The Billion Dollar Wedding: The Honeymoon Collection

by Cynthia Dane

  She also talked dirty. Which wasn’t something she was used to doing until she was put into that situation on their first anniversary, when that was the one thing Ethan asked of her.

  “Fuck my pussy,” she hissed in his ear, at the exact moment he began to meet her thrusts. Jasmine had to ignore the intense sensations of his cock soaring into her, claiming her depths and filling the void she never knew she possessed. “I want to feel all of you inside of me.”

  Once upon a time, she would have felt silly saying something like “Fuck my pussy.” It was the type of line she giggled at in books and rolled her eyes to hear in sex scenes and even porn. Then she started dating Ethan, who taught her there was a lot of merit to dirty talk with dirtier words.

  Still, it took her a while to embrace it from her own vocal chords. Knowing what a rise it got out of him, though? Made it all worth it. Now was no different. Ethan surged into her, and soon Jasmine was not the one controlling movements, but him – him in her, around her, taking her to a new height a mere minute after he first entered her.

  “Oh, fuck,” he groaned, and Jasmine threw herself into the best feeling she could summon, because she knew he was about to lose it.

  She wasn’t wrong. Ethan pushed his fingers into the flesh of her ass, holding her hips still as he pounded into her and unleashed the loudest sound a man ever uttered in the back of his private limo.

  Jasmine was halfway through a second climax when she felt her boyfriend have his own. His body rolled in intense waves of need and desire. His cock stilled within her, warming her body and sharing the very essence he kept hidden.

  Too easy to fall back like a woman lost in her own world. Because Jasmine was, and the only reason she didn’t make a fool of herself in the limo was due to Ethan pushing her off his lap and tossing her onto the other side of the seat. Jasmine’s head rested against the leather, eyelids heavy and thighs as sore as her feet.

  “Told you,” she muttered. “Made you come in like… a minute.”

  He leaned against her, lips tenderly touching her shoulder. “Only because I let you.”

  “Do we need to hash this out again at home?”

  Ethan didn’t respond until he had almost zipped himself up again. Jasmine, meanwhile, was a mess and not likely to clean up anytime soon. Moving vehicles, and all. Sure, there were tissues and discreet trash cans in there… but why would she bother right now? Sounded tiring.

  “I would love to hash it out again. At home. Later.”

  “Yeaaaaah, ‘cause I wore you out.”

  “It’s been a tiring day.”

  Jasmine sat up, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Whatever you say, sir.”

  She didn’t expect him to take her chin between his fingers. Yet he did, forcing her to look up into his dark demeanor. Oh, hi. Jasmine hadn’t felt this vulnerable around him in a while. Especially with her sated core releasing his seed down her skin.

  “That’s exactly what you’ll be saying later.”

  Apparently, their married friends weren’t the only ones who would be enjoying a loving and kinky time that night.

  Chapter 6

  Over the next month, Jasmine’s life returned to normal. Or as normal as life could be for a billionaire’s jobless girlfriend. February ended with a full spread of “The Warren Wedding” in the regional paper, complete with photos of Jasmine looking like a supermodel bridesmaid one minute and like an absolute lunatic catching the bouquet the next. Neither she nor Ethan commented on the journalist’s quote. “Miss Bliss is the serious girlfriend of hotshot billionaire Ethan Cole. Could this be a sign of what the next big wedding will be?”

  The only parties Jasmine hosted over that month included non-rich friends who loved coming over to take advantage of the huge TV and endless gaming Jasmine liked to indulge in. Her best friends Selena and Juan were regulars on the weekends. They didn’t like it when Jasmine paid for things all the time, but they never said no to her hospitality, especially if Belinda made her famous snickerdoodles. Since those cookies were also Ethan’s favorite, Belinda always made double the batch whenever Jasmine’s friends came over.

