The Naughty Step (Billionaire Book Club 2) Page 5

  No hands went up, the hot sauce abandoned. I wasn’t about to go on the book club record with my developing relationship with Zoe, and if anyone else was feeling guilty they weren’t about to own up to it. Besides, a ten-year age gap wasn’t that bad, unless she was a teenager. That realization just supported Marcus’s “predator” analysis, which meant I stood on solid moral ground.

  “So, again I ask. Great work of literature, or plain old underage smut?”

  “If Viktor was here, he’d say it was literature.” Silas looked to the pass for the next dish, which was slow in coming.

  Marcus waved his hand. “Viktor’s Russian.” It served as an explanation, a dismissal, and an excuse, all at the same time.

  “I found it very interesting that we read this book right after reading Gone, Girl,” Silas said.

  “How so?” I asked.

  We were all pretty intelligent guys—it was hard to find a really boneheaded billionaire. But while Marcus’s words carried intellectual weight, Silas could be uncannily insightful—which was probably why I never went to him with my problems.

  I didn’t need to hear the truth about myself. I already knew it. The truth was I wanted Zoe, and I had her. Fantasy or not, she was in my bed and in my life.

  “Bitches be crazy,” Silas finally said. “Now where’s the fucking second course?”

  10

  Zoe

  Some people sat on the subway and read. Some people listened to music. Some dozed, bobbing awake at each stop. I sat on the subway and fantasized about sex with my stepbrother.

  In another context, that would totally warrant an ewww. But other differences between us were more concerning. Our ages. Our incomes. Our power. Our shoe storage. It was hard not to feel inferior sometimes, when I technically was in many ways. I’d just finished college, for heaven’s sake, whereas Nathan had just finished, well, me.

  Only an hour earlier I was flat on my belly on Nathan’s bed, suspended in the boneless torpor that followed my first time having morning sex. I was so dazed that it took him slapping my ass to remind me that I had to get to work.

  We’d tried to keep some distance. I still slept in my own bed most nights. For one thing, I didn’t want to crowd him. For another, he didn’t invite me to join him. The night before, we’d both fallen asleep after an hour of incredibly vanilla sex. No kinky stuff at all. In fact, when he began snoring, I worried that I’d bored him to sleep.

  After tumbling off me, he’d barely moved from his prone position beside me, except to stretch his hand over my stomach. The solid weight of his arm was like an unconscious hug, a safety belt in this strange new relationship we were forging. Some kind of restraint was probably a good idea. I was counting on Nathan’s maturity and experience to guide us. God knows we’d be up shit creek if we had to rely on mine.

  I should have gone back to my own bed. There was no real reason for me to stay, other than just being… comfortable. Instead, I pulled the covers up over us and snuggled closer to the warmth of his naked body. His hair flopped into his eyes, his cheek on the bed. For all of the power and control he demonstrated when awake, in his sleep his mouth fell open like a little kid. I watched him, fascinated, until I realized I’d never get to sleep with his breath on my face.

  By the time I realized I’d made the decision to stay it was dawn, and I woke up in the pearly light to find Nathan’s head between my legs.

  “Oh!”

  He grinned up at me, his lips glossy. “I knew you’d taste sweet.” Likely, he was more pleased about being right than my, er, flavor. But as long as he went back to doing that thing he was doing with his tongue, I wasn’t going to quibble.

  My hands went to his head, tangling in his hair and pushing him back down. “More,” I demanded hoarsely.

  I was still drowsy, but the sensations roused me like an alarm clock with a very, very short snooze button. It would be a lie to say I was wide-awake as he brought me to the edge of climax, lapping and teasing and tasting. It was a little like having a falling dream, and my orgasm woke me up as I hit the ground.

  As I was coming, Nathan crawled up beside me and pushed my hip to turn me on my side. Then he looped his forearm under my thigh, pushed it up to my chest, and entered me.

  Another novelty for me. He went so deep I thought he’d touch my heart. His hand had clamped over it already.

