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

Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

(Charlotte)

Holy…

I’d always assumed the women in the videos I’d watched had been playing things up for the camera, but the moment the vibrator came to life, even on the lowest setting, I moaned. It was more from shock than anything else; I hadn’t expected it to use such deep, throbbing waves. Not just against my clit; my thighs and belly trembled from the power. The textured rubber nestled between my labia had been perfectly shaped to hit exactly the right spot without any need to adjust the angle.

Whoever designed the thing was a genius.

I hesitated before I turned on the rotation and glanced up at Matt. “I know I said ‘one tiny little orgasm’—”

“It’s not going to be tiny,” he promised darkly. “And I’m not letting you get away with just one.”

I panted a little laugh. He was right, it wouldn’t be one. The intensity of the vibrations alone was very close to getting the job done. I decided I would ride the first one out before I turned the other function on.

I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. Matt was right; I was aware of his presence. Hyper-aware. The fact that he was fully dressed, watching, not participating in any way, made it feel dirtier somehow.

“Is it living up to your expectations?” he teased.

I held up my middle finger and he laughed.

The rising heat in my pelvis radiated outward, consuming me, tightening every muscle and assaulting me with the contradicting urge to press myself harder against the machine and to rise up off it, to escape the sensation rapidly spiraling me to the edge. My breathing sped up, and I arched my back, giving myself up to the roaring tension, bursting with a satisfied “Ah!”

“Surely you can do better than that,” Matthew said.

After an orgasm, the direct clitoral stimulation was way too much, in the best way. It didn’t let me come down, not even a little. I gripped the controls and forced myself to turn the dial for the rotation. The dildo inside me twitched to life and started a slow roll that brought shockingly deep pressure to my G-spot one second, then disappointingly moved away before coming back again. I turned it up, and the machine grew louder.

What if a staff member came in? What if they overheard me? I could get caught, without getting caught, since Matthew was with me and had the authority to be here. Plus, it was a sex resort. Anyone working here would have seen worse than a woman masturbating.

But caught was caught, and it was so fun to imagine.

There had been no comedown from the first orgasm, not even a moment of respite before another climax shocked through me. This one wasn’t as intense. A little disappointing. I wondered if I’d been overstimulated to numbness.

Nope, there it was.

I ground my hips against the machine, bracing one hand on the platform beneath me as I rode toward another orgasm.

“Open your eyes.”

I did and met Matt’s gaze.

“I want to look into your eyes while you come.” His voice was weighted down with desire, a longing I felt as a pull in my chest. Though every instinct urged me to close my eyes and focus on my body, only, I maintained that silent link with him, kept myself on the brink, and when I tumbled into that mindless abyss of pleasure, I never looked away.

It was like baring a part of my soul to him that no one else had ever seen. Even I had never bothered to watch myself come. The intimacy shook me to my core, and with a final, shattered moan, I turned off the controls and slumped over the machine.

I couldn’t look at him. What had he seen in me, at that moment? Why had letting him in this way make me feel so small and unsure, when we’d gotten to know each other so well, physically?

“Are you okay?”

If he’d learned some awful truth about me, it didn’t show from the way he gently tilted my head up with two fingers below my chin.

I nodded, hoping my embarrassed flush would read as a sexual response. “Yeah. A-OK, one hundred percent. Who wouldn’t be?”

He grinned at me. “Good point. Let me help you up.”

I was happy for the assistance he offered, because my leg muscles seemed to have lost connection to my brain. “What’s the term for sea legs you get from fucking?”

He held me with his hands at my waist, looking upward to consider. “Fuck legs is kind of unimaginative, isn’t it?”

“We’ll have to think up something.” An unexpected sob hiccupped in my throat. I forced it into a laugh and blinked my eyes. What was wrong with me? I never cried after sex. That was so gross and emotional.

You’re jet-lagged, you peanut. I stepped away from him. “You know what, that might have been a mistake, after this morning.”

He frowned in concern that made everything so much worse. “Oh?”

“With breakfast and the jet lag?” I heard a waver in my cheerful voice. Please, don’t let him notice it. “I think I exhausted myself.”

He cursed under his breath. “That’s my fault. I’m sorry. I was so caught up in having you here and all the fun stuff I wanted to do with you—”

“I want to do fun stuff!” I was quick to interject.

He went on. “I should have set a limit. Like I said before, this place can be overwhelming. Too much of a good thing.”

“You’re saying that I need to pace myself.” Something nagged at me that pace wasn’t the real issue. It was whatever had happened between us. Had he not felt how weird that was?

“I mean, if you like donuts, do you want to eat sixty of them in one sitting?” It was rhetorical, but it was a bad rhetorical.

“Yes. I love donuts and if you put sixty in front of me, I would eat myself straight into my grave,” I said without a shred of humor. I knew myself.

