The Renegade Billionaire: A Small Town Romance (Happiness Ever After Book 1)

The bag of ice is freezing my fingers, but I don’t put it down when Braxton slides into the truck.

His massive thigh presses against mine because I’m sitting in the middle again, straddling the gearshift, even though there’s plenty of space.

I still don’t move.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks at the same time I say, “Are you okay?”

He turns his body a fraction of an inch, pressing closer into my side, and butterflies take flight in my belly. How does he do that? Just suck all the tension from my body with an innocent touch.

Even in the dark, his jaw seems swollen. Leaning into him, I press the bag of ice to his skin and hold it there. He hisses on contact.

“You can tell me if it hurts, you know? I won’t think any less of you. The jerk sucker punched you when you were…when you were…”

“Getting you out of harm’s way, which is exactly what he should’ve been thinking about too.”

“I was never his priority,” I admit quietly, readjusting the bag of ice on his face. “Not when it mattered. I’m certain he’s so drunk tonight that he had no idea how close he was to me, but I honestly don’t think even if he’d been sober, I would’ve factored into his train of thought. For him, it isn’t even about winning, it’s about not coming in last.”

His hand snakes around my wrist, and my pulse hammers beneath my skin.

I swallow hard before lifting my gaze to his. He’s staring down through thick lashes I’d die for, but there’s a storm brewing behind his eyes, and a pull ignites between us that’s explosive and exciting.

“You’re not an object to lose, Madison. And if he thinks you’re a game, then he’s a fucking idiot. You should have always been his first, last, and only priority.” Braxton’s voice rumbles in the silence of the truck. It bounces off metal and glass, reverberating through my body and heating my core.

“I don’t need saving, Braxton.”

Painfully slowly, he tilts his head, pressing more firmly into my hand. Our gazes are fused together, each of us locked onto the other, and I know I have zero chance of breaking our connection first.

“No, Madison. You’re a strong, independent, incredibly amazing woman. You don’t need saving—you need to be savored. There’s a difference.”

A full-body tremble starts at my neck and works down my body. Savoring? Holy hell, now I can’t stop imagining what being savored entails.

Braxton takes the bag of ice from my hand and tosses it to the floor of the passenger side, then presses my palm to his face in its place. It keeps us close enough to share air.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks again.

I purse my lips tight, too afraid that if I speak, if I open up to him now, I’ll never be able to stop.

“I don’t know what’s happening here,” I whisper.

His lips part as though he’s tasting my words, and a flame of desire spreads faster than wildfire through my veins.

He blinks, and his lips curl up at the corners. Lips I want to lick.

“I don’t know anything about you.” My words barely touch the air. “Not really. Nothing important, but I feel like—like…”

“Like you’ve known me for years?” He lifts a brow while he waits for a response.

“Yeah, but that’s silly. Right?”

His hand tightens on my wrist. Not painfully, just the slightest pressure to seal us together, and then his thumb strokes back and forth across the inside of my wrist and every thought in my head vanishes into thin air.

“There are very few people in my life that I have a connection with, Madison. In fact, besides Grey and our nephew Sage, I work very hard to keep everyone out.” The sadness in his tone tells me he’s being honest. “But here, with you and Pops? It’s as if someone rewrote my life and dropped me into a new story. One where I belong just for being me. One that has me working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, smiling more than I knew possible, and dreaming of a girl who might still poison my breakfast just to get me to move along if I’m not careful.”

I gasp and jerk back, but he doesn’t release my wrist, so my fingers twitch against the scruff of his jaw.

“I would never poison anyone.” I gasp haughtily.

His teeth shine in the moonlight. “No, you wouldn’t.” He says it as if he knows me, understands me. He says it as if there’s not a doubt in his mind that he can trust me.

My gaze drops to his lips, those perfectly pillowy lips, and my heartbeat hammers in my ears. Have I ever wanted to kiss someone as much as I want to kiss Braxton Mitchell?

I snort a laugh, and his entire face dances with amusement.

“What were you thinking just now?” he asks, peeling my fingers away from his jaw and holding my hand in his lap.

Gosh dang. How long have we been sitting so…so intimately?

“It’s probably better if I don’t say.” I’ve never been so thankful for the cover of darkness as I am right now because heat travels at warp speed across my cheeks, down my neck, all the way to the tips of my aching nipples.

