Billion Dollar Bastard: An Alpha Male Step Brother Billionaire Romance

by Lucas, Helen

  I tasted the clammy, cold sweat on them and the liquor and something that I suspected was cocaine. I pushed her away but not before the street scene seemed to erupt in flashes.

  Paparazzi. Perfect ending to a perfect weekend, wasn’t it?

  I gave it no more thought, until I called Karen the next day.

  “So, how’s Liana doing?” she asked coldly before I could even say hello.

  “What?”

  “I saw the tabloids today. My only question is whether you called her before or after you took me to Connecticut.”

  “Karen, that was a meeting to finalize some aspects of the divorce…”

  “Well, it looks like there are still parts to be finalized,” she growled and hung up.

  I slammed my own phone down. Fuck.

  I spun around in my chair, looking out over the city. I hated this—hated this dance we were doing, hated not being in control. I wanted to get away—get away from this city, from the forces that we keeping Karen and me apart…

  I gritted my teeth and made a fist. I dug my nails into my palm, dug them so deep that they almost drew blood. I growled. I wanted to scream.

  But no. I don’t quit. I fight. I fight till I win. That’s what I’ve always done.

  I’m coming for you, Karen.

  KAREN

  As if striving to match my mood, it began to rain: a perfect late autumn storm. I gazed out at the Silliman quad, my eyes clouded over with tears just like the sky.

  I knew I should leave, get away from campus before anyone saw me so distraught. But it was already the end of the day and I didn’t have any energy left. I stayed in my office, trying to read, trying to work, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. And so I stared out over the perfectly manicured lawns, watching students dart through the storm.

  And then I saw him.

  I knew him by his confident, striding walk immediately.

  Kyle. He had come here.

  “Bastard,” I growled, dashing downstairs.

  Without any consideration of the water streaking down out of the skies, I ran to him. He was wearing one of his fine suits but it was plastered to his body, his gorgeous, powerful body, showing off the tight contours of his back, how his back narrowed to form a V at his waist…

  “What the hell are you doing here?!” I demanded, screaming into the storm as he saw me. The sad, pathetic look he gave me melted my heart almost immediately, but I tried my best to keep a cold sneer on my face.

  “I love you!” I yelled back, the rain swallowing up his words even as they reached my ears.

  “Then why were you kissing her?”

  “Karen, it’s over between us. She kissed me. She’s a drug addict and an alcoholic. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She didn’t then. I had to send her home before she puked all over the restaurant.”

  I knew, at least, that the part about Liana being on drugs was true. I wanted to believe him.

  I wanted to trust him.

  I wasn’t sure if I did. But that didn’t matter, because I found myself going to him, throwing my arms around him, kissing him in the rain.

  We staggered back into my department building, all but falling over each other as we made our way up the stairs. I didn’t even peek around to see if any of my colleagues were around. Somehow, this seemed more important.

  We barged into my office, and I slammed the door behind me. In seconds, I was stripping off Kyle’s wet suit, kissing his powerful chest, tasting the water and sweat and tears on his skin as he stripped me, tossing my blouse on the floor, and then my jeans and then my underwear.

  And then his mouth was on my sex. I gasped, my butt on my desk as he held me there, hungrily devouring me. He slurped and suckled like a beggar at a feast, tasting me, tasting me deep, working his fingers into me, stretching me and making me moan.

  “Kyle…” I gasped hard, running my fingers through his soaked hair, molding it into shapes as he licked me. “Kyle… Kyle… I love you too…”

  He answered me only with his licks and kisses, slurping away at the center of my pleasure, at my throbbing node of delight as I shuddered and whimpered, my hips shaking as I got closer and closer.

  “Oh, god!” I moaned, thrusting my breasts forward passionately, every cell of my flesh alive with desire for this man as he pleasured me. And suddenly, I was losing my mind, shaking and squealing with delight, spasming beneath his practiced mouth as he continued his delicious ministrations.

  And then he was on top of me and his cock was sliding into my sopping hot center. I groaned, still aching from our loving over the weekend as he claimed me once more, penetrating me deep.

  “Kyle…” I groaned as he took me, working his hips deeper and deeper into me, my body responding in agonized delight as he labored over me, grinding our flesh together, rainwater and sweat mixing together into a delicious cocktail of passion.

  “Karen, I’m close,” he whispered and I felt him twitching inside of me, felt his passion coming to an end.

  “Please…” I whispered in reply, kissing him hard, dragging my teeth over his lips. “Please, fill me up.”

