Shopping for a Billionaire's Honeymoon

By Julia Kent

He is addicted to his phone and his new role as CEO. I’m addicted to getting some on my own honeymoon.

One of these things is not like the other.

I am pretty sure a serial killer’s lair is the only place in the world where I could stash my new husband so he can’t manage the acquisition of our new company.

And that seems a little drastic.

But only a little…

All I want is one week alone with him. Hours in bed, legs tangled together in ecstasy, room service and long walks on the beach in Hawaii.

Not vying for his kisses around a Bluetooth microphone. The Borg aren’t sexy in real life.

So I’m taking matters into my own hands and hitting “reboot” on our honeymoon.

We’re going to a place so remote that no one can find us.

Not even my mother.

Shopping for a Billionaire’s Honeymoon is now a full-length book of 150+ pages, with both Shannon and Declan’s points of view. Originally published with only Shannon’s viewpoint, this expanded edition is a result of reader feedback. People wanted to know what Declan was up to – so here you go. This book is meant to be read after Shopping for a Billionaire’s Wife and/or Shopping for a CEO’s Fiancée, but if you read it out of order (or even as a standalone), that’s fine. Shannon and Declan forgive you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prosaic Press
• Release date: Dec 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781937544980

Julia Kent

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julia Kent writes romantic comedy with an edge. Since 2013, she has sold more than 2 million books, with 4 New York Times bestsellers and more than 21 appearances on the USA Today bestseller list. Her books have been translated into French, Italian, and German, with more titles releasing in the future. From billionaires to BBWs to new adult rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every contemporary romance she writes. Unlike Shannon from Shopping for a Billionaire, she did not meet her husband after dropping her phone in a men’s room toilet (and he isn’t a billionaire in a rom com). She lives in New England with her husband and children in a household where everyone but Julia lacks the gene to change empty toilet paper rolls.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Shannon

Let’s do an inventory of this fine day. My day-after-I-got-married day. In Vegas.

After fleeing my Momzilla mother.

Today is supposed be Day One of my honeymoon after marrying the billionaire of my dreams.

(Let’s not count the night before).

Woke up to the lovely sight of my husband’s tousled dark hair sliding down my torso so he could feast on me for breakfast.

Had actual breakfast in bed after room service delivered mixed berries, cream, bacon, and maple-soaked carrot cake french toast, and the best damn coffee on the planet from the coffee chain I now own.

Made love with my delightful husband in the giant jetted bathtub in our suite. Turns out I’m as bendy as a Cirque du Soleil performer when I need to be. Maybe Mom’s insistence that I attend all those yoga classes she teaches has a silver lining after all.

Dressed and prepared to hop the corporate jet for Hawaii, kisses interspersed between readying ourselves for the trip. Undressed twice. Dressed twice. Declan insisted I not wear panties for the plane trip.

But I’m already a member of the Mile High Club, I’d protested.

"Not as a wife."

He had a point.

Panties abandoned.

Found his brother, Andrew, with my best friend, Amanda, my former colleague, Josh, and a chauffeur all married to each other.

Notice something a little different about that last one?

Yeah. Me too.

Day One of my honeymoon had promise, but now? Now it’s a little too real.

We’re on the plane, settling into our seats, and I’m doing my best not to think about my poor best friend and her chaotic mess back at the Anterdec resort where Declan and I just spent nearly a week trying to figure out our entire life.

Which we did, successfully, to my utter surprise. After fleeing our wedding in a helicopter and lying to my Momzilla mother, we managed to get to Las Vegas, ensconced in a resort on the Vegas Strip that Declan had designed himself. By the time my crazy family caught up to us, we’d steeled ourselves for the inevitable fallout.

And got so much more than we expected, in more ways than one. We’re married now. Husband and wife.

That’s really all that matters.

That, and honeymoon sex.

Lots and lots and lots of honeymoon sex. It’s my wifely right to walk funny for the next few days.

