Billionaire's Curvy Contract Read online

  BILLIONAIRE’S CURVY CONTRACT

  by

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  JAMES

  My ribs are cracked, I can still taste the blood in my mouth, and all I see is red. “Can’t believe I got sucker-punched like a . . . a . . .”

  “Like a sucker?” comes Janelle’s voice through my pounding head. I glare at her and then grin when I catch a glimpse of her dynamite thighs as she straightens her black dress, which had ridden up a bit when she fell on me in the elevator.

  Thighs aside, what a fucking mess in the elevator! Ingram connected with my jaw and then kicked me in the ribs like he’d been studying Taekwondo in his spare time. Then India pushed Janelle into me, and we both got entangled as the elevator door closed and mysteriously took us all the way up to the roof like it was being controlled remotely. Of course, India and Ingram were gone by the time we managed to get out of that metal box and back to Janelle’s apartment.

  Which is where we are now, planning our next move as nightfall rapidly approaches.

  “We’re both suckers,” Janelle says, collapsing on that teardrop shaped purple couch-thing and crossing her legs at the ankles. I glance at her smooth calves, my gaze moving up along her legs until my line of sight is blocked by the hem of her dress. But that only forces my imagination to take over, and take over it does.

  She’s saying something, but I can’t hear shit. My consciousness is up her dress, and in my mind I’m caressing the smoothness of her inner thighs, teasing the corners of her wet panties, breathing in her feminine scent, tasting her divine sex.

  I’m so hard for her I have to dig my fingers into the leather armrests to make sure I don’t act out the wild fantasy that’s taking over my mind and body. And when I see her notice my peaked trousers and quickly look up at the ceiling as her face turns red, it only gets me harder.

  “Ten hours to sunrise,” I say, reminding both of us we have a deadline set by the mysterious Mother and Father. A deadline by which we’re supposed to deliver on our contracts: Death contracts on Ingram and India. So either we find Ingram and India before sunrise (not to mention kill them, which despite my aching ribs I’m probably not gonna do . . .), or else we try the loophole to the contract:

  Marry each other before sunrise.

  That loophole is just speculation, of course. Ingram reminded me of something I’d said years ago: That I’d rather kill someone than marry someone. Turns out Janelle had said the same thing to India years ago. Which means it’s possible Mother and Father might be holding us to those words—or testing us to see if we cave in and marry each other to protect our wealth.

  The outrageous thought of marrying a woman I barely know after spending my entire life avoiding marriage makes me smile inwardly as I allow myself to daydream. What would it be like to wake up with Janelle in my arms? What would it be like to see her standing at the window, pulling the curtains aside, sunlight bathing her curves as I watch her blissfully from the bed? Would I ever tire of that sight? Would it get old after a year? What about after twenty years?

  But as I let my imagination go to images of us decades from now, gray and wrinkled, with children and grandchildren and cats and dogs, my heart fills with a weird warmth that I think normal people call love.

  Of course, that’s impossible. And anyway, we aren’t normal people, I grimly remind myself as I glance at Janelle, her pretty face tightened in concentration, brown eyes focused and determined. Neither of us started out rich, and we paid the price to accumulate wealth and power that we believed couldn’t be taken away. No way we’re getting sidetracked from protecting our investments—investments that we paid for by never taking our focus off our goals, never taking a day off from work, and certainly never falling into the commoners’ trap of marrying someone in the heat of the moment and then signing away half your net worth when things go bad.

  And things always go bad, I think as Janelle nods and sighs and checks her phone and then sighs again. Marriage is a trick, and neither of us is falling for it.

  “What is it?” I say to her when she sighs for the third time.

  Janelle shakes her head like she doesn’t want to talk about it. But then she does talk about it. “What happens in ten hours, you think?” she says. “Mother and Father can’t get their hands on all our money—not now that we’ve got our bankers converting millions to cash and bearer-bonds. Which reminds me, we should head to the banks and load up.”

