Billionaire On Fire: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Billionaire Romance) (26 page)

“Not exactly,” I said with caution. My
next words would make or break the deal. “I am asking you to go on dates with
me whenever I ask and spend time with me on my schedule for the next six
months. You know what I wish to accomplish in that time, but that is not a
requirement in this deal. If at no point in those six months you feel like you
want to sleep with me, then hey, I tried, and we part ways. If you do, then I
get what I wanted. In either case you get what you need, which is money to pay
for your mother’s surgery. It’s a win-win for you any way you look at it, but
quite the risk for me because there is no guarantee that I will get what I
want. A risk I am willing to take.”

I also needed a date for upcoming events I
had to attend to keep the businessman’s wives occupied while I tried to secure
important deals. She didn’t need to know that. She looked at me and the
document back and forth a few times, her mouth agape. She finally burst out
laughing.

“You’re joking. Is it April first?” She
looked behind her as though expecting to find an answer there. “Are there
cameras around here? I’m being pranked.”

“No, you’re being fucking ridiculous,” I
said, slamming my fist on the desk.

“But- but this is too damn easy to be
true! You’re saying you will pay 60,000 dollars for me to get pretty and go out
on dates with you, with no obligation for me to provide any sexual favors.” She
scanned the documents again. “I mean, there has to be a loophole somewhere.
Some clause where it says I have to let you tie me up in a dungeon and-”

“Seriously, Aria, a little respect would
be nice. You have already made it clear what you think of me, and you’re not
that far off, but there is no need to constantly stab me with your scathing
opinions. I’m still your boss.”
 

“I’ll have to have my lawyer take a look
at this,” she said laughing. I was not amused. “See, that’s funny, because I
don’t have a lawyer. Us regular people in regular people land don’t have
lawyers or butlers or-”

“Do you want me to hire you a counsel
before you sign anything?”

She rolled her eyes. “Humor, Mr.
Sinclair.”

“Zayden. There is a clause in there about
calling me that,” I said, pointing to the contract.

Her laughs got hysterical. “There is a
clause? So what, if I don’t call you by your first name you take money off my
contract?”

I furrowed my brows. “I wouldn’t do that.
But I’d like it if you called me Zayden.”

“Only if you add a clause that says you
need to work on your sense of humor.”

“Yeah, we can make that work.” Her eyes
were twinkling. “Oh. You are being facetious. Very meta.”

I laughed and then I realized that she was
agreeing to the contract.

“So you are accepting!” A kind of
excitement I hadn’t experienced in a long time started to bubble up.

“I have two conditions.” My lips started
twitching again but she added: “Real ones.”

“Oh. Go on.”

“First, the money will be a loan, not a
gift. I don’t feel comfortable taking your money just for spending time with
you.” She noticed my smirk and added, “I guarantee you this won’t end in me
sleeping with you, so you are not going to get what you want. It’s not fair on
you, in any case.”

“We will see about that,” I said, the
smirk still on my face.

“We won’t. I already know the outcome of
this Zayden.” She was at least calling me by my name already. “Hypothetically,
though, if I were to sleep with you, I would be especially uncomfortable taking
money from you. That would kind of make me a prostitute.”

“I never intended to make you feel like-”

“It doesn’t matter, since I will not
actually be sleeping with you. It’s a loan, which I will pay you back in
monthly installments, with a 10% interest after I graduate from college.”

Her words combined with the fiercely
confident look on her face made her all the more attractive. “I refuse to take
interest, but sure, if it makes you feel better about the whole thing, after
you have spent a few years working a real job you can start paying me back. I
won’t hold you to it though. I have plenty of money.”

“You will have to, it will be in the
contract. And 5%, starting a month after I graduate.”

“Zero percent interest, but you can start
the payments six months after graduation. And I’ll put it in the contract.
Final offer.”

She sighed. “Okay, fine.”

“What’s your other clause?”

She opened her mouth and closed it a few
times, as though unsure if she should speak her next words. “You cannot be
physically involved with any other woman during these six months.”

Wait, what?

“That’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t think
I can do that. Especially since you keep stressing on just how much I am not
going to be sleeping with you either.”

She shrugged. “If we are going to be
dating, in public, I cannot be okay with the idea of you going home at the end
of a date to entertain some other woman while thinking of me the whole time.”

“It’s cute you assume I’d be thinking of
you.”

“You have obviously never been on a date
with me.”

“It’s not going to happen, Aria. Anything
else?”

“I know that seems somewhat unfair but-”
She was screwing the corner of her mouth, looking like she really did feel bad
about what she was asking. “But I have been cheated on before and it was one of
the worst feelings in the world. I know it wouldn’t be cheating in this case,
since we aren’t going to be in a relationship, per say. But if I know you have been
sleeping around, it will be difficult for me to spend time with you without
some kind of resentment. I do appreciate you offering to help me out and I
don’t want to feel resentful towards you. You obviously don’t deserve that. So
if this is too much to ask, we don’t have to make the deal at all and I will
still be grateful for your offer.”

I hated the fact that, even with 60,000
dollars in my hands, the ball was in her court and I was the one playing by her
rules, yet it made her all the more fascinating, the challenge more exciting.
Backing out now would be accepting defeat and Zayden Sinclair did not do
defeat. I would make Aria Roberts beg to join me in my bed, if that was the
last thing I ever did. Agreeing to her terms would definitely not mean six months
of celibacy, since I was going to have her in no time.

“I will add your terms to the paperwork
and have you sign it tomorrow,” I finally said.

