The Billionaire Offer Read online

  As if sensing I had nearly made a decision, Jenny folded her arms over her apron making little bits of flour clinging to it fall to the floor. “What do you have to be afraid of, Stephanie?”

  Dang. That was the same thing Tiana had said. Was the universe trying to tell me something?

  “Nothing,” I answered immediately. She was right. I didn’t have anything to lose by applying for the position. After everything I’d been through, I could do this. “Fuck it, I’m doing it. No matter what.”

  Chapter 4

  JEREMIAH

  I woke up knowing I had a seriously hot dream and wishing I could remember it. Throwing my phone down on the bed after silencing my alarm, I covered my eyes with my forearm and tried to slow my breathing.

  I was horny as fuck, my cock harder than the imported tiles my bed stood on, and I couldn’t remember why. Frustrated, I ran my hands through my hair as vague glimmers of a girl doing the same thing in my dream came back to me.

  The sun had already risen outside, and judging by the way the light was shining through my tinted windows and lighting up the treetops in the park beyond, it was time to get up. I was fast losing the last faint memories of my dream, but not the raging fucking hard-on it caused.

  Damn, I could hammer nails with this thing. It throbbed and twitched like I needed to be reminded my dick demanded attention. Fuck it. I had enough time.

  Closing my eyes, I let my hand drift down to my nipple and let my imagination run wild. I ran my hand down my side, groaning as I cupped my balls. In my mind’s eye, it wasn’t my hand.

  Instead, I was picturing a woman with thick curves and soft skin sitting between my legs. My last girlfriend was a bird who didn’t know how to eat, cook or anything in between. She was a decent lay, but I was tired of feeling bones and being half afraid of snapping her in half if I fucked her good.

  No, what I was in the mood for was something to hang on to as my orgasm crashed through me. Someone I could pound into and feel hips instead of bone beneath me.

  I stroked my aching dick slowly, imaging a full set of tits swaying as the girl started pumping my cock. Flexing my legs, my toes curled when I tightened my grip.

  God, that felt good. The hand not wrapped around my shaft pinched a nipple and ran along my thigh until it was stroking just beneath my balls.

  Already, they were tight and heavy. I was going to enjoy the hell out of this jerk.

  A drop of pre-come seeped from my slit and using my thumb, I spread the liquid over the tip of my dick. Reaching into my nightstand, my fingers closed over a cylindrical bottle I knew was my lube. I squeezed a generous amount into my hand and moaned out loud when I started stroking again, the satiny gel allowing my hand to glide smoothly over my length.

  I increased my pace, my hips thrusting up to meet my hand. My breathing grew heavy. Low groans escaped as I felt the pressure building. The build-up was quick.

  The base of my spine exploded. I felt my entire body tense and my toes twist over each other. So close.

  A long, low moan escaped my parted lips. Feeling like a man suffering from voracious thirst discovering a waterfall, I bore down and fucked myself harder.

  I imagined the girl stroking my cock positioning her lush tits right over me, her voice breathy and needy as she said, “Come for me baby, come all over me.”

  I practically felt her warm, fleshy hip beneath my fingers as I squeezed down and held onto her until my orgasm ripped through me like a bolt of lightning. My cock pulsed in my hand, hot come hitting my chest in spurts.

  My muscles stiffened and quaked as I came so fucking hard. Letting out a last groan, my hips arched and bucked until I fell back on the bed.

  Breathing hard, I allowed myself a minute to recover before getting up to shower. Holy shit, that was good.

  If it was that good having a girl with curves in my bed just in my head, I was pretty sure the real thing would probably get me charged with kidnapping or something. No way I’d be able to let a woman like that out of bed for at least a few days.

  Pushing my fantasies out of my mind before I ended up in bed by myself for a few days like a fucking loser, I got dressed after my shower and shifted my focus to the day ahead.

  I still didn’t have a new secretary, but I trusted Neil was on it. What I needed to do was to start looking into this acquisition. Before I assembled a team, I needed to have my head wrapped around the basics.

