Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1) (34 page)

“Kline!” Georgie screamed.

“Come on, baby. Let’s go sit down,” I told her, scooping her into my arms before whispering in her ear, “My legs are tired from carrying this thing around.”

“Kline!”

“It’s a real problem, Benny.”

“Kli—” she started to chastise again, but I didn’t give her the chance. Sealing my lips over hers, I licked and sucked and nibbled out a real hello. The night had just started and the implications of my lies hadn’t even begun to be realized.

But
God
, I’d missed her.

And right then, in my mind, that was all that mattered.

“Where’ve you been all my life?” I asked against her lips as our kiss pulled to a close.

She smiled just for me, lust and like and maybe a little bit of love lighting her eyes and reflecting into mine. She rubbed the bridge of my nose with her own as I settled her into my lap, finding a space on a couch by sheer miracle. Hell, for all I knew, someone had moved at the last second to avoid having me on their lap. I wouldn’t have noticed.

“I’ve been—eeeep!” she squeaked as she was ripped from my arms.

For a full second and a half, I feared for every single patron, a hulklike rage overwhelming my emotions and tensing the seams of my clothes.

“Relax, K,” Thatch teased, cooling my rage but stoking the fire of my aggravation. “Just rearranging the seating chart.”

My eyes narrowed as he set Georgie down on the sofa across from me and pushed me back to sitting next to him.

My thoughts were nearly murderous.

“Sheathe your claws, buddy,” he cooed in my ear. “You’re gonna have to get over your tantrum because old Ruck here needs some information and there’s no one else to give it to him.”

Goddamn
, I hated when Thatch was right. And I hated it even more when it meant Georgia’s ass couldn’t be in my lap.

I looked at her, across from me, and found startled eyes bouncing back and forth between Thatch and me. To her, we were both a significant part of her life. It felt weird and I felt jealous, but mostly, I just felt
bad
. Bad for lying to her and bad for putting her through the confusion she felt now.

The responsibility for all of it sat squarely on my shoulders, and believe me, I could feel the weight. The sooner tonight was over with, the better.

“Cassie, right?” I heard Thatch ask above the ringing in my ears.

“Yeah.”

“You know,” he pushed, clearing his throat. “You look familiar.”

“You too, actually. You look very Ruckish or Rucklike or something.”

I shook my head and glanced at my panic-ridden girlfriend. She couldn’t see it like I could—she was too nervous. This was like watching a bad spoof film of Ruck’s and Rose’s lives where the blind were leading the blind. We would never have reacted like this to seeing one another. Not in a million years.

Thatch’s laugh was boisterous, his body nearly falling into my lap with the action. Turning his face to mine, he mouthed “name” quickly. I had to fight the urge to sigh. If it wouldn’t have been a spectacular failure and an embarrassment for Georgia, I would have told everyone to give it up right then.

Instead, I typed out Rose on my phone and showed it to him quickly.

“Rose!” Thatch practically shouted. Cassie nodded along while Georgie’s eyebrows pulled unconsciously together. She was rightfully confused. “I thought that was you, Rose! I can’t believe how beautiful you are in person, Rose!”

I discreetly elbowed Thatch in the ribs. “Say her name one more time and I’ll kill you,” I whispered through gritted teeth.

He grimaced and shut his mouth.

“What’s going on?” Will asked, the spectacle apparently just as confusing from the outside looking in.

“I was wondering the same thing,” I said, playing along.

“It, um,” Georgia mumbled. “It seems like they know one another or something.”

“Thatch and Cass?” Will asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Cassie confirmed. “We’ve been talking online ever since he sent me a picture of his big, ugly dick.”

Will jerked in surprise. “What?”

“It wasn’t his,” I interjected at the same time Thatch taunted through a smile, “Well, you’ve got the big part right.”

Georgie’s eyes came to me.

“Or so I’ve heard,” I added.

She looked upset. “He talks to you about it? What…” She paused and swallowed. “About what they say?”

God, this was horrible. I hated this and myself and every-fucking-body right now.

“No, baby. That’s the only thing he told me,” I assured her, digging my fucking grave a couple of feet deeper.

The urge to flee was strong, but we’d literally just fucking gotten there. To hell.

The Raines Law Room was definitely what hell looked like. The devil and fire and the roaring fucking twenties.

She’d confided in Ruck, and she felt badly about what that meant to her relationship with me. I could see it written in cursive, scribbled and scrawled all over her beautiful face as she warred with herself about not wanting me to know the things she’d told him and feeling like a liar and a cheat for having hidden something behind my back in the first place.

It made me sick inside, twisted the lining of my stomach and my intestines alike, and I just barely managed to stop myself from jetting to the bathroom for reprieve.

But my face was her lifeline in this situation, for as much as she feared being outed, every smile I gave her was a comfort. I refused to leave her on her own in this stormy sea to float and flounder.

Bottom line, Rose would have ditched Ruck ages ago if I hadn’t twisted every conversation to my advantage. I was the guilty party here.

As Thatch started to flirt, I pulled my attention from Georgia long enough to tell him to pump the fucking brakes. One comment about her tits and the ruse would be roasted.

“Ruck and Rose are
friends
. Ruck’s dating someone else, and Rose is a virgin for fuck’s sake,” I informed him. “Lay the hell off.”

