The Billionaire's Payment (BBW Erotic Romance) Read online

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2012 by Alexis Moore

  All Rights Reserved.

  www.sexwriteralexis.blogspot.com

  Published by Spreadeagle Publications.

  THE BILLIONAIRE’S PAYMENT

  by

  Alexis Moore

  Virginal introvert Shakira Phillips loves her father and has always done whatever he’s asked of her, but surely asking her to sleep with his employer to avoid a jail sentence is too much? Especially an employer ruthless enough to prosecute a man of her father’s advanced years who has faithfully served the company for over twenty-five years.

  Billionaire hotelier Jared Codrington is a jaded man. Everything he touches turns to gold. The more money he has, the more he makes. Beautiful women throw themselves at him wherever he goes and tired of meaningless relationships, he decides on a period of celibacy to clear his palette and re-awaken his appetite. When he catches his top employee swindling funds and the man offers his daughter as payment, Jared agrees, not planning to accept the virgin sacrifice, but wanting to demonstrate how deadly serious he is about the level of loyalty he expects from his employees.

  He doesn’t cater for the instant attraction he feels for the fuller-figured beauty who turns up at his office. In an instant she clears his palette, awakens his appetite and builds a hunger that he must sate.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Excerpts from other books by Alexis Moore

  Amazon UK & US links to all other books by Alexis Moore

  Chapter One

  Jared Codrington paced angrily across the lush burgundy carpet of his office in the penthouse suite of luxury hotel, The Codrington. The breathtaking, panoramic views of London, which made the hotel a must-stay for wealthier visitors to London, failed to appease the slowly-building rage inside him. He would have trusted David Phillips with his life. The man’s betrayal hurt as much as a proverbial ‘knife in the back’

  Profits had dropped drastically at the hotel and concerned that standards were slipping, Jared had just spent a sleepless week looking at its business practices in minute detail. Of the hundred and four hotels he now owned worldwide, this was the most dear to him. James Codrington, his paternal grandfather had sold his own home and borrowed from every relative and friend willing to lend him money, just so he could purchase the hotel when it was a rundown but superbly-located guesthouse. His grandfather hadn’t seen a vast profit before he was forced to retire due to ill health, but he’d had the satisfaction of seeing it build a reputation of excellence and subsequently be listed in tourists’ guides as one of London’s top luxury hotels. Jared’s father lacked both the passion and the drive to be a hotelier and had had no problem with his father recruiting Jared immediately after he had completed his degree in business instead of him.

  When a chain of twenty UK hotels teetered on receivership, James Codrington had spent several days and nights formulating a recovery plan and gathering the necessary funds to buy out the owners. But, on the eve of the day of the planned negotiations, he had suffered a near fatal stroke and twenty-four-year-old Jared had had to pitch the bold proposal while worried sick about his grandfather. The solution had allowed the previous owners to walk away debt free. He had then shared his grandfather’s vision with the staff and given them a choice of embracing a new way of working, or leaving with small compensatory payments. Jared hadn’t been alarmed when 16% opted for the payout, he suspected that most of those wouldn’t have been prepared to go the extra mile when required. With the remaining staff he had embarked on a journey of hard work and just rewards that had seen the hotel’s fortunes reversed in less than six months. Over the next seven years he acquired another eighty-three hotels, some little more than cosy local inns, while others were 5-star establishments regularly patronized by A-List celebrities. He was proud of every last one and acted speedily when profits indicated that things were amiss, and on any complaints received no matter how trivial.

  This was his lifeblood, damn it! Every member of staff was like family and David, who had been around since his grandfather’s time, was more so than most.

  “Come in,” he ordered at the brisk knock on his door.

  “Jared? I thought our meeting was scheduled for tomorrow at…” the older man’s voice trailed off as he realized that something was wrong.

  “Don’t I pay you enough, David?” Jared asked without preamble, his voice deathly cold.

  “Of course you do, Jared.”

  “Then tell me, David, why did you feel the need to steal my money?”

  “Jared, I apologize. I needed the funds urgently. I promise I was going to pay you back.”

  “I don’t see how you would have paid the money back when you have spent the last two and a half months fiddling the accounts and showing less than full occupancy.” Jared took a deep breath and tried to rein in his anger. “Why didn’t you just come to me for a loan?”

  The older man bowed his head and didn’t answer. If he had boldly written a cheque for himself and cashed it, Jared would have been annoyed that he had done so without his permission, but it would have seemed like a loan or an advance of salary. Instead the man had had set up a bogus company and had had one in every ten credit and debit card payments put through to it with a special card reader he had somehow managed to procure. The planning and the sophistication of the crime staggered Jared. It spoke of someone with a criminal mastermind, one whom he wasn’t sure he could trust to be around his operations.

