Billionaire Games

C
opyright
© 2016 by Sylvia Maddox

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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W
ith no warning
, Claire Winsome’s ex has come crashing back into her life. The man who broke her heart is now a billionaire—with the power to ruin her completely.

And that’s exactly what he threatens to do, unless she gives herself to him for six weeks. Claire doesn’t understand why. She only knows Simeon is cold, merciless…and so irresistible she can hardly breathe when he’s near.

Simeon Hayes was once a nobody, getting by on toughness and street smarts…and Claire was the sweet, rich, curvy college girl who made him believe anything was possible.

When he discovered her deception, it almost destroyed him. Nine years later, his money, power, and ruthlessness have the world at his fingertips.

And it’s time to balance the scales.

Six weeks is nothing compared to the years of suffering she’s put him through, but Simeon intends to get Claire—and her sinful body—out of his system once and for all. All he needs is enough time to carry out a thorough, completely unemotional plundering of her ample gifts.

At least, that’s what he keeps telling himself…

Can Claire uncover the truth behind Simeon’s behavior? And if she does, will it be too late to salvage what might have been?

“
I
could never
love someone like him,” Claire Winsome said, her voice rising on the last word as she began to laugh.

Simeon Hayes knew that voice well and loved the woman it belonged to, but he couldn’t really hear her voice or think about his love. Instead, his mind was too preoccupied with the words that had come before the laugh, the ones that were playing on a loop in his mind.

“I could never love someone like him.”

Simeon had heard the words, understood them, but he couldn’t process them, and his mind rebelled against the idea of believing them.

Yeah, he and Claire were different. A nice rich girl like her should never have given a guy like him a second look. Hell, Simeon shouldn’t even have ever crossed her path. But he liked the library at one of the universities in Boston; it was quiet there, and Simeon could flip through the books he loved to read in peace with no one from the neighborhood seeing him.

When he’d first started going to the library, he’d kept his head down, tried to mimic the others there even though he was a little older and a lot rougher than almost all of them. It had worked for a while too. Everyone ignored Simeon, and he’d returned the favor.

Except Claire.

He remembered the first time he’d seen her vividly.

“Excuse me,”
she’d whispered, and when he’d turned, the first thing he saw was her blue eyes, bright, shiny, friendly, and kind. He’d lost himself in those eyes for a moment before he’d managed to tear his own away. He’d looked down to try to break the hold she had on him, but that had failed. Because when he looked at her body, curvy as sin and built for just that, he’d been completely gone.

Her body was built for fucking, and when he’d looked at her soft mouth, Simeon could picture her lips against his skin, opening to take his cock deep, but when he’d looked at her eyes, he’d seen that kindness again, and he’d had to have her.

Simeon had never felt anything like Claire made him feel, and in the days after he’d met her, he’d sworn that he would make something of himself, become the type of man worthy of the love she had so freely given him and then make them permanent.

Which made what she’d said so confusing.

“I could never love someone like him.”

He dropped his hand from where it was lifted to reach for the doorknob. It was a piece of shit, just like the rest of this building. Simeon hated her living in it and often told her she shouldn’t, not that she listened. Her rich parents would have gotten her a place in the nice part of the city, but Claire, his proud Claire, wouldn’t take their help. Instead, she’d insisted on taking care of herself with the money she earned with summer jobs and from her part-time thing at the library.

She’d told him time and again that she was an adult and wouldn’t take handouts, not even from her parents. And it shamed Simeon to admit that he couldn’t take care of her himself. So as much as he hated the building, and hated her living in it, he put up with it and instead spent as much time with her as he could, partially to make sure that she was safe, and mostly because he wanted to spend every moment with her.

She’d seemed to agree and had always greeted him with open arms, her initial shyness about their physical intimacy giving way to passion that rivaled his. His cock was hard instantly, something that was inevitable when she was near, or even when she wasn’t, but though his body responded, his brain was still stuck on what he’d heard.

“I could never love someone like him.”

Again and again and again those words played in his mind, leaving him with the only possible conclusion.

She had lied to him.

All of the times she had said she loved him, all the effort she had put into convincing him that she had when every instinct inside him told him that Claire, sweet, beautiful Claire, could never care about someone like him, let alone love him, had all been a lie.

“It’s almost time for Simeon to come home. I’ll call you later, okay?”

It was Claire’s voice again. She was probably talking to her best friend Rosa or her mother. He heard the
click
of the phone hanging up as if he were in the room, another side effect of living in the shithole with its paper-thin walls. He also heard her moving toward the front door, humming some little tune under her breath.

He reached for the doorknob, but couldn’t allow himself to turn it; those words were still playing in his mind, growing ever louder.

“I could never love someone like him.”

Simeon didn’t know how long he stood there, but one moment he was standing, the words ringing in his brain, and the next the doorknob was wedged from his grasp.

The sunlight from the apartment filtered out into the dingy hall and lit Claire, giving her the angelic glow he sometimes thought he saw on her.

The soft smile that seemed permanently etched on her lips was still there, and her blue eyes were light with desire. It was still shy, but there nonetheless, and were this any other day, Simeon would sweep her off her feet and fuck both of them to oblivion.

Not today, though.

Today that look only made him angry. For her to look at him like everything was normal, like she hadn’t just slashed him apart, had him in a rage.

“Simeon? Why are you waiting out here? Come in,” she said.

She smiled even bigger and opened the door wider to gesture him in.

And suddenly, he hated her, saw a cruelty that he had never expected. How did she do that? Look at him like that, pretend that she hadn’t said what she had? Like she didn’t feel what she clearly felt.

