Her Billionaires: Boxed Set (The Complete Collection, Books 1-4)

by Kent, Julia

  “An old friend gave that to me.” She could feel him swallow, could sense the unspoken. Someone very, very special.

  “It’s been beaten up and seems to have gone through a lot, but looks well-loved.”

  “So was she.” Laura stopped breathing. His voice had gone quiet, the words a whoosh out of his lungs, like something he couldn’t control but that he could barely stand to say. The mood had shifted abruptly, her innocent questions something she normally would wish she could take back, would normally berate herself for asking, for making everything awkward with one simple piece of chit chat.

  Except she wasn’t. Regretful. Asking that question may damn well have been the best choice she’d made all day, because she got a glimpse into a very, intensely private man and his profound nature was revealed, even in a tiny sliver.

  This was what she wanted. And Dylan. Go away, Dylan! she chided no one—the voice in her head— as if he himself had invaded her thoughts. Why was she experiencing this strange duality, in Mike’s arms and feeling his pain for someone he’d once loved all while thinking about a man she’d been with last night—one with a hidden significant other?

  It was madness.

  “I’m sorry,” Mike said, stepping back and turning her around. His eyes were sincere and warm, tinged with nostalgia and troubled. “Mentioning her is the last thing I should do on dates. Talking about a past girlfriend isn’t exactly part of the blueprint for a successful new relationship.”

  Relationship? Did he say relationship? Laura’s heart sang.

  “It’s fine,” she assured him. “I understand. You loved her. You can’t separate that from who you are and what you feel in any given moment.”

  He flinched but kept eye contact, obviously shocked by her words. His reaction surprised her, but she knew she hadn’t said the wrong thing. Her usual insecurity was gone, replaced by a steadfast calm. Whatever she said, it had been from the heart, and that is all that really counted.

  How could she read him so well? Freakishly well. He felt like a complete idiot for talking about Jill right now, and yet somehow Laura made it seem fine. Natural. Like another extension of himself, just a perfectly typical part of life. Against all hope he had thought there might—just might—be a woman like this out there for him and Dylan. Someone sweet and nice and understanding and accepting. Not quite convinced she was out there, he had basically given up, and now Dylan had found her on a damn online dating site, of all places. The kind of place where men trolled for sex.

  Dylan, though, had been seeking something more. And now here “more” was, standing before him, telling him that who he was was totally fine. That talking about his dead girlfriend was OK because it was how he felt.

  What had he done to deserve this—and how could he keep it all going?

  Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her again, this time with more urgency and a deeper acceptance. Less questioning, more certainty. Was he imagining that she felt it, too? Her lips were less tentative, more confident, as her tongue slipped in and did its own claiming, her hands pressing against his shoulder blades and pushing him into her, her hips lifting up against his. She was shorter than he was used to, a good foot smaller than he, but her curves were addictive. His hands wanted to touch every inch of flesh, especially the expanse of softness from the spot where her ass met her thigh, up through to her breasts. Handfuls of Laura and her little sighs of pleasure made him harden even more—if that were possible—and by God, if they weren’t heading toward dusk on a mountain where it wasn’t safe to be unprotected at night, he’d have spent the next five hours devouring her, right here, right now.

  However, if they stayed, the bears might very well do the devouring, so with great reluctance he pulled back, cradling her face in his hands, smiling down at her lovely, flushed cheeks, those eyes eager and bright. “We need to go down the mountain now before it gets dark.” He pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I wish...” He couldn’t finish his thought, too overwhelmed by the crushing chaos of turbulence inside him.

  She nodded, making his head bob slightly, in turn triggering a grin on his lips. “That would be an inauspicious first date. ‘Woman eaten by bear.’”

  “Why do you assume the bear would eat you?” He laughed and opened his eyes. She was looking at him with a half-smile.

  “Because I have more body fat and you can run faster.”

  “I would help you climb a tree.”