  “Not only are you fired,” he threatened. “I intend to prosecute you for every last penny!”

  “Please, Jared, I have a daughter—”

  “You should have thought of her before you stole my money,” Jared interrupted ruthlessly. But, then he queried, his brow creasing in puzzlement, “I thought you only had two young sons.”

  “I have a daughter too. She’s a little older.”

  “What does she have to do with this? Is she in trouble? On drugs? Did you steal my money to finance her habit?”

  “No. No,” the man denied. “What I meant was that you and I could come to some arrangement.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Jared didn’t think that the man was suggesting what he thought he was suggesting. No, no parent would do that to a child, would they?

  “She’s as beautiful as my wife and still a virgin.”

  Against his will Jared felt his pulse quicken. The man’s wife was a former Miss India and was still beautiful enough to stop conversation dead when she walked into a room. She was reed slender and tall, with fine, silky, softly-waving hair that reached past her bottom. David, though twenty-two years older, was a good looking man. Their child could be nothing but spectacular. Yet, something didn’t add up, unless…

  “How old is she?” he demanded softly. If on top of thievery, the man thought he, Jared, was a defiler of underage girls, he would carry out the earlier threat of dismissal that he’d issued only as a warning.

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Twenty-three and a virgin?” Jared tried hard not to
laugh. Did he look like a fool? “I doubt that very much!”

  “I promise you she is. She’s very shy.”

  “How do you know she will be willing? I don’t want to feel like I’m raping any woman.” Jared couldn’t believe that he was actually pursuing the ridiculous conversation, but suddenly he felt an urgent need to meet the paragon of virtue. He hadn’t been on the hunt for pussy in ages—rather pussy had hunted him—it would be exciting to stalk one that was trying to evade him. He wouldn’t seduce her if she was unwilling, but the thought of the chase and the eventual capture made the blood heat in his veins.

  “She’s always been an obedient child,” the older man confidently assured him. “She will do whatever I ask.”

  Chapter Two

  “You want me to do what?” I stared in horror at my father. I must have misheard him. I really couldn’t have possibly heard what I thought I had.

  “Shakira…darling…he could have me put in jail. He’s dangerous and doesn’t like to be crossed.”

  “And yet you want me to sleep with him?”

  “Darling, he’s not that bad. He promised he wouldn’t force you.”

  My father’s words just didn’t add up. In one breath the man was a beast who would have him thrown into jail to rot there until he died of old age; in the next the man was too gentlemanly to use force.

  “I’m sorry, Dad, you’re asking too much!”

  “Darling, I’ve never asked you for anything before, but I need you to do this for me.” My father’s eyes filled and I felt tears prick my eyelids too.

  I’ve never seen him cry before.

  “Dad, what did you do with all that money?” Maybe if I understood why he had stolen almost a quarter of a million pounds from the elusive bastard of a billionaire, Jared Codrington, I would be able to figure out a way to help him.

  “Your mother had her heart set on that diamond necklace at Sotheby’s. I couldn’t deny her.”

  I should have known it had something to do with those bloody diamonds. The piece of jewellery had belonged to a former actress and my mother had been intent on having it at all costs despite owning pieces which had been passed to her on her mother’s death that were just as beautiful. She had returned from the auction that day, looking triumphant but I hadn’t bothered to inquire what price she’d paid for it.

  “Dad, you have to tell Mum you’re broke!”

  “Darling, I promised her that I would keep her in the style your grandparents had accustomed her to. I can’t go back on that promise.”

  “So stealing from your employer is better than telling her the truth?”

  My father had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’ve told her that we have to cut back a little. She is trying, but having friends whose fathers and husbands are millionaires is tough for her.”

  “Her father’s a multimillionaire in India!” I reminded him. “He just refuses to spoil her the way you do!”

  “Even if you don’t want to do it for me or for your mother, do it for your brothers. Think of what would happen to them if I went to jail,” my father pleaded.

  I knew I was being manipulated, but at the mention of the two brothers I loved to a distraction, all my objections faded. “Okay, let me think about it for an hour.”

  “Thank you, my darling.” My father grasped my hand gratefully and then released it.

  As I turned away I realized that by thanking me already he was acting as though it was a foregone conclusion that I would give a positive answer. I’d always known that my mother came first with him. I’d never minded that fact and hoped I would find a husband who would love me half as much, but I’d never realized until now that he loved her so much he was willing to sacrifice me for her.

