Page 117 of How to Bang a Billionaire

“I won’t.” I leaned in and brushed our closed mouths together. “How was that?”

“Fine.”

“What about here?” I nuzzled up his jaw to the tender space beneath his ear, not quite kissing him, just stroking my lips over his skin.

I heard his breath catch in the suddenly thunderous silence. Sat back meekly on my heels.

“Do that again,” he whispered.

His pulse was fluttery under my mouth. His stubble rough. And his cologne had mostly faded so he smelled of Kinlochbervie: salt and heather and sky. I followed the line of his neck down to his shoulder and then the ridge of his collarbone to the base of his throat, imagining myself Theseus and his body, with all its secrets, my labyrinth.

One of his hands came up and tangled in my hair.

I froze. Glanced up. “No?”

“Just…” Wow, that fine, flawless skin of his could really hold a blush. “Talk to me. Keep me with you.”

“You can tell me to stop at any time.”

“I know.”

I took a moment simply to look at him. Sprawled out over the rumpled quilt, he was gemstone dappled by the fairy lights, an emperor in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of ruby and emerald and topaz and sapphire. His breathing was a little too fast for pure arousal but the way it made all his muscles tighten was honestly…sexy as hell. As was the fact that he was definitely and undeniably hard. His desire felt mine in a way it never quite had before. “You’re so gorgeous,” I told him.

“I asked you to talk to me. Not flatter me.”

As he watched, I pressed my hand flat to his stomach and slid it upward over the impressive topography of his torso. “I’m not flattering. I’m admiring. I mean…you do know how you look, right? You have noticed.”

“I take care of my body. And I’m aware I meet several of the criteria for conventional attractiveness.”

“Yes, but”—I traced a teasing boustrophedon between his abdominals—“you feel beautiful, too, don’t you?”

He blinked. “Does anyone?”

“I do. I mean, not after I’ve eaten so much curry I look like a cartoon frog. Or when I’m waxing my arsehole. But when you’re kissing me or touching me or telling me—um, unless you’re lying I guess.”

He reached out and pulled me in for a kiss, and I just managed to catch myself on my elbows before I crashed down on top of him. “I’ve never lied to you. You’re perfect.”

“You’re insane.”

I felt him laugh before I heard it—such a sweet, strange intimacy. “Beauty is more than flesh and bone.”

“If you tell me it comes from within, I’m sleeping on the sofa.”

“That will not be necessary. But I think who you are matters as much as how you look. And you, my Arden, are full of light. Is it any wonder I want you?”

Oh God. Another twitch upon the line. And there I was, as besotted as I’d ever been. Caspian Hart’s most willing subject recalled to my place at his feet. Exactly where he needed me. “I’m so yours.”

We kissed again, a slow deep tangling of tongues and breath, and this time I didn’t know who initiated it. Only that it didn’t matter.

“I know,” said Caspian, when we broke apart, “this is an entirely reprehensible time to ask but—”

“Yes. The answer’s yes I’ll come back to London with you.”

He murmured something shaky and unintelligible. And for once I didn’t press, didn’t push. He’d given me so much—more than, even in my wildest fantasies, I would have had the bollocks to imagine—and I’d promised him just a little patience.

I could do that. I could definitely do that.

I wriggled carefully into the space at his side and he drew me in closer still, his lips seeking my skin, almost as if he couldn’t quite stop touching me. Couldn’t quite believe I was really there.

Well. That made two of us.

My heart was overturned like a kid’s dressing up box—satin and velveteen and strings of beads, all the thrown-together treasure of cast-off adulthood spun into dreams beyond counting. In the morning, I’d have to gather them up again. Put away my pirates and princesses and lions and faeries.

But for now I could lie in Caspian’s arms and listen to the papery rustle of the wind through the oak tree and the shush-shush of the distant waves and believe that everything was beautiful.

And anything possible.