Page 24 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“I’m not asking forLes Misérablesat the West End.”

“Right now,Breathwould be pushing it.”

She laughed, but without the usual trace of mockery. “Oh, stop dithering and come. You know you deserve to.”

I think it hit me about halfway through the sentence: one of those ripped-out-of-you orgasms that give you no time for dignity. Just this razor-edge of ecstasy where it doesn’t matter what goofy face you’re pulling or what stupid sounds you’re making. I heard a wild howl that must have been me. Felt the tightness of my helplessly arching spine. But everything else was drowned in the darkness and brightness of pleasure.

“H-how was it?” I asked, when I’d got my breath back.

“Four stars. Four and a half if I’m feeling generous.”

“I’ll take it.”

I flopped down next to George, awkward in a different way to when I’d been begging and moaning and coming in her face. I mean, not literally in her face—that wasn’t something you did without direct invitation—but at the very least near her face. Anyway, maybe I was just being weird. I’d shared a bed, both sexually and otherwise, with loads of people at university, and Caspian had found it difficult to sleep with me at all. So I shouldn’t have been conscious of his absence. Of the fact me and George smelled different to me and Caspian. I shouldn’t have felt lonely.

Except, y’know, I did.

Rolling onto my side, I gazed at George. Possibly a bit too intently, because one of her eyes popped open. “What are you searching for, poppet? The Amber Room?”

“No, I was just…”

“Just what?”

Fuck. George was great, and I knew she wouldn’t particularly care, but for my own damn sake, I couldn’t keep whining to her about my stupid emotions and my stupid ex-boyfriend. “I was just wondering why photography.”

“Is this an interview?”

“I’m curious. Don’t I get to be curious?”

“Always. But I suspect you’re indulging me.”

“Isn’t that what people do when they like each other?” I sidled a little closer across the covers. “And you’ve indulged me plenty.”

She gave me a sharp look. “Does your none-too-subtle Battle of the Somme approach to bedspace mean you want to be snuggled?”

“Would…would that be okay?”

“Of course.” Flinging out an arm, she made a nook for me against her side and I gratefully wriggled into it. We were both still pretty sticky, but it didn’t matter—the warmth and welcome were what I really wanted. “Just be aware that I’m rolling away later. I can’t have you lolling on top of me all night. A lady needs her sleeping space.”

I kissed the nearest available piece of skin, which turned out to be the crease of her shoulder. “This is perfect. Will you talk to me about photography now?”

She was quiet for so long I didn’t think she was going to, but then she said, “I suppose, being an English graduate, you’re familiar with Roland Barthes?”

“Yep, yep. I got familiar with avoiding him for three years.”

“Perhaps you’ll become better friends when it’s not required. His last book,Camera Lucida, was written after the death of his mother—he was, of course, terribly French and terribly homosexual, so they were close.”

“If you’d been my tutor at Oxford,” I told her, “I’d have got a first.”

“If I’d been your tutor at Oxford, I’d have been fired for fucking you against the fourteenth-century oak panelling.”

“Not true. You don’t get fired for fucking people at Oxford. They just tell you that you probably shouldn’t.”

That made her grin. “Good to know.”

“So what’s the deal withCamera Lucida?”

“It’s a very strange piece of writing: a famous work on the subject of photography that is, in many ways, barely about the subject of photography.”