  I would have expected this from my mother. I’ve always held fourth and last place in her affection. Her pride and joy is my fourteen-year-old brother, David Junior, but she’s almost as equally fond of Rajah my eleven-year-old brother and the baby of the family. My father held the third position. I brought up the rear. My elegant mother made no bones about the fact that she’s embarrassed by my overblown curves. At sixteen when my breasts had finally stopped growing at 36HH, she’d persuaded me to have them reduced to a more acceptable C cup. I had gone along with her to Harley Street, quite willing to have them reduced so that men of all ages and races would stop looking at me as though I was some freak of nature, or a glamour model who had deliberately enhanced my bosom. But when the plastic surgeon had admitted he couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t grow back to a similar size, I decided against the operation. My mother had been quietly furious in the taxi on the way back home from that day and things had never been the same again between us.

  The irony was that the curves didn’t come from my paternal line as most people assumed seeing mother and me together, but from my maternal grandmother whose curves had made her a famous Bollywood star in the days when voluptuous goddesses had reined supreme.

  ***

  Jared had agreed with David that the man’s daughter would stay with him in his suite for one week. They had shaken hands on it, but as soon as the older man had left the room, Jared had come to his senses.

  He couldn’t seduce the man’s innocent daughter.

  He would move the man to another of his hotels and deduct the pilfered money from the man’s salary and bonuses over the next two years. David having to live on less than he was used to and the loss of face of being moved from the flagship hotel should be lesson enough.

  Yet, Jared hadn’t called and cancelled the arrangement. Somehow he still wanted to meet his daughter. Why hadn’t her father ever mentioned her? And why hadn’t she attended any of the company’s functions with her parents and brothers? He almost didn’t believe she existed. Even her name, Shakira, sounded mythical. It did something strange to his insides. He needed to see her…so he could forget her.

  The intercom buzzed.

  He knew it could only mean one thing, but he asked anyway. “Yes?”

  “Mr Codrington, Ms Phillips is on her way up.”

  “Thank you.”

  As he disconnected the internal call, Jared realized his hand was trembling. Surprised he stared at it as though it didn’t belong to him. He hadn’t been nervous about anything in years! The last time he had been consciously nervous was ten years ago at twenty-four when he’d had to walk into a room and convince eleven people all of whom were at least twice his age that he could successfully run a chain of hotels when they had miserably failed. He had wanted the deal so badly, he had felt sick to his stomach. But having conquered that challenge and won, every other since had seemed a walk in the park.

  It felt good to be reminded that he was human.

  His valet Ambrose answered the discreet tap on the door and she walked in hesitantly, carrying a small overnight case, her eyes downcast.

  Jared had expected a slender, younger version of David’s wife, but the young woman standing uncertainly just inside the doorway was altogether quite unexpected. He was on his feet without realizing he had left the chair. He had given Perkins, his butler, the evening off, but Ambrose was enough of a jack-of-all-trades to fill in smoothly. “May I take your coat, Ms Phillips?”

  She nodded and allowed him to slip the non-descript brown coat she was wearing from her shoulders.

  Jared felt the earth shift beneath him.

  “Thank you, Ambrose,” he dismissed his valet. “That will be all for today.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Ambrose unlocked the front door and walked through it without a backward glance—as though it had been prearranged and not the sudden whim of his employer to be left completely alone with his guest. He knew better than to come back without being summoned.

  She was wearing a gold sari—not yellow, but the colour of the precious metal—with a richly-embroidered, halter-necked top in a matching shade. Her long hair was a shade between her father’s light brown and her mother’s lustrous jet black. Her features were also an exotic blend of the two. Her eyes
, dramatically highlighted by gold eye shadow and skilfully kohl-rimmed, were dark like her mother’s and so were her arched eyebrows. The shape of her face and her pixie nose she’d inherited from her father, though the small, turned-up feature looked better on her. The sari top covered large breasts that he would have immediately dismissed as implants on another woman, but she seemed too shy to deliberately draw that kind of attention to herself.

  Breasts were Jared’s weakness. When his mother wanted to embarrass him into doing something for her, such as attending one of her endless fund-raising charity dinners, she gently reminded him that he had breastfed until he was two years old and ruined her once firm breasts.

  There was something unique and fascinating about breasts and their ability to arouse and nurture.

  All Jared’s chivalrous intentions went through the door with his valet.

  “Take your clothes off,” he told her softly. “I want to look at you.”

  “What?” She raised startled dark eyes to his and he felt himself drowning in their depths.

  “I want to look at you,” he repeated. “Use my dressing room to get undressed.”

  ***

  Chapter Three

  I entered the room Jared had indicated and stood looking around me. It was larger than my bedroom at home and filled from floor to ceiling with dark wood panelling. Dozens of colour-coordinated shirts and suits hung from expensive wooden hangers. T-Shirts, sweaters and undergarments were folded with such precision I wondered if they were ever worn. Shoes so highly polished I could see my reflection in them were stacked row after row in convenient cubby holes.

  All this I took in with a quick nervous glance around the room to avoid looking directly into the full length mirror in front of which I stood, trying to avoid coming face to face with myself and the decision I would make in the next minute or two.