The Billionaire Game (10 page)

…and I remembered that I was in
my bra and panties, alone in a room with a man so hot it was a wonder
he didn’t spontaneously combust, and I couldn’t remember
a single reason why I wasn’t supposed to kiss him.

Asher’s eyes darkened, pupils
dilating as his hand traced up the suddenly tingling skin of my bare
arm, and I knew that he couldn’t think of any reasons either.

He leaned forward, the silk of his
shirt rustling, the crisp clean smell of his sweat making me clench
my thighs together in desire, and I couldn’t let him kiss me,
if he kissed me he would win, he would get what he wanted, what he’d
assumed was just his for the taking—

And so I kissed him instead.

He grabbed my hips and pulled me into
him, growling against my mouth as he kissed me back with a furious
need. I bit at his lips, demanding entry, and his tongue teased at my
own. My breath caught in my throat as his hand began tracing a line
along my abdomen up to my breasts, ghosting lightly over the sheer
fabric of my cheap department store lingerie. My nipples hardened and
I felt a flush spread over my chest, my skin burning with the need to
touch his.

I could feel his hard cock pressed
against my thigh as he ground into me, and my own hands slipped down
across the powerful muscles of his back to grip the perfectly formed
globes of his ass and pull him closer. He groaned, squeezing my
breast with one hand as his other slid around to my back, playing
with the clasp of my bra, pulling just hard enough to almost snap it
loose.

I was wet with desire, and I reached up
to tangle one hand in his hair and kiss him harder, as my other hand
slipped under his waistband, closing around and stroking the thick
length of his cock—God, it was perfect, and he was moaning now
and I wanted to suck him, to lick around the head and take him all
the way down my throat until he forgot every word in the English
language except my name, rocking his hips gently against my mouth as
his fist tightened in my hair, as my deft fingers teased across his
balls, as my cunt clenched in anticipation, as—

Police sirens went off in my head and I
pulled away with a gasp, stumbling backwards out of his reach and
hopefully out of reach of the sexy force-field he exuded. Asher’s
eyes were locked on mine, hazy with lust as he reached down to
unbuckle his belt. I felt my knees, and my resolve, weakening beneath
me.

I had to stop this.

What we had just done was a mistake. A
fun, sexy mistake, but not one that I could let continue. Because it
was obvious he’d been playing me all along. This wasn’t
about business at all, or investing in my company, or seeing me as
anything other than his next temporary plaything, a plaything that
I’d just mindlessly and idiotically offered myself up as.

God, sometimes I hate being a
responsible adult.

“Stop.”

Asher froze, mid belt-fumble, his brow
creased in puzzlement. It looked adorable, and he was rumpled and
disheveled and God but I still wanted to jump his bones. “Kate—”

“Sorry to disappoint you,”
I said, and I was proud of how steady my voice sounded. Calm and
cool, like I was actually in a business meeting, and hadn’t
just been making out half-naked with my former potential investor.
Like you do. “But I’m not going to make you millions.
This meeting is over. We can’t do business.”

Asher looked like a kid who had been
told that the Tooth Fairy was going on vacation and wouldn’t be
making any house calls. “But—”

“We’re obviously not a good
fit. I’ll find someone else. Thank you for your time.”

I pushed him out the door, and he
stumbled, wrong-footed, looking confused. It was a cute look on him.
He’d probably do it even more if I grabbed his hand, pulled him
back in and onto the bed, leapt astride him and—

Whoa, Katie. Hold your horses and
your hormones. Business first, remember? And Mr. Asher Young has
conclusively proven that he is not interested in doing with you that
which does not involve your ladyparts.

“Bye now. Try not to trip on your
assumptions on the way out!”

“But I thought we were—”

I slammed the door shut, locked it, and
put in my iPod’s earphones, turning the volume up to the max as
I loaded my favorite comfort track, the complete audiobook collection
of Sherlock Holmes stories, including the little-known spoof ‘How
Watson Learned the Trick.’ Then I climbed into bed. Alone. And
tried not to think about the fact that I’d just screwed up what
was probably the most important meeting of my life.

