The Billionaire's Hired Bride (BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1)

by Sherie Keys

  “Maybe I’d follow it,” Minnie whispered, cheeks turning well past pink, and thankfully she was spared from James’ immediate reply by the arrival of the waitress with two glasses of water and a notepad to jot down their orders.

  When the woman left, James looked… Happy wasn’t quite the word. Like a piece of his world had fallen where he wanted it, but he was still surprised at the outcome. “So you came to a decision about your feelings, then?”

  “Yes.” Minnie forced herself to nod, to look like she wasn’t as nervous about this as she was. “At least, I want to try. Making this fake relationship into something real.”

  “And if it doesn’t work out?”

  She had to remind herself that James was only being practical, that it was entirely possible that it wouldn’t work, in spite of all their efforts. “Then it doesn’t work. It’s not like I’m going to run off if we break up and tell everyone I know that you’re a horrible person.” He looked a little skeptical. Maybe that had actually happened to him; Minnie thought that most of the girls he would have dated would have left that sort of thing behind in high school. “Really. We’d still be friends. You can ask Avery, we dated once upon a time.”

  That seemed to surprise him. “Really? He seems a little… active for you.”

  Minnie could guess well enough what he meant. “That’s why we broke up, actually. It’s not that it was bad, it was just…” She trailed off, trying to put it into words – it was the first time since that break-up that she’d really talked to anyone much about why things hadn’t worked, sexually, between her and Avery. “He went too fast, too much. He wanted to explore some things I wasn’t comfortable with yet, so we agreed to break it off so he could find someone who would.”

  “Have you had sex with anyone since then?”

  It was only natural for him to be curious, Minnie reminded herself. She shook her head, then asked, “What about you? I don’t want to be too nosy, but I don’t actually know how many women you’ve slept with.”

  She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know, either, because she knew she would inevitably be measuring herself up to those other women if they did have sex. James looked thoughtful for a moment, having to count internally, which wasn’t much of a reassurance. “There’s six girls that I had fairly long relationships with, and some of them I kept having sex with after we broke up, for one reason or another. And then probably about the same number of one-night stands, at parties or the like.”

  Twelve! He was just as bad as his reputation made him out to be, Minnie thought to herself. But no – she knew James well enough by now to know that he wouldn’t have gotten involved with anyone who wasn’t willing to be involved with him. The fact that he hadn’t put pressure on her even once was proof enough of that.

  Even as she was thinking that, he continued, “And then I’ve had four relationships where we never had sex or did much of anything but date, five if you count this one.” The last comment was accompanied by a warm smile that made Minnie feel a little more at ease.

  “I think it counts, at this point,” she commented, before taking a sip of her water. Not all of his relationships had been sexual – he must have meant what he said to Liz about using his hands. “What’s your, um, appetite like?”

  He laughed. “Whatever you’re comfortable with. I take care of myself every four or five days, if that helps, though I certainly wouldn’t object to something a little more frequent.”

  A little higher than her own drive, but that was only to be expected. Minnie thought she could adjust to it eventually, but that would definitely take time. Then again, they had… At least two years. That was a thought.

  “And if it does work out,” she started, working that brief thought into a proper question, “Are we going to let it end in two years, or would you be willing to let me stay?”

  “Of course!” James looked a little hurt that she would even imply otherwise. He paused, seeming to gather himself, then said, “I think that I could be happy supporting you and being with you for a long time, if not forever. But I don’t want you to feel like you need to stay with me to have that support, either.”

  “I don’t,” Minnie reassured him. “Jesus, the deal gives me five hundred thousand dollars and I’m used to living off college student income. I can pay off my loans and still have a couple years before I even have to think about work.”

  James’ shoulders relaxed a little. “Okay, good. There are plenty of people who’d stick around just for the money – I didn’t want you to be one of them.” There was enough emotion in his voice that Minnie was sure other girls had probably done so to him in the past.

  (She certainly couldn’t deny that she liked the fancy gifts, too. It made it hard to wait for her birthday in November.)

  “There’s still a lot of time before we have to worry about that,” Minnie reminded him gently, the same way she was trying to remind herself. No push, no pressure. “Let’s figure out the next two years, first.”

  James nodded. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  At that point, their food arrived, and so any discussions were put on hold while Minnie relished the flavor of lobster and pasta. It seemed like the taste was even better than usual, perhaps because of her more relieved emotional state. As usual, there were enough leftovers that they both had to request boxes, and Minnie wound up adding a boxed slice of chocolate cheesecake to her order at the last moment.