  In fact, Jasmine didn’t leave the house much at all, unless she was going shopping or meeting up with Ethan at the penthouse downtown. That happened more and more, as Ethan was spending more and more time working late. The man used to be out of his office by six, depending on how many calls he had to return or how late a meeting ran. But now it was not unusual for him to stay until seven or eight. Jasmine finally told him to hire a new personal assistant, since he had not had one since she graduated from assistant to girlfriend several months ago. Nadia had been pulling double duty and splitting the receptionist job with another person in the office. Yet she complained of being overstressed, and Jasmine wouldn’t let Ethan let that continue much longer.

  Nonetheless, she was not impressed when her boyfriend hired a twenty-something skinny blonde named Amber. She also saw the contract on his office desk one day. The same exact terms she was given for the assistant part of her job when she worked for Ethan.

  Jasmine didn’t say anything about it. She knew it was irrational. She also saw the girl’s qualifications: top of her class, the administrative assistant for another bigwig before moving on to greener pastures with great recommendations. That right there told Jasmine that her boyfriend wasn’t fucking her, because Ethan didn’t care about qualifications when it came to hiring personal assistants to be girlfriends. He cared if they turned him on, like Jasmine had. The fact I could also do my job was a bonus. Now her job was running around with his money in her pocket.

  Amber helped take some of the load off Ethan’s job, but not enough. He still came home worn out, irritable, and, worst of all, completely disinterested in sex. Now, that wasn’t to say he was too tired to climb on top of Jasmine once in a while or accept some manual help from his girlfriend, who was used to doing such things for him, but almost all the kink was gone. The spark of adventure. The “I need you now, so bend over the kitchen counter” fun and games they used to play. Jasmine didn’t notice at first until she spent time alone in their bedroom one night, staring at their toys in a drawer and wondering when the last time Ethan tied her up and flogged her ass was.

  What could she do? Ethan was single-handedly running a multi-billion dollar empire. He didn’t have the super charming people skills that men like Henry Warren and psychopath Jackson Lyle did. So he was even more exhausted faking it for investors he used to barely interact with.

  Finally, he came to the penthouse one night, slamming his briefcase on the couch and ripping off his suit as if it strangled him. Jasmine watched from a distance as he locked himself in the bathroom and later came out with water splashed on his face. He made a beeline for his wet bar and poured himself a hard drink.

  “That’s it,” he mumbled. “I need to find a new business partner.”

  Jasmine pulled dinner out of the fridge and heated it up in the microwave. Oh, she had ordered in fresh takeout earlier, but that was when she thought Ethan would be home two hours ago. “Is that easy to do at all?” She didn’t doubt people would bite at the chomp to work with someone as powerful as Ethan, but most of those same people had prior commitments, contracts, and, well, motives. Jackson had been with Ethan since the beginning of Cole Enterprises, then known as Jackson-Cole. After Jackson’s abuses came to light, Ethan was quick to cut his best friend from his life. At the time, Jasmine had been relieved. She never anticipated how it would negatively affect Ethan’s life, and therefore their relationship.

  “It won’t be easy at all. I need to find a good businessperson I can work with and who has the capital to invest in the business. If it’s not one problem, it’s another. And it’s not exactly a position I can advertise for like an IT guy or whatever. I have to subtly put the word out and make sure people understand it’s not because we’re strapped for cash and desperately need another billionaire to save us.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jasmine approached where he sa
t on the couch while the microwave turned behind her. She put her hands on his shoulders and attempted to give him a massage, but he was so stiff that she started hurting. “I wish there was some way I could help.”

  He plucked one of her hands and kissed the top of it. “You help by being here for me.”

  It was the sweetest thing he had said to her in what felt like weeks. Jasmine ruffled his hair and responded to the dinging microwave. “You know what I mean,” she called over her shoulder. “Drives me nuts watching you burn yourself out and work yourself to death. That assistant of yours is supposed to be taking this workload off, isn’t she?”

