The Renegade Billionaire: A Small Town Romance (Happiness Ever After Book 1)

It’s after one in the morning before I make it home from the Chug, so I’m not expecting anyone to be up. But as soon as I open the door, Braxton sits upright on the sofa. His hair is sleep mussed, and he has lines on the side of his face from the pillow he was using.

“Hey.” His voice is gruff, tired—he’s been this way since we left the hospital a few days ago.

“What are you doing down here?”

“It’s late.” He looks at the clock on the wall. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. If you weren’t home by eleven, I was going to head down to the Chug to wait for you.”

Dropping my bag by the front door, I feel my shoulders relax as he crosses the room. “I’m a big girl, Braxton. I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“I thought you were going to cut back since I rented all those rooms.”

How do I tell him I’m planning for the future—a future I’m not certain he’ll be around for?

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he pleads. His hands wrap around me and tug me into his chest. He smells of home, and safety, and all the things I shouldn’t want from a man.

“Right now, I have a buffer,” I admit. “But what happens in March? What happens next summer or next year? You never know what the future holds, I know that better than anyone, so I have to prepare for a time when I don’t have…”

The truth is, ever since I held Elle’s beautiful baby girl, Keela, in my arms, my own future has felt more fragile than I expected.

“When you don’t have what?” He runs his hand in soothing motions up and down my spine.

You. When I don’t have you. I wish I could say that. I wish I could tell him every fear in my head, but my fears have been used against me before, and I vowed to never put myself in that position again.

“When I don’t have that buffer,” I say instead.

He doesn’t respond with words. But he takes me by the hand and leads me up the stairs and into my room. When he flips on the light, it takes a moment to adjust to the brightness, but when I blink the room into focus, my heart pinches. It’s not only my room anymore—it’s ours.

His sweatshirt is draped over the back of my chair, and the dress shoes he arrived in are lined up next to all the heels I hardly ever wear. There’s an indent I know smells of him on the pillow on his side of the bed, and a laundry basket that contains both of our clothes.

Braxton shuts the door, then spins us so my back is to it. One hand cups my face as he kisses the side of my neck.

“Explain your buffer to me, sunshine.”

It’s hard to think when his lips and tongue dance across the pulse in my neck.

“We, ah, we don’t know what the future holds.”

His fingers work the buttons on the front of my blouse. “You see, to me, that sounds an awful lot like you’re worried about what happens when my time is up here.”

A giant boulder settles in my throat, and my stomach turns with unease.

When I don’t answer, he bends his knees, putting his face in line with mine so all I can see is him.

He slides my shirt down my arms and tosses it into the laundry basket, then goes to work unbuttoning my jeans.

“The problem with that,” he says, kissing a line down my center until he’s on his knees. “Is that there are too many variables for me to tell you exactly what the future holds. I have to hear the reading of Ace’s will, figure out what to do with my family, and how that all unfolds is anyone’s guess.”

He leans back on his heels and stares up at me. “But the one thing I can tell you is I have no plans to leave you behind. However things play out, I will find a way to make us work. I can’t guarantee I’ll be a good lifetime partner. I’ve never had a good example of it, but I can promise you I’ll try. I can promise you that I feel more strongly for you than I’ve ever felt before. I’m falling in love with you, Madison, and that’s not something I ever expected, so I’ll need you to be patient with me.”

“You’re falling in love with me?” I stammer, disbelief making my voice wobbly and weak.

He holds his arms out wide. “Look at me. I think I might already be there.”

Wait. Does that mean he loves me?

“You are?”

He nods, then continues to drag my jeans down my legs, lifting one foot at a time to remove them.

“I want to be your full-time buffer, Madison. But we have some obstacles to get through first.”

“Like your mom?”

He told me the morning after Keela’s birth that his mother called to ask for money. But the shocking thing was she wasn’t asking for herself. She was asking for the women’s shelter, and Grey corroborated that the account info she sent for the wire transfer was sent directly to the director and anything extra would be used for a Thanksgiving Day meal.

He nods against my legs. “She did a good deed, but I’m not sure that erases a lifetime of selfishness.”

His hair tickles my thigh, so I run my fingers through it, massaging his scalp as I do, and he groans against my skin.

“I’m scared.” As soon as I say it, regret slams into me. Harry ruined parts of me I haven’t been able to heal—my confidence is one of them.

He lifts up onto his knees, and it puts his head right at my breasts.

“Of us?” he asks while emotion dampens my lashes.