She grinned.

The game was on.

CHAPTER
5

ARIA

“You did what?” Stacey was staring at me
with a mixture of complete horror and amusement.

“I signed a contract to date Zayden
Sinclair for six months.”

“But Aria, is this what you want? To lose
your virginity over some contract with some-”

I hadn’t even told my best friend that I
had already lost my virginity. I was embarrassed that it was some guy from a
bar. No one was ever going to know if I had anything to do with it.

“I’m not losing anything, that’s what I’ve
been trying to explain to you. He just wants me to go on dates with him.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Are you sure?
Did you read the contract? There wasn’t some footnote involving a dungeon of
some sort?”

“I said the same thing,” I laughed. She
joined me, to my relief. If I was going to do this, Stacey’s support was
essential. If she didn’t support this I would hear about it every day. “But no,
I read it cover to cover. No loopholes, no dungeons, no sex. Just spending time
with him. And I’ve been thinking about that, it can actually be beneficial to
me!”

“Well yeah, that’s a lot of money and you
can help your mom out,” she said, jumping on to the edge of my bed and grabbing
my stuffed turtle. I threw her a pillow from my desk.

“Yes, that, but also, he has an insane
knowledge of the banking industry,” I said, mindlessly scrolling through my
computer screen. “He can teach me things when we hang out.”

“He is a CEO, a title he inherited. I
doubt he knows much about becoming a loan officer.”

“He owns a chain of banks.” I looked at
her with raised eyebrows.

“I guess he’d better know a lot about loan
officers, huh?” She was hugging my pillow.

I shrugged. “Won’t hurt to ask. Plus I am
taking advanced Macroeconomics classes; he has a Masters in Economics along
with an MBA, so at least he can help me ace my classes.”

“Somehow, Aria, I don’t think he means he
wants to help you with homework when he says he wants to date you. He very
likely has other things in mind.”

“He does,” I frowned. “But since he is not
going to get what he has in mind, we will have to find something to talk about
during these ‘dates’ or whatever, and I might as well steer the conversation in
a direction that helps me do better in school. It’s not a colossal waste of a
time that way.”

“Or you could just jump his bones.” She
was now flipping through the copy of ZEN magazine with his interview on it.

“You jumped ship pretty quickly. Weren’t
you just lecturing me about the sanctity of my virginity?”

“Nope, I was just asking you if that’s
what you wanted to do. If it is, then by all means make hot… passionate… love
to this divine creation. I wonder how big his-”

“Nick!” I screamed loudly, cutting her
off. “You need to come in here and get your girlfriend, she’s getting out of
control.”

“Shhhhhh,” she hissed. “He won’t find this
funny. We haven’t done it in two weeks.”

“What? Why?”

“We are saving it for our anniversary.
Have to keep things spiced up.”

“By actively not, you know, spicing them?”
I shook my head. “You sex-having people and your weird ways.”

“You’ll get there soon enough. Very soon
according to your boss.”

“Please tell me you believe I can resist him.”
I could. I really, truly could. Why was I trying so hard to convince myself
when it was obviously the truth? My first time having sex was a mistake and no
way was my second time going to be too.

“You are stubborn enough to,” she said,
flipping through the magazine. “But if I were you, I would have some fun with
this whole thing. I mean how often do sexy gazillionaires pay you to date them?
I’d do him for free, if he asked.”

“Don’t make me shout for Nick again.”

She threw the pillow back at me and I caught
it right before it hit my head.

“Fine. You sit here and be boring on your
computer, I’ll go find my boyfriend.” She got up and left mumbling: “who is
probably sitting on his computer and being equally boring. What does one have
to do for some fun roommates around here?”

---

As the work-day came to an end and people
started evaporating away, I felt a strange knot in my chest. Zayden had sent me
an email earlier:

Aria,

Hang
around after 5. Our deal begins today.

Best,

Zayden

Zayden
Sinclair

Chairman
and CEO

South
National Bank

I wondered what he had in mind for today.
He hadn’t mentioned anything about going out, and seemed perfectly comfortable
lying on his office couch typing intently on his MacBook. Yep, we definitely
weren’t going anywhere. Just as well, I could ask him questions for my Econ
paper on progressive taxation. There was nothing else I could think of for us
to do within the premises of this bank except that, because that was just not
happening.

When everybody else cleared out, I wasn’t
sure whether to walk over to him or wait for him to summon me; he seemed
occupied by whatever was on his computer. Maybe he wouldn’t even notice if I
quietly snuck out. I did have tons of homework to get to. I tentatively started
packing up but the phone rang.

“Who said you could leave?” He was staring
at me. “You signed a contract.”

“You seemed busy and I wasn’t sure if you
wanted to be left alone.”

“If I wanted you to leave me alone, you
would know Aria.” With just that much he hung up the phone and went back to
typing vigorously on his laptop. What the hell was I supposed to do just
sitting here? I pulled out my phone and started texting Stacey.

“it’s weird as fuck. he’s just sitting
there doing work but I’m not allowed to leave.”

Stacey wrote back immediately.

“ask him if he needs anything. offer to
make him some coffee.”

“and set feminism back a few decades?”

“it’s just a nice gesture, nothing to do
with you being a woman. he’s helping you out, be nice.”

“fine. whatever.”

I called him back. “Would you like some
coffee?”

“Not if it is to be delivered with your
clothes on.” A grin formed on his face. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, I’m just
teasing. Easy on the eye-roll.”