Sometimes, when life gets complicated
and stressful, it helps to concentrate on something comparatively
soothing and simple, like violent murder.

Two days later, I was vacuuming my
apartment for the seventh time—any dirt particles that remained
were too small to be seen by any but the most powerful microscope,
and there was a very real possibility that the continued suction was
going to start pulling up the crappy carpet itself, but these were
small considerations in light of the fact that compulsive cleaning
let me avoid thinking about such niggling little questions like:
where do I go from here? Do I even have any options left? Am I doomed
to a life of unprofessionalism, hot make-outs with guys whose
pictures can be found by the word ‘unsuitable’ in the
dictionary, and business failure?

In other words, the apartment had never
looked so clean. I was half-expecting Martha Stewart to show up and
have a seizure out of sheer joy.

I picked a piece of non-existent lint
off the couch and grabbed the furniture polish for the coffee table,
which was already gleaming like King Midas had stopped by earlier. My
treacherous eyes lingered on the cell phone I’d left lying on
the table, and my even more treacherous mind thought:
you could
call Asher. You could ask for one more business meeting. He really
did seem to get it towards the end of that discussion, and if this
meeting just happens to end with you banging him on his desk, then…

No, no, NO. Calling Asher was a
terrible idea, even without following it up with the terrible idea
chaser of actually having sex with him. Even if he really had been
starting to get where I was coming from, and he wasn’t just in
this for the booty, he wasn’t going to change his whole
business model just for me. Asher took small companies and made them
into big companies that made millions, and then billions. He didn’t
throw out small change to people who wanted to make a little high-end
boutique, no matter how good they were at making out.

Not even if they made him moan when
they slid their tongue into his mouth, their hands gripping his ass
like I wanted to meld into him, like I couldn’t even wait to
have him inside me—

God-motherfucking-dammit, I was doing
it again!

Focus, Katie! This isn’t about
your libido and your loneliness for once, this is about your life!
Your dream!

Somehow the phone was already in my
hand, the contacts scrolled down to Asher’s number. I stopped
my thumb before I could hit his name, and scrolled down further.
Lacey. Lacey would know what to do.

I hoped to God she did, or this
apartment was going to be so clean that I was going to asphyxiate on
Lysol fumes.

#

“…and now I just have no
idea where to go from here.”

Lacey’s assistant handed us a
couple of coffees as I finished spilling the tale of my disastrous
business meeting with Asher and the following half-naked make-out
that was currently competing for the number one slot in both my list
of hottest experiences and worst ever life choices.

“Damn, girl,” Lacey said
with a look that somehow managed to be both horrified, sympathetic,
and impressed. “You do not do anything by halves, do you? Do
you even know what halves are? Do you remember the concept of
fractions? I remember that we were in seventh grade math together,
but I also remember that your answers on all your worksheets tended
to be the words ‘Aaron Davidson’ with a bunch of hearts
doodled around them.”

“What can I say?” I said,
draining my mocha latte with an appreciative sigh. Ah, sweet
caffeine. Almost as good as alcohol for making the world look like a
surmountable challenge. “That boy was a thirteen-year-old
Casanova, and I had this amazing friend who was always willing to
help me—”

“Let you copy my answers,”
Lacey correct firmly.

“Help me,” I agreed. I shot
a pleading look at Lacey’s assistant, and she mercifully handed
me another cup of java before leaving to attend to her duties at her
desk just outside of Lacey’s palatial new office. “Seriously,
though, thanks for listening to me rant about all this. Also, give
your assistant a raise. She deserves it.”

I drew in another deep gulp of hot
strong chocolatey brew, letting my eyelids drift shut in
satisfaction. Lacey’s assistant had discovered a little
hole-in-the-wall coffee shop run by two Ethiopian immigrants who had
made coffee their life study, and Lacey now bought from there
exclusively and in bulk. The people who came to her office for
meetings were starting to follow her lead too, and it was easy to
taste why: not only was the flavor smooth and subtle, but their
coffee had the highest amount of caffeine you were legally allowed to
sell in the United States.

Or, as I liked to call it, the perfect
amount.