And his husbandly duty to make it so.

With dozens of loose ends waving in the breeze like a batch of Tibetan flags in a typhoon, we’re escaping again, leaving Dec’s brother and my best friend married to who knows whom, Amanda covered in orange Cheeto dust in places where you just don’t insert snack products, and a fainting goat wandering the resort.

Poor Declan got into a wrestling match with his naked brother. Their father, James, grabbed a spray bottle of water and stole my own maneuver. For the second time in a week, we’re fleeing close family.

What a colossal mess.

Worst of all? I am being ignored by my husband.

Ignored.

On my own honeymoon.

But that’s okay, because it’s temporary. The man has to do his job at Anterdec while finishing the acquisition of the new chain of coffee shops he just bought for me as a wedding present. I get it. I do.

If this goes on much longer, I’m turning all Fatal Attraction on him.

I will not be ignored.

Declan’s talking a mile a minute into his Bluetooth earpiece. Freshly shaved, his skin is smooth, mouth tight with tension. His green eyes glitter and dart, filled with intense intelligence as he thinks and strategizes, makes snap decisions, and gives his assistant, Grace, a laundry list of action items.

He looks like Christian Grey joined The Borg. Brows down, he’s talking about financing and leverage and acquisitions in a language that starts to sound like Russian after a while. It’s English, but business-speak is so full of jargon it might as well be its own language. I tune out.

The pilot cuts in to tell us we’re about to take off. I fasten my seat belt. Declan’s pacing, turned in profile, and I shoo him over to sit down. He’ll end the call shortly, and we’ll turn to each other for a sweet kiss, then a hotter one, and finally we’ll stagger into the plane’s bedroom, have legs tangled in the sheets, my fingers spidering through his hair, starting our new life together, with a week alone in each other’s arms at a secluded Hawaiian resort before heading off to Japan.

Life is finally in order.

Perfect.

Serene.

No matter how many times I travel by corporate jet, it never gets old. You feel like you’re in a very nice, extremely elevated Manhattan hotel suite, only instead of the New York skyline, your view is nothing but clouds and sky. The decor is very chic, all cremes and beiges, and each seat is a thick, comfortable recliner covered in leather that might as well be body butter. There are three bathrooms (one just for staff), one enormous bedroom with a bed that screams out my name in the same pulse as my clit right now, a full gourmet kitchen, and enough room for me to be comfortable while my husband ignores me.

Ignores.

I have no right to complain.

When did I ever need a right?

No. The terms don’t work. I need to cash out the stocks I’ve had in the reserve.... Declan’s financial talk bores me to tears. When you marry someone, you accept them for who they are, for all the different slices of self that make up the beautiful – if sometimes infuriating – whole. He changes when he’s deep in the money weeds, going cold and analytical. Declan is still Declan. From the outside, the man is the same, but the way he projects himself changes. Business transports him to a plane of consciousness where his libido is in the backseat.

And not like on a Saturday night after a show at the Boston Opera House, headed home but stuck in traffic, where we have wild, raunchy limo sex while someone else drives.

I want him hot and untamed, in bed and raw, laser-focused on me. Is that selfish? Then call me selfish. My mother stole the show at my wedding. His brother just sucked all the attention out of our departure.

I’ll be damned if business upstages me on my honeymoon.

Six-hour flight. Jet with a bedroom. I can wait a half hour, I guess.

That Mile High Club Wife badge is worth it.

Right?

Dubai? Impossible, Declan drones on, his face filled with an irked sense of disbelief as he turns away from me. Business is so boring.

I, on the other hand, am not. He doesn’t know it yet, but I might not be wearing panties – per his orders. I have a secret weapon.

Garters.

Red garters.

Red garters are like kryptonite when it comes to weakening Declan’s business zone. The haze of mergers and loans, of financial projections and market testing gets cut through damn quick with a little dyed lace, some bendy pieces of elastic, and nothing on my body between them.