  “Right,” I say, frowning when I realize I lost a contact lens in the fight. I grab my jacket from the couch and pull out my spare glasses—which I fucking hate.

  “Um, how old are those glasses?” Janelle asks with a snort. “You look like a 1970s pornographer.”

  I straighten my oversized glasses and glare at her. “That’s a pretty specific insult. You into 1970s porn?”

  Janelle laughs. “I wonder if I can swap out the contract and kill you instead,” she says.

  “Snuff film, eh?” I say with a wink. “You’re a bad little girl, aren’t you?”

  “Ew,” she says, rolling her eyes and turning away to hide her smile. I steal another glance at her legs, and I want her so fucking badly it aches.

  “What? I’m too old for you?” I say with a grin.

  She lifts her head from the couch pillow and glances at me. “You self-conscious about your age? Isn’t eighty the new sixty or something?”

  I grin and shake my head slowly. “That’s the number of times I’m gonna spank your rude little bottom before sunrise.”

  “Eighty times?” she shoots back without missing a beat. “That’s gotta be a stretch for a geezer like you. Good luck getting mouth-to-mouth from me when you pass out.”

  “You keep talking to me like that and mouth-to-mouth is gonna be the least of your concerns,” I whisper, digging my fingers into the armrests as I try to hold myself back from leaping out of my chair and onto that couch with Janelle. “Don’t they teach you kids to respect your elders anymore?”

  “Elders need to earn my respect, just like anyone else,” she says, uncrossing her legs but keeping them together so I can’t see up her skirt.

  Of course, that drives me even wilder, and I’m almost ripping through the leather armrests with my claws. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline from the action that’s got me messed up or if it’s this weird energy that I feel when I’m around Janelle.

  She feels it too, I think as we look into each other’s eyes and hold the gaze like we’re locked in. It’s this weird mix of playfulness and darkness, like we’re bringing out something in the other person—something that each of us has tucked away for years, hidden from the world, perhaps hidden from ourselves.

  I’d rather kill someone than marry someone, we’d both said at different points in our lives. But although the contracts wanted us to kill Ingram and India, I know neither of us are truly capable of doing that. Not even for billions of dollars. Sure, we got a little carried away in the moment—and sure, maybe the thought crossed our mind. But Janelle and I aren’t psychopaths or serial killers. Mother and Father couldn’t have seriously expected us to follow through on death contracts. Hell, they didn’t even take our money before issuing the contracts! Ingram and India’s accounts were wiped clean at the start of the game. Why are Janelle and I being treated differently? What’s different about us?

  “What did you mean when you said you’d rather kill someone than marry someone,” I ask. The question comes suddenly, like my thoughts just overflowed into speech. But Janelle doesn’t even flinch, and I get the sense we’re both asking ourselves the same questions right now.

  “What did you mean when you said it?” she asks, flipping the question back to me like t
his is a game—like the game is in here, not out there.

  I shrug. “Don’t know if I analyzed it back then,” I say.

  “Analyze it now,” she says.

  My breath catches, and suddenly I’m annoyed, like I don’t want to fucking analyze what I meant. Whatever prompted that remark years ago is buried deep in my psyche, and I don’t want to dig it up.

  “Fuck this,” I snap, standing up and grabbing my jacket. “I’m going to go get my cash and hole up in my place for the night. We’ll see what Mother and Father do by sunrise. My bet is they don’t do shit.”

  Janelle blinks, and I see a flash of panic cross her pretty face. “What about that message about the family reunion in India?”

  I snort. “Don’t know what we were thinking when we actually considered flying across the world.” Then I sling my jacket over my shoulder, straighten my glasses, and shrug as I head for the door. “You can do what you want, of course,” I say. “Let me know how it goes. Actually, I don’t care how it goes. Goodbye.”

  I feel Janelle’s eyes burning holes in my back as I reach for the doorknob. I don’t understand what just happened, but I’m feeling uncomfortable, uneasy, almost anxious. I know it has something to do with Janelle asking me to analyze that off-the-cuff remark from years ago, and I rub the back of my aching neck and stop.

  “All right,” I say slowly, forcing myself to turn back to Janelle even though she hasn’t said a word to stop me from leaving. I don’t why I’m still here, why I’m allowing this woman to get to me, to get under my skin and force me to dig up beliefs I might have about love and marriage.

  But when I walk back to the couch where she’s now sitting with her legs drawn up to her body, I see the relief on her face and I understand.

  I understand that this woman is my future, but we’ll never be able to enjoy that future until we visit our past.

  Visit our past together.

  2

  JANELLE

  “Pass,” I say to James. “I don’t answer questions about my past.”

  He grins and shakes his head, arching his long, lean body back and sinking into the leather armchair across from the couch. I’m glad he didn’t leave; but at the same time I don’t like the fact that I’m happy he stayed. My head’s all messed up from the madness of the day, and being around James is bringing some weird energy bubbling up to the surface. I don’t understand it, but somehow I know it’s tied to that eerily similar remark each of us made years ago:

  I’d rather kill someone than marry someone.

  I was drunk at a bachelorette party in Atlantic City when I said it. Hell, I’m surprised I even remember saying it. Why is it so relevant suddenly? Was this whole game to get us to face our deep-rooted blocks against marriage and love?

  “What if . . .” I start to say as I let the memory surface in my head, letting it bring the associated emotions to the forefront. “What if we were talking about the same person?”

  James frowns. “We didn’t even know each other back then. How could we be talking about the same person?”

  I shake my head. “That’s not what I mean,” I say. “I mean what if the someone in our statements meant the same person. As in we’d rather kill someone than marry them. In other words, we’re both so opposed to marriage that we’d risk going to jail for life instead of getting hitched! Like a real prison would be better than the prison of marriage!”

  James thinks a moment and then scans me foot to face in a way that sends a tingle through my toes and up along my thighs until it disappears beneath my dress. “Huh. So if I said Marry me or kill me, you’d shrug and drop a piano on my head?”

  I laugh so hard my boobs shake, and James laughs too, his ridiculous glasses sliding down his long nose. “Is that how you imagine yourself being killed?” I ask.

  James settles downs and flashes a mischievous grin. “I always did picture my life as an adult cartoon. With explicit sex scenes, of course.”

  “Of course,” I say, trying to keep a straight face—which is damned hard when James is sitting across from me with a hard-on the size of an upright piano.

  I haven’t missed the way he’s been looking at me ever since we got back to my place after the debacle at the elevators. He’s been staring at my legs and thighs, and it’s clear to me that his filthy mind is already up my black dress, doing something dirty beneath my panties as I arch my neck back and moan like a buxom bunny in his adult cartoon.

  In a way this kinda does feel like a cartoon, I think as we smile at each other and enjoy the tense, almost electric silence. From the way Ingram and India got away from us like we were a circus clown act to the oddness of talking matter-of-factly about whether we’d rather kill someone than marry them . . . yup, totally surreal.

  Then, as if to drag us back to reality, both our phones beep at once.

  “Mother and Father?” I say with an eye-roll even as the anxiety rises so quick I almost pass out. I don’t know why I’m so jumpy—after all, most of my money should be safe, which means Mother and Father can’t force us to play their twisted games. Earlier both James and I had been determined to track Mother and Father down in India or wherever, but now I’m content to sit here all night and let the deadline run out. Mother and Father can’t force us to do anything—least of all attend their family reunion!

  “Don’t you dare come empty handed,” James reads. Then he snorts and yells into the phone: “We aren’t fucking coming! You can’t do shit to us! And you don’t dare try anything with the property and assets we couldn’t liquidate. Not unless you want every intelligence agency in two continents crawling into your hideout in some god-forsaken cave in India!”

  “They must know that most of our money is safe from their clutches,” I say, trying to contain my smile at the scene of James yelling into the phone like an angry teenager. I glance at my phone to confirm I got the same message—which I did.

