Bad Billionaire (Bad Billionaires 1)

We lay there breathing for a few long moments. There was no other sound. I couldn’t hear anything from the corridor outside or the apartment across the way, and I wondered if the police were gone. With the thought, the world seeped back in to the space between us, with its complications and its disappointments and its impossibilities. I put my hand over his where it rested over my breast, my fingertips brushing the ridges of his tattooed knuckles, as if reminding myself that what had just happened was real.

“I should go,” he said, reading my mind.

“I know,” I replied. But neither of us moved.

I was in danger if he stayed here. I knew that. The cops might come back, might have some way to find him here. They might find out I’d lied. Devon Wilder could escape the consequences of tonight for an hour, maybe two, but he couldn’t escape them forever.

Still we lay, drifting. If he stayed past midnight, past one o’clock, I reasoned with myself, there was less chance a neighbor would see him leaving. Even less chance if he stayed until two. Until three.

But he wouldn’t. I already knew that.

We were quiet for so long, I lost track of time. I wasn’t asleep; neither was he. We just were, the two of us in my bed, in the small world of my bedroom, for just a little longer. We could have talked, I supposed. But what was the point? This was only this, nothing else. It wasn’t anything. There was nothing to say.

He fucked me again before he left. We went slower this time, his body spooned behind mine, his hand hooked beneath my knee. He pressed me into the bed and said everything filthy in my ear—That’s it, that’s right, take my cock, easy and slow, fuck me nice and hot, sweetheart—and we both came again, our orgasms quiet and intense, rocking through us like earthquake tremors. Then he got out of bed in the dark and I heard him dressing.

I lay on my back and pulled my knees up, watching his shadow. I could feel him trickling out of me, and I didn’t care.

“Listen,” he said after a minute as I watched him pull his shirt on over his head. “I have to stay away from you, and you have to stay away from me. There are people who would hurt you in order to hurt me if they knew about you. Do you understand?”

He wasn’t talking about cops. “Yes,” I said.

“I mean it,” he said. “Don’t give a fuck about me, Olivia, starting now. Save yourself. No phone numbers, no email addresses, nothing. I’m not going to tell you where I’m going, and you’re not going to ask. If it’s ever safe to contact you, I’ll find you. Not the other way around. Are we clear?”

I shivered against the fear that was chilling my skin. Who was out to hurt him? What kind of person would hurt me in order to get to him? I didn’t want to know. “We’re clear,” I said, crossing my arms over my breasts.

He had finished dressing. He watched me for a long moment. I couldn’t see his face in the dark.

Don’t say goodbye, I thought. Don’t.

“Lock your door behind me,” he said.

He turned and left the room. I heard him pick up his jacket from the kitchen floor. Then I heard my front door open and close.

I waited for a long moment, hugging myself, staring at nothing.

I’ll find you.

Then I did as I was told. I got up, walked to my front door, and locked it so the night couldn’t get in.

Nine

Devon - Two Years Later

My lawyer’s name was Ben Hanratty. That was his real name. It might be tempting to make a joke about a lawyer with the word “ratty” in his name, but no one ever made fun of Ben. He looked like an escapee from a biker gang—tatted, bearded, except he showered and wore suits. His hair was dirty blond, and his eyes were dangerously intelligent. His opponents usually underestimated him, and by the time they learned how smart he was, they were already bleeding. I’d known him since I moved to San Francisco ten years ago, when I was an eighteen-year-old with an attitude problem, and he was a twenty-five-year-old working in his father’s law office. He was the first person I called the second I got arrested two years ago.

“Listen, Wilder,” he said to me now. “Something’s happened.”

We were sitting in a prison visiting room—a private one, since this was only medium security and Ben had made a case for lawyer-client privacy this time. It still stunk like cigarettes and old piss, and it still made anyone sane want to kill themselves, but at least it was private.

The first thing I thought of was either Max, my best friend, or Cavan, my brother. I thought about Olivia—I always thought about Olivia—but it couldn’t be her, because no one knew about her. No one except me. “What is it?”

Ben blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling. “Fuck, I don’t know where to start.”

I resisted the urge to jump over the table and grab him by the shirt. “Is someone dead?”

“No, no. Sorry.” Ben blew out another breath, then looked at me again. “You okay in here, by the way?”

I blinked at him. “Are you kidding me? I’m in fucking prison.”