“Do I have to be the bad guy and set limits for you while you’re here?” he asked. “I hate to be the buzzkill.”

“You might have to be,” I admitted. “I can’t be trusted.”

He nodded in agreement. “You have tried to fuck me twice since we’ve been in the building.”

“False!” The tension in my ribs eased a little and the exposed feeling faded. “False. I tried to get you to jack off. I only tried to fuck you one time.”

“Let a man have his ego.” He planted a kiss on top of my head and turned to the machine. “Give me two minutes to get this thing sanitized and reset. Since we’re the ones who messed it up. Then I think we should go back to the house for a rest.”

I nodded and put my bikini bottoms back on, wrapping my shawl around my waist as Matt took the attachments off the machine and put them in red baggies. I wandered around the rest of the room—most of the equipment was self-explanatory—while he wiped everything down with a pungent disinfectant. He whistled a little tune while he cleaned. It made that tension in my chest come roaring back.

Oh god.

Oh no.

I didn’t like him. I liked him. It wasn’t a friends with benefits thing. I was legitimately into Matt. And that was going to cause all kinds of problems.

****

I tried to be myself on the ride back to the house, but I couldn’t quite remember how “myself” acted. All I could think of was that my crush on Matt had turned into a full-blown hope for something he’d never offered, and which I’d never had the right to hope for in the first place.

Though I doubted I could sleep, I laid down for a nap in Matt’s big bed, all by myself, and to my surprise, my racing brain and jumbled emotions slowed down enough that I could get some restorative rest. When I woke, the sunlight through the slats of the wooden blinds had turned orange.

I got up and went to my suitcase, only to find it was empty. Tentatively, I opened one of the drawers on the wardrobe. All of my clothes lay neatly folded inside, except for my dresses. I assumed those were hanging in the closet. I’d fallen asleep in my bikini—which had never even made it to the beach—and it seemed like I should at least have actual clothes on now that it was almost dinnertime.

I opened the closet and sure enough, there were the three dresses I’d brought with me. I pulled the black satin slip dress out, the one that I’d never been brave enough to wear at functions back home. I’d never even taken it to the club; it was too short and flimsy to guarantee I wouldn’t expose myself. But this seemed like the perfect venue.

After I brushed my teeth—midday dental hygiene never hurt anybody—and pulled my hair up into a high ponytail, I sent off to find Matt.

“Are you fucking kidd—on your six, on your six!”

I followed the sound of Matt’s nonsensical, one-sided chatter through the living room and down another hall.

“Too bad, I don’t like you camping the spawn point.” A brief pause. “Yes, you were. Dan The Man, back me up.”

I entered a den that held a wet bar, leather furniture, and a huge TV that currently displayed a video game with little soldiers running around shooting at each other. Matt sat on the sofa, holding a controller in his hands and wearing a microphone headset.

“Don’t whine at me,” he told whoever he was talking to. “Those are the server rules, not mine. Oh shit, they’re coming from behind those railcars. Who’s covering the rail yard?”

I leaned against the door frame and cleared my throat loudly. “This is how you choose to spend your time at a sex resort?”

Matt slapped the headset off and tossed the controller aside, scrambling to his feet. He turned to me with the guilty expression of someone who’d been caught in the act. Unfortunately for Matt, that act was supremely uncool.

“Hey,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “So. You’re up.”

“I am.” I glanced up at the screen, which pulsed red around the edges. “I think your guy is dying.”

“Yeah, well. War is hell,” he said sheepishly, grabbing the remote to turn the TV off. “Have a good nap?”

“I did. How long did I sleep?” I was somewhat nap-disoriented.

“Four hours.” He winced. “I’m sorry, should I have woken you?”

I shook my head. “No. I must have needed it.”

What I’d needed was space away from Matt, where I couldn’t see his ridiculously beautiful face or absurdly jacked body. All of my feelings for him, I’d decided, were entirely predicated upon his physical perfection. I was being drawn in like a fly on a beautiful carnivorous plant. At the end of our time together, I would go back to the real world and never even think about him.

You were thinking about him constantly before you came here, my brain reminded me.

“You look…” Matt blew out a long, low whistle as he looked me up and down. “And I look…”

“Like you’ve been sitting on a couch playing video games all day?” I caught the end of my ponytail and toyed with it over my shoulder.

“I should change for dinner,” he said grimly, plucking at the front of his T-shirt. “If you’re up to going out?”

“I am hungry.” As if summoned, my stomach rumbled, and I pressed my hand to it as if I could conceal the sound.

“Let me take a quick, quick shower and get changed?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Why did my voice sound so tight? I cleared it again. “I’ll snoop all over your house while you do.”

