Page 99 of How to Bang a Billionaire

I laid my head on the table. With an exaggerated gentleness meant to combat the desire to bash my stupid brains out.

Fuck. Fuck everything. And most of all fuck me. For being an idiot. As usual. What was I thinking? Sushi. Nakedness. Kinky accessories. Had I really let myself believe that he was going to turn up and gleefully ravish me? That, based on a handful of words, he would tear down all his walls, abandon everything that held him back, and just offer up his heart for me to cherish?

Of course he wouldn’t.

Not when it was infinitely easier to make a fool of me instead.

I sighed and sat up again, accidentally knocking Milieu onto the floor. Bugger.

Despite my best efforts, picking it up with my toes just wasn’t happening—it made me feel slightly bitter about all those movies where people escaped from jail cells or handcuffs or whatever by manipulating keys around with their feet.

Nothing for it but to slither out of my chair, get on my knees, and use my teeth. Which was embarrassing in a totally not into this way. Thank God nobody could see me. Although, if past history was anything to go by, this was exactly the moment Caspian would turn up.

But no.

Not even being facedown, arse up, and completely naked was enough to summon him tonight.

And that was when I saw him.

In photographic form. Staring at me from the “Beau Monde” section of Milieu: that stilled tiger look of his, elegant, powerful, and exquisitely dangerous, captured only for a moment.

And he was with someone. An unsullied angel of a man, a little taller and a little older than Caspian, copper-blond and heart-crushingly handsome.

Impossible to ignore the way they stood together. An easy familiarity of bodies. Not the awkward affection of two male friends—the “I’m not gay” elbow nudge or shoulder pat—but the way you moved when you already knew how to fit. When intimacy had sanded away all the rough edges of touching.

The picture was one of several comprising a double spread on the Royal Brampton & Harefield Hospital’s fund-raiser.

The caption read: Caspian Hart and Nathaniel Priest.

That was all.

Five words to make me dust.

I suddenly really very urgently wanted to be not naked and not tied up. My whole body felt weird, like a spider had crawled on me and then scuttled away into some dark corner, leaving me violated and twitchy. I pulled frantically at the tie, sweat gathering, sharp-edged somehow, under my arms and at the back of my neck.

I’d once got stuck on a balcony, halfway up a building, wearing only a towel because of a complicated series of misadventures involving a one-night stand, an ill-timed shower, a lecture someone else was late for, and a locked door. It had bagged me a mention in Oxford’s longest running gossip column—how was that for classy—and it had been funny. Even to me. I mean, I wasn’t so fragile in the self-esteem department I couldn’t be ridiculous.

But this.

This was just embarrassing and awful and…and—

And I was going to be sick.

I ran for the kitchen, since it was closest, and spluttered into the sink. But there was nothing to bring up. Just a burn at the back of my throat and in my eyes. Unshed tears and unrelieved nausea and the sound of my own sobbing breaths echoing against too much fucking marble.

When I was calm…calmer…I reviewed the situation.

Tried to think what MacGyver might do had he taken off all his clothes and tied himself up in a strange apartment with no hope of rescue.

And came up blank.

MacGyver would never have got himself into this mess in the first place. Talk about being your own worst enemy.

In the end, I sidled up to the knife block—which was probably hand-carved sapient pearwood or something—and very, very carefully manipulated a knife from it with my fingertips. Then I lowered myself equally carefully to the floor, trying to put as much distance between my body parts and the path of the blade as possible. Because dropping a knife that looked more like a katana on my foot or decapitating my own genitals with it would have been the cherry on my shit sundae of an evening.

Despite being what A&E visits were made of, it was surprisingly easy to slice through a tie with a carving knife. I got the edge of the blade under the fabric—pointing away from my big, long, blood-filled artery—and applied what pressure I could.

And then I was free.

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