Billion Dollar Man

by Ali Parker

  I would see him on Wednesday. I was sure I was making a mistake by going out with him. But after that kiss at the restaurant, I hadn’t been able to say no. I hadn’t wanted to. I wanted to talk to him, to tell him what had been going on, to get a break from all the difficulty and all the negativity and to be positive about something that was growing instead of fading away.

  At least, I hoped that was the case for us. I wasn’t sure what he wanted to talk about but judging by his kiss and how we had been on the phone yesterday, it wasn’t going to be bad.

  Right now, Ben equaled everything that was good, and I clung to that.

  Chapter 30

  Ben

  Wednesday finally rolled around. I had made the most of the days in between while I counted down to see Mila again. I had gone to the station to see the guys. I had worked as a firefighter – my dream job – for only a few short weeks after Uncle Dean had bought the company from me to give me my freedom. But then he had passed away. I had built wonderful friendships, but I’d had to quit. They had all wished me well except Tyler. I had gone to school with him back in the day, and he’d been hostile.

  When I had gone to see them, Tyler had been distant and switched off, polite but nothing more. I had been upset until Sam, one of the other firefighters and the worst cook that ever walked the face of the earth, told me that Tyler became very attached to people and hadn’t taken my departure very well.

  I felt bad that I had done it to him, but he wasn’t the only person I had left behind.

  I had spent time with other friends and family members, too. But I was mainly back in Portland for Mila, and I was finally getting to see her again.

  When I picked her up, she looked beautiful in jeans and a red blouse that made her eyes striking. She wore her hair half-up and wore a bit of makeup, just enough to make her eyes look even bigger than they were without looking like she was trying too hard.

  We drove to the same restaurant we always went to. It was half an hour’s drive through the city to get there and looked out over the ocean. It was perfect in so many ways. It was an escape from the crazy life Mila lived, the crazy life I had been a part of for a short while I had been a fireman. The ocean was calming; the view was spectacular. But most of all, and most importantly, it was far enough away that no one we knew would arrive there by chance. We wouldn’t run into Jerrod or anyone else that shouldn’t see us together because it was out of everyone’s way.

  “I’ve come to love this restaurant,” Mila said, looking out over the ocean from the table I had reserved at the window. I asked for it specifically when I made the booking.

  “Me, too,” I said. It had become my favorite place in Portland. I didn’t enjoy that we were sneaking around behind Jerrod’s back. Our relationship was a secret, and I hated that we had to be careful, constantly nervous that someone would see us. But it did add to the thrill of what we were doing.

  Not that a relationship with Mila wasn’t thrilling already. She was exciting and interesting. But doing something I wasn’t allowed to do had always fascinated me. It was the classic rules-are-made-to-be-broken situation, and I had never been a stickler for rules.

  “Have I told you how beautiful you look?” I asked. “You look fabulous in that color.”

  Mila looked at me, her cheeks a little flush but her face was serious.

  “You can’t do this,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Compliment me. Be a nice guy. Make me feel the way you’re making me feel if I don’t know where we stand.”

  “How am I making you feel?” I asked.

  “Beautiful,” she said. “Great about myself. And you’re making me like you. But that’s dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  She sighed. “You have a tendency to leave.”

  She was right. I shook my head.

  “This is what you need to know,” I said. “I think you’re beautiful. And funny. And smart. I can listen to you talk for hours. When I’m not with you, I think about you all the time. When I’m with you, I wish that it would last forever. So, seeing that I’ve totally fallen for you, I’m allowed to compliment you as much as I want.”

  She blushed brightly and smiled. She was shy, and I loved that look on her.

  “So, we’re together, then?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I don’t want anything else.”

  She looked out over the ocean, still smiling.

  “Are you always this charming?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve known you forever, but I’ve never been at the receiving end of your advances.”

  I shook my head. “I’m only this charming when I want to impress the woman I’m interested in.”

  “How often does that happen?” she asked.

  “Once.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “You’ve never wanted to impress someone?”

  I thought about it before I shook my head. “No, they are always impressed with my money, but I’ve never wanted them to care about who I am without all my money. You seem to see that about me, and I want you to like what you see.”

  She smiled again, a smile that I hadn’t seen her give to anyone but me. It was a special smile.

  “I do like what I see,” she said.

  I felt like I was walking on air. If a woman like Mila said that I was worth liking, everything was right with the world.

  “Tell me about work,” I said.

  Mila groaned. “To be honest, I’d rather not. For now, I want to forget about work and focus on other things. How about you tell me about yours.”

  I nodded and started telling her about the business and how it worked. She was interested even though the company was exactly what had taken me away from her. But she cared about what I cared about, and that was a beautiful quality.

  It felt great to tell her about my life. The conversation was wonderful, comfortable, everything it should have been with the woman I wanted to spend my time with. Mila was interesting to talk to, and when I spoke, she really listened. She didn’t just nod and smile with a vacant expression, making me wonder if she even registered what I was saying. That happened a lot with people when I spoke to them about business.

