The Billionaire Dating Game: A Romance Novel (11 page)

Then I noticed where Piers was kneeling. His hands ran along my thighs, up past my skirt.

“Piers—” I gasped, trying to catch my breath, “Piers, what are you—”

CLANG! CLANG!

A knocking noise came from above us, near the top of the elevator door. I wrenched my head sideways, but Piers didn’t so much as glance up. His hands shoved my knees apart.

“Piers—Piers, what are you—”

“Can’t stop now.”

“They’re almost here!”

“Exactly! We’re wasting precious moments!”

Then his mouth was sealed over my clit, sucking hard. This time, the orgasm was nearly instant. His fingers were thrust into me up to the knuckle as he sucked, his tongue flicking my aching clit past what it could bear. A burst of new ecstasy tore me apart, and I writhed on the floor.

“Ohhhh!”
I screamed, then clapped my hand over my mouth. I bit down on my palm, trying to stifle the moan that ripped from my lungs. This wasn’t a normal orgasm. It went on and on, the seconds spinning around dizzily. I arched against the floor of the elevator, and in the mirrored ceiling I could see my legs wrapped around Piers’ neck as he sucked, sucked and licked, one hand gripping my ass as the other thrust into my clenching body.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

My fingers scrabbled at the floor, grabbing only a handful of pink rose petals. There was nothing human left in me, only animal urges that made me thrash around as wave after wave hit me, threw me into a frenzy of pleasure. And still his mouth was sealed over me, his tongue working my clit to the last moment.

“
Mmmmmmm!
” I closed my eyes, twisting as the last burst of electric ecstasy arced through my body. My hips spasmed wildly against his mouth, against his hot, hot tongue.

Then it was over, and all that was left was a dark warm feeling in my core and small shallow breaths shivering my body.

I wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for an hour. I wanted to lay there, in the middle of the rose petals, and let my nerves thread themselves back together after having been ripped apart. I needed to rest.

“Come on,” Piers said. “Time to get up.”

“Mmmm?”

I opened one eye. He bent down and picked me up, setting me on my feet. I slumped against the side of the elevator. I couldn’t stand in heels. Not now.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Oh, shit. I opened both eyes. I was topless. I couldn’t be topless when the security guy came in.

“Here, take this,” Piers said, fumbling with my blouse. “Quick, put it on!”

“It’s inside out,” I said, moving as though in slow motion. “Why did you put it inside out?”

“It’s confusing, okay!”

“I was under the impression you were an intelligent man,” I mumbled, taking the blouse.

“Just put it on,” he said. I blinked and stared into my reflection in the back wall. Dang, that was the wrong button. I started to unbutton the blouse again.

“What are you—just wear this!” Piers threw his jacket on over me and tugged the front shut. He picked up the now-mangled bouquet of roses and thrust them into my hands. I was still dizzy, catching my breath.

“How do I look—oh, God.” I had caught sight of my face in the mirror. My hair was a rumpled mess, my cheeks were flushed red, and my lipstick was smeared terribly. “Oh, God. Oh,
God
.”

“Come here.”  Piers spun me around to face him. His eyes were sparkling, and he looked classy as ever, his lips a bit pinker than before, his hair a bit darker at the roots. He smoothed my hair down quickly with his hands. Then he cupped my chin in his hands, his thumbs wiping off my lipstick around the edges.

“Do I look okay?” I asked.

Piers smiled, a slow smile that made my insides curl up. He bent his head and gave me one last quick, hard kiss. Then another swipe of his thumb on my lips.

“You look perfect,” he said, dropping his hands away from me just in time for the elevator doors to open.

Chapter Eleven

“You can’t tell me nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened. Now help me decide what I should wear on day one.” I shoved the last hanger back into my closet. “The gray cardigan? Or the brown one?”

“Neither!” Jessica crossed her arms, sitting back on my couch recliner. “Emma, did she tell you what happened with Piers?”

“Nope,” Emma said, bouncing Arlen on her knee. “I still can’t believe my sister got to meet Piers Letocci.”

“She didn’t just meet Piers Letocci, if you know what I mean,” Jessica said. “Even if she won’t tell me exactly what happened in that elevator.”

“How do you know something happened?”

