Page 49 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

He shook his head. And most likely I was imagining it for my own benefit, but I thought I saw relief in his eyes.

I gave him a tentative smile. “If it would make you more comfortable, I could sleep in one of the other rooms. Or on the floor since I’d much rather be near you.”

“I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor.” He sounded a little bit more like himself—which was to say, faintly exasperated with me.

“Will you really be okay sharing, though?”

“I don’t know. But I’m”—he swallowed—“quite tired.”

I’d never seen anyone struggle over such a basic admission of humanity. “Then get into bed, doofus.”

He managed a laugh, and half crawled, half dragged himself up toward the pillows. Landed in a vaguely vertical sprawl, his face shadowed by the crook of his arm. “I should shower,” he mumbled. “I’m disgusting.”

“You’re fine.” I untangled the sheet from my body and settled it over him, then drew up the duvet and—

Okay. It’s weird to say I tucked in Caspian Hart. But I did. Before slipping in beside him, top to tail, just like in Kinlochbervie. I felt him tense, then relax. He said something I didn’t catch, though it might have been nothing more than my name, and was asleep in minutes.

Annoyingly—despite me also being quite tired—my brain wouldn’t leave me alone. So I ended up lying there, restless but trying not to move in case I disturbed Caspian, hamster-wheeling through the carnage of our evening. And to think we’d started out so promisingly. Although, actually, in some horrible demonstration of beware of what you wish for, I’d got everything I thought I wanted: the truth about Caspian. Though probably not in any way he would himself have chosen to share it with me.

And, God, that was a bitter prize.

It didn’t help that my feelings for him were a total mess, as if someone had ripped open the sofa cushion of my heart and scattered the stuffing all over the living room. I was hurt by him and hurting for him. And I wasn’t all that impressed with myself either. A lot of my behavior tonight had sprung from a toxic combination of ignorance and my own shit. But, for fuck’s sake, it was sexing 101 that you didn’t make people do stuff that made them uncomfortable.

Even if you were the one ostensibly surrendering power.

Even if you were a nobody and they were a billionaire.

And even—especially, in fact—if you thought their reasons for being uncomfortable were a big pile of crap.

Most likely, from what Caspian had said, a lot of it came back to Nathaniel. And, obviously, for both selfish and unselfish reasons, I wished he could find peace with his desires. Believe that they weren’t the consequence of cruelty or perversion. But who the fuck was I to decide whether his choices were valid not?

It was the first time I’d ever been able to see Nathaniel as something other than my opposite or my enemy. After all, we had a lot in a common.

Since neither of us really understood the man we claimed to care about.

Chapter 13

I must have eventually dozed off because when I woke up, the bedroom was full of cold light and Caspian—exquisite in a pearl gray suit and an indigo tie—was sitting on the edge the bed, shaking me gently.

I jerked upright with an undignified wuffle. It was hard not to be slightly discombobulated because seeing Caspian, absolutely composed and back to normal, half made me believe last night had been a really fucked-up dream.

“What time is it?” I asked, blearily.

“Nearly eleven.”

He gestured to a line of cups on the bedside table. “I’m afraid I didn’t know what to bring you. So I thought I’d try everything. There’s tea or coffee or orange juice.”

This was not one hundred percent comfortable. Were we seriously just going to pretend nothing had happened?

“Um, juice?” I said. “Coffee makes me hyper. And I’ve never got into tea.”

He gave me a slight smile. “What a terrible confession for an Englishman.”

“I know, right? The government will be closing in on me as we speak.” My voice rang hollow in my own ears, full of false jollity. But what was the alternative? Hey Caspian, still fucked in the head?

He handed me the orange juice and I took a sip, glad to have something to do with my mouth that wouldn’t cause an emotional apocalypse. It was annoyingly good. Sun-bright and sweet, with an edge of sharp, not a single fleck of pulp or pith, leaving this citrus-glitter on my tongue.

Typical. Billionaires even had better squeezed fruit products. Orange juice of this caliber: second best wake-up call after a bj.

---