Just Friends: A Summer Fling With A Billionaire Heir

by Cynthia Dane

  She loved seeing how couples moved drunkenly to the music, laughing at the nudity around them, soaking up the sexual depravity, and eventually participating in it themselves when the confidence built up (with a little help from liquid friends.) What would it be like to come to this place every Friday night when the party was the craziest? Shots out of belly buttons? Women jumping up on empty stages and ripping their Chanel and Dior off as if they suddenly embraced the nudist lifestyle?

  A whole line of cocaine left on the sink in the ladies’ room, but by that point in her life Rachel would have been disappointed if she didn’t get the whole experience.

  She walked out, ready to laugh about it to Zack (while of course looking for someone who was particularly coked out of her mind, because she was nosy) when she saw him sitting on a chair, a beautiful young woman hovering near his ear. His eyes were locked on her cleavage.

  And Rachel’s eyes were locked on the svelte figure in that body-hugging white dress and the perfect blond hair brushing against her cream-colored shoulders. Her makeup was perfect – standing out in the dark lights of the club but not overdone. Stiletto heels kicked behind her as she bent down to giggle in Zack’s ear. He did nothing to push her away, although his body was turned in the other direction as he drank ice water and humored her.

  “You’ll never guess what I saw in the ladies’ room.” Rachel swept up to the table as if she had never seen the blond woman hovering nearby. “Topless women everywhere. There’s a boobie-measuring contest going on in there.”

  Zack pried his eyes off the other woman’s cleavage. “You’re lying.”

  “What makes you think I’m lying?”

  “’Cause you would still be in there checking it out if it were true.”

  “Like you’re checking out this woman’s tits?”

  “Allow me to introduce you to Cady.” Zack said, his hand flourishing in the other woman’s direction while his attention remained on Rachel. “We used to date.”

  Cady hooked her hand on her hip as she regarded Rachel with contempt. “You the latest he’s dating?” She looked her up and down. “Your dress doesn’t even fit right… and is so two years ago.”

  “I’m just his friend.” Rachel scooted into the booth and briefly looked for Tatiana’s black dress in a sea of other women in black dresses. “We haven’t even done it.”

  Zack spat out the water in his mouth.

  “Isn’t there a club of Zack’s ex-girlfriends for you to go join? Try the bathroom.” It was only then that Rachel remembered it wasn’t a boobie-measuring party going on in the bathroom. Oh well. Cady looked the coked-out type. Good thing Zack got rid of her.

  “Whatever.” Cady walked away from the table, her ass sashaying in her tight dress in ways Rachel could never hope to achieve in her own clothes. “

  “Wow.” Zack put his glass down. “That did not go how I thought it would.”

  “Oh, I’d love to know how you thought that would go.”

  “First of all, I thought I would be able to get rid of her before you got back. That was the fastest trip to the women’s room I’ve ever seen in this place.”

  “Probably because I actually went in there to pee and not to get high.”

  “If you saw something, you really should tell an employee. They crack down on that pretty hard here.”

  “Not sure security could clean that up in ten minutes. Looked like a pack of heiresses who got off on… no, wait a minute. You’re changing the subject. That woman was flirting with you.”

  “I don’t know if I’d say flirting, but she wouldn’t be opposed to me flirting with her, that’s for sure.” Zack shrugged. “She came up and said hello. Asked me how things were going.”

  “With her cleavage, huh?”

  “Ooh, you noticed Lizzie and Georgiana too, huh?”

  “Lizzie and… oh my God, is that what she calls her breasts?”

  “She’s a big Jane Austen fan.”

  “That’s…”

  “Bored heiresses in a nutshell. When they’re not snorting the blow because they have nothing else to do with their lives, they’re naming their tits after Pride & Prejudice characters.”

  “You’re changing the subject again!”

  “Are you jealous, Rachel?”

  She looked away, pouting. “No.”

  “Good. You shouldn’t be. I’m not going home with a girl if I’m already out with you. Unless, of course…”

  “We are not having a threesome with one of your exes.”

