Page 64 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

11

Kate

Kateawokewithanoise halfway between a grumble and a retch, yanked from sleep by something poking her in the shoulder. She swiped it away with a lazy hand, but it returned, as incessant as ever.

“Kate?” Saffron whispered, sounding terrified.

Only then did she open her eyes. “Mmph?”

Saf crouched there beside her bed, white-faced. “Oh thank god,” she took a deep breath. “I thought you were dead.”

Her throat was as dry as sandpaper, but she was alive. “Why would I be dead?”

“It’s quarter to seven. In theevening. You’ve slept the entire day.”

With her faculties returning, Kate held the covers to her breast as she sat upright, fully aware that she must look like she’d been shoved through a hedge backwards. If she was honest, she probably looked better than she felt. “Where’s Warren?” she rasped, glancing down at the unmade bed beside her.

Apparently satisfied, Saf stepped backwards. “He’s cooking dinner for everyone downstairs.”

“Everyone?” Realisation came a moment later. “Oh god, they all stayed for the party, didn’t they?”

“Yeaaaah,” Saf said slowly, grimacing slightly. “You might want to shower. You’re covered in—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

“I mean I was going to say sweat but judging by the vibrator sticking out from under the bed, there’s probably other fluids there too.”

“Oh god.” Kate wanted the ground to swallow her up.

Saf bit down on her bottom lip. “But youareokay?”

Well, her arse was sore. As were… other places. “My head hurts,” Kate conceded, feeling the soreness between her legs more with every movement. “I think I’ll have a shower before I come downstairs.”

After her shower, the intoxicating smell of food tugged her towards the kitchen, her stomach rumbling. She found a crowd of people around the breakfast bar, perched on tall black stools. Warren saw her first, just as he placed a ceramic baking tray loaded with food onto the bar. The others dived in like animals crowding around a watering hole, but Warren gazed only at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

Hi, she mouthed, his declaration of love still hovering in her mind.

Brushing past Rhys, Warren approached her whilst the others were occupied. “I was going to bring your dinner up to you,” he murmured.

Quirking her eyebrow, she smiled. “If I’d have known that, I would have stayed in bed.”

He dipped his head, taking her lips in full view of the rest of the room. It only lasted a moment before he pulled back, slipping his arm around her waist. “Come and get some food. You must be starving.”

She wasn’t—until she neared the food. Her stomach began to growl in earnest at the breakfast bar, piled high with steaming chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, and pigs-in-blankets.

Kate winced as she sat down, the tenderness in her lower half making itself known once more. She dragged her attention away from her body to listen to Saffron’s idle chatter, focused on the broadness of Warren’s back as he moved about, fetching jugs of gravy and glasses of wine—and inconspicuously placing two tablets of paracetamol in her hand.

It was a strange sensation—to observe a man after she’d slept with him. Daniel had effectively disappeared into the ether after she’d given him her virginity, discarding her as quickly as he’d picked her up.

But Warren was still here.

She felt as though she’d been permitted membership to some exclusive club. To have known this man when he was lost in pleasure. To know what he was like at his most vulnerable; untamed, unhinged, and aggressive.

And then there was the soft side of him. Those wonderful moments afterwards when he’d collapsed in her arms, utterly spent. Or when he’d spoken tender, intimate words that had lulled her to sleep. Or when he confessed that he loved her.

Thathad been a surprise.

The conversation was a subdued purr around the table, with Saffron and Darcy producing most of the noise. Euan sat next to Alison. So close that Kate had a suspicion she and Warren weren’t the only couple that spent the night together.

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