Page 36 of How to Bang a Billionaire

“Yeah?”

“Arden, it’s—”

I sat up so fast I practically hit my head on the shelf over my bed. “Caspian.” God, I’d never expected…why was he…“How did you get this number?”

“I put my considerable resources to the task.”

“You can do that?” I snuffled discreetly into sleeve of my T-shirt. Of course, he couldn’t see me but I had my pride. “I feel like I’m living in some kind of cyberpunk dystopia ruled by megacorps.”

“It’s on your Facebook page.”

“Oh.” He’d looked? And then he’d called me? As if you got to do that after you’d had someone chauffeured out of your life. I knew I should have been furious but I was too messed up right then, and some part of me was desperately, desperately happy to hear his voice again.

Even if he was telling me rather sternly that I had absolutely no sense of online security.

I tried to gather my thoughts. “Well, you grant things power if you try to hide them. Like there’s this…kind of public privacy, you know? If something is right there, chances are, nobody’ll think it’s worth caring about.”

“How very twenty-first century of you.”

“Hey, it works. Nobody has ever rung me randomly off the Internet before.” And then, because I was confused and stressed to buggery and afraid of blurting out something gauche like What the fuck are you doing? or I’m scared or Please help me, I stretched out like a Restoration rake and drawled, “To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure?”

There was a silence. Maybe he’d noticed this was weird and awkward. “I wanted to wish you luck with your exams.”

My stomach did an awful flippy thing. Worry and disappointment and generic insecurity. He’d been pretty certain he didn’t want me when I was relatively put together. How very, very heartbreakingly, self-esteem destroyingly certain would he be if he could see me now? Wrecked and hopeless and pathetic. “Um, thanks.”

Another silence.

“Arden, are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said tightly, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“And what’s it to you how I sound?” Eeesh. Way to come across like a petulant child.

“It matters.” His voice dropped into its lower register, the thrilling, growly one, except right now it felt oddly soothing. Tiger balm to my pulled-tight nerves. “Now answer me.”

“I’m…I’m really scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

“Um, slugs, growing old, all my hair falling out, enclosed spaces, relationships, my finals for fuck’s sake. And if you tell me everybody feels this way I swear to God I will punch myself in the face.”

“I’d rather you didn’t punch yourself in the face. But it’s very natural to be apprehensive—”

“I’m not apprehensive. I’m fucking terrified and overwhelmed and…” Whatever else I was vanished into a hiccoughy sob.

“Arden, Arden”—God, now gentleness—“you’ll be fine.”

I knew the right thing to do was nod bravely, stiffen my upper lip, and say something like Of course. Apologize for having made an arse out of myself. Let him feel he’d helped with his entirely generic consolation.

But I just didn’t feel capable of being gracious or strong or polite. It was some combination of closeness and distance. Residual trust left from when I’d let him push his cock into the deep, vulnerable places of my throat and the sense of not really having much to lose with the relative stranger who had already told me no.

So my mouth just kept babbling truths, panicky, ugly, embarrassing truths. It was almost a relief, the same way vomiting can be sometimes, when you’re seriously Bad Drunk. “I won’t be fine. I haven’t done enough to be fine. And even if I am fine, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do afterward.”

“It’s not important. When was the last time somebody asked you about your GCSEs or your A-level results?”

“Um, my university did. And presumably my future employer—whoever they may be—will be vaguely interested in how I spent the last three years.”