Page 59 of How to Bang a Billionaire

“What…um…what about the end date?” Okay, I wussed it.

“I would suggest six months. You’ll probably have something else to do at that point anyway.”

He probably meant a job.

Well, I could hope.

It’d be nearly Christmas by then, and it seemed like forever and yet, somehow, no time at all. I couldn’t even imagine what it might be like or how I’d feel afterward. For a moment, or a lot of moments, I couldn’t tell; I just sat there, horny and confused and hopeful and anxious, torn between feeling wanted and feeling handled.

But, seriously, what was I going to say? No, I won’t live in your house for free and be your logistically unequal prenegotiated sex partner. No, I’d rather have nothing than six months with you on your terms. No, I don’t want to be yours.

He was very still beside me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m in.”

It was probably a really stupid idea.

But then he smiled at me and for this brief, uninhibited second, he looked so happy that I was sure I’d done the right thing.

That everything was worth it for the power to give Caspian Hart just a little bit of joy.

Chapter 15

I wasn’t quite sure what being the not-quite-live-in lover of a kinky billionaire was supposed to be like. But my imaginings turned out to be way off.

The apartment Caspian had nonchalantly offered me was part of this crazy glass and steel-bladed monolith called One Hyde Park. He sent a car to pick me up from Oxford, which was, y’know, considerate. Except somehow I’d expected him to be there when I arrived, so we could fall on each other in a mutual frenzy of desperate passion and have sex everywhere, in all the ways—up against the wall, knocking stuff off tables, even on the stairs like in the remake of the Thomas Crown Affair. I mean, for example.

But it was the middle of the day and Caspian was obviously at work and waiting for me instead was— Oh no. The blond guy from Caspian’s office. The one who’d had to call security on me.

He was even more intimidatingly attractive up close: all lips and cheekbones and symmetry, the sort of face you’d expect to see on a billboard for a product that would cost the earth and basically make no difference to your overall attractiveness.

“You must be Arden.” He shook my hand before I had a chance to make sure it wasn’t sweaty and awful. “Justin Bellerose. I work for Caspian Hart.”

“Um. Yes. I remember you.”

“Likewise.”

I gave a horrified bleat. “You sure you haven’t muddled me up with someone else who turned up without an appointment and called your boss an arsehole?”

He didn’t laugh. Didn’t even look a teensy bit amused. This was going super well. “Caspian asked me to help you settle in. And you’ll need a retinal scan.”

“What? Why?”

“Security.”

It felt a lot like being arrested—well, the way being arrested looked in the movies. I was scanned, coded, fingerprinted, visually identified, practically strip searched, and eventually permitted into the lift with Bellerose, who had waited with this terrible patience through the whole extensive procedure.

He reminded me a little bit of Caspian. Not that they were actually all that similar, unless you counted the fact that they were both scary hot, but I could imagine them having devastatingly efficient conversations together. Even more disconcerting was the realization that Bellerose couldn’t have been much older than me, and he was already executive assistant to one of the richest, most powerful men in the UK.

Oh God. I was doomed.

“This way, please.”

I trailed after him into the apartment and it was…I mean, holy fuck, it looked like a picture in a magazine. Beautiful in this totally unreal way. Everything was marble and granite and silk and…designed. In these somehow extravagantly muted colors, taupe and cream and pearl gray. I was lowering the value of the place just by being there.

“Guest bedroom,” murmured Bellerose, pointing languidly, “and bathroom. Guest cloakroom. Master bedroom.”

So much…gleaminess. And the sense of space. I think they called it lateral living or something. For people too rich for, like, rooms.

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