  On their way back to the car, James leaned over her, box of pasta still in hand, and kissed her gently on the lips. It started chaste, but soon Minnie was putting pressure against his mouth, tasting the last bit of his pasta on his lips as she pushed her tongue into his mouth. He returned the gesture eagerly, and she closed her eyes as he wrapped his free hand around her shoulders.

  After breaking the kiss, they stood like that a while, both still grinning at each other. Minnie giggled, before sliding out from under James’ arm to open the car door. They drove home chatting as usual, but the kiss hung over them in a new, excited layer, both of them anticipating the next step.

  *

  The next step didn’t come for some time, because two days later, Minnie’s classes started up again, and soon she was back to working over a computer screen for several hours a day, and half of her conversations with James seemed to wind up being griping about the other people in her animation class who still hadn’t figured out how to do group work.

  And so September passed by, and most of October, and a Halloween party where she and James were much more of a couple than at the parties they had been to over the summer, even going so far as to arrange matching costumes. They weren’t cheap costumes either, but actually tailored so that the leafy dryad dress Minnie wore was tailored to her measurements, and James’ cape was embroidered so that it looked like it was actually leaves sewn together.

  After the party, Minnie let James help her out of the dress, and she could definitely feel his eyes looking her over when she was down to just her underwear and a strapless bra. Whatever he was thinking, though, he kept inside his head, and his hands to parts of her body that weren’t anything more than friendly.

  “You can touch my boobs, you know,” she told him, laughing. “I’m not going to bite your hand off if you do.”

  “Well,” he replied cheerfully as he took her up on the offer, stepping behind her to wrap one arm under hers and gently squeeze her breast under her bra, “My hands aren’t the only thing I would be worried about having you bite.”

  That made her pout, folding her arms over where his hand was. “I’m not going to bite anything.”

  “Even if I want you to?”

  A blush rose to her cheeks. “Okay, maybe then,” Minnie conceded.

  That moment was an accurate way to encapsulate how their relationship changed: slowly, and without too much fuss. They held hands in public more, kissed more (chastely and not so chastely), and Minnie’s preferred movie-watching seat slowly moved from sitting next to James to sprawling acro
ss his lap.

  A few days before her birthday, James asked Minnie if she liked lingerie, which led to the awkward confession that she had never worn any, and the even more awkward trip out to see if there was any she particularly liked that he could surprise her with. Minnie soon came to the conclusion that she hated the almost electric red lace that covered so many of the bras and panties.

  “I’m kind of surprised that you even thought to ask,” she said to James, as she put a fancy bra back on the rack. He laughed.

  “Well, I learned a couple of girlfriends ago – don’t buy her underwear if you don’t know what she likes.” His sheepish grin told Minnie that that experience hadn’t ended well, even if it didn’t share any of the details. “I have a few other things for your birthday already, but I thought I might as well check.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she said. “Even if I have no idea what half these things are called.”

  Eventually (predictably, she thought to herself), Minnie decided that her tastes still ran towards the simple, and they left with a few lacy panties and matching bras all in a discreet bag, and one set each of black and white stockings and garters in a second. “Happy birthday,” James said with a kiss on her forehead as they left.

  “Maybe I’ll wear them for yours,” Minnie said. James’ birthday was in late January, almost a year from when they’d met. Perhaps by then, she’d feel ready to put the garments to use.

  Chapter10

  As it turned out, she felt ready before then. Maybe. Or at least, ready enough to give it a try.

  That was almost exactly how she put it to James, as the credits rolled on their usual late-night movie, dead in the center of December, her finals three days past and Christmas a week away. He started, his expression showing confusion for a moment until he figured out what she meant.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and squeezing gently.

  “I’m never sure,” she said honestly. “But I’m not ever going to find out unless I’m willing to try, right?”

  He nodded. “Your room, mine, or one of the others?” There were a total of eight bedrooms in the manor, although one of them was reserved for James’ mother when she came over. It turned out that, although her bathroom was better than a lot of them, Minnie’s room was actually on the smaller side.

  “Not mine,” she said. “Other than that, I don’t really care.”

  “I’ve got some supplies in my room,” he said. “We can head over there.”

  So they did. James, of course, had the largest of the lot, nearly two of Minnie’s room put together. It was large enough that it practically had its own living room inside, an armchair and a chaise lounge clustered up in front of a TV nearly the size of the one in the living room. His bed was large too, large enough that Minnie had to wonder if he had to get custom sheets for it.

  She’d been in the room before, but it was in a much different context than the way she felt as she followed James in at that moment. Her nerves were beginning to act up again already; she fiddled with the ties at the front of her sweatpants while James went over to the table beside his bed and opened the drawer.

  When she stepped over to see what he was doing, he held a wrapped condom up for her inspection, and pulled a small bottle of lube out and set it within easy reach of the bed. “Kids are something we can discuss much later,” he said.

