The Billionaire From Las Vegas (United States Of Billionaires Book 16)

by Cj Howard

  There was clearly something bigger at play in the three demands they had made on her—possibly, Benjamin thought, just proving they had the kind of clout to make it happen. He recalled what he’d told Claire about her father’s debt: the amount of money did not, itself, matter. It was the fact that he couldn’t let it get out into the world that he’d excused any amount of debt. By the same token, Benjamin was fairly certain that the people who were after Claire for her father’s other debts had the need to prove that a person couldn’t just skip town and avoid doing what they were supposed to do.

  Since Claire’s second meeting with the person who’d threatened her, Benjamin’s helpers—Joe, his lawyer Harold, a few people high up in his Human Resources department, as well as some friends of the Senator—had confirmed that the person that Claire had met with wasn’t even the top person. Joe was tracking people down, but it seemed like every person he managed to connect to the folks behind the threats only opened up a new alley of people it could lead back to. Of course, Benjamin had assumed that Claire’s contact was a lieutenant of some sort—but there was the maddening worry about who actually was in charge. If he didn’t manage to catch all of the people involved, Benjamin knew that the threats would just keep coming, and Claire wouldn’t be safe—even if she left Vegas… which he sincerely hoped to avoid.

  It had only been about two months since he’d met Claire, but Benjamin had always been quick to make decisions, and he had decided—though he hadn’t broached the topic with Claire—that he needed to do whatever it would take to convince her to stay in the city beyond a year.

  Even if she wasn’t working for him anymore, Benjamin was hopeful that he could convince her to keep having sex with him—and, he thought, smiling to himself absently as they continued on the well-worn path the guide led them on, she would benefit from that particular aspect, too.

  He knew he couldn’t be alone in enjoying the twists and turns of their sex life together—the way Claire challenged his insistence that she be the one to ask him to kiss her, to touch her, to fuck her, the way he countered her. They had almost made a game of it, each of them teasing the other in private… or even in their public meetings where they had to pretend to be strictly associates.

  Benjamin had started getting emails from some of the men and women he’d met with alongside Claire, suggesting that there was more to what was between them than just business—and he hadn’t exactly denied that. He felt that in time, it would be easy enough to reveal Claire to the world as his partner, but he had to get her safe first and make sure that she was interested in being public.

  “Dinner and drinks makes this sound like a date,” Claire observed. “Do you want everyone thinking that we’re an item?”

  Benjamin grinned at her. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he pointed out. “Lots of high-powered business associates end up getting together.”

  Claire rolled her eyes. “Except that technically I’m not a high-powered anyone,” she pointed out.

  “People don’t need to know that,” he countered. “You are who I say you are.”

  “Yeah, but they’ll figure it out—especially with other people coming after me,” Claire continued, and Benjamin had to grant that she had a point there.

  “Would you be against people thinking we’re an item?” He took his hand away from the small of her back. They were coming to the end of the guided tour, and he wanted to give her space, as well. For an almost unbearably long moment, Claire was silent.

  “Do you want to actually be an item?” She looked at him frankly, and Benjamin wished he hadn’t accidentally gone down this particular conversational path in public. It was a conversation they should—by all rights—have privately. Preferably, he thought, in the bathtub… or in his bed… or on the couch… or any of the places they’d had sex since she had begun living with him.

  “We’re finishing up our tour—please feel free to wander around in the public areas as much as you like, and check out the gift shop on your way out,” the guide announced.

  Benjamin waited while the rest of the people on the tour with them wandered off, then he turned his attention back to Claire. “Do you want to be with me?” He kept his voice low.

  “Answer my question first,” Claire said, raising an eyebrow slightly in a challenging expression.

  Benjamin wanted, right then and there, to kiss her—but he knew better. “Why don’t we get out of here and go get our drinks?” He glanced around. They were more conspicuous than he wanted to be, to have a discussion like that.

  “Okay,” she said, looking him up and down quickly. “But don’t think that I’m going to forget that I asked you first.”

  Benjamin smiled and gestured for Claire to precede him toward the exit marked on discreet signs in the area they’d ended up in. Neither of them was interested in visiting the gift shop, though Benjamin thought that if things went well—as well as he wanted them to—he might come back another day and get something to remember the event by.

  They made small talk as they found Alan, waiting with the car, and Benjamin tried not to let himself feel nervous. If everything went well in the conversation, then he would be able to keep Claire in Vegas indefinitely—even beyond what her contract to him specified—assuming he could also keep her safe. Of course, if it goes badly, you’re stuck having to salvage a working relationship with her. But that was an issue for another time, something to wait until after he’d seen if it would go well or poorly.

  He had decided to take her to Frankie’s, off the strip. It was a classic of its type: a tiki bar with the “south seas” vibe and the expected drinks, served up by friendly staff in kitschy surroundings. It was, fortunately, a bit slow in the afternoon—not yet time for happy hour and the throngs of tourists interested in something a little offbeat, away from the overstimulation of the Strip itself.

  “Now,” Benjamin said, once they were seated and had their drinks, a little bit away from the small groups that had come in out of the afternoon heat. “I guess it’s time to talk.”

