Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1) (16 page)

I frowned, mentally counting the amount of drinks I’d had throughout the night.

“I didn’t drink that much.”

“I’m not talking about alcohol.”

My eyes went wide. “Did we do drugs?!”

His grin consumed his face, dimples peeking out and saying hello. “Calm down,” he said, humor in his voice. “We didn’t do drugs. Not in the illegal sense. But
you
had a crazy amount of Benadryl.”

“Oh, I forgot about that.”

“So, Benny girl, I think we should press pause on this fantastic moment—because you can bet that sexy ass of yours I want to revisit this—and let’s throw some clothes on you and find something a little less tempting to do.”

I thought it over for a second. “Do you have any pizza?”

A wry grin creased his mouth. “You want pizza?”

I nodded. “Pizza and Netflix. We’ll save the chill part for later.”

Kline lifted me off the bed and onto my feet as he sat up. “How about you rummage through my closet and find something you like and I’ll order us one?”

I pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Deal.”

As I turned for the closet, his hand met my ass, spanking a high-pitched squeal right from my lips.

“Hey!” I shouted, turning toward him.

He shrugged, smirking like the devil. “Can’t expect a man to ignore a perfect ass shimmying around in front of his face.”

“I was
not
shimmying.”

“Baby, you were shimmying. But don’t worry, I was definitely watching and enjoying the show.”

I ignored him, striding—
okay, sashaying
—into his walk-in closet, where I enjoyed a few moments to myself to swoon over the whole “Baby” sentiment.

There may have been jumping and silent screaming. Who knows? Maybe I even buried my nose into his dress shirts and put myself in a momentary Kline-induced coma?

But I will tell you this.

The pizza was fucking delicious.

C
onfused and sleepy, Georgia stumbled out of my bedroom and into the hall, the light from my sun-beaten bedroom windows backlighting her in the doorway. My shirt hung off of her tiny frame in a bloblike shadow and covered her completely, but the image of her naked body underneath was burned on my brain from having it straddling me last night.

She’d been out of her mind, completely out of control, and most of all, irresistibly fucking adorable. She made the term hot mess look good, and the rambling thoughts of her Benadryl-influenced mind would stick with me forever.

Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d ever met someone funnier—and I knew a whole lot of brilliantly funny people.

“I feel like someone buried me alive last night and I spent all twelve hours trying to claw my way out.”

I smiled apologetically.

She stopped to lean on the wall at the mouth of the hallway, putting the tips of her fingers of one hand to the skin of her forehead.

“I’m so sorry about last night,” I told her.

But I wasn’t sorry. Not really anyway. The only thing I regretted was that I should have taken her to the goddamn hospital in spite of her protests. It could have turned out so much worse. My Catholic roots were a little rusty, but I’d dust off the old prayer playbook to thank the big guy for keeping an eye on this one.

Inching her way into the room, she settled on the other end of the couch and pulled her knees carefully into her chest, stretching the cotton of my t-shirt to cover them.

“Fucking lime juice,” she muttered into her knees, the skin of her now normal lips teasing the soft knit of the fabric before looking up at me. “Scotch with lime juice, really? Who even drinks that?”

I leaned back into the couch, stretching an arm along the back and propping my feet up on the coffee table in front of me to keep from reaching out and running a finger along those lips.

“Ernest Hemingway drank scotch with lime juice.”

She chewed the recently healed skin nervously, and I could imagine what she was thinking. Trying to assess how she felt about waking up here, with me, at the same time she considered what I said. She seemed genuinely intrigued that I’d know something like that, but she warred with herself when it came to concentration on it. “Really?”

I laughed, explaining, “Well, I never witnessed it for myself, but I read it once somewhere, yeah.”

A smile crept into the corners of her mouth and brightened the blue of her eyes. And the maroon of my shirt already had them blazing.

Moving her eyes from the couch to the kitchen, down the hall and back again, she asked, “What is this place?”

I pinched one eye in winklike confusion, attempted to survey the scene from her point of view, and then answered the only way I could. “Uh, it’s my apartment.”

“
Your
apartment?”

“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Why did you say ‘your apartment’ like it’s infested with bed bugs?”

“No!” she denied vehemently in surprise. “No, it’s nice. It’s just…”

Silence lingered where words should have been.

“It’s…” I prompted. “What?”

Her cheeks puffed out slightly with the sour taste of her thoughts, and I could see her run the scenario of saying it out loud through her head more than once.

“
Georgie
. It’s what?”

“
Normal
.”

A laugh slipped out. “Yeah, well. So am I.”

And it wasn’t
that
normal, I thought a little bitterly. It had a doorman, for fuck’s sake. I was a single guy. What the fuck did I need a penthouse with six bedrooms for?

I didn’t want Georgia to think I needed some big apartment. I wanted her to
get
it.

“No,” she disagreed. “
You’re
Kline Brooks.”

