Before Her Billionaires (3 page)

Both.

In that exact, frozen nanosecond of time something in him had unearthed, like a dormant seed given permission to sprout.

And just like that—in one breathy conversat
i
on—his life had come together.

The three of them had come together.

He could just
breathe
. And had, for more than a decade.

As he admired the photo, h
is eyes raked over her face, an ache in his chest tugging at each fiber of muscle in his heart. When she’d died last year after fighting the cancer that had won—the evil bastard—he’d gone back to living with one lung.

It made him gasp,
breathlessly lurching through life as if someone had performed chest surgery on him, cracking his sternum with a bone saw, without anesthesia, ripping a part of him out, leaving him half alive
.

But he had no choice.

His finger traced the lines of her jaw in the picture, his desire rising up
through the grief
. Dead. She was dead. Ah, God, if only he could look at her one more time, show her with his eyes, his lips, his fingers, his soul, how love wasn’t enough for them all.
Oh,
how he would give every drop of it to her and walk around hollow for his remaining days to have that one, last look.

Last touch.

Last kiss.

His last kiss
with Jill
had been an afterthought as
s
he lay in the hospital bed, the beeping machines turned off, her blood pooling where her body had touched the steel-framed bed, her body lifeless and Jill—what made up the
real
Jill—gone.
Evacuated. Banished by the brutal finality of death, ravaged by mutating cancer cells that finally hogged all that was left of her.
 

He’d pressed his lips to hers and the co
oling
flesh had not bothered him. He’d expected that.

What had bothered him most was that he’d not kissed her enough when she had been warm. responsive. Wanting.

Alive.

He set the picture down and as he reached for another, he caught a glimpse of himself in a door mirror and laughed, the sound rusty and creaky, like a snicker in church at a funeral, like a fart in the middle of prayer.

Natural, but
really
unwanted.

Jill had been alive two years ago, though in the middle of chemo, when he offered himself as a “Date With a Hot Bachelor” for a local charity auction. She’d been the one to suggest he saunter down the runway wearing no shirt and half his fire
figh
ting uniform.

If she were here right n
o
w,
she’d go with him to the show. H
er hands would be the ones spreading oil across his thick pecs, massaging his tight neck muscles, roaming over the broad, rolling hills and val
l
eys of lats and triceps well-defined by work.

The thought made parts of him harden. Most of all, his heart, because he couldn’t continue to do this to himself. Torture himself. Make himself remember her.

Absent-minded and full of too many loose thoughts, he shook his head slightly to jostle himself out of it, hand holding the second picture. In it
she was on the beach, wearing a smoking-hot bikini, hips jutting out and ribs a little too close to her skin. She was smiling, but he remembered that picture all too well. Jill had just been diagnosed and the chemo was ravaging her body. The doctors had given her a three week dose and sent her home. Told her to go and recover and have fun.
 

Then come back for more.

They’d tried to surf that day, on a sunny Florida beach, but she’d been too tired. Mike and Dylan had paddled her out past the beach buoys, out where you could pretend no one else was around, and she’d tipped her pale face to the sun, worshipping the quiet. The waves had lapped at all three of them and Dylan felt a stabbing pain in his solar plexus at the memory.

It was the moment he’d realized this wasn’t going to end well.

His phone buzzed. The ringtone was from work. He was on call—no choice, had to answer.

“Hey, dumbass. You coming in for staff meeting, or what?” Murphy from the station.
Dylan’s fire chief was an uncompromising sonofabitch, but a softy, too. He’d been great through Jill’s death. At the fire station, his fellow brothers only knew her as his girlfriend.
 

They just thought of Mike as a roommate.

Dylan never corrected them.

“Shit,” Dylan m
u
ttered. “I forgot.”
Work first, then the auction tomorrow night. Right now, he was just doing a test run to make sure he had his look down pat. Years of modeling when he was younger had taught him to over-prepare.
 

“You forget lots of things lately.”

“Like your face,” Dylan shot back, grabbing clean clothes from his drawers.