  “Remember, I asked you first,” Claire said, taking a sip of her Mai Tai.

  Benjamin smiled slightly. “I will say that if you’re interested in being with me—really being with me, not just having great sex in between meetings—then I want to be with you.” He let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding.

  “So you do want to be with me,” Claire said slowly.

  Benjamin picked up his Ninth Island and drank down a gulp of the rum and pineapple before setting it down once more. “I do,” he said, “if you’re interested. If you’re not interested in me at all—beyond the sex—then we can talk about that.”

  Claire met his gaze for a moment and half-smiled, wryly. “It’s kind of a weird position to be in,” she pointed out. “I am under contract with you. I work for you. What happens at the end of the year if we’re dating?”

  He shrugged. “You are of course free to go,” he said. “You can leave, you can move out somewhere else if you want—or if you don’t like how our relationship is, you can break up with me and move on with your life. It would be exactly like any other relationship.”

  Claire chuckled and sipped her drink again. “It just seems strange,” she observed.

  Benjamin shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be,” he told her. “But if you don’t have feelings for me like that, we don’t have to discuss it again. We can just be employer and employee.” He deliberately didn’t mention the sexual aspect; he didn’t think it was all that realistic to keep that part of things going with Claire if she didn’t reciprocate his feelings.

  “We haven’t just been employer and employee since the beginning,” Claire countered.

  He grinned. “That’s true,” he said. “But if you don’t want an actual relationship with me—outside of what we’ve already got—then that’s where we’ll leave things.”

  “Would we have to stop having sex?”

  Benjamin could hear the uncertainty in her voice,
and he tried not to smile at that. She apparently doesn’t want to give that up, at least. “I think it would probably end up working out that way, don’t you? If we’re not going to get involved romantically, then we should stop being involved physically.”

  Claire looked at him sharply. “Are you seriously holding the threat of withholding sex over my head?”

  Benjamin couldn’t keep himself from snickering at that accusation. “I’m not threatening anything,” he said. “I’m just pointing out that since I do want to be with you romantically, it would be a bad idea to keep being involved with you sexually, if you don’t want that kind of relationship.” Claire pressed her lips together, and Benjamin saw the stubbornness creep into her eyes.

  “Is this another game, like making me ask you to touch me?” She crossed her arms over her chest, and Benjamin shook his head.

  “It’s just that if we keep having sex, it would be hard for me to separate the romantic feelings from the sexual ones,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “But you can separate the romantic feelings from the business?” Claire looked at him askance.

  Benjamin shrugged again. “So far I’ve been able to,” he said, even though he knew that it wasn’t strictly speaking true.

  Claire irritably picked up her drink and sipped it. “I still feel like I’m being manipulated,” she said quietly, causing him to lose his sense of amusement at the situation.

  “I don’t want to manipulate you,” he said, firmly and sincerely. He reached out across the table and took her hand. “Seriously. All I want is to make things clear between us as they stand right now.”

  “So you want to be with me,” she said, making it not quite a question. He nodded. “And if I don’t want to be with you romantically, we’re going to stop having sex.”

  He nodded again. “That just seems like the right thing to do,” he said. “If you’re not sure what you want, then we don’t have to figure it out right now.”

  Claire held his gaze for a moment and then drank down more of her cocktail. “I think I want to think about it,” she said.

  Benjamin smiled. It isn’t an outright “no,” at least, he thought. It would have to do for the moment.

  *

  Claire inserted her card into the scanner in the elevator and heard the beep acknowledging that it had been read. She pressed the button for Benjamin’s floor, and the doors closed with a whisper of sound, the moment before the elevator began to rise. She smiled slightly to herself, waiting as it moved through the floors of the hotel.

  True to his word, Benjamin had let her go visit the casino part of the property after they’d had dinner and hadn’t pressed the issue of whether or not they would become boyfriend and girlfriend. She’d wandered around the different tables for a while, distracting herself while she considered the question of whether she wanted to be with her boss romantically. It was—she thought at first—a loaded, petty, almost stupid question. And, at first, she’d thought it wasn’t fair of Benjamin to even broach the topic.

  But then, as she’d played a few rounds of blackjack, Claire’s thoughts had settled. It wasn’t unfair, really; there was clearly something more between them than just being employer and employee. The sex was amazing—but could she base an entire relationship on that? Claire fidgeted slightly as the elevator began to slow down, approaching Benjamin’s floor. Why would you have even opened up the question if you didn’t want some kind of answer?

  Claire stepped off of the elevator and followed the short hallway that led to Benjamin’s suite. If they ever managed to get her out of the current mess she was in, Claire thought it would be good for both of them for her to have her own rooms in the casino again.

  She was comfortable in the guest room, but she had never moved in with a guy she was having sex with only weeks after beginning to have sex with him, and even if she wasn’t staying in his bed every night, Claire wanted some measure of her own space as soon as she could get it.

  Benjamin looked up from whatever it was he was reading when Claire came into the suite and set his cup of coffee down. “I was figuring on you finding a way to stay downstairs most of the night,” he said, smiling slightly.

