Page 46 of Below Deck Billionaire
‘I’m pretty sure it’s how I’m always going to feel.’
‘And you’ve never in your life changed your mind about something?’
‘Rarely.’
His voice was laced with a grim kind of determination, and it was a visceral reminder that Theo Callisthenes was a man who knew his own mind. ‘It’s just so… final,’ she said. ‘Did you not grapple with that?’
‘No. Never.’
‘And what about if the unimaginable happens and you fall for someone?’
Tiffany’s breath caught at the thought. What would it be like to have this man’s intense, singular focus? Because something told her that if Theo ever did fall, he’d fall hard. After all, she’d had his focus for one night and hadn’t been able to get it out of her head.
An even longer pause followed, and Tiffany wished she was looking at him so she could read his eyes.
‘It hasn’t so far.’
His soft denial was like a small jolt of electricity searing a pathway through her chest, leaving the tight ache of a burn in its wake. ‘Humour me,’ she said, her voice threaded with irritation at his certainty and her confusion as to why in hell this mattered to her at all.
‘I suppose in that… unlikely event, if we decided we wanted to have a baby together, then I would go for a reversal.’
His confidence in such a procedure that had variable success rates bordered on arrogant. But then, that was Theo Callisthenes to the core. Expecting everything to just bend to his will. Even the re-joining of his scarred vas deferens!
‘I just can’t see it ever coming to that.’
Tiffany gritted her teeth. She’d officially moved from irritated to pissed. ‘Are you never unsure of yourself?’
‘Nope.’
Damn arrogant man. Tiffany had been leading her own life for a long time and making decisions and taking risks, but she’d never been absolutely sure they were the right ones. ‘You know that’s exceptionally annoying, right?’
He chuckled, and she shivered from her toes to the slick heat between her legs to her aching nipples, reminding her of how sure he’d been with her. How masterfully he’d played her body.
‘I have been told, yes.’
Of course he had. ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ she announced grumpily, turning on her side so her back was to the couch.
Another chuckle slid into a silky, ‘Kalinyhta, Tiffany.’
‘Kalinyhta, Theo.’
Not that Tiffany thought for a moment she was going to sleep.
16
Theo slipped out early the next morning, careful not to wake Tiffany, who was sleeping soundly after he’d heard her tossing and turning for what had felt like most of the night. He was careful to also not let his gaze linger on the back of a bare thigh and the curve of a gloriously soft ass cheek that had been exposed as she slept.
The urge to bite all the way up that thigh to that cheek then slide his tongue between her legs rode him so hard as he departed, he still had the hard-on ten minutes later as he sipped at the thick cup of Greek coffee he’d made himself at the bar.
At just before six, the sky was soft with pale pink light, but no one was up yet, either on deck or on Hydra, except for a lone fisherman. He waved to Theo as his small tin boat full of nets cut quietly through the harbour on his way out to his secret fishing spot.
Theo yawned and stretched his neck from side to side as he propped his foot on the middle railing. He’d barely slept last night either, weirdly attuned to every movement coming from the bed. Of course, the cramped confines of the couch hadn’t helped. In fact, after several hours he’d given up and thrown his pillow on the plush carpet of the floor, which had been marginally better.
His neck and back bitched at him as he wondered how pissed off they’d be after a second night on the floor.
Maybe it was his divine punishment. For unleashing this façade in the first place. Or for being so grimly determined to deflect her enquiries about his vasectomy.
Herare you never unsure of yourselfate at him now. Because the truth was, he never had been. His decisions – both business and personal – always came after a process of deliberate enquiry where all the facts were parsed and all the pros and cons explored. So he was always absolutely confident of what he had to do to get what he wanted.
