Page 67 of No More Billionaires

Stripping down to his boxers, Larson leaned over me and wrapped one powerful arm around my waist, pulling me with him into the middle of the bed.

I wasn’t actually doing anything strenuous, but I was breathing like someone jogging outside in a hundred percent humidity.

Larson stopped moving and stared down at my face.

“Is it okay for me to tell you how beautiful you are now?” he whispered. “Or do I have to keep holding it inside?”

I answered with a shy smile and a stroke of my fingertips down his cheek.

“My God,” he gasped. “Youare—you are so beautiful—I can’t believe this is happening. I almost quit hoping for it because you hated me so much.”

“I never hated you.” I lifted my head to kiss his jaw and pulled back to give him a rueful grin.

He grinned back. “Well maybe hate is the wrong word—you didn’t want to like me. But I saw you sometimes… looking at me. Like—like younoticedme, you know? The way I noticed you. And then you’d get this little concentrated frown.”

He stroked the skin between my brows, remembering it, mimicking it with his own frowny face.

“It was so cute. You were smiley all the time with everyone, but then I’d talk to you and you’d go all serious and still, like a little rabbit who’s been spotted by a hawk or something. It just made me want to earn one of those smiles for myself.”

“You scared me,” I confessed, gliding my palm over his muscular shoulder, so sleek and strong in the subdued light.

“Scared you? I’m not scary.”

“You were to me, because Ididlike you—too much. And I wasn’t looking for someone like you.”

“Tall, handsome, and brilliant?” he teased, raising one brow and forming his expression into one of mock-conceit.

“No, I…”

This conversation had to stop here. I couldn’t tell him the truth. Because that would involve more truths.

And there were some things I never wanted him to know about me.

Even if my heart hadn’t been fully in it, I’d been exactly like those girls who’d targeted him in his past—who’d used him for his money and connections and whatever they thought they could get out of his famous family name.

He’d hate me if he knew I’d been a gold-digger-in-training, obeying Momma’s instructions like a pathetic puppet, even to the point of gettingengagedto someone I may not have actually loved.

Now that I thought about it, Mark had probably done the right thing by breaking up with me. I thought it had beenmewho’d dodged a bullet—what kind of wife would I have been to him?

Someone like Momma?

Larson used one knuckle to rap gently on my forehead. “What’s going on in there? I don’t like that sad look on your face. I want you to be nothing but happy in my bed.”

“Sorry. I am happy.”

“Anything I can do to make you happier?”

Now his raised eyebrow communicated an entirely different message.

I unfastened the buttons on my cardigan one by one, letting my voice dip seductively. “As a matter of fact, there is one thing.”

“Only one?” Larson asked, glancing at the bedside table where we’d dropped the wrapped condoms. “I was thinking more like four.”

“Big talker,” I teased. “Let’s see you put some action behind those fancy words.”

Larson inhaled sharply, his expression intense. “I like that sassy little mouth. I’m going to keep it busy for a while.”

He kissed me greedily while finishing the work I’d begun on my cardigan and then moving on to the buttons of my blouse.

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