Biting my lip, I nod, and a tear slips free. “Sorry, I’m just tired,” I say, wiping away the errant liquid I hadn’t wanted him to see.

He places a gentle kiss between my breasts but never breaks eye contact.

“I’m not going to leave you, Madison.” Another kiss, a few inches higher as he lifts himself to his feet. “And I’m not going to hurt you.” His lips land on my collarbone and he sucks hard enough to leave a mark.

“But your life is in California.” Why am I arguing this? Am I really that much of a glutton for punishment?

Braxton’s lips hover over mine. His breath is hot against my skin, and his tongue darts out to lick at my mouth until I release my bottom lip from my teeth.

“But my heart is here.” My head swims with his words.

His heart is here, with me. Emotions flood me, so many I can’t grab hold of just one.

“No matter where life takes us, my heart will be wherever you are. I don’t know how that works, or what we have to do, but I know in my soul that it’s true.”

I have no chance of stopping the tears now. I want to believe him. I want to believe in him, but there’s a piece of me that holds back.

Will the trauma of my past always keep me from fully moving forward?

“I—I want to believe that. So much I want to believe you—in you.”

“I know you do,” he says, then kisses along my jaw from one side of my head to the other. “And I’m going to show you that you can, no matter how long that takes.”

A choked sob gurgles in my throat, and before I can say anything, he lifts me in his arms and carries me to our bed.

Laying me down gently, he pulls back and removes his clothes. He doesn’t bother turning off the light, so I see every hard line and sharp edge of his body, and his long, throbbing penis that bobs against his belly when he releases it from the confines of his underwear.

When he walks to the dresser and removes a box of condoms from the top drawer that he stashed there last week, my pussy clenches. That’s something that never happened before him, and no matter how many times Braxton and I have sex, my longing for him only intensifies.

I lift up to my elbows as he walks back to the bed. Is there anything sexier than watching this man roll on a condom? It’s not anything I’ve ever thought about before, but now I dream about it.

He’s a fantasy come to life.

“No matter how many times I kiss you, I always want more.” His whisper barely reaches my ears. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are? Or how hard you make me? I never seem to get enough of you.”

Braxton stands at the side of the bed fisting his hard penis with a condom wrapper in his other hand. When he brings it to his teeth to rip it open, I sit up and wrap my hand around his.

The groan that rumbles in his chest is all the encouragement I need.

Flopping onto my belly, I lick his tip. His hands fist in my hair, and I moan as he slides into my mouth.

Giving head has never been particularly enjoyable, but my panties are soaked at a simple taste of this man.

“Fuck, baby.”

Stiffening my tongue, I drag it up the underside of his shaft as he pulls out and his thigh muscles clench beneath my hand—I want to make him come undone. Holding myself up with one arm, I use the other hand to grab the back of his leg and pull him to me until he reaches the back of my throat.

I fight the reflex to gag, breathe through my nose, and swallow him down.

“Jesus Christ.” He grunts, holding the back of my head, pressing me into his groin, and I love every second of it. When he pulls out, he stares down at me with wide eyes and a sexual hunger that makes me feel powerful.

“You want me to fuck your face, beautiful?”

I nod shyly, trying to avoid looking directly at him, but he grabs my throat, not too roughly, but enough to keep my head up and focused on him, and I love it much more than I ever anticipated.

He blinks as if he’s in awe, and that wave of power rushes straight to my core.

“You dirty, dirty girl. Open wide and keep your tongue out.”

I do as he instructs, and he slips back down my throat. My insides are trembling. I’m so turned on my hips grind against the mattress, seeking relief I know will only come from him.

He moves in and out of my mouth quickly as drool drips from my chin. He gathers it and wipes it on the bed, then he reaches for the back of my bra and unhooks it with one hand.

Braxton slides his fingers down my spine and dips into the back of my panties. I nearly cry out when he dips a finger inside me, rolls it around to catch my wetness, and uses it to lube up my back entrance.

I slide forward to escape the pressure of his finger on my back hole, and it pushes his penis further down my throat.

His finger breaches my entrance, and I moan so gutturally around him that he hisses his pleasure before freeing himself from my mouth, but his finger never relents as he stretches me.

It’s sensation overload. I wasn’t expecting that to feel as good as it does. Oh, God. I might come from this alone.

“Has anyone had you here?” He slides his finger in deeper with the question.

“No.” I exhale harshly and drop my forehead to the mattress.

