Page 126 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

“Perfectly,” I agree, too blissed out for creative words. I kiss his perfect chin. His bad-boy lips.

Having sex without the game feels like a journey, an odyssey. We’re mindless, but also really together.

I press the back of my hand to his warm belly, enjoying the feeling of him inside me, and then I do myself. He swears under his breath, because it gets us both off.

A little later I have my clothes back on, and I’m lounging in his desk chair.

Everything feels different. I grab a carrot stick from his little Tupperware, and then I kiss him one last time. “I have to go deal with this subletter.”

“Wait. Saturday? Will you come to the banquet?”

The dress. The Cinderella experience. “I’m in.”

He grins. “Good.”

I grab his hand. “I’m going to warn you, don’t be mad at me if I get scared or weird, okay?”

“Roger that,” he says.

“I’m serious. Mason tried to control my life, and he took everything away from me.”

He furrows his brow, like he can’t even bear to think of it, then kisses my right cheekbone the way he sometimes does, and everything’s good again.

I smile. “So if I’m ever weird…”

“Noted.” He kisses my left cheekbone.

“It feels like a leap, okay? This whole thing. Scary.”

“We got this,” he says.

A sparkly feeling comes over me. “Dinner tonight?”

“Now who’s being presumptuous?”

I grin and slap his shoulder. “Where are you in your—” I nod at his whiteboard.

“I’ll hit a stopping point around six. Meet you at seven? You pick.”

“Wait, this wasn’t a stopping point? Were you running equations this whole time we were…” Fucking isn’t the right word, but making love feels toosomething…

“The whole time we were off the map?”

I put my hand to his heart and kiss his stubbly cheek. My chemist who carries the world on his shoulders. Who thinks he doesn’t deserve nice things because he didn’t get the car keys so many years ago. “I’m into it,” I say.

“Me, too. I’m into your animal videos and your pointless, awesome cookies and your snarky comments at four in the morning. I want a hundred and ten percent.”

“You’re not much of a scientist if you think you’re going to get a hundred and ten percent,” I joke.

“You make me believe in impossible things,” he says.

The sun reflectsoff the polished floor of the Vossameer lobby. The new artwork seems almost to glow. And I feel like I’m flying.

Everything was so gray and somber for all these weeks, but now there’s color and hope and trust andus—two people who are maybe shitty at relationships, me because of what happened with Mason, and him because, well…I’m grinning stupidly thinking how standoffish he is with people in general, but it’s different with me. He shows me a side of himself he doesn’t show other people.

He makes me want to be a fierce dragon fighter. I want to go back up and tell him that, but I resist the urge. There’s time now.

I see Marley at the guard stand talking with somebody. Sasha. Marley says something, and she turns and smiles in a way that I don’t like.

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