  “Guys do that so they have an excuse to stare at our asses.”

  He craned his head behind her body and looked down. “I don’t need an excuse.”

  She blushed and looked up, a tight, amused smile on her lips. Had he gone too far? “First date?” she said. She seemed to be forcing herself to make eye contact.

  Puzzled, he frowned. “Uh, yes?”

  “That implies there might...”

  “...be a second?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s up to you, Laura.”

  Not telling Dylan about Laura really was going to kill him, but he needed this second date to confirm his suspicions. When he came out of his bedroom and found Dylan hunched over his laptop, naked except for his boxer briefs, shoulders curled and face staring intently at the screen as he chowed down a bowl of cereal, Mike couldn’t help himself. He snickered.

  Dylan practically climbed the walls, startling, his face panicked and body spidery with a fight-or-flight stance. “What the fuck, Mike? Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Creep up on people like that!” He had one hand on his heart. “Fucking gave me a heart attack.”

  “Hey, I didn’t do anything weird. I walked into my own kitchen to grab breakfast. You’re the freak. Why are you in another world?” A quick glance at the screen gave him his answer: the online dating site.

  With Laura’s picture and profile.

  Fuck. Suppressing his jealousy, Mike opened the fridge door and grabbed a half gallon of milk to pour a glass as he popped two pieces of bread in the toaster.

  “I’m—ah, hell, I guess I’m stalking Laura.” A rush of protectiveness hit Mike in the solar plexus like a punch. He knew Dylan wasn’t going to harm her. Knew it was just because Dylan was crazy about her. Knew all that.

  Still reacted.

  “But I thought she blocked you?”

  “She did. Wait—I told you that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, I made a new account and am trying that way.”

  Mike blinked. The toast popped. Dylan returned his attention to the screen. As Mike grabbed peanut butter, he asked, “So you created a new identity to try to trick her into talking to you?”

  “No. My new account says it’s me. I’m not that crazy.”

  Yes, you are, Mike thought. Almost said it. Held back. Smearing the peanut butter with too much force, he shredded the toast, collapsing the piece and sliming his hand and wrist with nut butter. What a mess.

  Yeah. What a mess.

  “Aren’t you worried she’s going to be creeped out by you? I mean, she blocked you. Case closed. Move on.”

  Dylan shook his head and sighed, his six pack folding in and then out, the muscles rippling up through his chest. Mike admired it with a contentment, like looking at fine art. He didn’t need to touch it; just seeing it was satisfying enough. Knowing it was there when he wanted it sufficed.

  “Seriously, Dylan. Any woman would be freaked if some guy went around chasing her like this. You tried messages on her old account. She blocked you. You tried calling—same. Now you’re getting unhinged.”

  Beep-blip! “Woot!” Dylan shouted. “She’s responding!”

  Mike rushed across the room to see. A swirl of good and bad mixed within him, for if she wanted Dylan again, would she stop seeing Mike? Or, hope against hope, would she consider seeing them both?

  Please leave me alone, she wrote. Mike couldn’t contain a snort of laughter. Dylan scowled.

  “Fuck!” Schadenfre
ude aside, Mike’s inner thoughts mirrored Dylan’s, because in the end while this was amusing, watching Dylan twist in the wind, the fact that he wanted to share Laura meant that somehow he had to find a way to make her see his partner again, to clear up whatever misunderstanding had developed that one night they’d been together.

  Of course, Dylan couldn’t know that Mike was dating her—man, when had this become so complicated?

  When you asked her out, Dumbass.

  Oh. Yeah.

  “How many messages have you sent her?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “THIRTY-FOUR?” Mike howled with laughter now, unable to hold back, leaning against the counter and spilling the last bit of milk in the half gallon carton as it toppled over, sideways, then plummeted to the tiled floor. “Shit!” he shouted, grabbing a hand towel and bending down to clean it up.