  “But we could have one with a total stranger?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Zack scooted up next to her and whispered, “Hate to break it to you, but I’ve probably slept with half the women in this room.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Nope. Now, I don’t remember all of their names, but…”

  “I get the point.” Rachel could only bring herself to glance at some of the other women in the room. Before, she had admired their flawless skin, beautiful hair, and gorgeous outfits that made them look like they stepped out of an Old Hollywood movie.

  Right now, however, she’d rather pretend that none of them existed. Their drunken stumbling and constant fawning over mediocre-looking men was grating. Their high-pitched, shrieking voices were so fake and unnecessary. And their hair? Dyed. Fake tits. Filled cheeks and asses all implants.

  The only woman to pass by who didn’t reek of a million procedures or tacky fashion tastes was a tall blond woman who carried more grace in her steps than Cady had in her pinky.

  “Speaking of threesomes.” Zack shouted to the pass woman, “Hey! Kathryn!

  She stopped with a sudden jerk in her steps. The blond woman had barely turned around before she sighed in Zack’s direction. “You’re not a face I normally see around here,” she said, her French-tipped nails grazing against her sheer beige wrap-dress. Strappy white sandals showed off the sparking purple polish on her toenails. This woman’s on a whole ‘nother level! She reeked gobs of money but without the puffed-up pretentiousness. Like she had achieved such a level of familial success that she began to gently descend to Earth, back from her sojourn to Mt. Olympus.

  She lost most of her composure – but only for a second – when she spotted Zack.

  He motioned for her to come over to their table. With one quick glance over her shoulder, Kathryn approached them with body language that suggested she didn’t have more than a minute. Whatever Zack wanted, he better make it damn quick.

  “Decided to pop in for a fun Friday night. I hear this club is the place to be during the summer. I mean, there’s a reason you’re here, right? Let me guess.” Zack flashed her one of his most damning smiles. Oh my God. Stop flirting with women right in front of me! Then again, a Zack Feldman who wasn’t confident enough to flirt with every woman he felt like flirting with – in front of Rachel or not – wasn’t the man she had gotten to know over the past month. “You have a platinum titanium diamond-encrusted membership.”

  Kathryn genially grinned. Rachel couldn’t deduce if that was genuine amusement or the most practiced swing at amicability on the eastern seaboard. “Just platinum, actually.”

  “My bad.” Zack turned to Rachel. “Allow me to introduce to you my neighbor, the illustrious, beautiful, radiant, and oh-so-gracious Kathryn Alison.”

  The sarcasm dripping from his fangs almost made Rachel laugh. Kathryn cut in, saying, “He forgot magnanimous. And you are?”

  “Rachel Taylor.” She extended her hand across the table. Kathryn hesitated before taking one last large step forward and shaking it. Her grip was unexpectedly firm, albeit the shake itself was short. “I’m, uh… Zack’s friend.”

  “Friend, huh?” Kathryn placed her hands back on her hips. “With him? Surely, you could do better.”

  Zack filled Rachel in before she could feel more awkward in this situation. Even more awkward than with Cady! “This is the neighbor I told you about.”

  “I hope by that he means the one h
e keeps asking out. I’ve turned him down about a hundred times now.”

  Rachel’s mouth dropped, No wonder her name had sounded somewhat familiar. Kathryn… I heard that name… on the other side of the bedroom… wall…

  “Holy shit, you’re the one we heard, uh… uh.”

  “She and her boyfriend are big kinksters around here.” Zack coughed. “Aren’t you?”

  “He’s not here tonight,” she said in lieu of anything else. The only signs of being physically shaken were the slight movements of her arms and one shift of weight between her feet. “Dropped by to see some of my friends from college. They have reservations in the Diamond VIP lounge. I’d invite you, Zachary, but…” she glanced up at the balcony overlooking the main room. “Girls only.” She winked at Rachel before turning around. “Nice meeting you, Rachel. You can do much better than this third rate heir, though.”

