Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend (Her Billionaire #1)

Chapter ELEVEN

(Matthew)

There was a finite amount of time before cum went from a plasma to a liquid. As much as I loved sitting there, watching Charlotte’s raw, swollen cunt twitch and clench in the aftershocks of the pleasure, I had to move.

“I need to clean this up,” I said with a dismayed chuckle. “Shall we go inside?”

“Sure.” She eased her legs down from the arms of the chair and staggered behind the bar to collect her clothes. I couldn’t wait around; my situation had gone from drip threat to drip reality. I hurried inside, grateful that she didn’t immediately follow me. Nobody needed to see my awkward walk.

I went into the master bathroom and grabbed the nearest item, a hand towel, to clean myself up. While I swiped away as much as I could with the dry towel, I eyed the Jacuzzi tub. I hadn’t tried it out yet, preferring the walk-in shower. But there was a gorgeous, naked woman on the roof, and I didn’t want her to leave. Not yet.

I started the taps on the tub.

“Matt?” Charlotte called.

“In here.” I was still sporting glistening smears across my torso when I left the bathroom to meet her. Her eyes dropped to them, and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

With a gesture of her thumb over her shoulder, she said, “I was going to head out.”

“You don’t have to.” I hoped I didn’t sound too needy. “I’m going to get into the tub. Care to join me?”

“Oof. I shouldn’t,” she began, but her resolve weakened almost at once. “I don’t know. What could it hurt?”

“Exactly. Give yourself a chance to come down.” Give me a chance to make sure nothing we did threw you for a loop. As sexually free with her body as she was, she was still in her twenties. If a role-playing threesome had blown her mind, she wasn’t as experienced as she would perhaps like me to believe.

The tub would take some time to fill up, so I sat on the edge of the king-sized bed with her.

“How was it?” I asked. My voice was oddly uncertain. I’d wanted her to be impressed with it all. Not only the sex, but the care I’d taken to make the sex happen, to make sure she’d enjoyed it.

“Um, amazing?” She reassured me.

“Too short, though?”

“Just right,” she promised. “I wasn’t timing anyone. And frankly, I probably shouldn’t have had another sex marathon. Not with the wedding rehearsal tomorrow.”

“The wedding rehearsal.” Fuck. “I forgot, I’m not here to have sex with you and fulfill your secret desires.”

“Right, we need to stay focused. It’s Scott and Lauren’s big day.”

“Big weekend,” I corrected her. “And tomorrow night is the bachelor party.”

The bachelor party had seemed so important before. After all, it was one of my biggest duties as the best man. And it was going to be an awesome party. But it would make me miss out on spending more time with Charlotte.

Time I’d begun to view as precious. And that might be a problem.

“I don’t get bachelor parties,” Charlotte mused aloud. “I mean, the groom is already in a committed relationship. Why would he want to go out and do something to fuck it up the night before a really expensive wedding?”

“It wasn’t expensive to them,” I reminded her, and I had no idea why. It sounded petty. “But I get what you’re saying. Why quit the race right before the finish line?”

“Exactly! It’s misogynistic and weird. The idea that someone needs ‘one last night of freedom.’” She punctuated the sentence with finger quotes and an imitation of a deep voice.

“What about bachelorette parties?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to one, and I wasn’t invited to Lauren’s.” There was a note of hurt in her voice. “She doesn’t like me very much. And I don’t fit in with her friends.”

“I don’t think you’re missing anything.” It sounded mean to put it like that, but there it was. “One of them cornered me in the kitchen and wanted to know my opinion on revising legislation to protect trademark standards. I recognize that it’s an important subject but… it was supposed to be a party.”

“Politics are a good time for some people. Usually people who have no stake in them, like soulless billionaires. Maybe she was trying to meet you on your level.” she pointed out so charitably. “But let me guess. It was Art Fair Jewelry Woman.”

The description was short, but on the nose. “What was it made out of? Rope and clay? It looked so heavy.”

“She was into you. Maybe you should get her number. You could find out,” Charlotte teased.

