by Julia Kent
“Shhhhhh! I can’t hear her!” I hiss at him. “Elodie, what is it?”
“Hold on,” Nick says furiously.
“Chloe, I’m really sorry!” Her voice breaks. “I hate to bother you, but we were trying to teach Holly to crawl and we were all on the floor and she picked something up and put it in her mouth and she swallowed it and we think it was a spider!” She’s sobbing now. “And we don’t know what to do!”
From Nick’s phone, I hear the faint echo of “...what to do!”
I’m already standing, picking up my velvet pants from the floor and shaking them out. “We’re on our way,” I say. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
On his side of my bed, Nick is pulling on his shirt.
We’re on our way.
We really are.
And everything’s going to be fine.
Just fine.
* * *
:)
* * *
Thank you so much for reading Our Options Have Changed, the first in our On Hold of contemporary romances. Whether you like a little comedy with your romance, or some drama with your smiles, you’ll find this new series to be just right.
Look for the next book in the On Hold series, Thank You For Holding, coming in 2017.
KEEP READING for your BONUS NOVELLA: Shopping for a Billionaire’s Honeymoon!
About Julia Kent
Text JKentBooks to 77948 and get a text message on release dates!
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julia Kent turned to writing contemporary romance after deciding that life is too short not to have fun. She writes romantic comedy with an edge, and new adult books that push contemporary boundaries. From billionaires to BBWs to rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every book she writes, but unlike Trevor from Random Acts of Crazy, she has never kissed a chicken.
She loves to hear from her readers by email at [email protected], on Instagram and Twitter @jkentauthor, and on Facebook at facebook.com/jkentauthor
Visit her website at http://jkentauthor.com
For more information, click on a link below:
@jkentauthor
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www.jkentauthor.com
[email protected]
About Elisa Reed
Elisa Reed is a journalist-turned-fiction-writer whose snappy, irreverent prose combines with an irrepressible zest for the simpler, and often intimate, pleasures of life to produce fun(ny) contemporary romance with a focus on second chances.
New England born and bred, Elisa Reed now lives, writes, and plays in New Orleans and along the sugar sands of the Gulf Coast.
You can find her on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/elisareedauthor
For more information, click on a link below:
elisareedauthor
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Honeymoon
by Julia Kent
He is addicted to his phone and his new role as CEO. I’m addicted to getting some on my own honeymoon.
One of these things is not like the other.
I am pretty sure a serial killer’s lair is the only place in the world where I could stash my new husband so he can’t manage the acquisition of our new company.
And that seems a little drastic.
But only a little...
All I want is one week alone with him. Hours in bed, legs tangled together in ecstasy, room service and long walks on the beach in Hawaii.
Not vying for his kisses around a Bluetooth microphone. The Borg aren’t sexy in real life.
So I’m taking matters into my own hands and hitting “reboot” on our honeymoon.
We’re going to a place so remote that no one can find us.
Not even my mother.
* * *
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Honeymoon is a short novelette of approximately 100 pages. It is meant to be read after Shopping for a Billionaire’s Wife and/or Shopping for a CEO’s Fiancée, but if you read it out of order, that’s fine. Shannon and Declan forgive you. ;)
Copyright © 2016 by Julia Kent
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
* * *
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Chapter 1
Let’s do an inventory of this fine day. My day-after-I-got-married day. What is supposed be Day One of my honeymoon after marrying the billionaire of my dreams.
(Let’s not count the night before).
Woke up to the lovely sight of my husband’s tousled dark hair sliding down my torso so he could feast on me for breakfast.
Had actual breakfast in bed after room service delivered mixed berries, cream, bacon, and maple-soaked carrot-cake french toast, and the best damn coffee on the planet from the coffee shop I now own.
Made love with my delightful husband in the giant jetted bathtub in our suite. Turns out I’m as bendy as a Cirque du Soleil performer when I need to be. Maybe Mom’s insistence that I attend all those yoga classes has a silver lining after all.
Dressed and prepared to hop the corporate jet for Hawaii, kisses interspersed between readying ourselves for the trip. Undressed twice. Dressed twice. Declan insisted I not wear panties for the plane trip.
“But I’m already a member of the Mile High Club,” I’d protested.
“Not as a wife.”
He had a point.
Panties abandoned.
Found his brother, my best friend, a former colleague and an Anterdec chauffeur all married to each other.
Notice something a little different about that last one?
Yeah. Me too.
Day One of my honeymoon had promise, but now? Now it’s a little too real.
We’re on the plane, settling into our seats, and I’m doing my best not to think about my poor best friend and her chaotic mess back at the Anterdec resort where Declan and I just spent nearly a week trying to figure out our entire life.
