A Dollar Tip For The Ruthless Billionaire

"Where is she? Check the corridor! She couldn't have gotten far!"

The heavy oak door of Suite 3202 slammed back on its hinges behind her. Alicia Gray didn't waste a glance over her shoulder. She slipped past the outer archway, her pulse hammering against her ribs, her breath catching on the cold air of the high terrace.

Behind her in 3202, the trap was already snapping shut. Her stepmother Cordelia and her fiancé Victor had staged tonight's charity gala down to the last toast-including the private vintage poured specifically for her. One sip was all she had taken before the heavy, unnatural heat coiled in her chest, blurring the edges of her vision. They hadn't planned on her walking out to an engagement party tomorrow; they had planned on finding her ruined in an open hotel suite tonight.

Her burgundy velvet gown was torn at the hem, snagged on the doorframe as she broke free. The winter wind whipping off the Hudson bit through the velvet, shock-freezing her bare calves and cutting through the fever in her blood. She needed an exit-and the hall was crawling with her family's men.

Four feet away, divided by an exterior service ledge, sat the terrace of Suite 3201. Its sliding door stood ajar, spilling a thin thread of amber light onto the frosted stone.

Behind her, footsteps pounded onto the terrace.

"There! She's-wait, that's Mr. Stafford's suite next door!"

Alicia didn't hesitate. She kicked off her broken heels, vaulted the frosted railing with ruthless precision, and hit the maintenance ledge barefoot. The raw cold burned the soles of her feet, anchoring her scattered focus. Two quick strides across the steel beam, a low lunging pivot, and she cleared the neighboring divider, driving her shoulder into the unlocked sliding door of 3201.

She tumbled across the threshold, taking a low marble side table down with her. A crystal coaster spun across the carpet and came to rest against a pair of bare male feet.

The room smelled of cedarwood, cold cigar smoke, and expensive body wash. Alicia dragged air into her burning lungs, lifting her chin from the wool carpet.

"Who let you in here?"

The voice came from behind the wet bar-low, resonant, and entirely unhurried. Through the shadowed city glow, she made out the silhouette of a tall man in a dark charcoal bathrobe, damp hair combed back, a rocks glass held loosely in his hand. Jeremie Stafford.

He set the glass down with a soft click of ice on stone.

"Get out. Before I have building security carry you down."

Alicia tried to push herself up, but her knees trembled beneath her. The heat in her blood surged again, gnawing through the last thin barrier of her control. Her gaze tracked the clean line of his shoulders, and her mouth curved into a desperate, feral smile.

"Sorry, sir," she rasped, her voice thick and unfamiliar. "I need an alibi."

She didn't retreat toward the terrace. She lunged forward, throwing her weight into his chest. The cool linen of his open robe pressed against her burning skin like an oasis.

Jeremie went rigid. His fingers clamped around her wrist with the force of an iron vise.

"Let go. Don't test me."

Alicia hooked her free arm around the back of his neck, her feverish skin brushing the warm pulse beneath his jaw.

"Help me hide," she breathed against his lips, "or I'll give you a night you'll never forget."

His throat shifted. He moved to throw her off, but she rose on her toes first, dragging his mouth down to hers.

Outside, the suite's doorbell buzzed in frantic, sharp bursts, followed by frantic knocks against the mahogany door.

"Mr. Stafford! There's been an incident next door-we need to verify your safety!"

The doorbell chimed a third time-urgent, shrill. The hotel manager's voice seeped through the door.

"Mr. Stafford, is everything all right in there? The guests in 3202 reported an intruder-"

Jeremie's eyes narrowed. He took her by the back of the neck and peeled her off his chest, the way a man defuses a live bomb.

Her breath came out in scalding puffs. Driven by nothing but the unnatural heat running through her veins, she leaned right back in and pressed open-mouthed kisses to the side of his throat.

Something bloodthirsty and unhinged moved behind his eyes. Without looking away from her, he reached back and slammed his palm onto the wall intercom.

"I'm resting," he said, his voice perfectly flat. "If anyone touches that bell again, they're off this property by morning."

Outside, dead silence. Only the muffled thud of security boots on the hallway carpet. Nobody dared knock again. Nobody dared leave.

He released the button. When he looked down at her, the last of his restraint was gone. He slammed his rocks glass onto the bar hard enough to crack the base, hooked an arm around her waist, and kicked the master bedroom door open. It swung shut behind them, not quite catching.

"You asked for this," he growled, and bit her bottom lip.

They stumbled into the dark and crashed onto the gray velvet bed. Tearing fabric and ragged breathing swallowed the hum of traffic thirty-two floors down. Caught in the undertow, Alicia arched her back, her nails raking bleeding lines down the tight muscle of his shoulders-until a thin white line of dawn found the gap in the blackout curtains.

Alicia's eyes snapped open.

A deep ache spread through her limbs and dragged her fully awake in half a second. She turned her head on the pillow. He lay with his back to her, a dozen angry red claw marks across his spine, the deepest one over his shoulder blade still tacky with dried blood.

