and slowly tightens her fingers around mine. Fuck, it's electric, just having my hand wrapped around hers. Maybe it's the worry in her eyes making this more exciting, the fear and doubt, mingling with raw desire.

  Her urge to run away before it's even begun gives me an extra challenge, and I do live for those.

  “I don't even know your last name,” I tell her. “Much less your dreams, your nightmares, your desires, outside the naughty ones.”

  “Seriously? You care about those things for a one night stand?”

  I smile, turning my charm on full blast. “I want to know you, Penny.”

  “Hi, I'm Penny Silvers. Yes, just like the metal. Make all the copper and silver jokes you like. I have an older sister, a gorgeous nephew, and a cat who's three pounds overweight. Up until recently, I wanted to find Mr. Right, settle down, and have a family. Since the day I met you on the train, I haven't decided what I really want.”

  She doesn't realize her hand has been tightening on mine the whole way through her little speech. My fingers graze her skin, rubbing gently, wondering what else I can make her unearth for me.

  She's troubled, and she's still goddamned beautiful. There's a nervous tension in her touch, a melancholy, like she's doing this with me tonight because she's running from something else.

  I want to know what.

  “Anyway, I didn't really come here to talk about me,” she says, unraveling her fingers from mine, taking her hand away. “I'm not the only one who has problems, obviously. It sounds like yours are a million times more complicated than mine, if I read between the lines with Brie's text messages correctly.”

  “It's over with her and I,” I growl, motioning the bartender over to refill my glass. “Hell, it never really started. We were wrong from the beginning, a fling that went too far, everyone around us pushing for a fairy tale ending because we're a social fit, and nothing more.”

  “Who's Kayla?” she asks, getting her courage up.

  My jaw clenches. I think it's the first time in my life I've ever lost my erection without bedding a woman this beautiful first. But it's even more amazing I'm sitting here listening to her nosy questions, without thanking her for keeping my phone safe, and then walking the fuck away.

  “My step-mom. She was only married to my late father for a few years. Biggest mistake of his life, outside letting her sweet talk him into changing his trust for me and my brothers.”

  “But there's a way out, isn't there? Something about...getting married?” She's toying with me now.

  I stand up, taking her by the wrist, and grabbing my newly refilled wine. Before she can say anything else, I'm leading her out the bar through my private elevator, nodding to the maitre d' to run my tab straight from the account they always have on file.

  “What's wrong? Did I go too far?” She whispers, worry creeping into her voice.

  “You want to talk business. The bar downstairs isn't the place for that. Have you ever been to the top of this tower?” I ask, waiting for the golden doors we're standing in front of to open, letting us in. It only takes twenty seconds to get from ground floor to the very top. A custom modification I had done by the same people who worked on Seattle's Space Needle.

  She shakes her head. The doors part for us, and I lead her in, smiling inwardly as she stops to take in the grandeur. Gold bleeds into glass, giving us one of the very best views in the city, as I punch in my code for the private spot I have at the building's zenith.

  Penny hangs onto me, staring out across the downtown night scape. We rise quickly. It's too fast for any normal person to take it all in on one trip.

  She's entered shock and awe, and that's okay. It means I'm in full control.

  I can't believe she thought she'd walk in here, hit me with my secrets, and put me on defense. That isn't how it works when I go after sex in a skirt. I'm always the pursuer, always in charge, and always,
with very few exceptions, victorious.

  “Shall we?” I raise her hand to my lips and plant a kiss on the back, as soon as the doors open at the top.

  She blinks in surprise. “That was fast.”

  “You get used to it.” I lead her out, toward my private fire pit near the top. Thankfully, the wind has died down, ensuring we'll stay warm with just a fire while the city looms around us.

  “You've got more fire in your blood than I gave you credit for,” I say, lighting the gas while she sits, arms folded against the chill. “I respect a woman who goes straight for the answers.”

  I'm not lying. Hell, I respect it so much, I'm starting to get hard again, staring down at her as she's stunned, vulnerable, and swept up in the theater I control. If we don't talk too much about my serious fucking problems, there's a good chance I'll still be hard when we make our next stop, in my private suite.

  “Okay, so maybe I got carried away. I jumped before I understood what kind of trouble you're really in, or how you can get out of it by getting married,” she says, the newly lit fire illuminating every beautiful contour of her face. “I'm sorry, Hayden, but it's more than that. I didn't just mention it to get under your skin. I think I can help.”

  “I'm sorry, love, but I sincerely doubt it. The best firms in Chicago can't get me out of this one. I should know, since I have them on retainer.” My eyebrows twitch, trying to guess where she's going.

  This chick is full of surprises. I liked her before, but there's nothing like a good mystery and a lot of guessing to make me crave having her in my bed.

  “I'm not talking about lawyers. You need some kind of Potemkin village marriage to get out of this, don't you? Brie tried to jump all over it, and I know you don't want that. There's too much history for it to work. But what if you had someone else? Somebody you could keep it strictly professional with...”

  It takes me about ten seconds to realize she's talking about herself.

  “Shit.” I'm on my feet, turning my back, fighting not to grab my head before my brain goes up in a fireball. “What the fuck, Penny? You?”