  Once I was dressed, I headed to the kitchen and fixed a quick breakfast. Cereal and OJ, breakfast of champions. I carried my bowl to the living room and flicked on the news. This was one of the few parts of my routine that had remained the same after I took over for Jack at Williams Inc.

  Even when I lived to party and partied for a living, I was interested in current affairs and knowing what was going on in the world around me. I wasn’t a complete idiot, even then. I kept up with the Financial Times and all that shit, even if I would never admit it.

  The business minute was just ending when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Slipping it out, I grinned when I saw one of my best friend’s smug faces come up on the screen.

  Tanner and I became friends on the first day of first grade. He was playing baseball outside the school with his brother. The ball went wide, and Tanner dove to catch it, crashing right into me. He knocked me off my feet.

  As I sat there blinking and wondering what the hell just happened, his freckled face popped into my blurry line of vision and he extended his hand to help me up. I was in two minds at first. Fight him or accept his offer to help me up and let it go.

  In the end, it was the most random of things that made me take his hand instead of punching him in the face. Earlier that morning, I helped Jack stow away skis from a trip to Aspen we just returned from. In trying to reach a higher rack, I grazed my knuckles against the wall and promptly dropped the skis.

  With throbbing feet and bleeding knuckles, I ran away from a severely pissed off Jack. To be fair, he’d told me to leave the skis and let him pack that away while I focused on the scarves and mittens. Wanting to prove that I wasn’t only capable of stowing away the soft stuff like a girl, I ended up hurting myself and causing a nice crack right along the edge of Jack’s brand-new, favorite pair of skis.

  On any other day, I might’ve punched Tanner in the face. On that day, I just didn’t have it in me. I was a miserable, mopey six-year-old whose knuckles still hurt and was hobbling because my big toe was bruised. So I took his hand and let him yank me up off the grass, then dusted myself off and accepted his apology.

  Two decades later, and I’d never looked back. Or not often, at least. Sliding my thumb across the green bar on my screen, I raised the phone to my ear. “Tanner, what’s up man?”

  “I have good news, Jer.”

  Tanner’s definition of good news and mine differed drastically on occasion. “Yeah? What is it?”

  I heard him thank the doorman and step out of his building onto the busy sidewalk. Tanner’s apartment was almost directly across the park from mine. Vendors called out and horns blared, but he ignored them all. “There’s a new club opening in Manhattan tonight, and yours truly has tickets.”

  “Good for yours truly, but I’m not going.”

  “What?” I didn’t need to be able to see him to know he’d stopped and was running his hand through his shaggy light brown hair. “Why?”

  “How about because last time, we ended up half-naked with our pictures splashed all over the Times. A baseball player, a model, an e-sports champ and a billionaire walk into a bar… We sound like the beginning of a bad joke. I’m not into that again. Didn’t they have a shot of you with a feather boa?”

  Tanner chuckled. “They did. Good times.”

  “It was an epic night,” I agreed. “One that shall not be repeated. My dad will fuck me up good if I get myself into a situation like that right now.”

  “Shut up, he won’t,” Tanner argued, then yelled for someone to watch it. “You’re going. We haven’t all been out tog
ether for ages. We’ll lie low.”

  Lying low was difficult for us. In high school, Tanner and I became friends with Bart and Shawn. With Tanner now being a baseball player, Shawn a model, Bart an e-sportsman and me being, well, me, the media ate it up when we were all together.

  Still, Tanner was right. As close-knit as we were, the four of us hadn’t had time to hang out in too long. “Fine, damn it. I’ll go. I’ll be DD.”

  Tanner howled with laughter. “Lies. You’d never last as DD. No way. We’re walking, dude. Meet us at Shawn’s apartment. We’ll have a couple of drinks before we head out.”

  “I’ll be there.” I would just have to dig deep to find some of that self-restraint thing people were always talking about if I saw things were getting out of hand.

