Luca & Marcel (Hostile Takeover 0.50)

Murphy kept crunching candies with hard taps of his fingers. “You should get one of those prostitutes who pretends to be your assistant.”

What the hell was he talking about?

“Is that a thing?” I asked. “What kind of prostitute would pretend to be someone’s assistant… why? Why would that even exist?”

Jillian snorted. “Gay men who travel to countries where being gay is illegal often have to find creative ways to meet their… personal needs. So they bring along assistants who are really just assisting with their penis.”

If I continued clutching the front of my shirt, my housekeeper was going to have words with me.

“Certainly not,” I said.

“Told you,” she muttered to Murphy. “All that shirt-clutching is a symptom of sexual frustration.”

“Wait,” Murphy said, snapping his fingers. “You know who would be perfect for him? Marcel.”

“Are you kidding? No way. Marcel is too sexy,” Jillian said. “Working with him would break Luca’s brain.”

My ears perked up. “A sexy assistant? I don’t mind being broken—”

“Doesn’t he work for Grey Blackwood?” Murphy’s lips pressed together in thought.

“The billionaire venture capitalist?” I asked, ears perking even higher. If the man was good enough for Grey Blackwood, he’d be way, way better than any temp.

The two of them ignored me.

“Grey is on a three-week cruise with his mother. She refused to let him bring Marcel. The poor man is probably enjoying his well-deserved time away from someone as demanding as Grey Blackwood. That man has to be a tiger in bed,” she slurred as the painkillers took over. “Rawr.”

Wait. Wait. Were we talking about a real PA or one of those sex PAs?

Before I could ask for clarification, the surgeon came in and requested in very strong language that his patient needed to rest in anticipation of her surgery in the morning.

“Donchu wor’y, Luca!” Jillian called happily as Murphy grimly escorted me from the room. “Imma make a phone call n’ get you a new PA right this minnit! Iss all unner control!”

And that was how I found myself climbing aboard my plane a few hours later to come face-to-face with my new temporary PA.

The man was eye-poppingly pretty. There was no other way of saying it. He was beautiful, with a slight, slender frame, defined cheekbones under creamy-soft brown skin, and luminous eyes framed with inky-black lashes that might have even been set off with mascara. Strangely, he was dressed in a cropped, turquoise-sequined halter top, formfitting black cigarette pants, and cream-colored ankle boots.

I blinked at the delicious creature before me until the late-afternoon sunlight sparkled off something even more unexpected.

Nestled in his short dark hair was a delicate sparkling tiara fitted with hundreds of crystal gemstones.

Oh holy fuck.

In her drugged-out stupor, Jillian had clearly hired a sex worker to come with me to Las Vegas. A sex worker who just happened to tick every single box on my extensive list of turn-ons and—I stared at those dark eyelashes again and nearly swallowed my tongue—added a couple of boxes I hadn’t realized I was missing.

Jillian was definitely getting a Ferrari.

2

Marcel

I did not do last-minute changes of plan.

Answering Jillian’s frantic call just as I was about to step onto a subway train to join my friends for a bachelorette party extravaganza had been a major tactical error. Rumor had it, the plan had been to end up at a male strip club. I’d had one back pocket full of singles and the other full of condoms.

If I couldn’t be the bride, at least I could be the bride’s slutty gay friend who got fucked by a hot stripper at the bachelorette do. And if I wanted to live that particular fantasy, there was no better time than when my workaholic boss was safely tucked away on a luxury cruise ship in the Mediterranean, right?

But no. Jillian had to call in the favor she’d been sitting on for years. The one she’d earned when she’d had to suffer through the worst blind date possible with a grizzled old grandpa just so I could get a nice, long dicking by the guy’s hot grandson.

I’d thought at the time that it had been worth it.

But now here I was, standing on a private plane, hot and effervescent after racing back to my apartment to shove a bunch of clothes into a suitcase and make it out to Teterboro in time to meet…

Oh. Ohhhhh.

Wait just a tall, muscular moment. This guy wasn’t at all what I’d expected when Jillian had told me stories about her high-maintenance boss.

I’d heard gobs of stories about Luca Bernardi, the billionaire hotelier. Stories about his inability to resist being the first to bring a new hotel concept to market. His inability to take a vacation. Ever. His inability to tolerate soft cheeses paired with toast points.

“He insists brie belongs on a nice baguette,” she’d griped one evening over Happy Hour cosmos at Pinnie’s. “And if you need a cultural example, he’ll be happy to hold forth for hours about feta’s relationship to pita bread and how Halloumi should be paired with watermelon instead of any kind of bread product at all.”