Page 48 of Fake Dating My Billionaire Boss

When I kiss him, it’s without reservation. How can I hold back, after he talks art to me like that?

We part and his eyes dance along with the firelight. “You get it. I didn’t know if anyone I met ever would.”

“Did you put those couches there, just so you could sit and look at this thing?”

“I sometimes spend hours up here. It gets more beautiful the more you look at it.” He brushes his thumb across my cheek. “Like you. You’re the same. I’ve seen you in candlelight, morning light, and at sunset. And now, in firelight. And every time I look at you, you’re more beautiful.”

“Don’t say things like that…” I might be like Bo. Getting too attached.

Tonight, may well be one massive, gigantic, enormous mistake.

Tomorrow will come. Tomorrow, and the next day, and the end of the summer.

I’ll have to disappoint Damian and move out of this strange house of his.

“I have to,” he says. “If I don’t, I’ll just keep thinking these things and they’ll drive me crazy. When I look at you, I sometimesfeelcrazy.”

“Like you’re getting swept away in a tidal wave?”

He nods. “Or falling from a plane.”So, he feels it, too.I nestle my cheek against the soft cotton of his t-shirt. His chest forms a wall of muscle, and I can feel his heart beating.

He rests his chin on the top of my head. “How is it that I had a long, tedious day, and now all I want is to stay awake with you until the sun comes up?”

“I’m not tired, either.”

“Then, let’s sit.”

“I am dying to try those couches. They look as soft as clouds.”

I curl up next to Damian on the couch, and we both laugh when Bo tries to pile in on our laps.

“I don’t know, Bo,” I say as his paws press into my thighs. “You’re not a big dog, but you’re not a lap dog, either.”

Damian wraps his arm around me. With a few more nudges we manage to get Bo nestled in on Damian’s other side.

It feels so incredibly good to lean back and feel Damian behind me, and his arms holding me tight. When I look up, I can see thousands of stars. And out in front of us, the painting shimmers, morphing into one image and then another in the shifting light of the fire.

He’s right.

It’s alive.

It changes from instant to instant and becomes more and more beautiful as I look at it. And this—being here with Damian—it’s the same. From one moment to the next, my feelings for him shift and change.

I feel giddy and awe-struck one minute, then nurturing and protective the next. I feel like I want to tell him everything, and then I want to fall silent and just listen to the sounds of the night around us. And with each passing moment, being here with him feels more and more delicious. More and more beautiful.

“Look at that,” he says, as he points to a section of sky above the treetops, off to the side of the painting. “A shooting star.”

I catch the tail end of it: a fleeting streak of white light in the sky, before the star fades away. “Wow… I haven’t seen one of those in a long time. In the city, the sky’s so washed out. Light pollution, I guess.”

“Up here, I see them often. Especially in the summertime. If I see a few more, I’ll be at two hundred.”

“Hm?”

“Three more shooting stars…” he says.

“And then?”

“And then I’ll have seen two hundred of them in my lifetime.”

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