It’s a complicated problem and one some of the best minds in the world have been working on for years, so I’m not going to suddenly come up with the answer while I’m naked in bed. Not yet. But sue me, I still like to dream about it. Unfortunately, the board of Galaxtix knows that this passion project is my personal weakness, and they’ve threatened to shut the entire project down if I don’t reform or resign because my repeated educational forays into the birds and the bees are apparently costing them in terms of foundation donors.
When I asked if they were serious—it’s an educational foundation and I’m just conducting sex research of the Kinseyian variety—they informed me that I’d better meet their demands fast. And then they gave me a timeline and actual goddamned deliverables that included donating money to charities for puppies and kittens and never, ever making my sex life public again. They’ll collectively shit themselves when they find out about last night.
Which they will.
Because...internet.
Bare skin brushes mine as my companion shoves herself upright and swings her legs over the side of the bed with indecent energy. A soft sigh escapes the mouth I can’t see and don’t remember kissing, two issues that I also need to fix. In fact, my brain screams that compensating for that neglect is far more critical than making my Leda problem go away or even solving the intriguing challenges of a Mars landing. Stupid brain. Bleary-eyed, I roll back.
The room smells like sex.
Also? Mystery guest is stunning, with a tiny waist and a generous, pear-shaped ass that begs for licking and biting. I squint. Based on the physical evidence, that already occurred.
“Don’t go.” I mute my phone and shove it under my own pillow before curving a hand around her waist. She’s softly rounded where my fingertips stroke.
“No worries. You’re stuck with me forever.” Laughter fills her voice as she stands up. She’s short, but those legs of hers go on for days. Weeks. Multiple interplanetary cycles. All I can think about is that bare skin, so it takes a moment to process that she’s turned toward me, wiggling the enormous diamond on her ring finger in my direction as if it’s some kind of bizarre fishing lure. Diamonds aren’t my thing, but breasts...
Even better than a Mars rover.
Hers are fantastic. Round and lush, perfect martini-glass-shaped handfuls with pale pink nipples. I don’t remember these breasts, but her voice—
No.
I’m a filthy bastard but even I wouldn’t have—
There’s no chance—
I shoot upright, alarm sirens wailing in my brain. “Hana?”
“Liam.” Hana beams at me. My brain whimpers.
The one woman in the world who should never be able to pick my dick out of a naked lineup is in my bed. I might have gone above and beyond on my plan to incite maximum self-loathing come morning.
Hana is naked.
And also—married.
I’m strangely hurt she didn’t invite me to the wedding, although I guess that would have been weird since she had the biggest teenage crush on me. I’ve known for years, of course—in a strictly hypothetical and entirely abstract way—that Hana Valentine had grown up to be a stunning woman. When we first met, however, she was twelve to my seventeen and she blew raspberries on my arm.
There was zero attraction between us.
Zero.
I’d carried that attitude over to her teenage years when she’d developed boobs and then a crush on me. Eventually, she’d learned about the wonders of the bra and now she’s clearly outgrown her puppy love if she’s got a husband tucked away somewhere.
I glance around just in case I’ve developed a brand-new interest in ménage, but it appears it’s just the two of us in my bedroom.
I don’t have many rules, a character flaw that helped make me a billionaire before the age of thirty. Still, I’ve always respected the golden rule of friendship: thou shalt not bang thy friend’s little sister.
Said off-limits little sister shifts.
Onto her knees, my dirty brain supplies. There are possibilities.
She ups the smile wattage as if today is just the best day ever.
I end up watching her because it’s hard not to stare at Hana. She’s always happy—it seems to be her perpetual condition—and when she smiles, she lights up the room. I give her a head tip while my brain scrambles for the right thing to say.
Her breasts jiggle.
And I panic. Because I look down and then over. Up. Anywhere but at the amazing, new-to-me rack that’s right there at mouth level. Her eyes still crinkle at the corner when she’s happy. That hasn’t changed in the six months since I last saw her. We’d been wining and dining her brother in some weird vegetarian Berkeley restaurant she’d chosen for his birthday party. I’d dutifully tried to look like a meatless family dinner was my idea of fun while Jax laughed at me. I don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck Hana’s doing here, but I need her to go away until Jax’s next birthday. And find some clothes.
And stop.
Being.
Naked.
She’s rocking a serious case of sex hair—Christ, what did we do?—but her brown eyes twinkle happily at me. She still has the freckle she loathes on her cheekbone and a spray of less loathed, smaller freckles on her throat.
She complains about those freckles all the time, but they’re like a kissing road map, a deliciously sexy detour that I’ve never noticed and I’m absolutely, 1,000 percent not taking. Ever.
But because I’m bourbon-weakened, my eyes make an involuntary dip south that I blame on the tiny black-and-yellow tattoo of a bee pollinating a daisy inked above the soft curve of her right breast. How long has she had that?
Bees are Hana’s jam and her avowed first love. She earned a degree in entomology from the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California and now she harvests socially responsible honey that she sells at farmers’ markets and online. She has both a bee farm and a mortgage, which makes her a grown-up in the eyes of the world and the IRS, although I have my doubts, doubts Jax has echoed more than once. Frankly, neither of us understands the whole working-hard-for-a-pittance approach to life. It seems counterintuitive, so I’ve suggested strategies to better monetize her product whenever our paths cross. The last time, she’d sent me a paperback copy of Men Are from Mars bristling with sticky notes. Message received. I’d stopped offering unsolicited business advice that other people pay me for, although I had set up an anonymous weekly order for two cases of honey.
Jax’s Hana is a cheerful dork, a granola-to-the-bone, outdoorsy, justice-and fairness-oriented person. She truly believes that as long as her bills get paid on time, she’s good, and that it’s bad karma or something equally woo-woo to want more than you technically need. Plus, she’s an introvert and Jax swears each Christmas that he’s going to buy Walden Pond for her so that she can officially become a hermit. She barters—and she doesn’t always come out ahead financially because she believes feelings should get factored into a deal. Do I understand her? Not at all.