  And then he arched his back, his beautiful, handsome face contorting in pleasure as he released himself inside of me. I gasped, feeling it pump inside of me, his shaft spilling his seed deep into me.

  “Remember my fantasies about you?” he asked after a few minutes of quiet touching.

  “Bent over just about everything in existence?” I asked teasingly.

  “That’s right,” he growled, guiding me over my desk, my ass up in the air, like an animal in heat. He kissed the back of my neck and I groaned in delight as we began to act out those very fantasies…

  KYLE

  We lay together on the floor of her office, our spent passion surrounding us. The air was thick and hot even though it was cold and wet outside.

  “So, have you reconsidered this whole relationship thing?” I asked finally. Karen lay on her belly and I had been stroking her back; long, uninterrupted strokes down her perfect, unblemished skin, feeling the sweet sweat separate under my fingers as I massaged her flesh.

  “I don’t know, Kyle. I just… I don’t know. Give me time to think.”

  I sighed. I suppose that was all I could hope for.

  “I haven’t been in a relationship since Liana and I broke up,” I admitted finally.

  She lifted her head to look at me.

  “Really? Is that true?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s hard. Work and life got in the way. I would see friends from school getting married but I just never found time for it…”

  “For love?” she asked suddenly. I nodded.

  “I mean, there’re always…”

  “…women who want to take you to bed.”

  I smiled ruefully.

  “Of course. I mean, there’s always mindless sex.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “You don’t seem like the type.”

  “I’ve got a personal trainer who’s been blowing up my phone for the last few weeks. He’s dumb as rocks but he’s even got a better body than you do.”

  I grinned.

  “Now, consider what you’re saying…”

  “Oh, I know what I’m saying,” Karen said with a sweet smile. “I’ll admit… He doesn’t have your stamina.”

  “At least I’ve got that.”

  “At least.”

  We shared one more kiss and then began to slough our damp clothes back on. They were cold, sad, wet. I didn’t want to get dressed. I wanted to stay with her, stay naked with my woman, make her my woman.

  But real life called, I suppose. It was time to return to the world.

  Our clothes felt somehow uncomfortable, like they no longer fit. I wanted to tear Karen’s clothes off once more, rip them from her skin and make love to her all over again.

  But that wasn’t to happen.

  We chatted amicably, like friends, as we ducked out of the centuries old Gothic building, one
of dozens adorning Silliman’s gorgeous campus. The rain had slowed to a drizzle and at one point, I turned to glance back at the building where we had just made love.

  There was a single light on still, on the third floor, the floor where Karen’s office was. Where the English department was.

  I saw an older man in the window. I squinted. He saw us.

  “Karen…” I whispered, grabbing her by the arm. She stopped and we both gazed at the man gazing at us from across the wet quad.

  “Is that…”

  “It’s Gary Towson,” Karen whispered, her voice cold as daggers made of ice.

  KAREN

  I was only in my office for fifteen minutes the morning after my evening tryst with Kyle when Gary appeared at my door.

  “Have a good evening, Karen?” he asked coolly.

  I glowered at him.

  “What do you need?”

  “I was just curious as to what Mr. Stone, our gracious benefactor was doing on campus last night…”

  “We were working on the fund. Nothing that concerns you, so don’t you worry about it.”

  “It could look very, very bad, my dear…” he said with a growl. “If it got out, of course.”

  He stepped inside and eased the door shut. My heart began to pound in my chest.

  “How could it look bad?”

  “Like you’re whoring yourself. Whoring yourself for your career…” he whispered as he advanced on me.

  I felt so vulnerable sitting down. Adrenaline coursed through my body. I wasn’t going to be threatened or, if I was, I sure as hell wasn’t going to take it sitting down.

  I stood and met him halfway, in the middle of the room.

  “What do you want?” I hissed.

  “You know…” he said, reaching out, grasping my breast roughly.

  I yelped and before I knew what was happening, my right knee connected with Towson’s crotch. He groaned and doubled over.

  “If you come within three feet of me ever again, so help me god, I will destroy you,” I whispered. “Do you understand?”

  “Ghetto trash,” he growled. I slapped him hard, hard enough to knock him back a few feet, setting him on his way to staggering out the door.

  I tried to work but I was too worked up. It felt good. It was a dumb thing to do but goddamn, it felt good.

  I wanted to call Kyle. Wanted to brag to him. I knew he would be proud.

  That was a good sign, I realized—the fact that he would be proud of me for standing up for myself, for fighting for myself. I smiled. This felt like an insight, and important thing to realize…

  But gossip spreads fast. By five o’clock, it had apparently spread to my publisher.

