New York Billionaires Series

“I’m not going to spend the coming ten months of your internship hiding, Freddie.” His hand slides down my arm to grip my hand. Long fingers twine through mine. “I want to show you around the city. Take you to my favorite spots, have dinner with you at restaurants, Sundays in the park. All of it.”

I grip the lapels of his coat. “But what about Exciteur?”

“One of my business partners will take over as CEO.” A trace of sly confidence appears in his smile. “I’ll still be able to influence decisions behind the scenes.”

“Of course you will,” I tease, but there’s no emotion behind it. Nothing can drown out the happiness bursting through me like a broken dam. “What will you do instead?”

“Perhaps,” he murmurs, lowering his head again, “I’ll take some time off.”

“Oh, will you?”

“Mhm. And if that doesn’t work, there’s a publishing company I’ve been looking to buy.”

Laughing, I rise up on my tiptoes and kiss him. He can deny his hunger all he wants, but he’s just as ambitious as me, and that hasn’t changed with fatherhood. “Let’s get out of this cold,” I tell him when he finally raises his head again, both of us breathing hard. “I have a brand-new heater in my apartment.”

He lets me pull him down the street, smiling. “Oh, do you?”

“Yes, and I don’t think you’ve seen it.”

“I better come up, then,” he says. “To inspect it.”

Four months later

The damned mask chafes at my skin, reminding me why I’ve rarely worn the thing. I tuck it into the inner pocket of my suit jacket instead. The incense hangs thick in the air, the scent of citrus and chamomile familiar but not unpleasant. I gaze out over the writhing bodies in the warehouse the Gilded Room chose for this occasion.

Women in lingerie serve drinks out of highball glasses while a man trails them in nothing but a police hat and shorts. I watch as one of the city’s top bankers invites a model to sit on his lap. She agrees, smiling with false modesty.

My gaze continues, past the performance, until I find the one woman I’m here for.

She’s leaning against the opposite wall. The silky fabric of her red dress clings to every exquisite curve, draped around her chest in a way that beckons a man to drown himself between those breasts. Dark, thick hair hangs in loose waves down her bare arms and shoulders. I know how it feels over my skin as she rides me, and how it must be tickling hers even now.

The mask she wears hides most of her face from view, but I’d recognize Frederica anywhere.

I motion for a waiter and replace my empty whiskey glass with another. Coming here tonight had been her suggestion. It’s been six months since we first met, and when I’d proposed dinner to celebrate the occasion, she’d suggested this.

I’d been shocked. Intrigued. And what the lady wants, she gets.

A sultry voice to my right forces me to break eye contact with Freddie. A woman has her hand on my arm, nails digging into the fabric of my suit.

“Hello, stranger. I haven’t seen you around in a long while.”

She’s vaguely familiar, with ice-cold blue eyes and a pointed chin. “It has been a while,” I agree.

The old days when I’d attend a few of these parties a year seem like they belong to a different life. One where interactions with women were short, to the point, always fun, but never serious.

A way to keep relationships at arm’s-length, until Freddie refused to stay away. Until I couldn’t let her go.

“I’m going to head into one of the bedrooms soon,” the woman drawls, her hand inching down to wrap itself around my hand. “If you’d care to join…”

I release her with a placid smile. “Sorry, but I’m taken for the night.”

Her eyes scan the area. “And she’s left you here alone?”

“For the time being, yes.”

“A pity,” ice-blue eyes says with a shrug. “She’d better come to her senses soon.”

As she meanders off, my gaze returns to where Freddie had been. But she’s gone. I take a sip of my whiskey and relish the familiar burn down my throat, amplifying the punch of lust in my stomach. She’s here, somewhere, being admired by all the men.

But she’ll pick me.

Her strength, ambition and fierce intellect hasn’t stopped impressing me yet. With Victor in charge of Exciteur, the talented son-of-a-bitch, I’m still kept informed by both him and Freddie. So I know she’s been offered Quentin’s old job in Strategy, a position that would guarantee a full-time job after her internship ends.

I lean against the wall and scan the crowd for a spark of red silk and dark hair. Some of the women here are in lingerie, but even fully naked they’d have nothing on Freddie’s allure.

Her voice reaches me first. “Hi there, handsome.”

I turn to find her leaning against the wall beside me, her arms tucked underneath her breasts. The move gives me an even deeper view of her cleavage. “Hello,” I say.

She re-adjusts her mask, a flash of territorialism in her eyes. “You’ve already been spoken to.”

The urge to grin in triumph grows stronger, but I play along, crossing my arms over my own chest. “So I have.”

“She looked… interesting.”

“I told her I was already with someone.”

Freddie’s composure cracks and her lips break into the smile I love the most. Wide and unrestrained and just a bit fierce. A mouth that is kind, but never weak. “I’m happy to hear that,” she says.

I take her hand in mine, fingers brushing over the diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. It had been a gift for her twenty-seventh birthday.

She hasn’t taken it off since. “Have you seen how the men have watched you here tonight?”

“No,” she says.

My thumb smooths over the rapid pulse in her wrist. “I have. I’ve seen them all look at you, at how that dress clings to your body, at your hair. They’ve all been hoping they’d be the one you came and spoke to.”This content belongs to Nô/velDra/ma.Org .

“Yet here I am,” she murmurs, shifting her hand in mine. “Talking to you.”

I incline my head. “Here you are. And do you want to know something?”

I lean forward, brushing her ear with my lips. “I’ll never tire of being chosen by you.”

A shiver ghosts across her skin, and it’ll never stop turning me on, seeing how I can affect her, even after these months of ever-growing intimacy. Freddie slips her fingers in between the buttons of my shirt. “Thank you for agreeing to come here with me tonight.”

“Anything you want,” I say, moving my lips down to her neck. “But would you mind telling me why?”

“Why not?” she asks. “It’s fun.”