“Nothing happened!” I cried. I crumpled up the gray cardigan and threw it at Jessica’s head.

“Sure,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes and flipping her blonde ponytail. “Nothing happened. That’s why when you came back to the office, you had rose petals in your hair—”

“—I told you. I swatted him with that bouquet—”

“—and you were wearing his jacket—”

“—it was cold inside the elevator!—”

“—
and
you had his cologne all over you, and your lipstick was almost completely gone.”

“No!” Emma said, her eyes wide.

“Lah!” Arlen shouted.

“Thank you, Arlen,” I said. “You’re right, it
is
an invasion of privacy.”

“Great,” Jessica said, waving her hands in the air. “Be like that. Keep all the juicy details to yourself. But don’t ask me to help dress you for television if you’re not going to share things with me.”

“Fine,” I said. “You want to know what happened? Piers Letocci mauled me in the elevator. He tore off my shirt and panties and licked me all over and threw me on the floor and made me orgasm three times in a row.
That’s
what happened.”

Jessica rolled her eyes.

“Get real,” she said. “If you’re not willing to tell us what went on between you two, just forget it.”

My mouth dropped open.

“I—I—”

“You don’t have anything in here to wear,” Jessica said, jumping up from the couch and throwing my cardigan back at me. “We have to go shopping.”

“Yay!” Emma said. “Shopping!”

“Yay!” Arlen shouted, waving her tiny fists in the air. “Yay!”

Jessica tugged me to the door as Emma got Arlen’s stroller out of the closet.

“You have to help me with this stroller,” Emma said. “The elevator is broken again.”

I was still speechless. I’d told the truth, and neither one of them believed me. It was incredible.

“Don’t worry,” Jessica said, mistaking my expression for nervousness. “We’ll find you the perfect outfit to date a billionaire.”

“Look, I really don’t have money to waste on clothes,” I mumbled, realizing that she was dropping the subject of Piers Letocci. Well, fine. I wasn’t going to bring it up again. As far as I was concerned, that fiasco in the elevator was a mistake I couldn’t wait to forget. A wonderful, toe-curling mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Now that I was away from his mesmerizing influence, I could see clearly. And I was never going to do anything like that again with Piers Letocci, especially not when I was going to be on his show.

Especially since he hadn’t called or texted me since that afternoon.

I wondered if he slept with all of the contestants. I couldn’t help but imagine him with the girls I’d seen in the studio. Of course he did. He could sleep with anyone he wanted to. Obviously.

“Hello? Lisa?” Emma jangled the front door keys. “Let’s go.”

I swallowed the lump that was in my throat and shambled out the door of the apartment. As Emma locked up, Jessica hooked her arm in mine.

“Think of it as an investment,” Jessica said, patting my hand. “A hundred dollar dress now will land you a billionaire next Tuesday. Right?”

Arlen squealed happily as she scooted underneath the clothing racks in H&M. I struggled to squeeze into the tight dress Jessica had picked out for me. The billionaire-catcher, that’s what she called it.

A billionaire. Right. That’s who I was going on the show to date. I didn’t have to worry about Piers at all. I wasn’t there for him. I was there for the billionaire. Whoever the hell that was.

“This is the wrong size,” I called back out over the curtain. “Can we try one on that’s a size bigger than this?”

“No,” Jessica called back. “You always wear clothes that are too baggy for you.”

“I do not!”

“Emma, back me up on this.”

“Don’t you dare back her up on this, Emma!” I cried, tugging on the hem of the dress. “I’ll disown you as a sister!”

“I am Switzerland-neutral,” Emma said. “I take no side in this until I’ve seen the dress.”

“Thank you!”

“But it’s true that clothes are more fitted now,” Emma said. “It’s definitely more fashionable.”

“What happened to Switzerland?” I yelled, adjusting the fabric. No matter how I pulled it, it bunched up somewhere on my body. “Anyway, I would rather be unfashionable and comfortable than fashionable and unable to breathe.”

“Breathing is overrated,” Jessica said. “Do you think the other girls are going to care about breathing?”

I tried not to inhale too hard as I thought of all the other contestants. All the younger, skinnier, more beautiful contestants.

Who was I kidding? I didn’t have a shot in hell at winning the love of a billionaire who could pick and choose from so many pretty girls. It didn’t matter what dress I wore. It wouldn’t matter if I paraded around naked. In fact, it might make my chances even worse.

