Page 102 of Forking the Billionaire

“That bad?” Esme gave me a confused look.

I was not supposed to be hyperventilating. I was supposed to be commenting on her pajamas.

“You’d look hot in a cardboard box,” I told her, trying to ignore the panic rising in my chest.

She didn’t look pacified. If anything, she looked more concerned. She could see my unease. She knew something was wrong.

I smiled at her, walked over, and tipped her chin up. I kissed the wrinkles of concern on her forehead, then the tip of her nose.

“Want to join me in the shower?” she asked. “You might as well spend the night, but you’re not allowed to climb into my sheets while you’re actually dirty.”

She was adorable and sexy. I loved so many things about her, and if she’d asked five minutes ago if I’d wanted to shower with her and spend the night, I would have been in. No reservations.

But that’s before I’d seen her dress, before the implications punched all the air out of my lungs.

Esme had told me she’d slept with someone back in Epiphany, only one time, and they’d used protection. Then she’d left the country.

The timing lined up. It was impossible for someone else to have this exact dress.

The woman with marigold hair had grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the coat closet. She’d groped me, and I’d groped her back.

I hadn’t seen her face, hidden behind her reflective goggles, but that didn’t stop me from kissing her back when she’d kissed me. It didn’t stop me from fucking her hard in the dark against the closet door.

It had meant nothing to me beyond a few pleasant dreams and a few idle thoughts about my alien Cinderella leaving behind a piece of crêpe paper instead of a glass slipper. She’d meant nothing to me.

But she wasn’t a nameless stranger to me anymore.

She’d been Esme.

Back then it had been years since we’d seen each other. We hardly spoke to each other that night, and when we had, our voices were muffled by our headpieces.

Still, how had I not known?

I needed time to process.

She was still staring at me with her big doe eyes, waiting for an answer to her invitation to shower together.

“I can’t, Bramble,” I said, my voice rough.

“Allergic to water all of a sudden?”

“I really am tired,” I lied. “And with the wedding tomorrow, there’ll be questions if Gabriel comes to find me and I’m not sleeping in my room.”

“Right,” she said, her smile faltering. “Sure.”

I gave her one more kiss, this one right on the lips. She didn’t kiss me back. There was no softness, no openness, no light fun.

We were both shutting down. It was all my fault—the tension between us now, and everything about her current situation was because of me.

Regret mingled with the panic surging through my veins. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her.

“Good night, Jasper,” she said, with a look of confusion that made my chest ache.

“Good night, Esme.”

With that, I left.

The costume didn’t only mean that Esme and I had sex before I traveled to Calypso Caribella. It meant the one time she let herself be wild, I’d been the one to seek her out. In her costume, she’d been the alien to my astronaut.

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