And I didn’t like it. The notion that I should pursue another woman when Charlotte was right there, and the fact that she was so compatible sexually—

The realization that over two days I had gone from wanting Charlotte to wanting just Charlotte washed over me like a rogue wave of doom. And she would be leaving on Sunday. There were only two nights left, and one of them was spoken for.

“I think I’m going to pass, thanks,” I responded, standing to go check on the water level in the tub.

She followed me and whipped off her top, then stepped out of her shorts. “It looks good enough. Let’s get in and let it fill up around us.”

“Remember what I said about patience and how you needed to learn some?” I said, but put one foot in the hot water, anyway. “Careful, it might be a little—”

She stepped in, sat down, and reached to adjust the tap to a more scorching setting.

“You’re going to boil me alive,” I complained, but at least I could admire the view while I was dying.

“I know hot baths are bad for your skin,” she explained guiltily, “but my muscles need this.”

The water was high enough to turn on the jets, so I did, and she leaned back in the curve of the tub with a long sigh of appreciation. “Don’t let me fall asleep and drown.”

“Never.” I arranged my feet around her legs to get more comfortable. Even though it was a two-person tub, I was six-three. No bathtub had ever been perfectly comfortable.

“What would your dream bachelor party be?” Charlotte asked, sluicing water down her arms idly.

I considered briefly. “Vegas, maybe? Your brother wasn’t interested in that.”

“He thinks Vegas is a waste of money and time.”

“Well, I love it there. Have you ever been?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Because someone I trust said it’s a waste of money and time.”

“You trust me,” I pointed out. It wasn’t an arrogant assumption. She had to trust me, if she’d done everything she had with me. “I think it’s a lot of fun. Drink all day, gamble all night, maybe take in a cheesy revue of topless showgirls?”

“And I hear there are awesome buffets,” she added. “Okay, you sold me. Maybe I’ll go sometime.”

“I have a hotel on the Strip,” I said without thinking. I stopped myself before I could complete my thought, which had been, we should go together. I didn’t want to sound clingy, after we’d agreed that this was a weekend fling. “You’re welcome to see Vegas on my dime. I’ll give you my secretary’s number.”

“Thanks. I probably will. If I can find someone who’s been before and is willing to go with me and show me all the best stuff.”

I didn’t know how to interpret that statement. Did she want me to offer to take her to Vegas with me? Was that something I could do, or would it be crossing a line?

I settled on a vague, “Well, they can stay for free too.”

An uncomfortable quiet fell between us. I couldn’t remember that ever happening before.

“Thank you,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “This was a lot of fun. Bucket list fun.”

“Wow, bucket list,” I said, blinking in surprise. As wild as what we’d done had been, it was nowhere near some of the stuff I’d done at my private resort. Against my better judgment, I said, “You know, I have a resort for that kind of thing.”

“I know. I’ve heard of Ascend.”

But I’d bet she’d never heard of Ascend Red. My invitation-only private island for perverts and kinksters.

I’ll get her there somehow, my brain declared confidently.

My brain wasn’t supposed to be thinking things like that. My brain was supposed to remember that this was one weekend only. That woman sitting in my bathtub was my best friend’s little sister, and he would have some kind of fatal attack if he found out what we’d been doing.

And the weird thing was, he’d have that attack out of concern for me. Because he viewed his sister as some kind of man-eating she-goblin.

She swirled her fingers over the surface of the already swirling water. “Aren’t resorts like that for middle-aged couples who want to swing? Not that I have any problem with middle-aged people—”

“I’m not middle-aged yet,” I corrected her. I would consider myself middle-aged when I turned fifty and not a day sooner.

“I didn’t mean you,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I thought resorts like Ascend were where bored empty nesters went to reconnect after a quarter of a century being married.”

“There’s some of that,” I admitted. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone should be comfortable exploring their sexuality. Not just twenty-five-year-olds with perky tits.”

She splashed me.

“You should come to Ascend sometime,” I blurted.

“Can I tell everyone that I know the owner?” she asked, playing along as if I were joking.