Never. Not once in my life have I ever thought the words aching nipples in relation to my own breasts. I guess it’s another thing we can chalk up to this handsome housemate of mine.

I giggle to myself again, but he doesn’t press. He watches me with a mix of amusement and lust. It’s the lust that sobers me quickly.

“Your skin is so soft,” he whispers. I stare at where his thumb swipes over my pulse point.

“I like lotion. It makes everything slippery.” Oh my God. Did I seriously just say slippery? Slippery Madison? “Soft. I said soft.”

His rumble of laughter is a balm to my burning skin. “Slippery, huh?” he asks while running the thumb of his free hand along his bottom lip.

“Soft. And I bet your lips are soft.” Did I just moan that out loud?

Okay, Madison Melissa Ryan, I know you only had a couple of drinks tonight so get it together.

“Madison,” he rumbles in warning. “As much as I’d love to show you just what I can do with my lips, we need to get you home. You’ve been drinking, and I’m not that guy.”

“You’re not?”

His grip on my wrist sends an electric shock throughout my body when he squeezes—it’s a tease of what he could do to me without any clothes on.

“Oh, God. I think I’m drunk.”

Braxton throws his head back and laughs, and even though I know he’s laughing at me, I can’t help but savor the sound—he’s infectious.

He leans in so our foreheads are nearly touching. “Did you have fun?”

When I nod, our noses touch.

“That’s all I wanted. You deserve to have fun, Madison. Fun and so much more.”

“Do you have to go home?”

The muscles in his body bunch next to mine. “Home in general, or home right now?”

Both, but I want to play pretend for a little bit longer—pretend that he is actually the hometown hottie. “Right now.”

He scans my face, but I have no idea what he’s searching for.

“I have somewhere I want to show you, and it’s still warm enough out to do it. Another month or so and it’ll be too cold, at least for me.” My voice quivers in anticipation. “It’s my favorite place in all of Happiness.”

The energy in the cab of this truck is incandescent. Even the windows are beginning to fog up, casting the streetlamps in a twinkling haze, but finally, he lets go of my wrist and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear.

“I think I’d very much like to see all your favorite places, sunshine.”

“Sunshine, huh? I shudder to think what you’ll call me when my clouds roll in.”

He puts the truck into reverse but leaves his arm resting on my thigh and his hand on my knee.

“Does that happen often?”

I don’t want to talk about my fears—and that’s all that seems to roll around in my mind these days, so I deliver directions instead. “Head toward the hardware store and take the second right.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He squeezes my knee, and then his thumb taps against my skin in time with the song on the radio as if he and I are the most natural thing in the world.

And sitting here, this way, with him, we just might be.

Braxton turns his head to smirk at me. “This is where you wanted to take me?”

I glance through the windshield to the vast emptiness below us and shrug. There’s only one other vehicle up here, and I know their mamas would flip out.

“Madison, is this where the locals go to make out?” he asks in mock outrage. At least I hope it’s mock, because if he’s truly unhappy, I’m going to feign a horrible, debilitating illness until he leaves.

I scoff as if he didn’t just call me out. “If you’re sixteen, maybe. But I come here for the stars. There’s no light pollution up here. We can see everything, so back this truck up and let’s go.”

“Back it up?”

I nod, feeling lighter than air. “Yes, we have to get in the bed of the truck to look up at them, obviously.”

His wide, uninhibited grin should make the cover for the sexiest man alive. “Obviously,” he teases, then performs a perfect three-point turn until the tailgate is a few feet from the safety wall the mayor installed years ago.

Braxton turns off the truck and removes the keys.

“Come on, get out. You’re going to love it.” I playfully nudge his side with my elbow. Not that I moved him even an inch. The guy is a wall of muscle. I bet he doesn’t even have an ounce of body fat. Jerk.

With raised brows, he opens his door, climbs out, and offers me a hand. It was never a question that I’d follow him out his side.

“Now what?” he asks, closing the door behind me.

My back is pressed to the truck, and he hovers over me, so close our thighs are touching. I lift a hand to his chest and press. He backs up at my unspoken request, and I turn to peer into his back seat.

“Oh, Braxton,” I chide. “Old Fender here hasn’t been outfitted for small-town life yet.”

He presses into my back, cups his hands around his face, and peers through the glass over my head.

“What am I supposed to have back there?”