  Restraint wasn’t my thing. I believed in living life to the fullest. God knew how abruptly it could be yanked away from you. I was determined to make every second count. Balls to the wall all day, every day.

  Only, it wasn’t so straightforward these days. The carefree, party boy I used to be came out to play at night, but then left me feeling like shit in the morning. Add to that the pressures of now being my father’s only son and things got depressing.

  Fuck it. I could be who I was and who I had to be, no problem. All I had to do was avoid the damn photographers. Couldn’t be that hard. They didn’t follow me around. I just usually gave them prime opportunities walking out of a club. I wouldn’t do that tonight, that was all there was to it.

  Satisfied I wasn’t fucking up all the hard work I’d put in to “man up” as my father called it, I went back to my bedroom to grab shoes and a tie and got ready for work.

  When I opened my front door to leave, it wasn’t the usual faint scent of cleaning chemicals that hit my nostrils. I got punched in the nose by the smell of rotting flowers and pungent roses.

  My foot came down on something squishy and soft. What the fuck?

  Heaps of dead flowers and roses were strewn everywhere in the hallway. Gingerly, I lifted my foot and looked around for an explanation.

  I found it skewered to my door. A large knife protruded from the center of my door, a note written on pink stationery hanging from the blade.

  The paper ripped away from the knife easily when I tugged on it. A familiar scent wafted off the stationery. Feminine. Musk. Heavy. It brought back memories of feeling heels digging into my ass and sharp fingernails clawing at my shoulders while the party raged on right outside the coatroom door.

  Jannie. I knew the note was from her before I even read it. Sure enough, her loopy cursive scrawl was on the paper threatening to “get me good.”

  Crumpling the note in my fist, I locked up and tossed the paper in the trash basket while I waited for the elevator. I shook my head, mentally adding “get locks changed” to my to-do list for the day.

  Only in fucking New York.

  Chapter 5

  STEPHANIE

  Narrowing my eyes at my reflection, I studied my outfit in the mirror. I turned slowly, cringing when I realized again exactly how short this dress was. “I can’t wear this.”

  “You look great,” Tiana said, leaning forward over her dresser to slip a golden earring in. “So damn hot.”

  “You and I have very different definitions of the words great and hot. Do they mean something different in Greek?”

  She rolled her eyes and flipped me off, laughing as she reached for a tube of mascara. “Don’t take it from me, the dress speaks for itself. You’re going to be beating them away with a bat once we get there.”

  “I highly doubt it.” Tiana and I were getting ready to go clubbing for my birthday. Her bedroom was covered in discarded outfits, and every time I moved, I tripped over a pair of shoes.

  The antique wooden dresser she was leaning over was covered in tubes and tubs and makeup brushes. Hair product and perfume mixed in the air, creating that very unique girly smell you only ever get when two or more girls are getting ready in the same room.

  Lining her eyes with shimmery green, she shot me a look in the mirror and pursed her lips. “I’m serious. Girl, if I wasn’t into guys, I’d scissor kick with you.”

  “Really? Right now? Jeez.”

  She shrugged. “What? Hot is hot, and you’re scorching tonight.”

  I cast my eyes toward her full-length mirror again, wondering what it was she saw that I didn’t. Even away from the nightmarish dressing room light, I saw bulges everywhere. My breasts looked like they were planning a jailbreak, and my hips were two miles wide.

  Tiana had blown out my long brown hair and given me some body cream that added a shimmer to my pale skin. That looked decent enough.

  I also took some extra time with my makeup, blending in some bluish hues with the dark eyeshadow to make my eyes pop. Tiana had some tricks for accentuating cheekbones she showed me.

  From the shoulders up, I looked good. It was the tight dress making me slightly unhappy with the way I looked.

  Tiana fastened a dainty watch and glanced down at it. “You done? We should get going.”

  Turning away from the mirror, I popped my lip gloss into my clutch and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  “Your car or mine?” she asked on our way out of the apartment we shared.