“The owner could be there.” I did some quick mental calculations to justify why it wouldn’t break our one-weekend plan. She would go home after the wedding. We wouldn’t see each other for… however long it took her to get the time to go on vacation again. “Have another casual hookup weekend?”

Her confident smile faltered. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

She sighed and sank down until her chin touched the surface of the water. “We’re talking about future sneaky secretive stuff.”

“We’re talking about future sexy stuff,” I corrected her.

“But it’s still secret. And the secrets you have that you can’t tell your best friend are multiplying.”

It was an insightful, as well as infuriatingly correct, point. I couldn’t keep stacking up things I had to hide from Scott. It would damage our friendship.

“And at some point, keeping secrets becomes outright lying,” Charlotte went on. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not sure it could ever work out.”

“Keep the idea in your back pocket?” I suggested.

She mimed folding something up and putting it into the back pocket of the pants she wasn’t wearing. Then she gasped loudly.

“What, what’s wrong?” Was she hurt? Was there some kind of electrical short in the tub?

“I got it wet,” she whispered.

I didn’t follow.

“The secret. I got it wet when I put it in my pocket.” She grinned and shook her head. “I’m tired, okay? I’ve been peopling too much.”

“I don’t want this to be the last night we spend together.” The words came out before I could vet them. They sounded exactly as longing and pathetic as I didn’t want them to sound.

“We haven’t been spending the night together.” It seemed like an uncomfortable dodge more than a joke, despite her laugh. “We’ve been fucking and I’ve been leaving.”

“Fine. I don’t want this to be the last night we fuck and you leave.” Nope, still sounded pathetic. “The wedding activities are kicking into high gear tomorrow. I’ll be at the bachelor party, you’ll be—”

“Sitting in my room watching TBS because it’s the only station hotels ever seem to have?”

“Sure. My point is, this has been fun. But after tomorrow, the only chance we’d have would be Saturday.” And that day was the wedding, and everyone would party into the wee hours. I wouldn’t ask her to choose between me and the wedding reception—and as best man, I didn’t have the luxury of making that choice for myself either. “We can keep things going. If we’re sneaky.”

“Storage closet sneaky?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Exactly. And if you found your way back here, to my room, after the reception…”

“I’ll probably be drunk off my ass. Do you want vomit in your bed?”

I wouldn’t push it any further. But I would deliver my closing arguments. “We don’t have to make firm plans to meet up. But what if we played a game?”

The eyebrow arched again. “What kind of game?”

“The kind where I text you and give you instructions. You follow them. We have dirty fun.” I spread my hands. “That’s all.”

“That sounds like a good way to break up the monotony of having to be at someone else’s wedding functions.” She tilted her head. “What kind of instructions would you give me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’d ask you to excuse yourself from dinner to go masturbate in the bathroom. Or maybe I’d tell you to meet me in a linen closet again.” Not very imaginative, but she didn’t hold a monopoly on tiredness in this bathtub. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.” She gave me a slow smile.

“So? Are you up for it?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound too eager.

“Why not?” She sat up again, water cascading down her impossibly smooth skin. “It’s not like I have a job in this wedding or anything. Everyone else seems to. I might as well set myself some personal challenges.”

“You consider it a personal challenge to have sex with me? That’s not exactly flattering.”

“If you want to be flattered, you’ve come to the wrong place.” She sighed and shaped her arms to the bend of the tub, relaxing against it. “You know what would be perfect right now?”

What I wanted to say was “the reassurance that this isn’t the last time I’ll ever be naked with you,” but that wasn’t what she was looking for. So instead, I said, “What would be perfect?”

“Champagne.” She closed her eyes. “A nice, cold glass of bubbly champagne.”

“Lucky for you, I know where we can get some,” I said, hopping out of the tub and turning the taps off so it wouldn’t overflow by the time I got back in.

If she wanted champagne, I’d give her champagne. If she wanted to go to the moon, I’d figure out a way to get her there.

I hadn’t heeded Scott’s warning. And now it was too late.

I was into Charlotte way, way too deep.