  “I’m glad you’re handling your uncle’s death so well,” Mila finally said after I told her about Penny, Uncle Dean’s widow, and how I was worried about her. She wasn’t dealing with his death nearly as well as I had hoped she would. I was worried that she would lose the will to carry on.

  “When someone dies, there are two ways to handle it,” I said. “Especially if they were close to you. You can lie down and die, too. Or you can pick yourself up and move forward. Give your life meaning, even.”

  “That’s a good way to look at it,” Mila said. “It’s so easy to give up, but we owe it to ourselves to keep fighting.”

  “Exactly,” I said. It made me feel amazing that Mila and I were on the same page about big things like this. We were very different in some ways, but in other ways, we were exactly the same.

  I thought about the investigation that was pending now that Uncle Dean’s death turned out to be exactly the same as that of my father. I wanted to share it with Mila. It was a big deal, something huge that was going on in my life, and I wanted her to know what I was going through.

  But I decided against it. I was scared it would be too much. Mila had so much on her plate at the hospital. I had learned more about the pile-up from Miranda Castle when I had gone to visit the people that had been my second set of parents, growing up. I didn’t want to add to everything Mila was already worried about. I knew she would worry about me. It was in her nature to care for the people she cared about.

  Because her heart was so big, she cared about a lot of people.

  I could always tell her what was going on another time. When I knew more. It would be better than to leave her with only a little bit of information that might not even go anywhere.

  “Tell me what Uncle Dean was like,” Mila said.

  No one had asked me that, an
d I was caught off guard. The way Mila had asked me wasn’t offensive. She wanted to know because she cared. She understood that it was a way to honor the dead if we reminisced about them, remembering who they were to us.

  “He was a ruthless businessman, but he had such a kind heart. Outside the office, he was the loving grandfather, the man that wanted to help out. He donated to so many charities, and he was there for me when my dad died.”

  “He sounds like he was a wonderful man,” Mila said.

  I nodded. Uncle Dean had been an amazing person. His death had been a real loss. He had been one of the few golden people in the world. He had run the company with an iron fist, but he had never lost touch with the human side of it all. When I thought about the man I wanted to be, it was Uncle Dean that came to mind, not my own dad.

  The topic changed, and we talked about a few things like the restaurant and Skylar, the weather and what New York was like at Christmastime. Small things that brought great memories and images to mind.

  “So, Ben,” Mila said when the meal was finished and our plates had been cleared. “What are you going to do, now?”

  “I am going to spend as much time with you as you allow,” I said.

  Mila giggled. “No, I mean with your life. You said you were here to think about things. Have you managed to think?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “It’s a lot to wrap my mind around, I guess.” The truth was I hadn’t thought about much at all, except for Mila. My mind had been on her most of the time.

  “What are your plans? If you’re back, what are you going to do with the company? Get a manager?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. I made it sound like I didn’t know what I was going to do when I stayed here, but in reality, I didn’t know if I was going to stay here, yet. But the night was going so well, and Mila was so relaxed, I didn’t want to ruin the mood by saying that to her. I couldn’t trust anyone to take over the company, not until David found out if the Mafia was really involved. Until then, I was still in charge and running the company from here while I was in Portland.

  But that couldn’t last forever, and I would have to go back.

  I didn’t have an answer about what I was going to do, yet.

  “You mentioned that you might have gone to New York too soon,” Mila said. “What did you mean?”

  “I should have thought it through more before I left,” I said.

  Mila nodded. Again, it sounded different than it was. It wasn’t that I had left too soon, it was that I hadn’t allowed myself the chance to think about how I wanted to handle my life here, how I wanted to say goodbye. I hadn’t thought about what it would mean to say goodbye to Mila.

  But again, it wasn’t something I wanted to clarify and ruin the evening. So far, everything had been perfect, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  “I have an answer for you,” I said. “Maybe not to all your questions, but what I can offer you right now, is right here and right now. That’s what I have to work with, and I want you to be a part of it.”

  It was a bit of a cop out, but it wasn’t a lie. I wanted to give her everything in this moment.

  Mila smiled. “I like that.”

  She reached for me over the table, and I took her hand and brought it to my lips, kissing her knuckles. Her skin was soft and warm, and I got a whiff of the perfume I assumed she’d applied to her wrists. It made me want her. Not because I wanted to fuck her, but because I wanted to be even closer to her than I was, now.

  “Let’s get out of her,” I said to her.

  She nodded, her eyes growing darker.

  “Let’s.”

  Chapter 31

  Mila

  Ben drove me home. We were quiet in the car, but it was an amicable silence. Everything that had gone wrong before seemed to be okay, now. Ben was back, and he had told me, almost in so many words, that he was in love with me. That he hadn’t said the exact words was okay.

  The atmosphere was thick in the car, and I was aware of him next to me. I wanted to be with him. It hadn’t changed since the last time we had been together when we had almost fucked. But this time, it was different. We weren’t trying to fight what was happening. In fact, we were both going with it.