  “Yours. Herbie finally bit the dust.”

  She stabbed the call button for the elevator. “No! I mean, we knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but I’m sorry anyway.”

  “Thanks.” Herbie, my 1986 Honda, gave me her all, but her time had apparently come to an end. “Earlier when I got home from work, she made a funny sputtering sound. When I tried to restart her, there was nothing.”

  “Damn. What are you going to do?” A low ding announced the arrival of the ancient elevator car in our building. We trudged inside and I, for one, sent up a quick prayer that the thing wouldn’t also call it quits on us before we got to the parking level.

  I lifted my shoulders and shook my head. “I haven’t got the money to get anything new right now, so I guess I’ll just have to make do without a car until I can save up enough to replace her.”

  Tiana nodded solemnly. “In the meantime, you’re welcome to use Barney if you need to.”

  Barney, Tiana’s Beetle, was at least two decades younger than my car. It should still have a good couple of years left in it. Between us, if we had one working car, I was sure we could make it work. “I’ll definitely take you up on that. Hoofing it to the bookshop isn’t that bad though.”

  “You won’t be at the bookshop much longer,” Tiana said confidently. “Is that secretary job at Williams Inc. in the towers downtown or at one of their other buildings?”

  “In the towers, but I haven’t got the job yet. I only sent in my application a few hours ago.” With a deep groan, the elevator doors slid open to deposit us in the darkened parking lot underneath our building.

  I waited for Tiana to unlock the Beetle before sliding into the passenger seat and buckling up. She navigated us out of the parking lot and eased into traffic, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “The operative word in that sentence is yet. You don’t have the job yet, but you will.”

  “We’ll see on Monday.” I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Being overly optimistic wouldn’t get me anywhere, but I was hoping my business degree would give me a bit of an edge above the other applicants.

  “That we will,” Tiana said, following a turn to the Meatpacking District. “Other than Herbie giving up the ghost, how was your birthday so far?”

  “Same shit, different day. No one remembered but you.”

  Her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Parents didn’t call?”

  “Nope, but it’s really all good. You know how I feel about my birthday.”

  “True, but you know what you need tonight?”

  “What?”

  “Dick,” she announced without batting an eye. “You need to get laid.”

  I laughed. I had to love this girl. She had such an easy way of saying th
ings. “Oh no, no no. That’s the last thing I need.”

  “I disagree. It’s your birthday. You need to celebrate, and what’s a better way of doing it than with a couple of orgasms?”

  “Um, how about with a couple of drinks?” I suggested. “Maybe some dancing?”

  She waved me off, turning into an overpriced parking structure I assumed was near where the club was. “Nah, let’s find the hottest bastard in the club. It’s time you play some ding-dong ditch.”

  “I’m guessing we’re not talking about the kids’ game.”

  “Nope. That was fun. This is better.” After circling the level we were driving on a few times, Tiana spotted an empty space and parked, winking when she caught my eye. “At least it’s better if you find a guy who knows what he’s doing.”

  “I’m too afraid to ask and morbidly curious all at the same time.” I rocked my head from side to side, then nodded. “Okay, curiosity wins. What’s this version of ding-dong ditch?”

  “You play with a target of your choice’s ding-dong, then you ditch. Simple enough, right?” She flashed me a sassy smile and got out of her car.

  “For you maybe, but I’m wearing a girdle.” Also known to me as a chubby choker or a passion killer, to name but a couple. “There’s no way I’m getting naked in front of anyone.”

  Leading me down a flight of concrete stairs with bright, fluorescent lights, she waggled her brows at me. “You were naked in front of me earlier.”

  Our heels clicked on the concrete on the way down, the sound drowned out as soon as we stepped onto the busy street. “Fine, I’m not getting naked in front of anyone with a ding-dong.”

  A guy walking past us gave me a strange look, then hurried past. Feeling my cheeks heat, I ducked my head behind my hair and focused on following Tiana. She stuck her tongue out at the guy’s back and nudged me with her hip.