Unfortunately, even the most delicious
coffee couldn’t solve everything, or even put off the problems
forever until they solved themselves. I groaned, knuckling my
forehead. “I think I invested way too much emotional energy
into this thing with Asher working out. I told myself it was my one
shot, but I just meant that to motivate me to do good on my
presentation. And now I’m halfway convinced it really was my
one shot, and I fucked it up harder than a fucked up thing from
Planet Complete Fucking Disaster.”

“You know that’s not true,”
Lacey said gently but firmly. “First of all, this fuck-up was
on both of you—maybe you got unprofessional, but he started it
by not listening to you. And you know that this wasn’t your one
shot. Even if you keep insisting on not taking money from me and
Grant—which, for the record, I think is prideful and
unnecessary and shooting yourself in the foot—the world is full
of people who would like to invest in your ideas.”

“But where the hell am I going to
find them?” I asked, slumping down in my seat like a sack of
particularly depressed potatoes. “I’m banging my head
against a brick wall here—ugh, a brick wall would probably be
softer than this, this is some bullshit kind of futuristic carbon
fiber wall. What am I going to do next?”

“I can always have another word
with HR about that wrongful firing…”

I sighed. “Lacey, I appreciate
it, but I already told you—”

“Or a loan, investing!”
Lacey added brightly, speeding right past her torpedoed first
suggestion. “A loan wouldn’t really be taking money from
us, since you’d be giving it back eventually!” She aimed
her puppy dog eyes at me, pleading. “Seriously, there are only
so many dresses I can buy, and it’s not like I want to crack
open caviar for every lunch. Let me put my tacky new money towards an
actually worthwhile cause. Please, Katie. Assuage my newly rich guilt
by taking this cash off my hands. You’ll be doing me a favor!”

“Lacey, girl,” I said,
taking her hand, “you are sweeter than all the combined
contents of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but I can’t.
You are my best friend, and I wouldn’t risk that friendship for
a million dollars, a massage from Jude Law, and a box set of books
signed by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve seen too many good
friendships ruined by money.”

“That wouldn’t happen with
us—” Lacey started to protest.

“And
even if
that doesn’t
happen,” I overrode her, putting my foot down so hard I was
surprised the floor didn’t crack, “I would be stressed
about it happening all the time, and I would be miserable. It’s
off the table. It’s not even on the floor next to the table.
It’s in another room, on a different floor, in a separate
building, in a country halfway around the world where they don’t
even use tables, that is how far off the table it is.”

Lacey pouted, but she nodded in
reluctant agreement. “Fine. Well, all right. But I’m
still going to think of something to help you. Best friends!”

“Best friends!” I agreed,
and we clinked our paper coffee cups together.

There was a knock on the door, and
Lacey’s assistant entered timidly. “Excuse me, Miss
Newman, Miss Jameson. I know you said not to be interrupted, but
there’s a gentleman here who’s getting very insistent.
Something about a not-to-be-missed opportunity for Miss Jameson…?”

I started to get a sinking feeling in
my stomach. Or was that excitement? “This guy wouldn’t
happen to be, I don’t know, about six one with curly dark hair,
green eyes, smirk that could knock your panties off at twenty paces,
and an entitlement complex the size of Manhattan?”

“Wow, you know me so well,”
a deep voice came from behind her. “It’s like looking in
a mirror.”

The floor completely failed to open up
beneath me and swallow me forever as Asher Young strode into the
room, hands in his pockets as if he didn’t have a care in the
world, smirk on his face like it had been sculpted in marble.

“You really need to work on your
timing,” I told him, trying to still the traitorous butterflies
in my stomach. “Unless you’re actually actively trying to
enter conversations at the worst possible moment, in which case,
congratulations, you have this timing thing down pat.”

He raised an eyebrow. Oh, that should
not be doing the things it was doing to my southern regions. And
there went that dimple—winking in and out of existence like a
star as he smiled, those deep emerald eyes almost hypnotic as he
lounged against Lacey’s desk at just the right angle for his
jeans to hug his crotch and legs like a dream come true.