  “Fuck, Zoe. You feel so good,” he grunted.

  I twisted my head back to try to kiss him. I got as close as my lips on his jaw, but his face ossified in a state of focus and despite being inside me he felt very far away.

  His fingers dove down my belly to catch my clit as he slowly and methodically drilled me. If I were on my back I could wrap myself around him. If I were on my hands and knees I could push back against him or try to reach where we joined. In this position, neither was easy to manage. Nathan was in total control. It was nerve-wracking and liberating and overwhelming.

  When I came, it was with a relieved shout and a sense of loss. And now I sat on the train trying to figure out how I felt about the whole… thing.

  Then I sat in my cubicle thinking about it. And one or two trips to the ladies’ room, thinking about it. On my second visit I’d gotten so lost in my thoughts that I was peppered with jokes about drowning when I returned to the department meeting I was sitting in on. The irony was that we were discussing a bid for a PSA for safe… sex… Oh shit.

  Halle stopped at my desk at a little after twelve, snapping her fingers. “Get your purse.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “We’re going to get some lunch and you’re going to tell where the fuck you’ve been all morning.”

  My wristlet hanging off my arm, I followed her outside. She ordered two falafel combos from a food truck, handed me an iced tea slick from the melting ice in the cooler, and sat me down on a black granite bench in the plaza connecting our building to another.

  “Zoe. What. The. Fuck?” Halle scowled behind her sunglasses as she unwrapped her lunch. “Damn it, I always forget to hold the onions.”

  I squinted at her—having forgotten my shades upstairs—and said the first thing that came to my mind. “My ass is hot.” I was wearing a pair of khaki capris and my white eyelet lace blouse.

  “No shit. We’re sitting on a hundred degree rock. Now what’s going on with you? You were a total space cadet this morning.”

  Normally we didn’t see each other much at work, as I was at the beck and call of Creative Services and she was running numbers in Business Development. That morning was the first time we’d sat in on a meeting together, and apparently I’d been too distracted to notice Halle trying to get my attention.

  “Do you engage in safe sex?” I blurted out.

  She almost choked on her iced tea, swiping at a trickle running over her chin. “What are you, my doctor? Oh, the PSA bid. I guess it depends on what you mean by safe, right?”

  The sun blasted down on us. I swear I could feel my skin burning. “Okay, what’s safe?” I asked, cracking open my drink and downing half of it. Mist from the nearby fountain drifted to us, providing momentary relief from the heat.

  “Condoms. Communication. Cunnilingus.” Halle stabbed at the salad that came with the falafel.

  Ha ha. “Not a bad slogan.” I opened the container and tore off a piece of pita bread.

  We’d had lunch together only a few times, but Halle was the kind of girl that acted like you’d known each other for ten years instead of ten days. You know, the kind of girl that would ask you to be her bridesmaid after knowing you a week and then ask you to hold her wedding dress up while she peed.

  I loved that I was making friends. Halle, Tom, Jordan. Jordan was interning in the same department as Halle, and Tom holed up with the graphic designers. I was the only “Communications” graduate. In fact, I was the only graduate—the rest of them were going into their senior year. Despite being the oldest, I felt like Bambi around their hipster ways and east coast nonchalance.

 
There were some things I definitely didn’t like about New York. Being passive-aggressively treated like a naïve hick was one those things.

  “Oh my god, you’re having sex!”

  My falafel box fell off my lap to splatter on the hot pavement by my feet. “Shit!” Disgusted, I picked up as much as I could and put it back in the container, then I went to dump it in the nearest trash can. When I came back, Halle was clearly thinking hard.

  “Who are you fucking? I know it’s not Tom.” She screwed up her face. “He wishes. Jordan would have told me.”

  “You’re not the only people I know in New York,” I lied.

  For a city with so many damn people, it was surprisingly hard to get to know anyone. But I also hadn’t tried too hard either. My head had been wrapped up in work or Nathan. Speaking of wrapped heads and Nathan… My stomach flipped at the reminder that I hadn’t been practicing safe sex.