“A blanket, first aid kit, snacks. You always carry snacks. If nothing else, you can toss them to a black bear and make a run for it.”

I turn slowly, but his hands stay pressed to the truck on either side of me. “You get a lot of black bears around here?”

His voice is low, controlled, hungry.

I nod despite being full of crap. “We could. They’re in the mountains, and even Google says they could be in southeast Georgia.”

Braxton leans down, his words hot against my ear. “Have you seen any?”

“N-no,” I stammer. I’m pretty dang sure he just inhaled my hair. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not here.”

He pulls back enough to study my face. If he stuck a piece of paper between our mouths, our mingling breaths would surely turn it to wet mush in seconds.

“Well, Madison. You’ve got me here, and I’m apparently woefully unprepared. What are you going to do with me?”

Dear God, if I make a fool out of myself right now, please don’t let me remember this tomorrow.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I lift up onto my tiptoes and seal my lips over his. My eyes are wide open—the shock of my actions registering too late, and my surprise is reflected in his matching expression. One second. Two. Three. Then his mouth curves into a smile against mine, and my lashes flutter closed in relief when his arm bands around my waist and hauls me to him.

Our bodies press together from my breasts to my knees, and my entire being melts as I sag into him.

His lips are so dang soft and gentle but firm as he angles his mouth over mine, deepening the kiss, and yup, I open to him with a low moan, the sound seeming to urge him on.

“Braxton,” I gasp, when he fists my hair. Holy Hades. It’s not even painful, but the illusion of how he could control my body has my stomach doing somersaults and my thighs clenching.

He nips my neck, just once, before resting his forehead against mine. “Just a taste,” he whispers. “You had fun tonight.” He sighs. “A lot of fun. And as much as I’d love to continue with this kind of fun…”

My mouth drops open when I register his hardened length pressing into my belly. That’s not a cock, that’s a weapon of mass destruction, and I’m ready to be its target.

“Oh, God,” I groan, my head tipping back. He kisses my chin, then pulls his body away from mine.

“As much as it’s killing me, tonight is not our night.”

“Does that mean we’ll have a night?” I snap my mouth shut. “I didn’t mean that. I…”

He takes my hand in his. “I hope you did, actually. But we’ll talk about it another time. What’s our plan here, sunshine?”

Embarrassment is a real drain on liquid courage because suddenly, I have no idea what to do.

“Madison,” he says gently.

“Um. Just a sec,” I say, then slip out from under his arms, march over to MJ’s truck, then bang on the window. Thankfully, they’re too busy to have noticed what was happening on the other side of the parking lot. Hopefully.

The two teens jump apart, and Marty Jr. rolls down the window. “Miss Madi? What⁠—”

I hold up a hand to stop him. “I know your mama thinks you’re at the youth group campout right now.”

The kid’s face pales, and the tiniest fissure of guilt sneaks up my spine.

“I won’t tell if you head back there with no stops.”

“Yes, okay. Of course, Miss Madi.” His voice cracks, and that guilt kicks me in the ribs. Haven’t we all snuck out of youth group at one point or another?

“One more thing,” I say before I turn around. “Can I borrow your kit?”

His brows raise, then he squints, trying to make out who is leaning against Pops’ old truck.

“Sure thing, Miss Madi. Are you sure you’re okay up here?”

This is what I love about small towns. Even scrawny little sixteen-year-olds watch your back.

“I’m fine. Mr. Braxton’s a city boy. He’s never seen our Georgia moonlight before.”

Marty Jr. hands me the bag from the back seat of his truck.

“Thanks, MJ. I’ll get this back to you tomorrow.”

He nods, spares one more questioning glance Braxton’s way, then starts his truck. I don’t move until his taillights have long faded.

“Is scaring away teenagers one of your many talents?” Braxton asks. He hasn’t moved from where he’s leaning against his truck, but his voice carries to me on the breeze.

“You have no idea what kind of talents I possess, Mr. Mitchell.”

He winces at the same time a sound rumbles out of his mouth that has the effect of a magical incantation because my body floats to him on its waves.

When I reach him, he takes the bag from my hand, opens it, removes the blanket, and holds it in the air. “Your move, Madison. Show me what I’ve been missing.”

I press my lips together almost as tightly as my thighs. Stand down, vagina, he means the stars. He means the stars!