The facts stacked up fast. Her stepmother and her fiancé had tried to set her up. Her clutch was still in 3202-no phone, no cash, no ID. Her engagement party was tomorrow. If she was photographed leaving this floor, she'd walk into it as the scandal instead of the bride. And no one could ever be allowed proof that the eldest daughter of Gray's first marriage had spent the night in Jeremie Stafford's bed.

She lifted a corner of the dark charcoal duvet, slipping out from underneath and leaving the heavy velvet bunched over the center of the bed. Between the thick blackout curtains and the charcoal-gray sheets, the vast mattress lay entirely in shadow. Her bare soles touched cold carpet-and the mattress dipped behind her.

A big, calloused hand shot out and locked around her wrist.

"Done using me already?" His voice, low and scraped raw by sleep, cut the quiet in half.

Her breath caught. Before her next breath, she'd wiped the panic off her face and let her shoulders sag into a frightened tremble. She turned slowly under his grip, letting her tangled dark curls fall forward to hide half her face.

"Sir, last night was an accident we both walked into," she whispered, a weak, empty smile on her lips. "Why take it so seriously?"

He propped himself on one elbow. His gaze dragged over the marks scattered along her collarbone.

"An accident?" His mouth curved, and there was nothing warm in it. "No woman in New York has ever played me and walked out intact."

Alicia leaned in and rested her forehead against his shoulder, all helpless surrender. "Then what do you want? Should I stay and make you breakfast?"

At the soft touch, his breathing hitched. His grip on her wrist loosened a fraction.

Under her lowered lashes, her eyes glinted. Her free hand slid across the nightstand, fingertips brushing the cold edge of his phone and the keycard pinned beneath it. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, her voice going thin and fragile.

"Can I at least wash up first?"

Jeremie let out a low scoff. Something pleased and proprietary flickered across his face-the look of a man who thought he was still holding the leash. His hand opened. Alicia stood on shaky legs, one palm braced on the bedpost, her eyes already locked on the custom black dress shirt he had dropped in the foyer before his shower-just visible through the gap.

The second she rounded the corner toward the bathroom, Alicia dropped the act. She lunged, scooped the black silk shirt off the foyer floor, and shoved her arms into the sleeves.

Her fingers flew down the front. The wide hem hung at mid-thigh.

On the bed, Jeremie heard the rustle of silk. His gaze sharpened. "What are you doing?"

She didn't answer. She spun to the nightstand and swept up his phone and the keycard in one motion. The phone was his only private line out. The keycard was her only way out.

Her left hand dipped into the lining of the gown puddled on the floor and found the split pocket. Her fingers closed on something cold that still held her body heat-a one-dollar coin, change from a hot dog cart outside the gala last night. It was every cent she had left.

Jeremie threw off the duvet and came off the bed-tall, naked, radiating something lethal.

"Put those down." He came toward the foyer like a big cat off a ledge, in no hurry at all. "You're not walking out that door."

Alicia's mouth curved. She flicked her wrist and tossed the coin into the air.

It rang off the marble at his bare feet and spun itself flat.

"Service last night was decent. Your build barely passed." Her voice was flat, the way you'd review a bad takeout order. "Keep the change."

Jeremie looked down at the coin glinting against the dark stone. His jaw bunched until the muscle stood out. He moved a hundred billion dollars of other people's money for a living. No one had ever insulted him like this and lived to brag about it.

"You've got a death wish, woman." He lunged, hand going for her throat.

She was already moving-sidestepped the hand, slapped the keycard against the sensor. Both locks clicked back. She slipped through the gap, then reached back into the narrowing crack and ripped the power card out of the wall slot.

The door swung shut behind her. The lock threw itself home, and every light in the suite went out.

Inside, Jeremie slapped the wall switch. Nothing. The dark closed over him. He drove his fist into the armored door and felt the whole wall take it.

In the hallway she ripped the black trench coat off the suite's exterior valet hook-his, hung there on his way in-and dragged it on. Then she ran, barefoot, down the carpet toward the fire stairs. He wouldn't chase her thirty floors in a bathrobe; without his phone he'd have to hunt for a landline first. That was thirty seconds she was buying.

In the black bedroom, Jeremie felt his way to the bedside landline and punched the direct line.

"Colin. Seal the building. Now."

"Give me a reason for the floor managers, Mr. Stafford." Colin Sullivan-his chief of staff-didn't waste a syllable.

"A stray cat stole my clothes and my phone." Jeremie bit the words off one at a time. "Nothing leaves this hotel. Not a fly."

"Understood. I'll seal the exits on a security protocol and handle building operations myself."

He killed the line, crouched, and picked the coin off the marble. His knuckles went white around it. "Whoever you are-I'll take New York apart to find you."

Twenty floors down, Alicia pushed through the fire door onto twelve and slipped into a housekeeping linen closet. She scraped her hair back into a high ponytail, watching her own amber eyes in the small wall mirror. They were perfectly calm.

Working fast in the narrow space, she turned the trench coat inside out so the gray plaid lining faced the world-it hung unevenly, seams reversed, looking like a cheap knockoff instead of bespoke luxury. She snagged a hotel maintenance cap off a shelf, tucked every strand of hair under the brim, and pushed her bare feet into a pair of spare slippers from the cart.

When the freight elevator chimed in the service hall, she walked in with her chin down, already blending into the morning shift.