  “I guess I didn’t need to do as much thinking as I originally believed,” Claire said. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of the entryway, into the living room.

  “What conclusion have you come to?”

  Claire considered answering him but instead continued to move forward, toward the couch where he sat. She slowed down a bit, sauntering towards him, remembering the rule that he had established from the very beginning of their sexual encounters: she could do whatever she liked, touch him however she wanted, but he would wait until she gave him some kind of signal, some indication, before he made a move on her.

  Benjamin watched with interest, and Claire resisted the urge to grin as she approached him on the couch. She saw him open his mouth and then close it as she reached him. He set down his cup of coffee, and Claire carefully climbed onto the couch, straddling his lap, barely holding herself above him.

  She leaned in and kissed him on the lips, lightly at first and then more hungrily, letting her body sink down onto his as she felt him tense up. Claire felt a little thrill at the knowledge that it was taking Benjamin significant effort to resist acting beyond responding to her kiss.

  She felt her body heating up as she moved on top of him, as she felt the hard ridge of his cock straining at the fly of his tailored pants. She rubbed against him slowly, rocking her hips, and dropped down from his lips to the column of his throat, exposed by the tee shirt he’d changed into after he’d arrived home.

  “I’m going to need an answer,” Benjamin murmured, his voice tight.

  Claire giggled. “Well, I think it’s pretty clear that I want to keep having sex,” she pointed out, nibbling sharply at the spot where she could feel his pulse against her lips.

  “Or it’s clear you want to be an incredible tease,” he countered.

  “You can do whatever you want,” she told him, bringing her lips back up to his and kissing him once more. “Anything you want to do to me, any way you want to touch me, I want it.” She heard and felt Benjamin groan against her lips, deep down in his throat, and after a moment’s pause his hands moved to her back, pressing her against him.

  “Is that so?” he kissed her before she could reply, and she moaned as his hands slid around to the front of her body, cupping her breasts through the fabric of her clothes. His grip tightened and Claire moaned again, kissing him more hungrily, pushing her hips down against him more eagerly as the heat began intensifying as it flowed through her body.

  She let her hands wander, touching and teasing, kneading and groping as they began to move together. She felt the tightness forming between her hips as she became more and more turned on, rubbing her covered pussy against the hard ridge of Benjamin’s erection.

  Benjamin’s hands slipped over and around her body, and she shifted against him as she felt him find the buttons at the back of her blouse, along the top of her spine. She let him undo them one by one and then pulled back enough to allow him to pull the fabric over her head, raising her arms up to help him.

  Benjamin buried his face against her breasts, nuzzling and kissing and nibbling, and Claire felt herself trembling almost without entirely knowing why. She was soaking wet—she could feel the dampness seeping through the fabric of her panties—and felt almost feverish from how turned on she was.

  Benjamin’s arms wrapped around her hips, and Claire yelped in surprise as she felt him rise to his feet, slow but utterly steady. He held her body tightly against his, and she looked around, still startled, as he began to walk. He carried her out of the living room and up the short flight of stairs to where his bedroom waited, not seeming to strain at all. “You did say I could do whatever I wanted,” he murmured, dragging his lips against her neck as he pushed the door open and carried her through it.

  “I did,” Claire acknowledged.


  Benjamin dropped her carefully onto the bed and immediately covered her body with his, kissing her eagerly as his hands moved along her curves. Claire wrapped her legs around his hips and pushed down against him, returning his kisses as the tension mounted between the two of them, as she became more and more turned on.

  He reached down between her legs, slipping his hand up under the hem of her skirt, and began to rub her slowly through the fabric of her panties. Claire fumbled at the front of his trousers and found the outline of his erection, beginning to stroke him.

  Gradually, their clothes seemed to fall away, until Claire found herself completely naked underneath Benjamin, her hand wrapped around his thick, hard cock, stroking up and down along the length of it as he rubbed her clit steadily. She got an impulse and acted on it, shifting underneath him and letting go of his erection briefly to shove him off of her; she followed him as he tumbled onto his back on the bed next to her, and straddled his hips.

  She kissed him lightly on the lips and then worked her way down slowly, along the column of his throat, past his collarbones down his chest. Benjamin groaned in frustrated desire as Claire slithered past his ribcage and kissed and nibbled his abdomen, taking her time to get to his erection.

  She looked up at Benjamin’s face as she brought her lips to the tip of his cock, lightly kissing the hot flesh before she took it into her mouth. She swirled her tongue around the slightly spongy head of his erection, sucking a little more of him past her lips. Benjamin groaned, his hips bucking, as Claire began to work him with her mouth. She swallowed as the salty-sharp taste of his precum coated her tongue, watching his face twist as she took as much of him into her mouth as she could.

  Benjamin’s hips moved under her as she evaded his thrusts, setting her own pace. She reached down between his legs and carefully cradled his balls in one hand, while she worked the base of his cock with the other, bobbing her head up and down as she worshipped him with her mouth.

  The slurping, sucking sounds of her mouth on his erection filled Claire’s ears, but not so much that she didn’t hear him groaning out in pleasure as she worked him more and more enthusiastically.