  I got a call as I was packing up to leave from Lori.

  “Karen, everyone is talking about you and Kyle stone!” she gasped as soon as I answered.

  “Really? How the hell did this spread so fast?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s the biggest story in the world of academic publishing right now,” she said, a hint of irony in her voice. I found myself grinning. The world of academic publishing—certainly the most exciting world Lori could have ever found herself in.

  “How would you feel about writing a tell-all book about you and Kyle?”

  “What? A book?”

  “It’ll make an incredible story. Bother and sister, billionaire and professor… You using him for his money, using him for his body… We could give it a feminist spin.”

  “Lori, it’s not like that, really…”

  Damn it, but Towson’s gossip sure did spread fast.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s like that. Kiddo, this could MAKE your career!”

  I took pause at those words. Was she right? Possibly. But still… I couldn’t do that to Kyle. I couldn’t… I don’t know if betray was the right word… But it sure felt like betraying him.

  “Listen, I’m going to have to say no.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Lori, no. It’s not going to happen. This is my personal life. Besides, I don’t want to be defined by who I sleep with—I want to be defined by my scholarship.”

  “You’re a woman in a man’s world. You’re always going to be defined by who you’re sleeping with—and who wants to sleep with you.”

  Fucking Towson. I sighed.

  “Let me know when you have something to tell me about my book. My ACTUAL book. My scholarly book.”

  And I hung up on her.

  KYLE

  Karen and I planned to have coffee three days after our encounter in her office. We chose a tiny town in the middle of southern Connecticut, a sleepy sea-side town with a harbor, where no one knew us.

  I sat in the town’s only coffee shop, a place where I’m sure I stuck out, if only because I hadn’t been coming there everyday for five or more years.

  And then Karen strode in, wearing a long, tallow colored dress and tights.

  “Hey you,” she said, shifting her sunglasses down flirtily. I smiled and just sipped my coffee.

  “So, after you thought more about my proposition?” I asked.

  “Coming to the Cape? This weekend? I’ll… Yes. Yes, I’ll come.”

  I reached out and took her hand.

  “Good. It’ll be great to get away. I think that’s the secret… You know. To making this work.”

  She bit her lip.

  “There’s… Something I have to tell you, Kyle.”

  My heart froze. What the hell was it going to be? That she was actually a man? A mutant? That she was already married? Or that we were actually biologically brother and sister, somehow, some way?

  No. Fortunately, it was nothing like that.

  “People know… About us,” she said slowly as I savored my coffee, thinking over what she was saying. “Towson had spread it around. I… I don’t know what will happen but…”

  “But this is great!” I declared suddenly, maybe a bit too loud for the casual, slow-paced small town coffee shop. But I didn’t care.

  “Uh, great?” Karen asked. She was skeptical. But as far as I was concerned, this was perfect. This was exactly what we had needed.

  “Don’t you see? We can be together. No one can stop us. Everything we were worried about—it’s happened. There’s no reason not to.”

  I watched her beautiful face think, imagine the possibilities—the possibilities offered by this newfound freedom, the freedom of being out in the open.

  “Kyle… I hope it’s that simple,” she said finally, with a sigh.

  “How isn’t it that simple?” I demanded. She bit her lip.

  “We just… We don’t know. I don’t know how this will affect my career. I’m already hearing things from my publisher. They want me to write a book about this, of all things.”

  I raised an eyebrow. I’d never been the subject of a potential book.

  “A book? Really? What’s supposed to go in it?”

  Karen laughed.

  “I’m supposed to make it look like… Like I’m using you for your money, manipulating you. Kind of a feminist thing, you know.”

  For the second time that morning at that coffee shop, my heart froze. It felt like Liana all over again. I felt like I was being used, all over again.

  “But don’t worry—I’m not doing that. I’m not writing it. I refused. I don’t want to be defined by my personal life, don’t want to be defined by… By… Sex scandals.”

  “So, this is a sex scandal?”

  She scowled.

  “Well, yes, sort of…”

  “How does it feel,” I asked, teasingly. “To be in a sex scandal.”

  The question caught Karen off guard.

  “It feels… Feels good,” she said finally.

  “So, you’re going to come to Cape Cod?” I said once again.

  “Yes,” she said and I could tell her face was flushing. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

  We chatted a bit more and then Karen had to go. After we kissed goodbye, I paid and as I stepped out
to my car, I saw an email from Liana’s lawyer pop up on my phone: