Shopping for a Billionaire 3(25)
Author: Julia Kent

“And for two, I don’t want anyone in my family to hear!”

As if on cue, Jeffrey shouts, “Ready or not, here I come!”

“I want to hear you say that,” Declan whispers as he bites my earlobe.

“You—I—what are you—oh my God,” I gasp as he slips his hands under my waistband and does unspeakable things.

“Then let’s go have sex in your car.”

“We can’t have sex in my car!” Teenage Shannon is, like, totally grossed out by the idea of finally ha**ng s*x in her parents’ house but doing it in a car that looks like it should be sprayed down by the mosquito truck is even worse. All the Shannons agree on this point, even the pulsing little Shannon in my pants, the one that keeps screaming Yes yes yes even though she doesn’t have a mouth.

“Why not? We already had sex in mine, so fair is fair. Your turn.”

“I drive a car with a dead insect on top of it.”

“Maybe that’s my real fetish.”

“Oh, toilets aren’t enough?”

“I’ll show you a fetish or two.”

A rush of warm electricity fires out from my core through every single pore on my body, and I’m about to agree to whatever he wants and throw in a few of my own requests as well, when—

“SHANNON!” Dad’s voice is joyful and blessedly ingenuous. “Let’s get ready for ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” Declan murmurs, fingers sliding up to find my throbbing point that makes me inhale so sharply a strand of hair gets caught in my nostril.

“It’s trad”—my voice hitches with arousal and groaning need—“ition. We stuff ourselves silly and then go out for chocolate-dipped cones. The local ice cream joint opens today. Then we go to the movies.”

“Ice cream and the movies on Easter? I love your family.”

“I love your fingers.”

“I have other long bits of me you might love, too.”

“THANNON AND DECLAN!” Jeffrey screams, right outside my door. Oh, no. Did I lock it? Did Declan? “It ith time for eyth cream!”

“I love eyth cream,” Declan says as he kisses me, his tongue probing deep, wet, and luscious. This is the kind of kiss a man gives a woman when there are no preliminaries, where you go right for the marrow and the soul, because all those surface layers peel away with a single touch.

The kind of kiss you can enjoy and treasure for the rest of your life without ever experiencing any other kind.

“Hey, Shannon, are you guys—” Amy barges through the door the same way she did when we were kids and living at home. Hell, the same way she does in our shared apartment now.

Declan smiles against my lips, pulling his hands out of my pants, leaving me frantic and disassembled.

“Oh, you two are having a different kind of dessert,” she mumbles, pulling back and closing the door, but not quite fast enough.

“Auntie Thannon! Declan! Eyth cream time!” Jeffrey bursts into the room and slides between us, wrapping his little arms around my waist. “Group hug!”

Amy snickers.

“Group hug?” Declan ruffles his hair anyhow, but the disappointment and skepticism in his voice makes me snicker, too.

“Ice cream and the newest Pixar movie will have to be a poor substitute.”

A spreading grin lights up his face. “No. A great substitute.”

I smack his shoulder. “Hey!”

“We have all the time in the world,” he adds, pressing a kiss against my cheek.

“Groth,” Jeffrey mutters, pulling on my hand. “Eyth cream!”

“You owe me a double, kid,” I say as we all head downstairs to the waiting crew.

Chapter Twelve

“You are the worst wife ever,” I hiss to Amanda as we get out of the Turdmobile. We’ve parked a few blocks away from the credit union and she’s nattering on about strategy in between grilling me about my relationship with Declan. A quick glance at my car and the light bounces off a bunch of little sparkly things littering my floor. The Easter Bunny was good to Jeffrey and Tyler. A little too good. Plus, Mom still insists on giving her own kids a basket, so I have enough chocolate egg foil wrappers on the floor of my car to build three disco balls.

I kill the engine and climb out of the car. A kid on a skateboard who looks like he’s about twelve, with a Justin Bieber haircut and a Minecraft t-shirt, waves as he skates past and says, “Your car’s a piece of shit.” His laughter trails off.

So does my self-confidence.

“Ignore him. Focus on me. Tell me every detail about Declan. Your bedroom after Easter dinner?”We have both been so busy for the past two weeks. Amanda was at a big mystery shopper’s convention in Kansas City last week, and this is the first chance we’ve had to talk in person. It figures: I live a dull, boring life for freaking ever, and just when it gets good she’s not around. And now we can catch up, but we’re about to pretend to be married.

While I describe my sex life.

Hmmm.

“No – Jeffrey stopped us.”

She frowns. “Did you seriously have sex in a limo, on a helicopter, and in a lighthouse?”

“Yes.”

“You can do it in a car. You can do it in a bar. You can do it with long hair. You can do it in the air. You can do it in a limo, you can do it—you’re a bimbo!”

“Hey!”

“You can do it in a lighthouse. You can…” Her voice trails off. “What rhymes with lighthouse?”

“Winehouse?”

She shudders, then laughs. “Day-um!” She stretches the word out like it’s taffy. “Declan has the refractory period of a seventeen-year-old if you had that much sex in one night.”

I blush.

“In a helicopter?” she squeaks. Squinting, she rolls her eyes up, as if trying to imagine it. “How did you not fall out a door or something?”

“It was, um…one-sided.” My face is as red as her painted lips.

“A one-sided helicopter?”

“A one-sided sex act. On the way home.”

“You gave him a—oh. Got it.” She gives me a high-five. I smack her palm back and feel a roiling sense of doom in my gut. Are we seriously talking about all the ways I had sex with a man—a very, very attractive man—while walking to a mystery shop in which we have to pretend to be married?

“So…I am guessing you didn’t go back to that Mexican joint to collect Steve. ”