  “She does her job well.” Ethan stood up from the couch and hauled himself back to the wet bar. “Also, she does make my job easier, but only by about 10%. There’s still at least 40% to account for.”

  Jasmine wished she could say this was the beginning of things changing, but as another week went on, Ethan ended up in the doctor’s office because of stomach pangs. It was only a mild flu, but for a man who couldn’t stop working for more than a day, it was a nightmare. He had to run his entire business from home. Jasmine filled in as both personal assistant and nurse as her boyfriend would yell at someone on the phone one minute and then roll over and groan from pain the next. Then she got sick too. Because of course she did! It wasn’t real love unless they were both breaking fevers, being mauled by their cats, and rejecting food in the same bed. Belinda had to quarantine their bedroom until a doctor declared them no longer contagious – just miserable.

  Because of this, Jasmine had to reschedule more than one social outing. One of these was with Monica, whom she saw two days after she started feeling better.

  She was visibly pregnant now, with a small, high-riding pooch protruding from her dress. Her main complaint was the lack of sugar in her iced tea, because her ob-gyn was worried about her developing gestational diabetes. The thing that shocked Jasmine the most, however, was the fact that Monica was already in her fifth month of pregnancy.

  “I didn’t know until the third month,” she said. “That may sound weird, but my birth control – for all the good it did me – sometimes made me skip or have really light spotting instead of a real period. Not always, but enough that I didn’t think anything of it until I started having massive morning sickness.” She sighed, staring longingly at her tea. Someone just wanted some freakin’ sugar. “By that point it was a month until the wedding. Of course I thought about telling Henry, but I ended up telling no one. I was too freaked out.”

  “Understandably.” Jasmine had no idea what she would have done in Monica’s situation. Tell everyone, probably. She couldn’t keep a personal secret to save her life. “What scares me is that your birth control randomly failed.”

  “It happens. My doctor said it was a fluke, but now I am a statistic. It was certainly not because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Still, I suppose this gets things out of the way. We don’t have to have endless talks about when to start a family. Because knowing me, I would put it off until I was forty.” Monica scoffed. “That’s coming up way too soon as it is.”

  Jasmine refrained from rolling her eyes. Monica was in her early thirties. A good few years older than Jasmine, but not old. “I’m glad everything is going well.” The baby, the marriage, the transition from legally single woman with no kids to both wife and mother. Monica’s biggest source of stress right now – outside of the baby, of course – was her ever growing business and a soiree she was throwing as her debut as Mrs. Warren, a title she decided to embrace.

  “Monica Graham was a woman who accomplished many things,” Monica explained over their lunch. “But she was also a very hurt woman who had been through way too much. I’m hoping Monica Warren can have some much-needed stability. God knows I need it if I’m having a baby already.”

  “I hope she can too.”

  “How is our dearest Ethan?” She didn’t waste any time.

  The only reason Jasmine revealed as much as she did was because Monica was also a confidant of his. The only reason Monica hadn’t heard it from him first was because of how busy – and sick – he was.

  “I was afraid that would happen, but I was not about to convince him to stay with Jackson.”

  “Neither was I.”

  “Except Ethan can’t rule that empire by himself. He needs someone just as good and rich as Jackson, but not a fucking psychopath.”

  Jasmine stared at her.

  “What? Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck.” Monica glanced at her bulge. “She’s heard it a million times. As long as she knows not to say it in front of company, I won’t clap my hands over her little virgin ears.”

  “She? You found out already?”

  Monica hung her head in self-admonishment. “I was gonna keep that a secret…”

  “You’re getting bad at secrets in your married life.” Nevertheless, Jasmine smiled to imagine Monica with a little girl. That would suit her best, for sure. Little Girl Warren would grow up to be one of the most refined and courteous women in America with Henry and Monica as her parents. “Does Henry know?”

  “Henry can’t talk about the baby for two minutes before getting so excited I completely lose him. The bigger I get, the worse he gets.”

  “Oh, the horror.”

