Billionaires Dollar Series

I raise an eyebrow at her, but she just gives me a look. “You told me I was a lightweight,” she whispers.

My hand slips down to her shoulder, and she’s warm and real by my side. “I’ll take one for the team, but you owe me one.”

“You’re the one who owes me,” she murmurs back, straightening as our hosts return.

When we finally retire for the evening, my head feels like it’s grown two sizes. Albert had insisted on whiskey too, and there had been no way to decline. The second the door closes behind us, Maddie lets out a helpless little giggle.

“What?” I ask her, tugging at the buttons of my shirt. I sink down onto the edge of the bed and it feels like cotton candy beneath me, sinking and swaying.

“I haven’t seen you drunk since… well, since Jeremiah Mobie’s party.”

It’s a tough thing, sorting through thirty-one years’ worth of memories and names.

“Oh. That party.”

“Yes.” She tugs off her shoes, still chuckling as she heads into the adjoining bathroom. I listen to her as she cleans off the few traces of makeup. “You threw up in my mother’s rosebushes.”

“I did no such thing,” I say, dignified.

“Oh, you did. She noticed.”

I lie back on the bed. “I can’t think she minded,” I say. “Your mother loved me.”

“Oh, you were like the son she never had.”

Images dance behind my closed eyelids, of summer days in Fairfield with a throng of friends from childhood, none of whom I’m still in contact with. Everything had changed when we’d moved away, my mother wanting to be closer to Ethan’s college.

Something of the gravest importance strikes me. “Who’d you go to prom with?”

There’s a beat of silence. “What?”

“Who did you go to prom with?” I’d left midway through high school.

Maddie’s voice is closer, and when I open my eyes again, she’s crouching by her weekend bag. “I went to prom alone.”

“Alone?”

Her voice makes it clear I’ve raised her hackles. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I had a great time.”

“That’s not what I meant. It was more… alone? Wow, we sure went to school with a bunch of idiot guys.”

Maddie’s laughter is soft, washing over me like a wave. Fuck, but I really am drunk.

“Of course I forgot something. Why is packing always so difficult? I forget something every time.”

“What did you forget this time?”

Her voice is muffled by the sound of rifling through stuff. “Something to sleep in. Do you have a T-shirt I can borrow or something?”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

The instant response is no.

Not because I don’t have something, but because the mental image of Maddie naked sweeps over me. Of sleeping in a bed with her when there’s nothing between us, including clothes, secrets or a bargain.

I’ve never seen her naked.

And I’ve never wanted anything more.

“Liam?” The bed dips as she sits down beside me. “Are you all right?”

I open one eye to see her peering down at me. “I’m debating whether or not to lend you a shirt.”

“Oh,” she says. “Is it that difficult a decision?”

“You wouldn’t believe,” I mutter. Maddie laughs, but it’s tinged with something I can’t place. Nerves? “I’ve decided,” I announce. “There should be a gray T-shirt in my bag.”

She bounces up from the bed. “Thank you. Now, are you going to sleep with your shoes on?”

Sighing the sigh of men who can’t rest in peace, I kick off my shoes. My head is only moderately spinning now.

But my efforts are derailed, like a train switching tracks, by Maddie. She emerges out of the bathroom in nothing but my T-shirt and a hairbrush in hand.

It skims the tops of her thighs, leaving the curving shape of her legs on full display. Long calves and soft thighs. And when she reaches up to brush her hair, the fabric rises an inch, revealing just a hint of ass cheek.

Fucking hell.

I lean back on the bed and abandon project take-off-clothes, focusing instead on project don’t-get-aroused. I’m halfway ready to deem it a lost cause when Maddie’s voice reaches me.

“Liam?”

“Yes?” Is it obvious in my half-strangled voice what I’m thinking?

But then she says nothing else. Curiosity kills this cat, because I rise up on an elbow to see her sitting cross-legged on the bed beside me. The angle gives me a tantalizing glimpse of black, lacy panties.

“What is it?”

Please tell me you’re overwrought with desire.

“It’s just… why aren’t you yourself? Around these people, I mean? It’s like you flip a switch when we’re around others compared to when we’re alone. Most of the time, at least.”

I put an arm over my face. Of course she couldn’t just be overcome with desire. I’d let my dreams bleed into reality again.

“I am myself.”

“No,” she murmurs. “You’re saying all kinds of things that I’m not sure you really mean.”

“I’ve had too much whiskey for this conversation.”

“Perhaps you’ve had the right amount.” Cool fingers close around my wrist. “Liam, come on.”