Page 133 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“You may recall, I have extensive skills in that area.”

“And it won’t…it won’t make you feel bad,” I asked. “Because of your dad?”

“Maybe sometimes. But mostly”—he offered me an unexpectedly winsome smile—“it feels…right, somehow.”

“Oh.Oh.” Overcome, I hurled myself at him again and we hugged for a long time, Caspian’s arms tight around me, and his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Very. I just always knew we could be like this. Or”—I peeped up at him—“hoped we could.”

“I should have trusted you.”

“Eh.” I shrugged, the happiness of this moment already infinitely realer to me than all the sadnesses that had preceded it. “We got here in the end. That’s what counts.”

Gently he untangled me. “It’s getting late. I should take you home.”

“Can we stay? Just for tonight? If it won’t freak you out.”

“It won’t, but…I don’t know how comfortable we’ll be.”

I glanced around the room—at the bed with its faceless covers and the faded patches on the carpet where other things had stood once. “This is going to be our home someday. I guess I’d like to get a head start.”

“You don’t mind that it will take some work?”

“Our relationship?”

“Well, that too. But”—he touched his nose to mine—“I meant the house.”

Oops. “I think it’s mostly fine. I mean, it’s going to need more bookshelves if I’m going to live here, and maybe we could put your father’s posters in the spare room, not that I don’t loveWar of the Worlds.”

“I want it to be a place for us. Not a shrine to him.”

“You’ll help, though, won’t you? I’ve never actually been responsible for a house before.”

“Neither have I. Truthfully,” he admitted, “I usually hire someone to take care of it for me.”

I pressed a hand to my brow in shock. “No. Really? I would never have guessed.”

“Shush.” He lowered his eyes, blushing faintly—though a smile seemed to tremble at the corners of his mouth.

I turned and walked the dimensions of the room before returning to the bed and kicking off my Docs. “Do you think we could we get a four-poster in here?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I mean, not a full one with a canopy and velvet curtains. I don’t want to feel like I’m Henry Tudor. But something with, y’know—posts. I’m very interested in the whole posts concepts.”

Caspian came up behind me and slipped his tuxedo jacket from my shoulders, the sudden exposure of my back to his gaze and touch enough to turn my skin into an electric storm of longing.

“We can have one made to fit,” he said. “Although I don’t quite understand this obsession with posts.”

“God, Caspian. Isn’t it every boy’s dream? To sleep in a four-poster bed like a princess. And, y’know—actually, never mind.”

“What is it?”

“I was just going make a silly kinky sex reference. It doesn’t matter.”

His lips brushed over my shoulders, like maybe he was chasing my freckles. “Please don’t hold yourself back from me. I may not be quite ready to do everything I want to do with you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy hearing about it.”

---