Page 14 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“Can I have—” Actually, it wasn’t a Samuel L. Jackson moment. It would have reminded me of Caspian in a bad way. Made him, and all the ways we’d failed to understand each other, too present. “How aboutPoe?”

“Works for me.”

It worked for me too. Probably in the future I’d want something else, but for now this was what I needed: a memory of Caspian, at his happiest, watchingThe Force Awakenswith me, protecting me from hurts I couldn’t bear.

I glanced at George. “What about you? Anything you don’t like or I shouldn’t do?”

“Well, ideally one would be too old for dysphoria but apparently one isn’t.” Her fingers tapped restlessly against the wheel. “Which is to say, when it comes to my dick, you may touch it, suck it, and beg for it to your heart’s content. But it’s never going inside you.”

“Touch it, suck it, beg for it. Got it. Um…”

“Yes?” she purred.

“What about my dick?”

“I don’t know, poppet. What about it?”

“Well. How about…I mean…could it maybe go in you?”

There was a pause. Then laughter. “I’ll think about it. If you’reverygood.”

Chapter 5

George lived in a house—yes, a house, not a hypermodern apartment or a nineteenth-century mansion—in a tiny hamlet near the Swale. It was pretty and white-painted and not at all like anything I would have imagined for her until I stepped inside and saw how the light, silver-spun from the marina, moved through the space like it was alive. She’d done the lateral living thing familiar from Caspian’s many, many properties, but I’d always found it on the edge of oppressive before. Intimidation by square footage. Here there was just a clean, bright openness, full of colourful rugs, nooks I wanted to explore, and furniture I actually wanted to sit on. She had books and paintings. Flowers on the kitchen table. Mugs on the drying rack. Fashion magazines piled up in corners. Such beautiful, everyday things.

“Oh wow.” I moved over to the French windows. “This is lovely.”

George seemed startled by my enthusiasm. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Remember, I live in a dog biscuit factory with a feral person. I honestly can’t remember the last time I was somewhere that looked like home.”

Her eyes swept over me. There was something a little sharp about George’s attention—not unpleasant, when you got used to it, but it was always there. The cool edge of a letter opener prising you dextrously apart until all your secrets came spilling out. “Mind if I get my camera?”

“I guess? But why?”

It was never far from her hand. And I’d helped out on enough shoots that the snaps and clicks and whirs of George in action were almost soothing. “Because I’m interested in how you look.”

“I’m pretty sure I look ordinary.”

“Nobody’s ordinary.”

I managed to stand still, or at least still-ish, for about five seconds, before asking, “Can I see?”

She nodded and stepped closer so I could peer at the LCD screen. And there I was—not quite in shadow, a delicately dappled boy, half-turned towards some private horizon. My heart squeezed in strange recognition of my own sadness. And then…then I just felt nebulously pissed off.

Because I was so fucking sick of being sad.

There was a soft clack as George put down her camera. She wasn’t as tall as Caspian, but she still had a couple of inches on me, which meant I had to look up when she slid a finger under my chin and turned my face to hers. I’d forgotten how vulnerable-making it could be, that teetering expectation of a touch, and I almost flinched, wanting to whoomp myself closed like an anemone. With Caspian, I’d held nothing back. And in return, he’d taught me to be afraid.

The breath shuddered out of me. “I…I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re going to ask me to kiss you.”

“Am I? Why?”

“Because you need to. And”—her eyes flared with sudden heat—“I want to hear you.”

Fuck, what a mess. I didn’t know it was even possible to be miserable and angry, and hating someone and missing them, and kind of into someone else, and scared of that, and what it might mean, all at the same time. But apparently it was. And I was nailing it.

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