Page 65 of How to Bang a Billionaire

He half turned. He looked tired—and not in the fun shagged out way—and bleak. “You don’t have to do any of that.”

“The sex? You don’t want to sleep with me anymore?” I just about managed to keep my voice seminormal. But inside I was horrified. How had I managed to put him off already?

“No, of course I do. I meant…the rest of it. The other things you said.”

For a split second, I had no clue what he was talking about. And then I remembered my lust-dazed litany of filthy offerings, which were suddenly way too much and super embarrassing.

His hand curled around my ankle. “You’re everything I want. Just as you are.”

It should have been a lovely thing to hear. I mean, it was probably the closest he’d ever got to a romantic sentiment and, if this was a romcom, we’d be about fifteen minutes from kissing in the rain while the credits rolled. But it also felt kind of disconnected from, well, everything. And from me. The boy who’d just enthusiastically incited the pounding of a lifetime. It wouldn’t even have crossed my mind that what we’d just done could be incompatible with liking Arden St. Ives: the Whole Package. Just the opposite, in fact. So now I was all nervous again that he didn’t want me.

I was about to say something but then his fingers brushed over my hip. “Oh God, what did I do?”

His touch woke a warm ache and I glanced down to discover bruises blossoming on my skin where he’d held in place. They didn’t really hurt but, holy hell, did they make me look well used. I loved them.

“And your wrists too,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I grinned sleepily at him. “They’ll give me something to remember you by while you’re away doing your billionaire things.”

“I’d rather you didn’t remember me hurting you.”

I matched my fingertips to the marks he’d left. “You know I’m okay with a little pain in a good cause. Especially when the cause is you. I think it’s hot…actually. Knowing you lost control because of me.”

“That’s not a side of myself I’m proud of.”

“Oh, Caspian.” I sat up and threw my arms around him—not an entirely successful maneuver because he went all tense and stiff and elbowy, so it was a little bit like hugging a piece of modern art. “Well, it’s a side of you I’m really into. But even if it wasn’t, I’d tell you what you just told me.”

“I just told you lots of things.” He sounded wary. “Which did you mean?”

“That you’re everything I want. Just as you are.”

He pulled out of my clumsy embrace and turned. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he just leaned in, his brow resting for a moment against mine. It was a chaste and unexpectedly tender gesture. His eyes closed, the lashes silky soft and vulnerable against his cheeks. “I’m never quite prepared for how sweet you are.”

“Sweet?” I repeated, somewhat disappointed. “I don’t suppose you mean sexy and dangerous, like a homme fatale?”

“That too.” Except he was smiling, which rather diminished the plausibility of his assurances.

Not that I minded. Not at all. I wanted to put my lips against his, to feel the shape of his smile beneath my mouth, and tease it gently open into a kiss.

I went to suit the action to the thought, as Conan Doyle would put have it, but for some reason that made Caspian draw back. His thumb moved idly over the smudges that ringed my wrist. “You don’t deserve this, Arden.”

I’d never been a big fan of deserving. It always seemed like something other people decided for you. “What about what I want?” I asked. “Don’t I deserve that?”

I thought it was a winning argument, but Caspian only glanced at his ridiculously complicated, double-faced watch. “Arden, I have to go.”

Not what I’d expected. Even though he’d told me he didn’t have much time. “Right now? Like that?”

“Well”—he reached self-consciously for the open collar of his shirt—“I’ll change first.”

I swallowed. And tried not say anything too stupid. How had I ever convinced myself I was sophisticated enough for this? It was a peril-strewn no-man’s-land between casual fuck and boyfriend, and I had no idea what the etiquette was. What it was safe to want and to ask for. What I was supposed to do. What he expected me to give him or take in return. Basically, which relationship fork to use.

“You really can’t stay longer?” I asked. And, wow, I sounded pathetic. No wonder he wanted to run.

“I’m afraid I have to be in Tokyo tomorrow.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “But thank you.”

The idea of lying there, naked and fucked and watching him leave, was pretty bloody awful. So I peeled myself off the bed and fled into the shower, drowning his footsteps and the click of the door in a torrent of water.

Chapter 17

---