The Money Talks (Adult BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1)

by Cherry Kay

  “Well, if you need me to help relieve some pressure, just let me know.” The girl licked her lips and winked suggestively.

  “Thank you for that offer, Vanessa, but as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think I’ll be needing that particular sort of help from you in the near future.”

  His assistant laughed. “My body is yours, should you require it.”

  Thomas shook his head and smiled. He’d been floored the first time she’d offered herself to him with no strings attached, and although he couldn’t deny the theoretical appeal of being able to fuck such a perfect body like Vanessa’s, he found himself not even a little aroused at the idea of it. What he wanted was Tiffany, and that was a different story altogether.

  While she’d come part way towards forgiving him, Tiffany still resisted being too close with Thomas. They’d made love the last time they’d been together after he’d convinced her that he hadn’t abused his standing as owner of Matchr to manipulate their meeting, but that had been five days ago and she had yet to give him any indication of when she’d be ready to see him again.

  Trying to focus on an especially complicated clause that subtly outlined the numerous ways a company Thomas hoped to acquire could slip out of their contract, he found himself instead distracted by thoughts of Tiffany’s smooth dark skin. While his eyes scanned row after row of overly complicated legal jargon, his imagination roamed across Tiffany’s body, drinking in her full breasts and the luscious curves of her hips and thighs. He recalled the tenderness of her inner thigh where it curved inward and became her supple and smooth sex. She’d waxed all but a patch above her pussy, and he could still picture the delicate pink skin within when he’d pulled her coffee colored lips aside to lick at her exposed clit.

  “Do you have a hard-on?” asked Vanessa who was standing next to him. She chewed the end of a pen and flashed a knowing look.

  Embarrassed to have been caught thinking of Tiffany like that, Thomas coughed and wheeled his chair a little further under the conference table, hiding the bulge in his pants.

  “This behavior really has to stop, Vanessa.” He said. “You’re my assistant, and it really isn’t appropriate.”

  Vanessa pulled his chair backwards and spun him to face her. She then knelt on the floor in front of him and undid another button on her blouse. It was difficult for Thomas to not look at the smooth roundness of her breasts where they squished together from her bra, and he fidgeted in his chair while trying to keep his gaze on her eyes.

  “You can think about her if you want,” said Vanessa, her fingers undoing one more button. “I could just suck you off and you can call me by her name if you want.”

  “This isn’t going to happen.” He replied, his voice a little more uncertain than he would have liked.

  His young assistant had undone several more buttons by this point, and she’d pulled the cups of her bra down so that her pert little nipples poked out above them. Reaching up towards Thomas, she ran the flat of her hand down his hard cock, stroking it gently over his pants.

  “Or,” she cooed, “you could just jerk off if you need to. Don’t you think you’d feel better if you sprayed a load across my tits?”

  “If you weren’t such a damn good assistant, I would fire your ass right now.” He said, pushing backwards with his feet to move his chair away from her.

  “I can think of something else you can do to my ass, but it involves a bit of lube and a lot of sweaty fucking.”

  Thomas stood up and collected his jacket. He knew his erection still strained awkwardly at his pants, but this wasn’t what he wanted. Fucking Vanessa would be too easy, and too wrong. If he was to have any chance at properly reconciling with Tiffany, he couldn’t have this hanging over his head.

  “I expect this to be the last time you’ll try something like this.” He said, his tone firm and commanding. “I value the work you do for me, but if you try to push your boundaries like this again, I will fire you.”

  Vanessa pouted and stood up. She tugged her bra back up over her breasts and began re-buttoning her blouse.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really just thought I could shift your mind away from that woman you’re so hung up on.” She looked at him appraisingly. “I honestly didn’t realize it was this serious.”

  Thomas slipped into his jacket and fastened the top button. “Honestly? I didn’t realize it either. I guess I owe you that much.”

  “Gee, thanks boss.” She replied.

  Vanessa stepped in close and kissed him on the cheek. The faintest hint of vanilla and some bright floral scent hovered around him, and he almost reconsidered giving in to her just to be rid of the longing he felt for Tiffany. He knew it wouldn’t be enough, though, and that it would only serve to make matters worse.

  “Let’s call it for tonight.” He said, turning and walking towards the conference room exit. “I’ll be back in the office early, but why don’t you take some time in the morning. Come in around ten?”

  “Sure thing,” she replied. “I’ll lock up on my way out here.”

  Thomas nodded and left the conference room. He walked down the hall and punched the button for the elevator. Once inside, he pressed the button for his private office on the top floor. His company owned the entire building, and after he’d taken control of it, he’d renovated the top floor lounge and had it converted into a large office with an adjoining apartment.