“Get out here!” Jessica called into the dressing room.

“Uh, I don’t think this is going to work.”

“I don’t care! Let us see!”

“Argh! Fine!” I walked out timidly, smoothing the hem of the dress down. The dress was made from a super-shiny fabric, and it clung to my body super tightly from my neck down to my thighs.

Arlen peeked out from a row of jackets. She looked at me and let out a high pitched squeal.

“That bad, huh?” I said.

“Oh, Lisa.” Emma put one hand to her mouth. “You look like…”

“Like I’m being slowly strangled by an aluminum foil anaconda.”

“Hmm.” Jessica tilted her head to the side, pressing her lips together.

“Right,” I said. “That’s all you need to say.” I turned and went back into the dressing room. Behind me, Arlen was still squealing at the top of her lungs, and Emma was trying to catch her as she ran under the clothing racks.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You looked at me with that look that says
I’m going to try not to hurt your feelings right now, but…
”

“I didn’t even look at you like that!”

I poked my head back out of the curtains.

“It’s alright,” I said. “Don’t mollycoddle me. I know I look hideous.”

“I don’t even know what
mollycoddle
means,” Jessica said. “You and your writerly intelligent words. Is that what you and Piers were doing in the elevator? Mollycoddling?”

“That’s exactly right,” I said, pulling the dress over my head. It was so tight I couldn’t breathe. I turned to try and get my arm out, but then I
really
couldn’t breathe.

“Uh, Jessica?”

“What?”

I twisted to try and extricate my arm, but I heard something start to rip. I quickly put my arm back inside the dress.

“Uh, I’m stuck.”

“How can you be stuck?”

“I don’t know,” I said. The dress was already over my head, and I was starting to panic. “Get in here? Please?” I twisted, but the dress was completely stuck on my head.

Great. This was how I would die. Suffocated to death by a dress that didn’t even look good on me. It would be an open coffin, I decided. They would leave the dress on my head as a warning to every woman there: don’t ever try on a dress that’s one size too small. It could kill you.

I heard the curtain swish open.

“Help!” I squeaked.

“Oh, honey,” Jessica said. “And here I thought you were the smart one.”

“That’s what everyone thinks,” I said, my voice muffled through shiny satin. “I’ll prove them all wrong.”

Chapter Twelve

I woke up at five in the morning to Arlen wailing.

“Oh, baby, baby,” Emma said, patting her back as she paced back and forth in front of the couch recliners. “What’s the matter, baby?”

“She wants to eat,” I said, pulling a pillow over my head.

“Not everybody screams when they want to eat,” Emma said, kicking my ankle. “Just you. Can you get up?”

“Today’s the first day of the show,” I moaned.

“Lisa, I think she has a fever.”

I tossed the pillow aside and stood up sleepily.

“Let me get the thermometer. It’s alright, baby girl.” I put my hand on Arlen’s forehead. “You’re right, she does feel hot.”

“If she’s sick again…”

I stumbled to the bathroom and found the thermometer under a pile of Emma’s hair products. When I came out, Arlen’s wails had turned to full on shrieks. There was a knock on the door. I tossed the thermometer to Emma and cracked the door open.

“Can you keep that screaming down?” the guy from next door asked. His gray eyebrows knotted together angrily.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll just smother the baby with a pillow. That’ll stop it.”

“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. Some of us are trying to sleep!”

“And we’re not,” I snapped. “We don’t need sleep at all. We absolutely
love
having a screaming baby in the apartment. It’s our favorite thing.”

“Who is it?” Emma called.

“Some asshole who doesn’t understand how babies work,” I called back.

“I’m going to complain to the landlord,” the man huffed. “This is completely unnecessary—”

“I’m sure you never got sick when you were a baby. Is that right?”

“He’s always sick! He’s always crying!”

“She
isn’t always sick,” I said. “What do you want me to do? Yell at her until she stops crying?”

“What do you want me to do?” the man yelled. “I need to sleep!”

Another door opened from across the hall.

“Can you quit yelling?” the lady hissed at us. She was wearing a terrycloth bathrobe and she had circles under her eyes. “It’s five in the morning.”