He walked in, and she closed the door behind him, then turned, her smile dampening as she looked at him. Claire was smart, but she didn’t need to be to see his rage. He knew it was clear in the way he stood stiffly, hands clenched at his side instead of touching her like he always did when he saw her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, worried and frowning, and for a split second, Simeon wanted to comfort her.

He quickly corrected himself.
She
had done this;
she
had betrayed him.

But he would have the last word. He walked toward her, the heavy scowl pulling his face tight, and he felt a perverse satisfaction when he saw the worry on her face increase.

“Claire,” he said, his voice as cruel as he could make it as his heart cracked apart, “it’s been fun, but we’re over.”

N
ine Years
Later

“
M
orning
, Claire,” Sydney, the main receptionist at Claire’s architectural firm, called as Claire stepped off the elevator.

“Morning!” she replied and waved and then walked toward her workspace.

Her company was one of Boston’s hottest newer firms, and it came with the cool open-concert workspaces that were so popular now. Exposed beams, gleaming concrete floors, and sleek white furniture filled the space, and more than half the time, Claire felt out of place. Her somewhat conservative clothes and hair didn’t fit with the place, which sometimes made her self-conscious, but the work was interesting enough that Claire didn’t care.

The entire space was supposed to be a free-for-all, and the owner discouraged the architects from having a set working space, saying that he wanted to encourage openness and communication. Which was all well and good, but Claire had staked out her computer and had made it clear that no one else in the office should touch it, and so far, everyone had followed Claire’s unspoken rule.

She sat at her desk, no, her “workspace,” as the firm preferred to call it, and fired up her computer, anxious to dive into her current project. She was designing a tiny house concept. If she nailed it, the account would be huge for the firm, and Claire’s design would be the prototype for thousands of units. So getting it right was a big deal, and it was proving to be an interesting challenge to incorporate everything a luxury home had into such small spaces. But Claire was making progress, and she would be ready to present her initial design on Friday if she pushed, leaving her weekend free.

Not that it would matter. It wasn’t as if Claire had big plans for the weekend. She might go down to a local craft fair, maybe drop in and visit her parents or her best friend, but that was about all. Kind of lame when she thought about it, and not how she’d expected to spend her twenty-ninth year, but all things considered she was happy.

She’d always wanted to make her own way in the world, starting with her determination to get through college without her parents’ help. She had, and then after college, had built her career on her own terms, and no matter how drab or uninteresting it might seem to others, she was pleased with what she had accomplished with her life so far.

There was only one thing missing.

She had no one to share her life with and no prospects. It was her fault; after
him
she’d been too scarred to try, and her life had settled into a predictable, boring routine. Most days she didn’t care, but some days, she missed having someone to call her own. And as silly as it was and even after what he’d done to her, she missed
him
.

She felt pathetic. No matter how connected she’d thought they were, Simeon Hayes had been nothing but a college fling, but years later, she was still stuck on him, even though half the time when she thought of him, she almost choked on the anger that still burned her.

Ugh.

It was way too early to be thinking about Simeon, so she took a sip of the green tea that was such a poor replacement for the coffee she had recently given up and then threw herself into work.

The early morning hours flew by without her hardly noticing, and she was so engrossed in her work that she didn’t notice someone standing next to her worktable until the visitor spoke.

“Claire?”

She started and then looked over at the receptionist, Sydney. “You’re needed in the conference room,” Sydney said once Claire looked at her.

Sydney was dressed in skinny jeans and a tank top, and it was easy to look at her and assume that she wasn’t serious, but her job was important to her, and she was always professional and always in good spirits. Now, though, she frowned.

“Is everything okay?” Claire asked as she stood.

“I don’t know,” Sydney replied, looking off toward the main conference room.

The glass-walled room was usually open, but today blinds that Claire hadn’t even known it had were lowered.

Claire glanced at Sydney, momentarily distracted by comparing herself to her friend. The receptionist was tall, leggy, and beautiful, and Claire knew that her own curvy body and gray knee-length-skirt-and-blouse ensemble would never match up. She’d sometimes wondered if her looks had been the thing that had made Simeon leave her, and while she still struggled with her looks and comparing herself to others, she tried to keep those thoughts at bay whenever she could.

So what that she didn’t look great in a miniskirt or that her two-inch kitten heels weren’t sexy stilettos or that her brown hair was dull compared to Sydney’s rich red? She was still worthy, so she stood, threw her shoulders back, and smiled up at Sydney.

“Wish me luck,” she said. Then she grabbed a notepad and pen from her desk and then marched toward the conference room, her shoes ringing on the concrete floor. Her curiosity grew with each step, and so did her apprehension. She tried to think positively, though. Maybe the promotion that her boss had been hinting about was finally coming due.

Claire could only hope. She’d worked hard for in the years since she had graduated from college and she craved more responsibility, wanting to prove to everyone, including herself, that she was capable. She
was
capable, and she’d act like it, so, with a confidence she didn’t quite feel, she opened the conference room door.

Its lone occupant immediately grabbed her attention.

He stood with his back to the door, his arms tucked behind him, the dark blue suit jacket pulling tight across his broad shoulders. His dark hair was clipped short, the longer strands from his youth gone. The different hair, clothes, the fact that she hadn’t even seen his face didn’t change anything.

She would have recognized him anywhere.

Nine long years since the last time she’d ever seen him, but she’d still be able to pick him out of any crowd.

Simeon Hayes. Billionaire. The man she’d given her virginity and her heart. The man who’d cared nothing for either and left Claire heartbroken.

Claire sighed.

Nine years hadn’t been long enough.