Wild eyes jumped to mine. I wanted to shove the words back in as soon as they escaped.

“Excuse us for a second,” Thatch said with a smile, dragging me from the couch and over to the bar in a way no one else could.

My ass hit the stool in front of him and he leaned in menacingly.

“You better start talking, dude. I’m fucking dying over there in the name of
your
two-timing ass, and you can’t take your eyes off of your girlfriend long enough to save me.”

I shook my head.

“What the fuck is up? If that woman is a virgin, I’ll freeze my fucking nuts off with one of those wart removers.”

I grimaced.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Not a pretty fucking picture. So tell me, what’s the real deal here?”

I considered it for a second, what it would hurt if I told him versus what he would hurt if I didn’t. I decided I liked all of my bones like they were. And anything I told him to keep to himself, I knew he would.

“Georgie is Rose, not Cassie. But she doesn’t know I know that, and she doesn’t know I’m Ruck.”

“Jesus.” He put his face in his hands and rubbed at his temples. “You don’t pay me enough for this level of complication.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not here as an employee. You’re here as a friend. And I didn’t invite you, if you’ll remember. I tried to get you the fuck out of here
before
they got here.”

“All right, all right, I get it. You and Georgie need to leave or something. I can’t keep this shit up, but I can’t abandon you either.”

“Noble of you.”

“Duh, dude. My character is top of the pyramid.”

I shook my head and scrubbed a hand over my face.

Realization flooded him in a surge, like the swelling of a tide. “Wait a minute. Does this mean Georgia girl is a virgin?”

I tried not to give him anything, but my face must have conveyed some kind of confirmation.

“Oh holy hell, K.”

“Thatch—”

“But she’s not anymore, is she, you dirty dog?”

“Thatch—”

“Kline?” Georgia asked from behind Thatch timidly. My tongue made a valiant attempt to choke me. The conversation, the circumstances. All of it was fucked, and a timid Georgia was the last fucking straw.

My girl was a fucking shark, and I was completely over anything that made her feel any different.

“Hey, baby,” I greeted her from around Thatch, leaning out to make sure my eyes met hers.

“Is everything okay?”

With one last look to Thatch that conveyed
just
how important his eternal silence was, I was up, moving toward my woman to the slow beat of the house band.

I was done with the secrets, done with the space, done with the whole scenario of the night, and nothing made me happier than dragging this woman out onto the dance floor when she least expected it.

“How about a dance, Benny?”

Her eyes cruised the room, but I made her walk as she did, a warm palm at the small of her back allowing her to lead but still guiding the way.

“But no one else is dancing.”

“I like being the first,” I teased as I pulled her around to face me and planted her square in my arms. She blushed furiously.

“
Kline
.”

“I’m selfish,” I admitted through a smile. “I don’t want to share you anymore.”

The color in her face drained to white, the transition from blush to blanched one of the fastest I’d ever witnessed. Immediately, I regretted the words despite their validity. She didn’t need any more evidence to build a case against herself in the court of Georgia’s opinion.

Lips to hers, I apologized the only way I could, loving her on an endless loop of licks and swoops and tongue to tongue connection.

She hummed right into my mouth, the rightness too powerful to be contained in silence.

My fingers in her hair, I rubbed at her jaw with my thumbs and sank every ounce of myself into her. I didn’t worry about Thatch or Cass or Will or anyone else, and for a couple of minutes, neither did she.

I’d never been this consumed. Not in my entire life, not by anything or anyone.

Wrinkles formed in her little button nose as she pulled back, her delicate hands loosening my tie just enough that I could breathe again.

Relaxed by the music or me, Georgia finally felt comfortable enough to address the night.

“It really is a small world, huh? People crossing paths and never realizing that they already had…or maybe they should have sooner.”

Complicated and twisted, she spoke of herself and me and Rose and Ruck and everyone else all at once. But the answer was simple to me.

“The world is small, baby. But love is large. Big enough that coincidence occasionally rubs elbows with opportunity.”

“Where’d you get that?” she asked. “Ernest Hemingway again?”

I shook my head and pressed my lips lightly to hers briefly.

“That one’s all me.”

I lived in her eyes as she searched the depths of mine, swimming in the pools of blue and fighting to stay there. I was so deep in her, deep in this, entrenched in the muck and lies, and I still felt high.

High on her, high on us, and high on everything I wanted us to be. The wedding, the kids, the happily ever after. I thought it because I wanted it. Every minute, every hour, every day, I wanted her to be mine.

I was in fucking love with her.

And I needed to show her.

“Let’s get out of here,” I pleaded softly, rubbing the tip of my thumb along her perfect bottom lip.

She could feel my desperation, a tremble running through her from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Her gaze jumped to our seats, and I followed to find Thatch and Cass deep in flirtatious conversation and Will missing.

I scanned the room ahead of her, finding him at the bar in conversation with a woman and pointing him out.

“They’re all busy, Benny,” I coaxed. “Come home with me.”

I expected her to survey them again, but instead, her eyes just found mine.

“Okay, Kline.”

Okay.

All it took was a little love making to turn that okay into a repeated
yes
.

I
was straddling the line between asleep and awake. My eyes were still shut, but the morning sun rested against my face. Kline’s arms were wrapped around me, holding my back to his chest. Big spoon, little spoon, we fit perfectly.