He scoffed. “Obviously. What’s the point of going to other people’s houses if you’re not going to snoop?”

When he left, he used his cane, giving me a weirdly apologetic look as he picked it up. I wasn’t sure what that was about. When we’d been doing the long-distance sex and chats thing, he’d made lots of jokes about his injury and his reliance on mobility aids. I supposed all those jokes could have been a shield to protect his ego.

One wall of the den was covered in a floor-to-ceiling collection of DVDs. There was a similar collection in my parents’ den, from a time before streaming. I ran my finger along the edges of the boxes as I read the titles. Full Metal Jacket. Donnie Darko. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. All very out of context with our location. In fact, the whole room was out of context. Who needed video games in a place like this? Who wanted to stop and watch a movie when there was so much flesh and sin on demand outside?

Suspicious, I took one of the DVDs with me and headed to Matt’s bedroom. He sat on the padded bench at the foot of the bed, shirtless and seemingly out of breath.

I held up the DVD. “Quick question: who needs a copy of The Devil Wears Prada at an exclusive four-star sex resort?”

He blinked at me for a moment. “It was a gift.”

“From whom?”

“Stanley Tucci.” The answer was too quick.

“Stanley Tucci,” I repeated, wondering if he’d walk it back. “Stanley Tucci came to your sex island and brought you a DVD of one of his classic movies.”

“Uh…”

“World-renowned actor, foodie, and devastatingly hot bald man Stanley Tucci came to your sex island and brought you a DVD of one of his classic movies and the movie he chose to bring you was The Devil Wears Prada.” A part of me wondered if the scenario I described wasn’t as outlandish as I’d made it sound. Matt had tons of money. He probably did have famous friends.

But caught in his lie, it took him a moment to answer. “Well… The Lovely Bones or Spotlight would have been thematically inappropriate.”

“Ew!” I exclaimed. “Matt, are you living here?”

He looked away. “Not living. I would call it staying. I’m staying here.”

“I thought you went back to New York!”

“I did,” he said, holding up his hands again. “That wasn’t a lie. I went back to New York, but things weren’t the same. Or they were. And that might have been the problem.”

I sat beside him and put my hand on his knee. His cargo-shorts-wearing knee. Ugh. I’d be critical of his wardrobe later. Right now, there was something else going on. “What do you mean by that?”

He stretched his injured leg out, the one I had my hand on. “I got a lot of sympathy. And none of it was about the right things. I was attacked by a bear, but everyone was concerned with the walking.”

“If it helps, I was impressed that you survived the bear attack.” I hadn’t been thrilled, exactly, that he’d chosen to announce our sexual dalliance to the entire wedding… That was a conversation for another time. “So, you’ve been down here fucking your cares away?”

“No. Not really,” he admitted, hanging his head as if he were ashamed of his lack of promiscuity. “I’ve been down here eating room service and playing video games.”

“That’s… sad, dude.” There was no sense in coddling him, but his pain was like a pulsing force between us, and I didn’t want to increase it through my honesty either. “And you’re sure you still wanted me to come down here? Because if you’re going through something—”

“No, I wanted you here,” he was quick to reassure me. “This is going to sound so pathetic but… You’re the only person who hasn’t shown me weird sympathy through this.”

“Hey, I’ve been sympathetic,” I said softly.

“No, you’re bad at sympathy,” he said with a soft chuckle. “That’s why I said ‘weird sympathy.’ Other people seemed to agree with me and encourage my self-pity when I made this out to be a tragedy. You made fun of me when I acted like the world would end because I have a limp and sometimes need to use a cane.”

“It was funnier when you had to use that walker with the tennis balls on the ends.” I snorted at the memory of the photo he’d sent me when he’d still been high on painkillers all the time.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said. “I knew you’d be able to hang with me and have fun and not encourage me to wallow in self-pity like my entire life was over.”

I looked down at the gnarly purple scars on his leg. Not just the jagged slashes from the bear, but the long, straight one where they’d cut him open to try to fix the damage caused by the blood clot. I reached down and traced it lightly with one fingertip. “I was scared when this happened. I was scared about the whole thing. Bear included.”

“That makes two of us,” he said grimly.

I slid from the bench and dropped to my knees in front of him, taking his foot in my lap. “I don’t give a shit about how you walk. And I don’t care about your self-pity. Life changes.” I leaned forward and planted a kiss on the whorls of warped flesh on his calf. “Suck it up.”

He covered his face and laughed, pulling his leg back. “All right. Let’s go to dinner.”

“And after dinner…lube orgy?” I proposed hopefully.

He cupped my cheek, and I leaned into his touch. He ran his thumb over my lower lip. “Whatever my princess wants.”

I wanted him. I just had to figure out how to stop wanting him before the wanting messed up our good thing.