I left my corset at home, damn it. If I’d remembered it, we’d be in the airplane’s bedroom by now, calls be damned. Declan’s response to my red corset is downright Pavlovian. He’s as predictable when I wear it as my mother is when the word grandchild is uttered within a four-mile radius.

Both kinda drool, too. Huh.

Declan and I sniped the better jet. Declan knows now that his Anterdec corporate privileges are in jeopardy. No one’s said anything specific, but Grace has warned him that, knowing his father and brother, his days of using the company planes, limos, and credit cards for expenses are limited.

Knowing that, then, and knowing his new wife is so horny that when she gets naked he’ll find green skin, why is he talking about interest rates and Department of Health sanitation policies and expanding leverage?

The only leverage he should be thinking about is how to use his hand as a lever to move me around on a mattress.

Hot and bothered, aroused and wet, I use the only ammunition I have.

The Glare of Death.

It doesn’t work. I wish my cat Chuckles were here. He’s better at it.

Hyped up on the Grind It Fresh! lattes Declan had waiting for us on the plane, I’m a ticking time bomb. Frustration and want are building faster than caffeine in my bloodstream. You think guys can have sex brain 100% of the time?

Try being a newlywed wife of a hot billionaire.

If researchers dissected my brain right now, they’d find a clitoris.

A caffeinated clitoris.

Pointed straight at—

Okay. Bye.

He’s done! My turn! The Hallelujah Chorus starts to play.

Between my legs.

I know what you’re thinking. We just had tons of sex all morning. More sex than most married couples have in a month, if you believe popular culture news articles. How could I want more?

Look at my husband.

Really look at him.

He’s tall and muscular, with the kind of body that manages to look extraordinary when naked, and yet even better in a suit. Don’t make me choose one over the other. If it were physically possible, I’d have him wear one of his bespoke cashmere suits and be naked simultaneously. Like Schrödinger’s cat in the box, I want quantum physics to bend to my will and make both possible.

At the same time.

That dark, thick hair, his eyebrows strong, framing eyes the color of the hills of Ireland. Broad cheekbones, carved by God, with an intelligence in his expressions that makes it clear that even when we’re old and our bodies have faded to bone and love-worn wrinkles, we will have the pleasure of talking and joking, of being enraptured with the divine interplay of the mind.

Which is great and all, but let’s talk about how smoking hot his bod is now.

How can a man arouse me until I’m buzzing out of my own skin, wet and warm and full of instinct that makes me need his fresh skin? But more important – how did I get so lucky as to marry a man who can do this to me?

Declan sucks down his latte in one long ribbon of throat grace, his mouth muscles moving in perfect harmony to execute the consumption. I want that mouth on me. That tongue needs to do curls and swirls and double axels and Biellmann spins on me. That caffeine could be transmitted from his bodily fluids to mine with the right maneuver.

One I’m prepared to initiate ten seconds ago.

And then—wait. Wait. Hold on here. He’s not getting naked.

He is dialing.

What are you doing? I ask in Dog Whistle, my involuntary language.

He holds up one finger.

No. One finger won’t do.

I need him to use both hands.

And mouth. And tongue. And one other important appendage. Plus all those muscles, and the sweet tug of his fingers in my hair, and --

Just another call.

No. I pull up my skirt. That’s it. Time to launch the nuclear sequence. Thighs engaged.

He gives me an appreciative look but continues dialing.

Excuse me? he says, clearing his throat, but the phone rings in the muted distance behind his ear.

I said—

I yank my skirt up, the plane tilting slightly, making me fumble so that the entire section of cloth flies up and covers my face, leaving me blind. I scramble to pull the cloth down, only to find two horrifying realities.

The flight attendant chose that exact moment to come out

Reviews for Shopping for a Billionaire's Honeymoon

[jamiem12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a true romantic comedy and guys you hot to read this book to see what happens on the honeymoon