“Hah.
I’d forget my face too, if I could.
Just get your pretty little ass down here. Maybe you can prance down the runway for us after we take roll.” The guys knew he’d volunteered again for the bachelor auction and wouldn’t let up.
Still shots from the video on YouTube the charity organizers had uploaded dotted the locker room at work, pictures of Dylan smiling a sexy smile, using his finger to lure the winner on stage, dipping her back for a saucy kiss.
 

S
omeone had made a fake
Dancing with the Stars
poster and superimposed his face and red suspenders on it. Nice. Jill had found immense joy from that picture, and it pleased him now to remember how her laughter had pealed like church bells on the somber oncology ward, how the video of his antics made her day.

“I could teach you how, Murph,”
he said after a long silence on the phone, shaking himself out of his memories.
“You could surprise your wife.
Give her the full monty.
”

Murph let out a be
l
lowing howl. “I walk into the bedroom half naked wearing my uniform pants, dancing like a stripper, my wife’s gonna think I overdosed on something from the police evidence room. Not get all ready for sex. Out—see ya in a few.” Click.

Dylan tossed the phone on the bed and sprinted to the bathroom, shower on and clothes off in seconds. If he’d learned nothing else in a decade or so of firefighting, it was how to take a one-minute shower.

He looked down as the water soaked him. D
am
n it. Hard as rock and pointing up with an accusing eye.

Make that a two minute shower. If he showed up at work with a boner like this he might as well paint it neon green and tie a red ribbon on it.

The second he touched himself his mind flashed—for the first time, ever—not to Jill, but to the mysterious woman in his dream last n
ight
.

Blond, wavy hair and creamy skin. That’s all he remembered. The warm, enveloping love of her touch, the air tinged with compassion and passion, too. With excitement and comfort and—everyt
h
ing.

But
not
Jill.

A few strokes and he was close, remembering how he’d nuzzled the woman’s neck, how Mike’s hand appeared across her generous ass, palms memorizing the planes of this new, unexplored, lush land.

Her breath had come out in little moans that—

And he was done.

Spent. Like a thirteen-year-old boy with a lingerie catalog.

The rest of the shower went quickly, but his skin warmed at the thought of the dream woman. Something all-pervasive invaded his thoughts, his flesh, his sense of self.

As he toweled off, he gave his mirror reflection a half smile. Maybe she was a manifestation of hope. If he wasn’t dreaming about Jill, finally, with every waking second he could spare, then perhaps the grief counselors at the oncology ward of the hospital had been right.

You really do move on. Eventually. And you can find love again, too.

He threw on an old Star Wars t-shirt and jeans, stuffing his feet in brown loafers, hair still wet as he marched into the kitchen, grabbed a bottled water and an apple, and snaked his keys off the hook next to the door.

“Where are you going?” Mike asked, incredulous, as Dylan snapped the front door open with ruthless efficiency.

“Work.”
He had to get out, get away, go do something with people who didn’t look at him with the kind of pain Mike carried in his eyes nonstop. Rescuing people from fires, working on car accident victims, helping old ladies with chest pain was better than this.
 

God, that made him feel like a jackass.

But it was true.

* * *

“We gotta do something, man. We’re not cut out to live the rest of our lives as monks,” Dylan said, opening up his laptop and plunking down on the couch next to Mike.
Dinner had been reheated beef stew Mike had made yesterday. They both had cracked open beers -- and they’d need them for what Dylan had planned.
 

One of the finer points of getting a ton of money this year had been upgrading from a laptop that was heavier than a semi-truck’s wheel. The sleek, slim computer made him feel guilty. The money came from Jill. From her death. From her secret.

But damn if it didn’t make life a lot easier.

“I’m perfectly happy living like a monk,” Mike said, eyes glued to the television. Dylan looked at the screen. Some nature bullshit show. How much did they really need to learn about the mating habits of some Australian fish?

They
the
had mating habits of the North American Male Human to worry about.