  It wasn’t his only apartment, of course, but he often worked late into the night and preferred to not have to deal with the hassle of commuting to his much larger estate outside the city. Even dealing with the helicopter was too much bother most work nights, and so he maintained this semi-secret residence as a place to sleep for a few hours before awaking to begin a new work day.

  Tonight, however, he had something else on his mind when he unlocked the door that allowed him to access the apartment. The door locked automatically behind him, and so Thomas gave it a little push to ensure that it was seated properly. No one else had a key card that could open that door except for the specified times that a two-person crew came in to collect his laundry, change his sheets, and do a general cleaning of the apartment.

  Thomas shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on a hanger from his wardrobe. Unknotting his tie, he folded it and put it away with a dozen others on a simple wooden rack. He then kicked off his shoes and untucked his shirt before unbuttoning it and tossing in a laundry hamper. His belt went back in the wardrobe, but the rest of his clothes followed his shirt into the hamper.

  Slipping into a navy blue silk robe, Thomas went to a bookshelf along one wall of the small apartment and pushed in on the spine of a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He then pulled out on the spine of Atlas Shrugged, activating a trigger that caused the entire bookshelf to slide away to reveal a hidden doorway. It had been a terrible indulgence for him to install such a contraption, and it brought a smile to his face every time he used it, but it was the one place in the world where Thomas knew he wouldn’t be interrupted.

  Once inside the windowless room, Thomas pressed a button on the wall that closed the door behind himself and then took a seat at a desk that held three huge computer monitors. The computer came to life at the touch of a specific and obscure combination of key presses that he’d programmed as a layer of security. Once the system was up and running, Thomas clicked on a specific folder with a list of timestamped video files. Double clicking on one of these, he pressed the fullscreen button on the video player and leaned back in his chair.

  High definition footage of the pool on top of his fake apartment building appeared on the screen. The video had been trimmed to the exact moment that he and Tiffany emerged out onto the roof, and he untied the belt on his robe in anticipation of what was to come. Letting the silky material fall to either side, Thomas watched the object of his desire strip off her clothes and dive into the pool.

  Watching her swim towards his video self, Thomas stroked his manhood back to erection. He began to jerk himself mo
re vigorously when the video switched angles to show Tiffany straddling him and riding him to her climax. Watching her gorgeous body gyrate brought him to an explosive climax that he directed into a hand towel.

  Breathing heavily and tossing the hand towel into the garbage bin next to the desk, Thomas closed the video player and brought up a messaging app that allowed him to send SMS messages to any phone. He loaded up his ongoing conversation with Tiffany and sent her a polite request that she join him for dinner the next day. Jerking off to a stolen security video was one thing, but he wanted more. He wanted Tiffany’s trust again, and he was determined to do what it took to win it back.

  *

  A pile of dresses, shirts, skirts, and pants covered the bed. Tiffany had gone through almost everything she owned in order to find an outfit for her date with Thomas, and she still felt like she had nothing to wear.

  Of course, there were several things he’d given her that she had stuffed into a cedar chest at the bottom of her closet, but she wasn’t ready to open that particular box just yet. Thomas had fractured their trust with his deception, no matter how good intentioned it was, and she was determined not to let him buy her affection in any way.

  In fact, she’d told him as much upon receiving his late night message asking her if she’d see him again, and she’d replied with the specification that he keep it as simple and un-billionairish as possible. She didn’t know exactly what that looked like, but she wanted to spend time with the man behind the helicopters and the money, instead of being blinded by the fancy restaurants and lavish gifts he’d bought her on too many prior occasions.

  Deciding to keep things simple with a pair of dark jeans and a tight black top that showed off her figure and was casual enough for a walk down the beach or just barely dressy enough to wind up at a club. She selected a pair of low black heels that wouldn’t do well at all on the beach, but took the whole thing up another slight notch. It was the kind of thing she might have worn on a fourth or fifth date with someone more in her income bracket rather than something she’d have chosen to impress any of Thomas’s wealthy friends or business partners.

  That thought made her frown. Did Thomas even have friends? Surely he had plenty of acquaintances that wanted to be around him for his money and his influence, but he’d never mentioned any friends in all the conversations they’d had since first meeting.

  He didn’t seem to go to basketball games or play racquetball with anyone, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t been passing up any guy’s poker games or other events to spend time with her over the few weeks they’d been together. The man seemed to pretty much just work and date her, and she had no idea what he’d been doing when he hadn’t been with her these last several days.