Which we did, successfully, to my utter surprise. After fleeing our wedding in a helicopter and lying to my Momzilla mother, we managed to get to Las Vegas, ensconced in a resort on the Vegas Strip that Declan had designed himself as an intern in college. By the time my crazy family caught up to us, we’d steeled ourselves for the inevitable fallout.
And got so much more than we expected, in more ways than one. We’re married now. Husband and wife.
That’s really all that matters.
That, and honeymoon sex.
Lots and lots and lots of honeymoon sex. It’s my wifely right to walk funny for the next few days.
And his husbandly duty to make it so.
With every loose end waving in the breeze like a batch of Tibetan flags in a typhoon, we’re escaping again, leaving Dec’s brother and my best friend married to who knows whom, Amanda covered in orange Cheeto dust in places where you just don’t insert snack products, and a fainting goat wandering the resort.
What a colossal mess.
Worst of all? I am being ignored by my husband.
Ignored.
On my own honeymoon.
But that’s okay, because it’s temporary. The man has to do his job at Anterdec while finishing the acquisition of the new chain of coffee shops he just bought for me as a wedding present. I get it. I do.
If this goes on much longer, I’m turning all Fatal Attraction on him.
I will not be ignored.
Declan’s talking a mile a minute into his Bluetooth earpiece. Freshly shaved, his skin is smooth, mouth tight with tension. His green eyes glitter and dart, filled with intense intelligence as he thinks and strategizes, makes snap decisions, and give
s his assistant, Grace, a laundry list of action items.
He looks like Christian Grey joined The Borg. Brows down, he’s talking about financing and leverage and acquisitions in a language that starts to sound like Russian after a while. It’s English, but business-speak is so full of jargon it might as well be its own language. I tune out.
The pilot cuts in to tell us we’re about to take off. I fasten my seat belt. Declan’s pacing, turned in profile, and I shoo him over to sit down. He’ll end the call shortly, and we’ll turn to each other for a sweet kiss, then a hotter one, and finally we’ll have legs tangled in the sheets, my fingers spidering through his hair, starting our new life together, with a week alone in each other’s arms at a secluded Hawaiian resort.
Life is finally in order.
Perfect.
Serene.
“No. The terms don’t work. I need to cash out the stocks I’ve had in the reserve....” Declan’s financial talk bores me to tears. He changes when he’s deep in the money weeds, going cold and analytical. I want him hot and untamed, in bed and raw.
Six-hour flight. Jet with a bedroom. I can wait a half hour.
That Mile High Club Wife badge is worth it.
Right?
We sniped the better jet. Declan knows now that his Anterdec corporate privileges are in jeopardy. No one’s said anything specific, but Grace has warned him that, knowing his father and brother, his days of using the company planes, limos, and credit cards for expenses are limited.
Knowing that, then, and knowing his new wife is so horny that when she gets naked he’ll find green skin, why is he talking about interest rates and Department of Health sanitation policies and expanding leverage?
The only leverage he should be thinking about is how to use his hand as a lever to move me around on a mattress.
Hot and bothered, aroused and wet, I use the only ammunition I have.
The Glare of Death.
It doesn’t work. I wish my cat Chuckles were here. He’s better at it.
Hyped up on the Grind It Fresh! lattes Declan had waiting for us on the plane, I’m a ticking time bomb. Frustration and want are building faster than caffeine in my bloodstream. You think guys can have sex brain 100% of the time?
Try being a newlywed wife of a hot billionaire.
If researchers dissected my brain right now, they’d find a clitoris.
A caffeinated clitoris.
Pointed straight at—
“Okay. Bye.”
He’s done! My turn! The Hallelujah Chorus starts to play.
Between my legs.
I know what you’re thinking. We just had tons of sex all morning. More sex than most married couples have in a month, if you believe popular culture news articles. How could I want more?
Look at my husband.
Really look at him.
He’s tall and muscular, with the kind of body that manages to look extraordinary when naked, and yet even better in a suit. Don’t make me choose one over the other. If it were physically possible, I’d have him wear one of his bespoke cashmere suits and be naked simultaneously. Like Schrödinger’s cat in the box, I want quantum physics to bend to my will and make both possible.
At the same time.
That dark, thick hair, his eyebrows strong, framing eyes the color of the hills of Ireland. Broad cheekbones, carved by God, with an intelligence in his expressions that makes it clear that even when we’re old and our bodies have worn to bone and love-worn wrinkles, we will have the pleasure of talking and joking, of being enraptured with the divine interplay of the mind.
Which is great and all, but let’s talk about how smoking hot his bod is now.
How can a man arouse me until I’m buzzing out of my own skin, wet and warm and full of instinct that makes me need his fresh skin? But more important – how did I get so lucky to marry a man who can do this to me?