  “And you can do much better than that first rate heir you’re with!” Zack called after her.

  Rachel still confused. “Does she normally wave at you with her middle finger?”

  Zack drummed his against the table. “Every day.”

  “So she’s the one you’re really in love with, huh?”

  Even after saying that, Zack only had eyes for Rachel. “It’s complicated. Yes and no.”

  “How so?”

  “Ah… you don’t wanna hear it.”

  “No. I wanna know all about these women you’re apparently in love with.”

  “I am not in love with her. She’s hot, though, yeah?”

  “Stop changing the subject!” And trying to redirect the topic back to my sexuality! The more Zack drank, the more of a cad he became.

  Zack slipped out of the booth and gestured for Rachel to follow him. “Walk with me, and I’ll fill you in a little.”

  Rachel pulled herself out of the booth and took Zack’s hand. He yanked her to one of the back rooms, careful to steady her when she wobbled in her borrowed heels.

  “She an ex-girlfriend of yours?”

  “No. We’ve never gone out. She’s way out of my league… and I’m not submissive enough for her. Ahem.”

  Okay, then. Sounds interesting. “How is a woman out of your league? You’re the guy who gets supermodels with an appointment to walk in the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.”

  “It’s different when it comes to heiresses, and she’s the biggest one in the city. Not just financially, although it’s a huge deal that she’s the sole heir of the Alison fortune.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Not surprising.” Zack tapped on a waitress’s shoulder and politely asked if there was a private party in the back rooms. When she gave the go-ahead for them to go through the guarded hallway, Zack continued, “They mostly live off their investments from decades ago. Their job is to make more money from their money, period. I think her great-great-grandfather was in neighborhood development or something… her family is so old and has been so rich for so long that they’ve fallen off all the maps. Helps they’re not in any public corporations now. That’s why my family still has middle-class name recognition. People still have to buy steel.”

  They lined up in the dark hallway behind a man in a crimson red cummerbund and a woman in a bright pink slip dress. Neither of them did anything about her red thong poking out beneath her hem. “I’m still confused,” Rachel admitted. “So because your family isn’t as old or rich as hers – which is impossible for me to imagine, mind you – she’s out of your league?”

  The people in front of them were gradually checked off by a bouncer who made sure the headcount in the back rooms remained beneath a certain limit. Fire codes? Management stipulations to make the place look more desirable? If there was one thing Rachel learned that night, however, it was that even Zachary Feldman, the billionaire heir to one of the most established families Rachel had ever heard of, was still a small fry compared to others.

  “That was a joke,” Zack told her. “It’s more like I’m not her type, and she’s not really mine. We give each other a good ribbing whenever we’re in the same place.”

  “So you asking her out all the time is a joke?”

  “Kind of. She’s got a boyfriend, anyway.”

  What kind of man does a woman like that choose to date? “Would you go out with her if she ever said yes?”

  “I mean… duh. Did you see that ass?”

  The words he used were silly, but his tone was not the usual kind of playful Rachel had expected to hear. This isn’t the first time he’s dissociated a little when talking about the neighbors. Specifically, whenever the boyfriend came up…

  But before Rachel could pry even more, they had reached the front of the line. The bouncer looked them up and down before jerking his thumb into the dark, black-light lit room. Magically, Tatiana awaited them on the other side of the entrance.

  “Good, good, you should take full advantage of your guest passes.” Her teeth lit up beneath the black light. They weren’t as strong farther into the room. No, the only strong thing in there was the throbbing bass beat of a sensual song and…

  And the man and woman in masquerade masks making slow, graphic love in front of the audience that was the rest of the room.

  “So that’s how you know you’re in a sex club,” Rachel muttered.

  “What?” Zack brought her over to the wall, where they stayed out of everyone else’s way. Tatiana insisted on bringing them their complimentary drinks for the back room. “Exhibitionists and voyeurs gotta get off. Does it bother you?”

  Rachel laughed. “You think this is my first time in a sex club?”

