Page 1 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

Prologue

Fifteen years, Arthur. And sometimes I still can’t quite believe you’re dead. Your son is so like you in some ways—passionate, obstinate, ambitious—and in others not at all. He has such dark needs. A twist of sexual cruelty as integral to his nature as gold through marble. You would not have understood him. Not the way I do. To you I was nothing but an experiment, an impulse of fondness and alcohol, cast aside for that doe-eyed whore you married, relegated to the ranks of mere friend. But Caspian is mine in ways you could never be. We made him together. Your final gift to me. My reward for half a lifetime of unregarded love.

I did not plan what happened between us. But he came to me, the rage and grief in him an irresistible reflection of my own. He thought he wanted to punish you, but all he truly needed was to mourn. I, however, had needs too. I will admit that manipulating your son into bed is hardly an accomplishment worthy of my abilities. Nor any true testament to my taste. But what are rules to men like us? Petty middle-class limitations placed upon those with the capacity for greatness. And, Arthur, he has your eyes. Blue as forever.

He was so enticing. So young and restless and full of pain. It was not like loving you at all. It was far superior. He was everything you could have been, were you only less hidebound, less conventional. Less excruciatingly kind. And what are you now? Nothing but an absent father. When I am his teacher, his lover, and his friend. Of course, he has his dalliances. It does him good, I think, to test the limits of the ties that bind us. And, as the loosed hawk returns always to the hand of its master, so will Caspian to me.

Ah, but sometimes he tries my patience. I offered him a gift—the perfect subject for his desires—and he uses him like a secretary. Nathaniel Priest should have been a passing folly. Instead he nearly ruined what I gave so much to create. And now this boy. This boy of no consequence.

While I would infinitely prefer Caspian to return of his own volition, perhaps it is time to remind him where, and to whom, he belongs. Of course, I would never stoop to an instrument as blunt or as unreliable as force. Rather, I am the loving vivisectionist of Caspian’s soul. I have shaped and reshaped him with incalculable cuts, and I can bring him back to me whenever I will it. All I have to do is show him who he truly is.

Chapter 1

So I had this totally crazy dream. I dreamed I met a billionaire called Caspian Hart and he kind of liked me. Well, liked me enough to put me up in a ludicrously expensive London flat but not enough to trust me, talk to me, or spend any time with me. A sufficiently self-esteem-tanking level of liking that I ended up running back to my family’s place in Scotland. But, also, a sufficiently something level of liking that he wound up following me. And telling me a bunch of things which made me realize that not only did my level-of-liking scale need serious recalibration, but I liked him enough to give it another go.

Except, oh wait, that wasn’t a dream.

It had really happened.

And there was Caspian himself, tucked into the corner where the bed met the window, watching the distant sea. He was pale in the cool, blue-tinted morning and a little tousled—that one wayward lock of his fallen free again. The smile he gave me, as I emerged from the duvet, was slightly shy, as if he wasn’t sure how to greet me.

“Good morning.” I stretched with abandon, spine arching, toes uncurling. “Did you sleep okay?”

“I’m fine. I saw the sunrise.”

“Really?” It was a little hard to imagine. Or maybe not? He was probably the only person I knew who would have the patience to do something like that: watching and waiting as the light cracked wide the night. Lonely, though. With me snuggled and oblivious right there beside him. “Um, maybe you should have woken me? Or…I don’t know. I might have been grumpy.”

“I didn’t want to wake you. You looked, frankly, terribly cute.”

I looked what now? I wrinkled my nose, unimpressed. “Cute in a way that makes you want to do bad things to me?”

“Oh yes.”

He crooked a finger and—after a second of OMG, will I taste of mornings based hesitation—I dived under the duvet, surfacing again between his knees. He wrapped his arms around me, hauled me up, and kissed me, not roughly exactly, but without mercy. Prizing my mouth open like the lid of a treasure box and taking possession. These simple caresses infinitely preferable to whatever drug I’d taken with Ellery in London. No feverish ecstasies but a deep, heavy, and all-consuming bliss. A spell to turn me to butter.

He was smooth and silken against me—his hair surprisingly soft, though I could also feel the wicked tightening of his nipples and the hot pressure of his cock. He smelled of warmth, if that was a thing that was possible. A cozy, sleep-clinging scent of skin, with only the faintest trace of sweetness from his cologne. This unexpected nakedness that was just him.

He made a low sound at the back of his throat—almost a growl—and flipped me. I went gladly, though the bed made a godawful telltale creaking as I landed on my back amid the pillows and rucked-up sheets. I wasn’t even sure Caspian noticed, let alone cared, as he came down on top of me.

I’d been kissed and delightfully manhandled enough by him that I had a pretty good notion of what he might like. So I stretched my hands over my head. Giving him my surrender. The safety and the dark thrill of it.

His eyes glinted. Turned stormy.

And he reached up, dragging a finger from my wrist to my shoulder, making me very aware of that line of pulled-tight skin, all exposed and unprotected and held that way by nothing but the desire to please him.

As he settled between my thighs I couldn’t help arching my spine and tilting my hips, making very, very explicit all the places of my body I was up for yielding.

“God, Arden.” I was always suspicious of the phrase ground out when I saw it in books, but it seemed to apply to Caspian’s words right then. Especially if you also took into account what he was doing on top of me. “You’re such a…”

“Wanton?” I offered, tightening my calves around him.

“Tease.”

Tease. My cock gave an eager jump.

I loved this kind of talk but it was tricky. There were lines in my head even I didn’t properly know how to navigate. And I’d found asking people to call me names tended not to go so well. It seemed to make them either act weird or get nasty. Neither of which I was into.

But tease…that was lovely. Made my toes curl with the naughty delight of being bad.

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