  James frowns, and I know what he’s thinking because I just had the same thought. Immediately we call our bankers again—only to discover that everything’s going as planned and all the withdrawals and conversions will be ready for us within the hour. No glitches. No tricks. No smoke. No mirrors.

  And therein lies the catch.

  “What’s their game, you think?” I say as James stands back up and grabs his jacket so we can head to our banks. “They haven’t even mentioned the contracts in the last few messages. They’re all focused on us coming to their place like it’s Christmas! What did we miss?”

  James shrugs and tries to appear cool, but I can see he’s on edge just like I am. After seeing how Mother and Father played Ingram and India masterfully, I can’t help but feel they’ve got something up their sleeves for us. But what?

  We’re both silent as we drive to my bank first. The bank is closed, of course, but my private banker lets us in through the security entrance.

  “It’s fine,” I say when my banker glances at James and then back at me with wide eyes. “I’m not being kidnapped and this isn’t ransom money. Don’t call the FBI.”

  James straightens his serial-killer glasses and clears his throat. Then he narrows those green eyes and shoots a deadly look at my freaked-out banker. “Yeah. Don’t call the FBI, kid. This’ll all be over by sunrise.”

  I have a hard time keeping a straight face—and an even harder time calming down my banker after I count the cash and verify the bank checks and freely tradable bonds.

  “I guess it does look suspicious,” I say when we get back into James’s silver Bugati coupe that makes me feel like our next stop should be the Golden Casino in Monaco. I glare playfully at James, who’s still in character—at least I hope it’s just a character.

  “No talking from the hostage,” he snarls. “Or there will be spankings.”

  I giggle, and then I gasp when James guns the accelerator and pulls the powerful car out into late-night traffic, drawing honks and middle-fingers and curse-words in at least three different languages.

  “We’re g
onna get pulled over if you don’t slow down,” I say as James rips it and we fly through an intersection just before the light flips to red.

  “Nothing like a car chase to get the blood pumping,” James says with a huge grin as he swerves in and out of traffic with a racecar driver’s skill.

  “Um, no one’s chasing us, James,” I say as he burns rubber on a turn and shoots up the entrance ramp to the freeway like it’s an launch-chute to outer space.

  “Details, details . . .” James growls through his delighted grin as we tear down the highway like a streak of lightning.

  I cross my arms under my boobs and shake my head like I disapprove. But I’m totally into the thrill, and James exudes such confidence and control behind the wheel that I feel safe like a clam in a cabinet. I’m also kinda turned on by James playing the stone-cold kidnapper on the run from the law. And those serial-killer-porn-star glasses complete the picture.

  Soon I’m sucked into the fake feeling of danger as we hit the open highway and leave the lights of the city in our dust. I feel like I’m at an amusement park, and I’m taken back to the overwhelming sense of fantasy and freedom I used to get as a kid when we made it to Six Flags or Disneyland.

  “Your parents ever take you to Disneyland when you were a kid?” I ask through my smile when James finally settles the car into a steady hum and checks his watch like he just remembered that his own banker is waiting for him back in the city.

  James shoots me a look that’s so real it breaks me from the spell of the moment, and when he takes the next exit and loops around to head back, I blink in surprise.

  “Wow,” I say after we drive in cold silence for a few miles. “Clearly I touched a nerve with that Disneyland comment.”

  James bites his lip like he’s trying to stop himself from saying something he’ll regret. I stare at the turmoil that’s written all over his face, and I swallow hard when I get the overwhelming urge to dig deeper, to understand why just the mention of his parents and childhood sent him into a dark funk.

  And then I slip into a funk as well as the city pops up on the horizon like the end of the ride. Suddenly I’m thinking about what happens when James picks up his cash. Do we just go our separate ways? Do we stay together until the deadline passes at sunrise so we can see what Mother and Father do or say? And then we shake hands and walk back to our separate lives like nothing happened?