  Fuck my life. I was smarter than that. I wanted to beat my head against the granite grill I was sitting on.

  Halle hummed to herself as I finished my tea, her eyes widening. “You whore! You’re fucking your brother?”

  Now I wanted to beat her head against the granite bench. Thankfully, nobody heard her; or, if they had, nobody cared.

  “He’s not my brother.” The sun was just too damn hot. My arms were turning red and I wanted to hang my tongue out like a dog and pant.

  “Stepbrother, sorry. Wow.” She leaned back, bracing herself on her palms until she realized how hot the stone was. “Motherfucker!” She shot to her feet, shaking her hands. “I mean, brotherfucker,” she snickered.

  “So funny.”

  “Seriously, Zoe. How old is he?”

  What should I tell her? “He’s thirty-two. And rich. And kind of bossy.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Well, slap my ass and call me Ana.”

  “Sooo funny.” My face burned. It was a good thing I didn’t tell her about the kink closet. “I need to get out of the sun,” I told her, my chest feeling tight.

  “So hot,” she breathed as she walked beside me back into the cool of the lobby.

  “Too hot.”

  “I mean with—Nathan’s his name, right?” She waved her hand in front of her face. “So fucking hot. How is it?”

  I could only hope my new sunburn would hide my blushing. “I’m not telling you details.”

  At least she wasn’t judgmental. If anything, by the look on her face, she was envious. I’d shown her a picture of Nathan on my phone on the Fourth that I’d taken without him knowing. Even in profile watching TV he was pretty striking.

  My body began slowly returning to a normal temperature, or at least most of it was. Our lunch break was over, so I was hoping we could postpone the rest of this conversation.

  “C’mon Zoe, tell me. How big—”

  “Later,” I ground out as we got in the elevator with half a dozen other people.

  Halle wore an anguished expression, like a toddler doing a pee-pee dance. When she opened her mouth again, I experimented with Nathan’s hand gesture. It shut her up briefly. Cool.

  “Okay,” she sighed. Then she leaned over and whispered, “I’m sorry for calling you a whore. I’m just jealous as fuck, to be honest.”

  That was what I figured. “I’m sorry for calling you a nosy bitch.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Oh. My bad. You’re a nosy bitch.”

  11

  Nathan

  “Bitches be crazy? What?”

  Zoe wore a towel, her hair dripping onto my bed as she sat on the edge. After a week of complaining about getting home hot, sweaty and tired, I’d suggested a cool shower. It quickly became a daily ritual.

  “Nathan!”

  “Huh?” I popped my head out of the closet, where I was changing into a pair of basketball shorts after work. She held up the sticky note on the cover of my iPad.

  “Oh. Book club notes.” I disappeared again, in search of a tee shirt.

  “What? You’re in a book club?”

  “It’s just a bunch of guys who get together every few weeks,” I explained, plopping down beside her to peel her towel open. “You should have waited for me—I would have joined you in the shower.”

  “And talk about books?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s what a book club is, right?”

  She sucked in a breath as I thumbed her nipple. “I, uh… we need to talk.”

  Four little words guaranteed to kill the mood. I waited.

  “Uh, we haven’t been using, um, protection.”

  Fuck. This conversation. I raked my fingers through my hair. “I just assumed you were on the pill.”

  She bound the towel back around her, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, I’m not.” She looked like she was about to throw up.

  Wait… no. My eyes narrowed at her. “I can’t get you pregnant.”

  “I may be a little inexperienced, Nathan, but even I know the basics of the birds and bees.”

  “No, I mean I can’t. I had a vasectomy about five years ago.”

  “What? Why?”

  The blatant shock in Zoe’s voice irritated me. “Does it matter?” I asked, standing up.

  “Um, I guess not?” She fell silent. For some reason her silence rankled me more than her shock.