  Even if we were keeping it a secret.

  When Ben parked in front of my apartment building, I looked at him.

  “Do you want to come inside?” I asked. It was forward, but I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want this amazing night to end, didn’t want him to turn around and leave when I had finally gotten him back.

  “Yeah,” he said. His voice was a little rough around the edges as if he had the same thing on his mind as I did.

  I smiled, and we climbed out of the car. This was it, I thought as we climbed the stairs to my floor. Tonight was the night I was going to lose my virginity to the man I had been fantasizing about for years. It wasn’t that I had saved it for him, but I was glad he would be the one.

  The sexual tension escalated between us as we reached my door, something sticky-sweet growing at my core. Sweat ran down my back, and when I looked at Ben, his eyes were dark, pupils dilated, and his cheeks were flush. I hadn’t seen him like this before, but we had both been denied what we wanted for a while, now. The passion, the urge, had become so much more intense.

  We were barely through the door when Ben was on top of me. He pressed me against the wall the way he had the last time, and he ground his hips against mine. I could feel the thick ridge in his pants as he ground himself in circles, gyrating his hips. I moaned into his mouth, heat washing through my body and pooling between my legs as I got wet for him. Ben’s tongue was in my mouth, exploring, tasting. He probed my mouth with his tongue as if we were already fucking.

  Ben’s hands slid down my sides, tracing my curves. I was glad I had put on lingerie, even though I hadn’t known this was going to happen. I had hoped, but I hadn’t known. I reached up and pushed my hands into his black hair.

  I slid my hands down Ben’s neck and over his chest, and he stepped back a little so I could reach his buttons. He wore a collared shirt – he often did. I started unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his chest. I ran my hands through the burst of chest hair on his pectorals. When the shirt was undone, I moved down to his waist and rubbed his cock through his pants.

  Ben murmured something and moved his lips from my mouth to my neck, my collarbone, taking advantage of the space between us to slide his hands onto my breasts. I gasped. I had touched myself, thinking of his hands on me, but this was so much better. His hands were so much bigger than mine, and the way he touched me made me want to orgasm on the spot. And he wasn’t even under my shirt, yet.

  As if he knew what I’d been thinking, he slid his hands down to the hem of my shirt and pulled it up, exposing my black lace bra. I lifted my arms, and he pulled the shirt off and dropped it on the floor. I shivered, standing in front of him like this.

  “Beautiful,” he said, glancing up at my face for a moment before he paid attention to my breasts again. He pulled the cups down, exposing my breasts and kissed the tender skin before sucking one of my nipples into his mouth. I gasped, the electricity shooting straight to my pussy, making me wetter.

  Ben reached his hands down between my legs and cupped my pussy through my jeans, making me ache for more. I wanted him so badly.

  “You’re so fucking hot,” Ben mumbled against my breast. “I want you so much.”

  He lifted his head and kissed me on the mouth again, reaching behind me to unclasp my bra. I arched my back away from the wall to allow him space. He pulled my bra off, and my nipples tightened in the cold air of the room.

  I reached for Ben’s pants and undid the button, pulling the zipper down. I reached in and pulled his dick out. He was hard and hot, and so much bigger than I had thought he would be. I ran my hand up and down his shaft, watching as wetness squeezed out of the tip. Ben groaned and kissed me again. My bare breasts pushed up against his naked chest, framed by his shirt, and I knew this wa
s the point of no return. Until now, we could have stopped if we really tried. But I wouldn’t have been able to turn back, now. And Ben didn’t look like he was going to stop, either.

  Ben dropped to his knees in front of me and unzipped my jeans, pulling them down along with my panties. I was riddled with lust as I lifted one leg after the other, letting him strip the jeans and underwear down and pull them off. I stood before him naked, trembling with anticipation. Ben ran his fingers over my pussy lips, and I widened my legs, giving him access.

  “You’re so wet,” he said.

  “I really want you.”

  Ben didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed his fingers into me, and I cried out. At the same time, he closed his mouth over my clit, making me shudder. He started sucking my clit, and it was better than anything I could ever have imagined.

  The first orgasm shattered me, and I cried out as my body tightened and pleasure washed over me in waves. I sagged against the wall when it was over, and Ben stood up, his mouth glistening with my sex, an arrogant grin on his face. He knew he was good.

  “Follow me,” I said, stepping around him and walking to my bedroom on jelly legs. Ben followed me to the bedroom. He spun me around and kissed me before I reached the bed. The hot flesh of his cock pressed against my lower abdomen, the open zipper of his jeans biting into my skin a little. Ben pushed me on to the bed, and I fell backward, my legs opening for him.

  Ben kicked off the jeans and boxers he still had on. He’d lost his shoes somewhere along the way as well. I heard the crackle of a piece of paper, and when I looked, Ben tore open the silver foil of a condom. He rolled the rubber over his cock as if he had done this a thousand times.

  Maybe he had.

  When he crawled over me on the bed, I was out of breath, every nerve ending on fire. He was so close.