Page 22 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

George huffed out a pleased sound. “I’ve been doing this for over thirty years. One would hope to be quite accomplished.”

“That’s a bit modest for someone who once told me her talents were sex and art.”

“My talentsaresex and art. But I leave taking their measure to others.”

“Well, I think you rock at both.”

“Thank you, poppet.” She tucked a hand behind her head, the other wandering blatantly to her erection—which, framed as it was in black silk, was quite a sight. “But do feel free to keep praising me. I’m rather enjoying myself.”

I replacedSylviaand picked upJules, a study of cool androgyny, as exquisitely remote as a classical study. ThenLuis. Who was, um, naked. Unless you counted the tattoos. Before reaching curiously for the very first book on the shelf. Probably, I should have checked the name before opening it, but I didn’t. And so I got to see my boss naked. She was probably about twenty in the photograph—which had a stylised, grainy quality like an old black-and-white glamour shot—and reclining on a bearskin. I was pretty sure those sorts of pictures were meant to be a juxtaposition of vulnerability and savagery, but honestly, the way Mara was staring down the camera, if it came to a fight between her and the bear, I’d have picked her every time.

Annnnnnyway.

I stuffedMaraback where I’d found her and retreated to the bed. George grinned at me lazily, still stroking.

“I really love your work,” I told her. And then, before I even quite knew what I was going to say next, I blurted out, “What’s it like?”

“What’s what like? My work?”

“No. Like…always, knowing who you are and what you want to be.”

She paused, propping herself up on an elbow. “Arden, nobody really knows what they want to be. It’s just that for some people—by pure chance—the thing it turns out they actually want to be happens to have the same name as the thing they thought they wanted to be.”

“Um. You’ve lost me.”

“The first time I picked up a camera, I felt this tremendous sense of completion. Like I’d found some lost jigsaw piece of my soul. And that made me want tobea photographer, but I didn’t really know what being a photographer meant or what it was like. And now I’ve been a photographer for most of my life, and I’ve loved every minute of it, but it has almost nothing to do with that feeling I had when I was a child.”

“But,” I protested, “what if your jigsaw is all over the floor and you’ve lost the box?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure plenty of people pick up a camera and feel exactly the way I felt, but then discover that they don’t actually enjoy taking pictures for a living. And some people probably stumble into it blindly and never look back. It’s not the rush that’s real. It’s the follow-through. Find out what somethingisand then you’ll find out if you love it.”

Now there was a statement with broad applicability if ever I heard one. I sighed.

“Stop worrying, poppet. Your face will get stuck like that.”

I plonked my chin into my hand. “I’ve always thought it’d be kind of cool to write forMilieu.”

“It will never be anything like you thought it would. But that’s okay. And it’s also okay if you decide it’s not what you want.”

“But if it’s not,” I absolutely did not whine, “what do I do then?”

Her brows lifted in mock exasperation, but her voice was still surprisingly gentle. “Haven’t you listened to a damn word I said? Do you want another flogging?”

“No, I mean, yes, I mean I was listening.” I drew a deep breath. “I keep trying. Until I find what I love.”

As soon as I spoke, I realised I’d heard those words before. How the fuck had I forgotten them? I guess all my mental energy had been focused on surviving. Which was probably fair enough. It was hard to be a carpe-seizing go-getter when your skin felt like a bag full of broken pieces. But my time with a billionaire who believed in me should have taught me better than this.Iwas better than this. So what if Nathaniel had taken Caspian? He didn’t get to take me.

“Are you all right?” George asked. “Your nose is all wrinkled up.”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just wondering why you’re always so nice to me.”

She subjected me to her most sardonic look. “Because I want to fuck you. Obviously.”

“Works for me.” Riding a rush of confidence that was at least sixty percent determination, I knelt up and pulled off my Jedi dressing gown. “Though it’s probably about time I was nice to you back.”

Her eyes gleamed, gold-sheened by the softer light. “Works for me.”

I leaned down and kissed her. First on the mouth and then along her jaw and down her throat, catching against my lips the vibration of her contented sigh. It was actually a little disorientating to have such freedom. I’d never minded that Caspian preferred me helpless and at his mercy. As a matter of fact, I’d loved it. But I’d also been desperate to touch him, believing—like an insecure, oblivious idiot—the fact he wouldn’t let me was about me, instead of about him. Looking back, I understood exactly how much of himself he’d given me, when, at the time, I’d seen nothing but barriers. It made me sad in a way: all his unrecognised trust. Sometimes it even kept me up at night, thinking of everything I would have done differently if only I’d known. What did it matter what we got up to in bed? It was him I wanted. His passion, his laughter, his cruelty, his kindness. And his hurt, because that was part of him as well.

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