Page 5 of Filthy Rich

My phone rings and I pick it up right away, figuring it’s Sasha without looking at the screen. I called her on my lunch break and told her what I’d found, which sent her into detective mode as well. We haven’t had a chance to talk since.

“So… I see why this guy is arrogant.” She laughs as she says, “Does he really look like this in person?”

I roll my eyes and pull up his website again, staring at the man on the screen. He’s wearing a black three-piece suit with his hair combed back and his long beard perfectly managed. There’s something insanely hot about the dichotomy between his business attire and the tattoos that peek out from beneath his button down. “Kind of. I mean, he’s pretty filtered in this, but… yeah. He’s big, tall, bearded, and inked in a suit and tie.”

“Damn, girl. Just go on and humor him. Take him to your sister’s party! Oh my God, it would drive her crazy!”

As much as I’d love to drive my narcissistic sister crazy with envy, I’d never ask Christopher to go with me. “Yeah, that’s not gonna work. Besides, my sister would see right through that.”

“Okay… then do it for me.”

“How is this for you?”

“I’m livingthroughyou, Trish. That’s a thing. You go do the dirty, fun stuff I read about, and then report back with every filthy detail.”

“You’ve been stuck in book worlds for too long, Sasha. There’re no filthy details. This man is an arrogant psycho. I bet the money thing isn’t even true. He probably won’t even come back today.”

“I don’t know, girl. I don’t usually read billionaire romance, but this is kind of tracking like that trope.”

“Yeah? And what happens in a billionaire romance?”

“Well, anything can happen, but in the ones where he offers her money for time, he usually solves all her problems, she sees him as a nice guy beneath the money, and they fall in love.”

“Oh, well… it’s almost like it was meant to be then. He did mention that my house needed repairs,” I laugh, “so maybeyoushould go out with him. I think he’s more your type, anyway.”

She laughs. “Don’t tempt me. I could use a sugar daddy. I have a student loan, a car loan, rent, and an impending vet bill for Cowboy’s back surgery.”

I forgot her dog was having back problems. If this money thing is real, I could really help out a lot of people. A million dollars up here would go a long way.

What am I saying?

“I can’t take this man’s money. I don’t even know what he’d expect for it. What if he wants to have sex?”

Sex. It’s been ages since I’ve had sex. I’m talking…years. Even then, I’m not sure it really counted. I mean, yes,technically, it was sex, but I didn’t come. That said, my clit is throbbing at the thought of coming with a man inside of me, his hands touching me, his deep voice rumbling in my ear.

Why am I imagining that man is Christopher?

“Then you have sex with him,” she laughs. “You have hard, crazy, billionaire sex. The kind of sex you’ll never forget. The kind of sex you’ll randomly think about in the grocery store aisle on a rainy Saturday afternoon long after it’s ended. The kind of kink you’ll flip back on when you’re thirty years deep into a vanilla marriage someday.”

“What makes you think I’ll have a vanilla marriage?”

She laughs. “Well, you won’t have crazy sex with a billionaire, so… I just assume.”

I roll my eyes. I’m not opposed to that memory, but I don’t believe any of this is real. “This has to be a trick. No one would pay that much money for a weekend with me, Sasha.”

“You’re undercutting yourself. You’re smart, sweet, and you connected with someone who appreciated that long before they saw you.”

“And now he has, so he won’t be coming back.”

“Not true. He saw you,thenhe offered you the money. If he didn’t want to go through with it, he could have pretended to be someone else and walked away.”

“To be fair, he saw me through the glass on the front door. I don’t think he saw my whole body.”

She crunches into something as she says, “Well then, he’s in for a treat.”

I’m one hundred percent sure I’m not the type Christopher goes for in the wild. For one, I’m thick all over, and he’s in great shape. Second, I don’t keep up with my nails, or my hair, or really anything. He looks like he wakes up and straightens his beard with oils. “He’s not my type.”

“He could be, though. It’s just for a weekend, right?” Sasha laughs as she bites into whatever she’s eating again, and I peel a scratch and sniff sticker from the book of fruits and slap a cherry onto Miranda’s math quiz. I’ve barely gotten it stuck down when a knock at the door clenches my stomach tight.

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