Page 51

‘Ever fucked a billionaire?’ he asks, the corners of his mouth lifting.

I laugh. ‘Nope.’

‘Ever screwed on top of two hundred grand?’

My smiles gets bigger. The whole notion is so damn absurd. Also thoroughly, utterly debauched. ‘Nope.’

‘Well, then.’ Fishing in his back pocket, he pulls out a silver foil packet before stripping out of jeans and underwear and kicking them aside. ‘This is your lucky night.’

He’s right. It is my lucky night. And not just because I am lying on a literal bed of money but because this is the first time I’ve seen him completely naked, and he does not disappoint. My mouth goes as dry as those ten-dollar notes as I trace the twineof inky vines that wrap around his legs from his ankle to the bulk of his quads.

And further north to narrow hips and the ladder of his abs and the span and breadth of his chest and shoulders decorated in a breastplate of ink. Unfettered by clothes, Danny’s body could have been Da Vinci’s inspiration forVitruvian Man.

He advances on me then and I fall back onto my elbows and watch him, the gleam in his eyes purely carnal. Pausing at my knees, he holds my gaze as he tears the foil packet open and rolls the condom down his shaft. He shudders at his own touch and I feel an answering shudder as the walls of my vagina squeeze tight in anticipation.

‘Spread your legs,’ he says, his eyes still on mine.

I can smell my arousal as I slowly comply, easing onto my back as I do so, money crinkling and sticking beneath me. He looms over me, placing one hand near my head while the other scoops up a bunch of notes, which he lets fall all over my body. He does it again until my torso is strewn with ten-dollar bills.

Only then does he drag his gaze off mine to admire his handiwork. Bills pile on my belly, cover my mons and my nipples, slide off the slopes of my breasts and the cage of my ribs. I am conscious of the crinkle of cash as I flatten my palms into the duvet.

‘Fuck, that looks good on you,’ he mutters.

My breath catches at the reverence in his voice, but I need more than his eyes on me. More than his money on me. I need him on me. Covering me. In me.

‘You know what else looks good on me?’ I say, my voice husky. ‘You.’

I reach for him them and drag him down, moaning as his weight presses me into the mattress and his pelvis settles against mine. My legs, ten-dollar bills sticking to my inner thighs, wraparound his waist and I feel the thick nudge of him butting my slick entrance.

‘Now,’ I whisper in his ear. ‘Please.’ It’s been too long since he’s been inside me, and never like this.

Never horizontal. Never nose to nose. Never skin on skin. This is intimate. It’s not the furtiveness of a hospital closet. It’s not the riskiness of a broken-down elevator or the public thrill of a grungy alley.

It’s just us, alone – no risk of being caught or interrupted. It’s the stuff of lovers.

He kisses me as he drives his cock inside, swallowing my moan and his groan as they erupt from a place inside that seems to be shared. I open to him. My mouth to his kisses, my centre to the thrusts of his cock, and I’m exactly where I want to be.

It doesn’t take long. Not for either of us. It’s too much this first time – this first proper time. It’s been building for too long. We find our peak quickly and let go together, my hands scooping up piles of ten-dollar bills, letting them rain down around us as we gasp and groan and shudder through an intensity of pleasure and passion.

12

DANNY

I don’t know how many times we make love. Yes – make love. It doesn’t feel like fucking. Like something recreational and unimportant. It feels hella important. Like there’s an added layer beyond the physical that deepens our frantic joinings.

We roll around in the money all night until, much like cookie crumbs in the bed, it ends up everywhere. Not that we care. We just doze off for a bit and wake again for more.

We are insatiable.

It’s not that we don’t have plenty to say – we both know there’s a lot to talk about – it’s more that this is the first time we’ve had such continuous access to each other and neither of us wants to squander the opportunity. She’s not on shift or studying. I’m not at a gig or hundreds of miles away in Reno.

Those pesky things that have kept us from each other don’t have any place between us tonight, and knowing I can just put my hand out and feel her next to me is a reassurance I never knew I was missing.

I think maybe she feels the same way. Because there’s an intensity to how she kisses me, touches me, looks into my eyes. As if she’s trying to convey solidarity with her body. Trying toconvey that although life is full and fast and busy, she’s here for me. I know it’s what I’m trying to convey with mine.

Amongst other things.

There’s a lot of miles between here and Reno, and all that quiet time helped crystallise my thoughts. This thing between us has been unexpected. And a whirlwind. But not, at least for me, unsurprising. I knew there was something different about Holly from the start. Stupidly, or maybe cockily, I thought it was her shyness, her coyness. The way she avoided my gaze. Avoided me.