  “And the lube?”

  “That’s just in case,” he answered, setting the condom next to it. “If you’re nervous, it won’t hurt to have it.”

  “There’s no if there,” Minnie said awkwardly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed and pulling off her socks. James nodded understandingly.

  “Gentle and slow, then, and if you need to stop, just say something.”

  She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him, and he bent down to meet her lips. It was a long, slow kiss, with only a little tongue, not like some of the others they had in the heat of a moment snatched while no one was looking at parties, or sometimes when everyone was looking.

  As they kissed, Minnie undid the belt holding James’ robe closed, letting it fall open over his underwear and being glad that he didn’t usually go naked under there. She’d seen him in his underwear alone several times before – he had just enough muscle for some definition, but not the body of someone who exercised constantly – and she was grateful for that middle step between clothed and naked, to give her a few minutes to get her confidence together.

  As they pulled apart, James tucked his fingers under her shirt, pausing to wait for Minnie’s nod before pulling it up over her head. At that point, however, he had to stop and let her get it the rest of the way off, because it was so tight around her armpits. She slid the sweatpants over her hips next, sitting back on the bed and letting James pull the ends of the legs off her ankles.

  Now that they were both down to their underwear (and a bra, in Minnie’s case), she could feel her nerves beginning to fail again. She reached up, and James let her wrap her arms around his neck, let her hold on for a moment to settle down. She kissed him, eagerly, willing that to be the thing driving her heart rate up instead of her nerves.

  He pulled her up into a standing position, some of her weight on her toes, some of her weight on the hand he rested under her bottom. As they kissed, he ground against her, just a little, enough for her to feel that he was already becoming erect underneath his boxers.

  She ground back. It felt good, satisfying in a way her occasional adventures with her hands didn’t.

  They stayed like that for a while, until the kiss broke and James released Minnie to slide back down to the bed. Her legs weren’t going weak, not yet, but her body was beginning to feel electric the energy meant that she had to either sit or pace circles around James.

  He looked down at her with a little concern. “Still good?”

  She nodded, taking a moment to find her words. “Doing better, I think.”

  He nodded, leaning and then kneeling down to put the level of his face a bit below hers. One of his hands reached for the front closure of the bra she was wearing. “May I?”

  “Go for it,” she said, adjusting her shoulders to puff out her chest a little more for him. Her breasts weren’t exactly large, but Minnie had always felt glad of that, given the difficulty in shopping for clothes some of the women she’d known with larger chests had. Certainly, James didn’t seem to mind the smaller size; once he had her bra off, he palmed one of them, running his thumb over the nipple and sending a small shiver down her back.

  He looked up at her then, to see her smiling encouragingly down at him, then slid his hand aside to lean forward and take that nipple into his mouth. It was gentle, more lips and tongue than teeth as he played with her, but Minnie gave a pleased wriggle nonetheless. If she focused on her nervousness at all, it still threatened to overwhelm her, but James was giving her plenty of other things to focus on, as his free hand slid down to pull at the band of elastic over her hip.

  By the time James came up for air, Minnie could feel herself starting to get wet, feel her lower muscles bunching up excitedly. It was a good sign; when her body was ready, it helped to keep her mind from failing her and backing out in the middle of the act. She didn’t want to back out of this.

  “I think we can take the rest of this off,” she said quietly, lifting her butt from the bed just long enough to slide her panties over the hump of it. James, in turn, stood up to drop his boxers over his hips and to the floor, and so of course afterward, naked in front of each other for the first time, there was a moment of examination.

  For Minnie, at least, there weren’t any surprises. James was a bit on the large size, but given the size of the rest of him, it was really only to be expected; if you compared just the men of his towering height, he would probably be a bit above average, but not so much that there would be commentary. Part of her nerves tried to throw up objections at the size anyway, but she squashed them down; he would fit just fine. She’d never had any trouble
fitting tampons or the like inside herself, the way she knew some girls who were small did. It would be fine.

  Whatever verdict James had come to about her, it left him grinning when she looked back up to meet his eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and Minnie was glad that he didn’t attach an observation to it about how out of place her nerves were. Avery had done that, sometimes, and it had usually just made it worse. Instead, James’ simple compliment gave her a little more confidence, enough to stand up and kiss him again, pressing their bare skin together.

  I can do this, she told herself silently as he wrapped his arms around her. I can do this, and it’s going to be GREAT.

  When their kiss ended, James had a funny little grin on his face. “I don’t know why you got up just to sit back down again,” he said. “Unless you planned on doing this standing up.”

  Minnie blushed, even on top of the faint flush that was already all over her body. “No, definitely not,” she said. “Maybe someday, but… definitely not.”