  “Is that a metaphor?” Dylan muttered, typing something in the chat window.

  “What are you writing?” Mike split his attention between the milk mess and Dylan’s mess.

  “I’m asking her to meet me for coffee.”

  “No chianti and fava beans?”

  “Shut up.” Dylan’s glare turned from simple annoyance to a simmering fury. OK. Mike knew when to let up. Half a minute later and the milk was cleaned up; time to get out of the house and let Dylan find his way through his heartache. He had a date tonight.

  One that required some serious planning to pull off. What was Laura thinking right now, facing her own screen as Dylan tried again and again to talk to her? Was she scared? Intrigued? Pissed? She kept turning him down, and that didn’t bode well for a future triad.

  All Mike could do now was “wow” her with tonight’s date. He left Dylan half-naked and brooding, to find his way through her roadblocks, the man grousing about all the ways he might have screwed up on their date.

  Same mountain, new date. Or, it seemed like the same mountain. They all seemed the same to her as her vision blurred, her veins unaccustomed to blood pumping this hard through her body for any reason other than sheer arousal.

  Arousal was an issue here, though, too.

  The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking and Laura probably would’ve appreciated it more if her attention weren’t completely focused on Mike. He was all she wanted to watch as he surprised her. He’d carried a back pack at his side through much of the walk. Not wearing— just carrying it. And now like some sort of a magician’s hat, he pulled out a blanket, two bottles of red wine, a couple of glasses, a container filled with five or six different kinds of cheese, most of them with names she couldn’t pronounce, and a container of grapes and strawberries, a couple of them chocolate covered.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “I thought I’d surprise us with a light dinner.” He smiled shyly. “I’m too much of a gentleman to take a woman out and not feed her at least something. I may have dragged you along for another crazy hike and ruin my chances at the third date, but at least you can’t say we didn’t have dinner.”

  She surveyed the layout before her. Some sort of a camping blanket; thin, but well-worn. Actual stemware, wine glasses that he kept in a special case. And as he inserted the cork screw into the first bottle of wine, and very deftly opened it, she sampled one of the cheeses.

  “Mmm, sheep’s cheese?” she asked.

  His eyes lit up. “Yes! You can tell from the taste?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “it’s one of my favorites.”

  “Well, hot damn! Who knew I’d find someone who knows their fromage?” he said, biting his lower lip, and smiling and nodding at the same time, as if he quietly celebrated a minor success.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, “who knew?” Her face shifted in an expression of wistfulness, of serenity, of being very much in the moment.

  She felt she could breathe around him, that she could appreciate each breath. And as he handed her the glass of red wine, she sniffed it, then took a sip. “This is good.”

  “Guess?”

  “Guess what?” she asked.

  “Guess what kind of wine this is.”

  She surveyed the bouquet, sniffing a couple of times, lapped at the red wine very ostentatiously, took a sip, and looked at him grandly, with as much pretension as she could muster, and declared, “It’s red.”

  He burst into laughter. “How sophisticated.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry. I may know something about cheese, but I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about wine. But I like this.” She reached for his hand as they stood and stared out at the valley. “I like this a lot.”

  His warm palm closed over her shoulder and he looked down at her, standing a full foot above her frame, his neck leaning toward her, his face an inch away. “Yeah. I like it a lot too.”

  Making love outside, in the fresh air, had never been part of her bucket list. In fact, it was more a part of her anti-bucket list; bright light, no covers, on the hard ground? Who would find that appealing?

  Uh, her. Right here. Right now.

  As Mike stared at her, eyes burning with an intensity she fell into, an abyss of wanting, she found herself startlingly interested in trying this new experience. Was this why he had gone to so much trouble—the wine, the special blanket, the fromagerie of cheeses and such? It dawned on her that he wasn’t just being a sweetheart, giving her a lovely, gourmet picnic for their second date.

  As a matter of fact, what they had eaten was just an appetizer.

  She was the entree.

