Auctioned to the Billionaire

Exhausted, I fall into the arm chair and shut my eyes. Normally, I would offer her some sort of snarky remark about Erik spending the night—he and my ex are close friends and Erik is just as big of a douche canoe as Justin—but I don’t have it in me this morning. My body is sore and weak, and all I want is a few hours of sleep before I go in for my shift at York’s this afternoon.

“Was he—I don’t know—okay-looking at least?” Wendy demands.

If okay-looking equates to having the appearance of a Greek god. Jackson Cade is sinfully gorgeous, from his wicked smirk to his large hands and toned body. Cracking open an eye, I tell my friend, “He was very good-looking.”

She presses her hands to her mouth and squeals. “Then he must have had a really small—”

“No.” In the back of my mind, I hear the words “ten inches” playing on repeat. “I mean, we didn’t actually get down to the act last night, but it’s not small. I felt it.”

“How do you know he doesn’t have one of those dick extenders they use in porn and—” As if she’s just now understanding the rest of what I said, her brown eyes bulge.

“He didn’t sleep with you?” I shake my head. “Holy shit. Not even the tip?”

“I agreed to spend the month with him, remember?” She bobs her head, and I sigh. “He wants to take it slow. He wants me to be the one to beg for it.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Oh, he sounds like a dick.”

“You have no idea.” At her confusion, I droop my shoulders and confess everything. I hadn’t planned to tell her that Conquer&Please is Jackson Cade, but Wendy is my best friend—even if she did get me into this mess. If I can’t talk about this to someone, my head will explode. After I’m done, she spreads her fingers by the sides of her face, indicating that I’ve just blown her mind. “Yeah, mine too.”

“Only a filthy rich bastard would pay someone who owed them so much money,” she muses aloud. Before she has a chance to say anything else, though, Erik paces into the kitchen, an ill-fitting towel around his waist. I fight the urge to gag when I get a glimpse of his naked ass as he bends to fish something out of the refrigerator. “Babe, Flick’s here. Put on some fucking pants.”

He turns around and drinks orange juice right from the bottle. The dick. “Sorry, Flick,” he says with a sheepish grin.

“About tainting our juice or blinding me with hairy crack and balls?” I ask sweetly, gathering my purse and heading toward the hallway. “Apology accepted, though.”

“Speaking of apologies, Justin—” Erik begins, but I shake my head.

“Tell him no. I’m not interested in hooking up. Or seeing him again.”

Usually, when Erik brings up my ex, I spend hours lying awake, thinking about the man. Though I’m overjoyed Justin showed his true colors before I made a mistake, it still hurts. While he was promising to wait for me, swearing that he was patient because he wanted it to be special, he was off pounding any woman who smiled in his direction.

Today, though, my thoughts of my ex stop quicker than they began and I go to sleep with Jackson Cade on my mind instead.

When I wake up just in time to shower and get dressed for work, I’m wet yet again.

I rub my clit vigorously in the shower, letting the piping hot water swallow my quiet moans, but it does nothing for me. My fingers aren’t his fingers. My release isn’t inspired by his smirk and dirty-talking mouth. And when I come, I don’t feel the least bit satisfied.

Jackson doesn’t reach out to me for the next two days. I’m starting to think he forgot about our deal—and the disappointment leaves me confused—but then he makes his grand re-entry into my life.

At my job.

It’s fifteen minutes before the lunch rush begins, and I’m sitting at a table with Brooke when the bell on the door rattles. Brooke’s in the middle of telling me how relieved she is that Casey will be starting kindergarten in the fall because it will reduce her daycare costs when her mouth drops open.

“You know when I said I was swearing off men?” she asks, leaning forward and waggling her eyebrows. “I’m about five seconds from breaking that promise. Wow.”

Twisting around in my seat, I look back and my heart springs into my windpipe when I spot Jackson in the doorway. Oh, god, why does he have to be so gorgeous? With his black hair neatly combed and a dark blue business suit that hugs his tall, muscular frame in the best ways imaginable, he looks out of place in our tiny restaurant that smells like fry oil and grilled beef. My body’s reaction to him is powerful. Under my red apron and my snug white tank top, my nipples instantly harden and my sex…