I just shook my head, trying to find the right words to describe how much nothing my fucking name meant to me—and how very little it should mean to everyone else.

“Trust me, that name doesn’t mean nearly the same thing to me, my relatives, or any of my friends as it does to other people.”

She untucked her knees from my shirt, stretching her long, tan legs out on the couch toward me and crossing them at the ankles. Unable to resist, I reached down and rested the palm of my hand on her bare shin.

She watched it happen and paused for just a few seconds before looking back up and into my eyes. She forced serenity over her features, but discomfort lived just under the surface. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it; she just felt awkward because it had been unexpected.

“What’s it mean to your family?”

“I don’t know.” I searched my mind for the best way to put it, ignoring her minor discomfort and running a thumb along the skin of her calf casually. “A guy who eats way more pizza than he should and has sweaty feet and a grumpy cat who hates him.”

“Meowwww,” Walter said on cue, hopping up onto the arm of the couch and startling her.

“Oh!”

“Speak of the devil.”

“Hi?” she prompted.

“Walter.”

“Hi, Walter,” she cooed, turning her upper body and rubbing his back from head to tail.

He purred and nudged into her. “Meowwwww.”

“Sure,” I scoffed. “Bond with the pretty girl. How fucking predictable.”

“Was he here last night?” she asked haltingly.

I bit my lips to stave off the urge to go into detail. “Uh…yeah. The two of you had quite the lengthy conversation.” They had. Georgia and Walter had bonded over pepperoni pizza and reruns of
Friends
. She sang “Smelly Cat” to him no less than fifteen times.

The snooty motherfucker purred for every single one of them.

She nodded as if that made sense. “He seems like the friendly sort.”

I scoffed audibly.

“Maybe that’s your problem,” she suggested simply, scratching behind his ears like they were old lawyer friends there to co-prosecute my trial. “You’re being kind of an asshole to Walter. He responds to kind words and soft touches.”

“Are you kidding me?!” I nearly yelled, pointing to myself and then back at my grumpy old cat wildly. “I’m not the asshole!
He’s
the asshole! I tried to bring that cat around to me for weeks. I’m just treating him how he treats me now.”

Walter leaned into her as if scared. That fucking cat con-artist!

“Aw, it’s okay, Walter,” Georgie swore sweetly, tucking his kitty face between her hands and rubbing their noses together. “I’ll protect you from the bad, scary man.” Her face turned conspiratorial, an eyebrow arching up menacingly to match the traitor-cat, as she looked me in the eye again. “I know how you feel. He tried to poison me last night!”

“I didn’t poison her,” I told him calmly, going along with this crazy conversation for some reason. “I ordered the same drink I’ve been ordering for ten years, and then I gave her the best kiss of her life.”

Georgie’s playful eyes jumped to mine and turned serious. Panicked even.

“It was not the best kiss of my—”

“Uh-uh-uh.” I tsked with a wave of my finger. “Don’t lie now, Benny. I know it was the best kiss of your life for a fact.”

“And how do you claim to know that?”

“Because last night you told me so yourself.”

She gasped. Walter hissed in camaraderie.

“Right before you kissed me again—”

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and everything about her posture said she was two seconds away from sprinting straight out the door.

But I knew there was more, and I gave it to her, sliding a gentle hand from her shin up to her knee as I did. Walter jumped down and trotted off in protest, but we both ignored him.

“And they were both the best kisses of mine.” I decided not to focus on the fact that beyond those kisses, she’d given me much more—including a naked lap dance. With the way her skin burned red about the kisses, I thought the trauma of the rest might make her actually combust.

She opened her mouth just to close it again and forced a visible swallow down her throat. I gave her the time she needed, the time to process my words and run them through a cross-check with her emotions.

I’d had all night, listening to her and enjoying her, to prepare for the blow. She hadn’t.

Just when I thought she might actually say something in return, her phone started to play the opening beats of “Freek-A-Leek” by Petey Pablo.

It was horrendously endearing.

I had Thatch to thank for that kind of music knowledge myself. It used to be one of his favorite songs in our much wilder post-college days.

She jumped up in a hurry, pink hitting her cheeks with embarrassment.

“Sorry. For the awkward ringtone and the interruption—”

“It’s okay,” I consoled with a smile and a wink. “It would have been way more awkward had Shonda, Monique, and Christina called you last night at the benefit.” Her eyes widened in shock.

“Me, it doesn’t bother so much. I’m actually
looking for the goodies
,” I teased, referencing another one of Petey Pablo and Ciara’s masterpieces I knew she’d recognize.

And it worked, surprising her so much that she almost didn’t make it to the kitchen to answer her phone before it stopped ringing.

I really wasn’t much of a mystery, but she was convinced I was.

With the way I craved her company, I planned to enroll her in the accelerated education program and keep her there until she had me mastered.