“
We need to do something, Mike. Anything. I’ve gone out on a few dates, at least.”
 

“Yeah. I know. You’re ready and I’m not. Now be quiet so I can concentrate.”

Dylan peered at the television. “Dude, they’re showing footage of a fish’s erection. If that’s your idea of porn these days, you are way more desperate than I am. At least I look at
human
genitals.”

Mike snorted and clicked the television off. He turned to Dylan. The guy was scruffy. Three days of growth on his face, the same t-shirt Dylan saw him wearing...three days ago, and a stinky funk that made him wonder.

“Have you gone
running
in those clothes?” he asked, afraid of the answer. He really hoped that
crusty look to the shorts was from sweat.
 

“
Sure,” Mike said with a shrug. “Why?”
 

“You’ve gone running and then you didn’t bother to shower?”

“No time.” Mike’s answers were turning into two word utterances. Uh oh. Dylan knew what that meant.

“No time?” Dylan made a derisive noise as he focused his attention on the laptop, navigating to the online dating site he’d picked out for both of them. “You’re a ski instructor. It’s July. If there’s ever time to take a shower, now is it.”

“Shut up.”

That was a definitive two-word answer, wasn’t it? Dylan opened the profile he’d started for Mike the other day and shoved the laptop screen in his partner’s face. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Your dating profile.”

“My
what
?”

“You heard me. Unless there’s so much dirt built up in your ears that you can’t hear.”

“Fuck you.”

That was two words, too.

Mike snapped the laptop shut. “Not now,” he said, walking out of the living room.

“Where are you going?” Dylan watched as Mike peeled his shirt off, his bare back visible before he turned and walked into the bathroom.

“Shower.”
Slam!
T
he bathroom door shut with a violent shudder.

“Fuuuuck,” Dylan hissed under his breath. At le
a
st he got Mike to take care of basic hygiene.
T
hese two off-seasons since Jill had died were miserable for Mike. Snow meant he kept busy. Nice weather meant he sulked and moped around the house watching nature shows and running constantly.

Dylan opened the laptop and pondered the profile.

What if he just...submitted it? Mike wouldn’t need to know unless someone contacted him, right? Checking out the online dating site’s settings,
h
e realized he could configure the ad so Mike never got an email. All his contact would be through the online dating site, via private message.

Dylan
had to do
something
.
Mike was suffering. No amount of meditation or running was going to drag Mike out of this dark place. And, since Dylan was his partner and along for the ride for life, whatever emotional dungeon Mike lived in, Dylan visited heavily, too.
 

He wasn’t being selfish trying to get them back into the dating game, to find their third partner.
H
e was being realistic. Life couldn’t go on like this.

No matter how much they both missed Jill.

* * *

Oh, God, her mouth was like fire and ice, warm heat and slick
ness as it left his eager lips, kissing down the hollows of his neck, sucking each nipple with a teasing intensity. Her hands skimmed the contours of his arms, muscles swollen from need. As she left a wet trail that journeyed down, down, down she blew lightly in his wet, used skin, making him groan.
 

Her long, curly hair was like an afterthought, trailing behind her
as she lavished
luxurious attention on his skin. It caught in the wetness, slipped between his torso and arms, tickled his cock as finally, mercifully, her mouth took him in, half-hard and in full need of her.

Her.

She didn’t have a name, but oh, did she have a grin. A touch. A taste about her that made Dylan sure this wasn’t just a dream. He swallowed, the tight keening of his cock alleviated by her singular attention. She moved like beauty in pure form, her hand grasping the base of him, pulling up and stroking, lubing the shaft as needed. Engulfing him with her soul—via her mouth and throat—she
ministered to his every wish.

The sex was infused with a wholeness, a gentle, tender feeling of being loved. This was what he craved, and before he could come from her mouth he pulled her off, flipping her with a commanding movement, mouth raking over her lips, sucking and biting as she widened h
er
legs for h
im
, the tip of his entire self resting at the entrance of her.