  Satisfied that she was as ready as she was going to be, Tiffany went downstairs and hailed a cab. She’d told Thomas that she didn’t want to be picked up, and that she’d meet him somewhere instead, but when she sat down in the rather old and sour smelling taxi, she felt a tug of regret at not letting him send a car. She told herself that if he behaved and showed her he could be trustworthy then she’d probably never have to hail another cab as long as she was with him. But that was no reason to look past the lies that he’d told her or to ignore the slanderous implications on his character she’d received from a vengeful stranger. While he’d sworn up and down that they weren’t true, she still needed to know for herself that Thomas was a man to be trusted.

  The cab pulled up outside the address Thomas had given her, and she paid him and happily exited into the relatively fresh air of a large cement lot in front of a huge and possibly abandoned warehouse. She might not have left the safety of the vehicle had if she hadn’t seen Thomas standing there waiting for her, and so she walked over to him and accepted his kiss on the cheek.

  She felt a desire to kiss him on the lips just then, but she checked it and kept herself distant. There was no point letting her physical attraction get the better of her so early in the date, and she wanted to send him a message that she wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily.

  “Why exactly have you brought me out to the middle of nowhere?” She asked.

  He offered her his arm. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  They walked around the side of the warehouse and Tiffany saw light spilling from a door that had been propped open. The inside of the old warehouse had been converted into a huge art gallery, and carefully positioned lights highlighted a number of artworks hung on long white walls. They seemed to have the gallery completely to themselves.

  “Did you use your connections to arrange this?” She asked, her annoyance plainly evident.

  “Not at all,” he said, his smile widening. “In fact, I found this place through Craigslist.”

  “What exactly are we doing tonight?” She asked as they walked towards the back of the gallery.

  Thomas led her into a back room where a host of easels had been set out in a wide half circle around a table, straight out of a renaissance still life. A man and woman, each completely nude, reclined in the middle of this bizarre scene, and all around them were people chatting, laughing, and doing their best to capture the scene.

  “Shall we join in?” asked Thomas.

  He stepped up to an unoccupied pair of easels and snatched up one of the painting frocks draped over the canvas. He handed this to Tiffany before donning one of his own.

  “We’re painting?” she asked, feeling a little silly for asking something so obvious.

  “It’s date night,” he replied. “They do it once a month for couples looking to try something fun and new. It also cost me fifteen dollars for each of us, so you better get to work.”

  Tiffany laughed and stepped up to her canvas. She had no idea what she was doing, but an instructor soon wandered by to help her get started. The experienced painter showed her how to lay a base coat with big wide strokes of one brush before switching to a smaller one and dabbing bits of color onto the canvas. He helped her flesh out the scene and then left her to her experimentation so he could move on and help someone else.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing.” She said. It felt impossibly difficult to do much more than dab paint onto the beginnings the teacher had helped her with, but she was having a surprising amount of fun trying.

  “Well, maybe I can give you a lesson,” said Thomas from behind the brush clenched between his teeth.

  He held his paint palette in one hand and slashed artfully at the canvas with his brush. It was tilted at just the right angle for Tiffany to not be able to see what he was doing, but he appeared to be quite confident in his actions.

  “I didn’t know you could paint.” Tiffany said, a note of awe seeping into her voice. “Did you learn that at one of your fancy prep schools?”

  “I am completely self taught,” he replied, removing the small brush from his teeth and leaning in to apply some bit of detail. “Come see for yourself.”

  Tiffany stepped around to peer at his canvas and she giggled so loudly that even the female model cracked a smile before regaining her composure.

  Thomas’s canvas was a splattered mess that looked like a child had used his fingers and toes to try to capture the scene in front of them. Every one of his colors was off, and the whole thing could almost have been called abstract modern art if it hadn’t been for the fact that Thomas had splashed more paint on his smock and on the floor than on his canvas.

  “Not so good?” he asked, raising his eyebrow like a little boy on the verge of causing trouble.

  “You may not want to quit your day job.” said Tiffany.

  The instructor announced that their two hours were up, and Tiffany couldn’t believe how much time had flown by. She hadn’t thought about Thomas’s money or the issues between them since they’d started painting, and she kissed him full on the lips the moment they were out of the studio.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked, a part of her hoping he’d suggest a return to his apartment.

  “Pizz
a,” he replied. “And you’ll never believe where we’re going.”

  Tiffany gave him a quizzical look and followed him across the vacant lot to another warehouse that didn’t look much different from the first one. He knocked on a door. They were greeted by a young woman who took Thomas’s name and let them into what seemed to be a large makeshift kitchen.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Tiffany said as they were handed a pair of aprons.

  “I upgraded my package to include the dinner option.” He slipped his apron over his head and tied it around his back before poking at the pile of dough on his workstation. He massaged it gently with his fingers and looked longingly into her eyes.

  “They say working with pizza dough is very sensual.” He said in a sultry voice.