“Does it feel good?” he asks, leaning his whole body over the top of mine and shoving my panties down. Imagining his gaze on his finger, I whimper into the mattress. It’s all too much, but it still has me clenching around his finger as I push back against him.

I can’t form words, but I don’t have to—he feels how my body responds to him.

“You love it, and someday we’ll explore this more, but right now, I want to feel your tight, wet pussy squirt all over my cock.”

His dirty freaking mouth. My core spasms as he flips me onto my back and kisses me hard before retrieving the condom.

I don’t want tonight to be gentle. I’m already on an emotional wire from his confession earlier. I can’t take any more sweetness without dissolving into a puddle of emotions, so I lift to my hands and knees, then crawl backward until my feet hit the edge of the bed.

He grips my hips with the passion of a lover but the gentleness of a soulmate, and I gasp.

“You want it this way tonight?” he grits out. Is he angry?

“Yes,” I moan when his tip glides through my wetness.

“You’re hiding from me.” He slips a hand around my hip to tap on my clit. It causes him to lean over me, his mouth at my ear. “But you should know, fucking this way is no less intimate, baby. If anything, it can be more so.”

His penis enters me with one thrust, and it takes all my willpower not to scream out and wake everyone in this house.

I’m panting as my body gets used to the intrusion, but it’s as though he’s everywhere at once. In a move I can’t comprehend, he lifts my upper body from the bed, holds my back to his front with a hand splayed over my collarbone, and his fingers trace along the column of my neck.

He squeezes, just once, and it heightens every sense.

“You see,” he whispers into my ear. “All this does is allow me deeper, closer to you, feeling every reaction.”

His hips piston in and out of me. With one hand holding me upright, he uses his other to strum across my swollen clit. I’m not going to last long.

He controls my body in this position, and I’m helpless to do anything but receive the pleasure only he can wring from me.

“Did I scare you when I said I’ve fallen in love with you?” he pants. The slap of our bodies colliding fills the air around us.

My core clenches, on the verge of an orgasm, and all I can offer is incoherent whispers that tumble from my lips like lava from a volcano—hot, deadly, and yielding to no one.

He bends his knees, then thrusts up while pulling me down onto him. We grunt in unison.

“I’m falling for you, Madison Ryan.” His movements become as erratic as his fingers pinching and rubbing my clit. “And it’s not because you make me come so hard I pass out, or because of what you do for me.”

“Oh God. I’m going to⁠—”

His fingers stop, and I whimper in response.

“Not yet. You can come after you listen.” He’s buried so deep inside me I feel him everywhere. “I’m falling for you because of who you are. Because of this giant heart you keep guarded behind layers of hurt. One day, I’ll peel back all those layers, set fire to them, and see the pure love you hold beneath, because I love all of you.” He grinds into me as if he can’t help but move. “It may have taken me a while to realize what it was you brought out in me, but now that I know, I won’t let it go unless you ask me to. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Holy crap. Does he seriously expect an answer right now? My core is spasming around him. I’m so close to an orgasm that my body erupts in goosebumps and a sheen of perspiration. I can’t hang over this edge much longer.

“Please,” I cry. “Please make me come.”

He chuckles darkly against my ear. “I’ll always do as you ask, but I need you to answer me first.”

Braxton doesn’t play fair. He uses one long finger to trace my pussy up and down but never gives me the friction I desperately need.

“God you’re so fucking perfect.” He twitches inside me, and I shiver. “See how perfect we are together? Feel how we fit together? Your body is my playground, and I’ll worship it as my altar. Is that what you want?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” I chant. I’m saying yes to all of it and more. I have been holding back from him, but for what? “I don’t want to hold back anymore.” The admission comes from someplace deep in my chest. It barely registers as my own voice, but he takes me at my word and his body commands mine.

I come so hard, I lose control of myself. He cups a hand over my mouth to muffle my cries, and it makes me come harder.

The quivers in my body go on for what feels like eternity, and one orgasm swells into two as he falls on top of me, rutting into me from behind, my body pressing hard into the mattress, and he sticks his thumb in my mouth.

And then that thumb is entering my other hole, working in tandem with his penis, and I come so violently when this orgasm hits, I shake the bed.

I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I just feel as wave after wave of pleasure rolls through me.

He comes with a muted roar that vibrates through his body and into mine, and then he collapses next to me, curling my body into his as we come down from this high in tandem.

It’s when I take a deep, shuddering inhale that I know we might have a problem.

“Oh fuck,” he says. When he nudges my body forward a few inches, I know he sees his cum slipping out of my entrance. “The condom broke.”