Page 82 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

She gave an unabashedly filthy chuckle. “There, there, poppet. This is about my narcissism, not yours.”

I was rapidly losing my capacity to care what it was about. Nothing mattered except the long, smooth strokes of her hand and the giddy cockscrew of my pleasure. I’d long since lost track of the remote for the plug, but George hadn’t, and the sudden burst of stimulation against my inside happy place made not coming everywhere an outright impossibility. I’d got off while bound before but there was something about the position, and having my hands trapped behind me, that made my body feel like a gun someone else had fired. I came, thrashing and shuddering, in a wild jet that George made exactly zero attempt to control for me. My orgasm-wrecked brain helpfully slo-mo’ed the experience: an arc of my own semen pattering gently down on my celluloid self.

“For my private collection,” murmured George.

I collapsed against her, panting and satisfied. “You are a sick fuck.”

“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

She put a hand under my chin, turned my face up to hers, and kissed me with a kind of lazy thoroughness—like she had no compunction in using me, but no desire to possess me. It brought me gently back to myself, to the safety of being held by someone I trusted, and the comfort of knowing everything I’d gone through had been mine to choose. George had a blanket ready and wrapped me up in it, but she left the cuffs on until I got restless. I’d found too much freedom all at once could sometimes freak me out.

I’d dozed off against her shoulder for a bit, but when I stirred again, I found her uncharacteristically serious.

“Now that you’re thinking clearly,” she said, “you should probably decide once and for all what you want me to do with these photos.”

“You…you don’t want to use them?”

That earned me a little shake. “Of course I do. But now you’ve seen them, I wanted to check you were still comfortable with them being public.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because”—she sighed—“the world has changed since I first picked up a camera. Information is forever. You need to think that your enemies will see these, your family, every reporter who ever writes about you, every employer you ever work for.”

I sat up a little straighter. “They’re not porn. I’m not ashamed.”

“I’m not saying you should be. I’m saying not everyone will understand.” She pulled me back into her arms, breath warm against my neck. “Barthes said the photograph is always invisible. But the photographer is not. Nor the subject. You need to be certain this is something you wish to reveal about yourself.”

I thought about it. Not because I needed to, but because she wanted me to. “The thing is,” I said slowly, “what you saw in me when you took those photos, I’m proud to reveal.”

“Oh, poppet. With talk like that, you’ll turn a girl’s head.”

She sounded much as she always did—wryly amused at something only she understood—but then she kissed me again, and there was a sweetness in it that took me by surprise.

Afterwards, though, she just laughed. “How’s that hot young blood of yours? Think you can get it up again?”

“Probably”—I waggled my eyebrows like a cartoon lecher—“given enough encouragement.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ve a mind to break you like a wild stallion.”

Chapter 26

TheArdenexhibition—and even thinking that made my head swim—was a single-night affair timed to fall playfully close to Valentine’s Day. When I’d heard about George’s shows, I’d hoped I might attend one someday. And here I was the actual motherfuckingsubject. Holy shitballs. I told my family, of course, and they were thrilled for me, but we all agreed it was probably for the best they didn’t come. It was one thing for them to be a hundred percent behind me doing exactly what I wanted to with my own body, up to and including having lots of kinky sex with it, but quite another to look at pictures of me, well, doing that. I did send a copy of the accompanying book to Nik, though. Partly because I was insanely proud. But also a little bit to mess with him.

And, of course, I wanted to tell Ellery, but she was still couch surfing her way round the band and I was still working up the courage to ask her to move back in. So I didn’t think I’d have much luck with, “Hey, come and look at some fairly naked pictures of me.” Before I’d kissed her, I’m sure she would have found it hilarious, but now I’d turned myself into a threat instead of her ally and I wasn’t sure seventy-eight photos of Broderick were enough to make her want me in her life again.

So I ended up going to the me exhibition by myself. Which was fine, and probably fitting, and I knew George would be there when I arrived. I decided to be fashionably late, since that way I’d be able to come and go unnoticed, though I got delayed making my hair cute and ended up unfashionably late. Albeit with excellent hair.

I’d heard of the Laine Matthäus Gallery but sort of in the same way I’d heard of Cirque le Soir or Annabel’s; that is, I was aware it was known to be cool, but hadn’t expected ever to have reason to go, or reason to believe they’d let me through the front door if I had turned up. But the gallery turned out to be surprisingly welcoming—not of me, in particular, but in general. It sat in the middle of a parade of shops near King’s Cross, sandwiched between a Super Laundry and a kebab emporium, still boasting the sooty tile façade it had possessed when it had been a bookie’s. The rest was window, allowing the light from within to glaze the dark pavement with a sheen of gold and the wibbly reflection of the sign which readLaine Matthäus Galleryin cursive red-pink neon.

Gosh, it looked busy in there. People were even hanging about outside, some of them eating kebabs. My insides did something weird, caught between anxious squeezing and excited fluttering, that ended up feeling like my heart had just sneezed. I mean, I was glad the place wasn’t empty—the last thing I wanted to be was the George Chase collection nobody cared about—but at the same time…this had all got very real, real fast, very suddenly.

But still, I had no regrets. A realisation that gave me the courage to head on in. As I got close to the door, my shoulder collided with someone coming the other way at a speed best described as antisocial.

“Ow, I’m sor—” The instinctive British apology, even though I wasn’t the one who’d caused the crash, died on my lips as I recognised Nathaniel.

His head came up. And for a split second he was staring at me with naked hatred. Then—and this was honestly kind of worse—his eyes filled up with tears.

“Are you—” I started.

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