  His kiss wasn’t a surprise; what shocked her most was the preternatural urge that welled up, unbidden, as his hands seized her ass and hips, his body knowing exactly what—and who— it wanted. He shifted, like he had on their first date, from a mild-mannered, lanky, zen-like dude to a ferocious, sexual alpha male.

  And she—she—had triggered all that. It excited her almost more than his touch, the way his tongue conquered hers, how his palms were greedy for so much of her skin, his chest pressed into hers, the thick outline of his erection in such stark relief against her navel she could probably sculpt it out of clay from memory. When he urged her, gently, to kneel, then recline, on the blanket, she knew her outdoor sex cherry was about to be popped, and a thin membrane of restraint about to give way to a burst of need that told her she was more than ready to bare all before nature.

  “Mmmmmmmm,” she sighed. His mouth moved from hers, hands tracing patterns of lust on her breasts, as if he were memorizing the terrain, his flattened palm stealing down her ribcage as his lips caressed her neck. She had worn a skirt today, a just in case move that she was grateful for, now, because the easy access meant that this would be so much simpler, more direct, less complicated.

  Like Mike.

  And, thankfully, she had shaved. Landscaped, if you will. Going nearly bald had been a new experience, the little landing strip like a giant, glowing neon sign pointing to her clit. She almost smiled to herself; would he like it? Hate it? Not care?

  Barely functioning nerves kicked in and she couldn’t turn off the lopping thoughts, the cluster of fears and insecurities, even with this gorgeous athlete’s hands greedily touching every part of her, even as his lips brushed her abdomen, her hands in his hair and—oh! He was going...

  The smooth, cold feeling of her skirt sliding up her thighs felt like butter melting on hot flesh as a light breeze blew up to her V, centered on the little bit of hair under her postage-stamp thong. She shivered and he nearly growled, his face about to descend on her womanhood, his eyelids heavy and his hands communicating his own, barely-controlled need. A deep sigh from him as his hands roamed up her torso told her more than words, that he was enjoying this, that her body was his, and fine, and enough.

  As he slid the thin string of her thong down her legs she worried they were too plump, too full, too—and then, oh wow, he gently kissed her labia, a soft touch like a promise, so profound she nearly came in his mouth, the thought and feel of this giant, gentle man wanting her such a balm. A quick
flash of Dylan— would he never leave her thoughts?—nearly ruined the moment for her, but she pushed him away and let Mike continue, surrendered to what was before her.

  A man who very much desired her—and who was showing it, touch by touch.

  “Oh, oh!” she whispered, his hands slipping between her ass and the blanket, her naked bottom half exposed for the sun and clouds and sky to view unfettered. Modesty disappeared under the sun’s rays in their secluded spot, and the knowledge that here, miles from anything that could judge her, they were just two people enjoying each others’ bodies and minds. Muscled arms pressed in the right places, his fingertips gently folding back her labia and his hot breath teasing her just before his tongue did its dance, flicking against the tender, red skin that craved his mouth so much.

  She bloomed with lust, every pulse of energy focused on her womanhood as he sucked her clit, slowly extracting the release within, entering and pulling back with two perfect fingers as he seemed to know exactly what to do to make her build to a climax. This wasn’t some shy guy who didn’t know his way around a woman’s body; she couldn’t control her shaking legs, a sign she was getting so close and, moreso, that he was a master at triggering a woman’s touch points, making the different parts fall into place for the grand finale.

  Letting go was so hard, but at one point Mike’s hand came up and touched her hip bone, the simple, non-sexual gesture a symbol of a bond here—that this wasn’t just sex, but it was something more. A connection. She looked down—something she never, ever did during oral sex—and her hands found their way into his hair again, her eyes wide open as she took in the cloud formations, the shine of sunlight on the side of the mountain, the lush greenery, the quality of the light and the chirping of birds. They were just mammals who were part of nature, yet so much more.