  “I know! Sometimes a woman wants to get the whole trust fund and nursery thing out of the way. Kinda hard to do with a grown-ass man losing his mind at the thought of finally being a father. If I knew that was one of his biggest ambitions…”

  Jasmine couldn’t help what came out of her mouth next. “Has anyone told you that pregnancy hormones make your rather irritable?”

  “Every fucking day. I’ve turned into a well-dressed monster with manners.” Monica snatched a sugar packet and caved, dumping untold amounts of white crystals into her tea. “There. I’d like that doctor to be pregnant for two months without sugar in his tea.”

  “I bet your girls are very pleased with the new you.”

  “They’re distracted with the new girl I finally hired. A real spitfire. They’re dividing into teams and turning everything into a competition. Whatever. More money for me, the more they fight over those clients.” Monica took a large gulp of her tea and quickly changed subjects. “So tell me more about how things are going with you and Ethan. Did that bouquet I so subtly tossed get anything moving?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Monica’s cheeky grin dropped to a frown. “I mean has that dolt proposed to you yet.” There was no inflection at the end of her statement.

  Jasmine was forced to look away before she choked or blushed herself to death. That was forward, even for her. No more Miss Subtle Monica. Marriage and pregnancy had made her blunter than Jasmine’s old kitchen knives. “I can’t say he has, no.” Jasmine cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m not expecting him to… anytime soon. Right now he’s so involved with work and keeping business running that we barely have time to… you know…”

  “No. Don’t imply such a drastic thing.”

  “Well, we did…” She said a few things about what transpired after Monica’s wedding.

  “Excellent. I told Henry I hoped couples were getting it on.” Monica eyed another sugar packet. Jasmine pulled the basket away.

  “Yes, and that was the last time anything fun like that happened.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  Monica’s expression suggested that what Jasmine said was heretical.

  “We took turns being sick, and he’s so busy…”

  “What about you? It’s not all about him and what he needs. Of course he’s tired. He’s a billionaire businessman. That’s no excuse to not tend to your physical and emotional needs. Do I need to talk to him?”

  “No!” The last thing Jasmine wanted was her boyfriend’s pregnant and married ex-girlfriend waltzing into his office and chastising him for not sticking it in or going down on his girlfriend often enough
. The way the hormonal Mrs. Warren now was, she was probably liable to start smacking Ethan with sugar packets and adorable baby booties. Maybe a crowbar. That would put him out of his misery. “I mean… that’s kind of you since you know him so well, but…”

  “Yes, yes, very nosy of me.” Monica’s phone beeped. She checked it before tucking it in her bag and leaning back in her seat. “Speak of the devil and he appears. Ethan wants to meet me for lunch sometime next week. I doubt it’s for pleasure.”

  “You think it has to do with his business?”

  “Certainly. He asks for my advice all the time.”

  The way she said it implied that there was nothing odd about that.

  “Look, Jasmine,” Monica continued, cupping her hand over the top of her glass, “I know Ethan, and I know that he is madly in love with you, and has been since before he even realized it. He’s changed – for the better – since getting involved with you. It may be hard to believe sometimes, but that man thinks the sun rises and shines on your cute ass. The fact he hasn’t asked you to marry him says nothing about you and everything about him. Mostly that he’s still denser than I took him for.”

  “In all fairness, I haven’t really thought about marriage.” It was the truth. Jasmine was still adjusting to living the high life with Ethan. She was content to call him her boyfriend. Maybe she would start thinking of wedding bells one day… but for now, she was still in her twenties and Ethan was still, well, Ethan.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s concerning that he hasn’t asked you.”

  “Er…”

  Monica pulled her phone back out, a device that was three times the size of her small hand.

  “You’re not…!”

  “Oh, calm down. I’m simply replying to him. About business.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well,” Monica said, putting her phone down. “At least you don’t have to worry about this,” she pointed to her stomach, “changing things in your life anytime soon. Ethan took care of that a long time ago.”