Declan sucks down his latte in one long ribbon of throat grace, his mouth muscles moving in perfect harmony to execute the consumption. I want that mouth on me. That tongue needs to do curls and swirls and double axel and Biellmann spins on me. That caffeine could be transmitted from his bodily fluids to mine with the right maneuver.
One I’m prepared to initiate ten seconds ago.
And then—wait. Wait. Hold on here. He’s not getting naked.
He is dialing.
“What are you doing?” I ask in Dog Whistle, my involuntary language.
He holds up one finger.
No. One finger won’t do.
I need him to use both hands.
And mouth. And tongue. And one other important appendage. Plus all those muscles, and the sweet tug of his fingers in my hair, and --
“Just another call.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said—”
He turns away. I hear Grace’s name. I hear the words New Zealand and Costa Rica and capitation and border policies and fair trade come out of his mouth.
You know what I want to hear him say?
Ask for it.
Beg me.
Where’s the whipped cream?
Do that thing with your pinkie again.
I love how your nipples touch the mattress when you lie on your back.
(Hey, it’s my fantasy).
Not what he’s currently saying, which sounds like “Put the market analysis for Satan’s civet coffee in Putin’s bank account so we can merge the CPT modifiers with the Euro into a blockchain hedge fund.”
Or something like that.
“DECLAN!” I scream.
He doesn’t even jump.
One finger.
I get one finger.
For the next hour.
I start seven different books on my eReader, finish the New York Times newspaper on board, balance my checkbook, and declutter my email inbox. I had 7,543 unread messages in there, most of them forwards from my mother about how Bill Gates will pay you $5 million if you forward that email.
They date back to 2008.
That’s how bored I am. On my honeymoon.
“Dec?”
I get the finger again.
I give him one of my own.
He’s deep in thought and doesn’t notice.
My phone buzzes.
A text from my mother.
Honeymoon oops babies are the best wedding present for your mother. <3
That’s it.
I call for the flight attendant, who comes to me immediately. Declan looks relieved.
“Yes, Mrs. McCormick?” Her voice is cheerfully professional, using a cultivated tone I’ve come to recognize. Working for the wealthy requires a skill set no one teaches you unless you brush up against this world. I would have gone my entire life not knowing. Grace has the tone. Gerald does, too. It’s an unflappable, responsive way of managing people who don’t have to deal with the same worries that the rest of us juggle.
Mrs. McCormick.
I love that.
“Could you please tell the captain to cut off all cell and internet access?”
“Excuse me?”
Funny how that unflappable tone turns to panic.
“Cut off all cell and internet to the plane. Not, though, you know, the controls to fly the plane,” I add quickly.
“But it’s corporate policy to—”
I point to Dec’s back. “See that hot guy in that beautiful suit?”
She gives me an uncertain look. “Yes?”
“See that unused bedroom?” I nod toward the door.
She blushes. “Yes.”
“I need help getting Hot Guy and Toilet Girl in bed.” And to stop hearing from my mother about oops babies.
To stop hearing from my mother at all.
She looks at the bathroom. “Toilet...girl?”
“I’m Toilet Girl.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand.” Her eyes are beautiful, dark and wide, with more white around the deep, minky irises than usual. Thick eyeliner gives her an E
gyptian look, and her cheekbones are wide, well rouged, and apple-sized from smiling.
“Do you understand wanting to have sex on your honeymoon?”
Adele. That’s her name. Adele gives me a sour look before quickly composing herself. “I—um...” She fiddles with the paisley scarf at her neck as she blinks rapidly.
“What?”
“I know what it’s like not to have sex on your honeymoon,” she whispers confidentially, eyelids flaring.
That thought never seriously occurred to me. Given that Declan’s more likely to make love to a notary stamp than he is to me right now, though, the potential’s there.
“What happened?” I ask with sympathy. Hey, she’s talking to me. I’m getting more conversation out of her than I am from my new husband.
And she doesn’t give me the finger.
“He drank too much Champagne.”
“And he couldn’t...perform?”
“Not when you’re puking.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Keep Mr. McCormick away from the drink.” Her eyes cut over to him and she frowns.
“And the phone?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Patting my arm like we’re old friends, she makes her way on five-inch heels as if they’re an extension of her body.
As she slips into the cockpit, I realize that if the pen is mightier than the sword, the mouth is mightier than the finger.
And boy, does that apply to everything. In so many ways.
As I approach my husband, he holds up his index finger.
Standing on tiptoe, I slowly ease my warm, wet mouth over it, wrapping my flat tongue around the hard ridge of his knuckles, sucking hard. Using the tip of my tongue, I flick the spot between the end of the joint and the pad of his palm.
His eyes widen. His body stiffens. I use my hand to make sure something else stiffens, too.
His eyes plead with me. But he can’t say a word, so I don’t know if he’s telepathically saying Stop or You are a tongue goddess.