  Did it matter? Maybe not so much in the short term, but in the long run… wait, was I thinking about the long run?

  She cleared her throat. “I need to get dressed,” she announced in a small voice. “And go for a fucking STI screening,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Zoe. Jesus, I never, ever would have touched you if I didn’t know one hundred percent that it was safe. What kind of an asshole do you think I am?” Granted, I was the kind of asshole who forgot to say anything in the first place.

  Her eyes were glassy with disappointment. “I feel like an idiot. What am I, fifteen?”

  I wanted to kick myself in retrospect, but the truth was that it had never occurred to me that she wasn’t totally pure and innocent. I assumed she was smart, responsible, and self-aware. Apparently, I’d also proved that I wasn’t.

  “Believe me, I wouldn’t have touched you if I also didn’t think you were safe, too. I trust you. But I should have said something too.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  “Why didn’t you ask?”

  She pressed her lips together. Yeah, we were both at fault here—more me than her, though. I should have said something, should have reassured her in the beginning. I should have protected her, even if it wasn’t necessary, just for her peace of mind.

  Hell, I should have protected her from me and not touched her in the first place. But that bed had been unmade, and now we had to lie in it.

  Her tears had been blinked away, but the frown on her face deepened. “I don’t understand, though. Why did you get a vasectomy? Don’t you ever want to—”

  “Stop.” I stepped in front of her so she couldn’t get up. “Just listen. I’ll explain what you need to know, then I don’t want to talk about it again, okay?”

  I felt her peering up at me but I remained detached, staring out the window behind her. Maybe she was imagining some tragic story of mumps, a sports injury, or even just accidentally stabbing myself in the balls with a sharp pencil. I’d never felt ashamed of myself about this until right this moment. Her warm hand squeezed mine, and I swallowed hard but didn’t look down.

  “Long story short… I went through two pregnancy scares with two girlfriends in a row, who were basically gold diggers. I was getting pretty well known in the business at the time, but I was still at the point where I trusted people.”

  Yeah, that time had passed.

  “I knew I didn’t want kids, and I didn’t want it to become an issue in the future—so to speak.” I couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the pun.

  She didn’t laugh. Outside, the city got ready for dinner and people walked their dogs. Inside it was quiet.

  �
��Okay,” she finally said as she dropped my hand. “Wow. That’s pretty selfish.”

  Phew. She understood. “I know, right?”

  “Of you!”

  What? She wriggled past me and stomped to the den. Halfway through the living room she dropped the towel. I shook my head. Bitches be crazy, huh?

  “Zoe!” When I caught up to her she was pulling on a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top she excavated from under her pillow. “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem?”

  In a huff, she reached over and tried to open my play closet, but the addition of a real bed to the room didn’t leave any space. She managed to crack it open enough to wedge her arm inside with a wince, before yanking out a riding crop like a she was a magician pulling a rabbit out of a fucking hat.

  “You’re a control freak who gets off by punishing women, and I’m the one with the problem?”

  I ripped the crop out of her hand and slashed it down on her covers, making her jump. “You didn’t seem to mind when I made you come like an express train!”

  “No, because I was coming at the time! Jeez!”

  The way she rolled her eyes made me want to spank her again, then fuck her mercilessly. The compulsion made me pause, my chest heaving as I contained my emotions. Her nipples pressed against her tank top, her thighs soft under the hem of her stretchy shorts. I couldn’t help but desire her.

  Her gaze swept up and down me knowingly. “You want me right now, don’t you Nathan? You want to punish me for making you tell me your secrets.”

  I swallowed.

  She softened. Her whole body slumped a little, every molecule warming as she pushed down her shorts and pulled off her top. Naked, with arms pink from the sun, she reached out gingerly to touch my chest.

  “Have me, then. But don’t punish me for trusting you. I’ve been on board with all of it, you know. There’s been nothing you’ve done, that we’ve done that I haven’t liked. Well, until this conversation, anyhow.”