  “No. Way.”

  “Way.” Rachel accepted her drink with thanks. “Went to one a few years ago with a friend. Nothing high class like this joint, though. Very middle class, but still nice. Mostly middle-aged swingers making the most of retirement, but there were some hot youngin’s who made the trip worth it. Buffet was good, too.”

  “Please tell me you hooked up with someone there.”

  “In the bathroom, yes.”

  “Nice. Nice.”

  “Calm down. That wasn’t happening there.”

  Rachel was intentionally not paying attention to the erotic display going on the stage. Not because people having sex in a sex club made her nervous, but because… well, why would she look at them when she could admire the way Zack’s body cut in that suit? In the dark? With stubble growing all over his face again? He was ten times sexier than the guy on stage. Bigger, more muscular, more her type…

  Had Zack brought her here in the hopes they would hook up again?

  “Zack?”

  Great. Was it another ex-girlfriend?

  “Whoa.” Zack turned his full attention to yet another blond. This one, however, was on a different level from Cady and Kathryn. Neither of those women had curves that could come close to the body standing beside Zack. Nor did those women have the lushest golden hair to come spinning from a loom. “I had no idea you were in town for the weekend.”

  A man came up behind the woman and looped his arm around her midsection, the largest hand Rachel had ever seen spreading across the stomach of her red strapless dress. This guy is huge! Broad shoulders, a hulking chest, and a suit that probably cost twice as much as Zack’s from the amount of material. He wasn’t overweight, per se. He looked plenty fit, especially when standing in a crowd of some of the best bodies personal trainers and dieticians could buy. But Rachel could barely comprehend a man who was both six and a half feet tall and built like a linebacker. Suddenly the other woman’s curvy body looked like a petite, demure muse’s. What does that make me!

  “Miguel insisted that we come while he’s in the country.”

  “Hi.” The man, who had an accent that Rachel could not quite place, waved one of his large hands at Rachel. “I’m Miguel. Don’t think we’ve met before.”

  “Yes! Introduce us to your girlfriend!”

  “She’s not my…”

  “I’m not his…”
>
  They both stopped. Surely, Zack understood how silly this situation was, right? They were in a sex club together, for fuck’s sake. In the back room where people with kinks openly got it on! Of course it looked like they were boyfriend and girlfriend! I’m not even going to fight it right now. After all, I’ve happily sucked his cock.

  “Anyway, you may remember me talking about Judith,” Zack said. “This is, uh, my best friend Seth’s girlfriend.”

  Rachel paled when she looked at Miguel and the possessive way he slung his arm around Judith’s shoulders.

  “They have an arrangement.”

  “It’s fine.” Judith said. Her demeanor was a pleasant blend of Kathryn’s cool approachability and Cady’s crasser manners. “Polyamory is the new cool thing! Or so I’m told by everyone who’s trying to cheat on their wives.”

  “That is not our situation,” Miguel cleared up. “Anyway, I also know Zack from the marina. I bought the yacht in the station next to his.”

  “Totally not what it’s called in English,” Zack said, “but close enough.”

  “Where are you from, if I may ask?” Rachel batted her eyelashes at the imposing yet amiable man looming above her. “I can’t quite place your accent.”

  “Because I’m from Monaco, but my family is Spanish. My accent is a damn mess.”

  “He doesn’t know if he’s channeling French or Spanish,” Judith said with a sigh. “He’s either being romantically dirty or erotically dirty. I can’t keep up.” She smacked Zack on the arm. “Enough about this boring guy! Who is this lovely lady? Seth didn’t tell me you were seeing anyone new. Not anyone serious enough for you to drop into the city sex club for the first time in two years.”

  “This is Rachel. We’re friends with benefits.”

  “Oh my God!” Rachel would have taken a step back if she weren’t already up against a wall. “Tell people, why don’t you?”

  “Please, Rachel. This is Judith. You don’t know her, but she’ll get the truth out of us in about five more minutes. I’m saving us time.”