Page 17 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“None whatsoever.” If only he would see my smile. “I absolutely and categorically welcome any depravity you care to practice on me.”

“Thank you. But I still think you should have a…a…”

He couldn’t even say it. “A safeword.”

Another nod.

I’d never seen him so uncertain. It made me want to pull him back into the apartment, wrap him up tight in my arms, and never let him go. But I knew he wouldn’t let me.

He cleared his throat. “Arden?”

Shit, I needed an actual word. But my mind had gone completely blank. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Any word will do.” He shifted impatiently. “I understand red is traditional.”

Red was boring.

The silence stretched out between us. Every single word in the entirety of the human history of language was somewhere else right then.

“I…I know I’ve probably startled you. Maybe even frightened you. But, Arden, I really don’t want to hurt you in any way that—”

Oh God, the look in his eyes. Like a half-tame wolf the second before its spirit broke.

“No,” I cried. “No. It’s fine. My safeword is…um…Mace Windu.”

“It’s what?” Caspian asked, finally.

I shrugged. “He’s the badass Jedi with the purple lightsaber.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” He sounded faintly affronted that I’d doubted his knowledge of the Jedi Council. “I just don’t know why you’d— It doesn’t matter. If that’s what you’ll remember. If it makes you feel safe.”

I thought about telling him he made me feel safe, but I didn’t think he’d believe me. “It’s Samuel L. Jackson,” I said instead. “Of course I feel motherfucking safe.”

Caspian really did leave after that. He had his phone out as he stepped into the elevator, immediately back into work mode.

And I was, once again, alone in One Hyde Park.

But it wasn’t so bad. And, God, I was spoiled. There were homeless people. And here I was, conceding that an extravagant, exclusive apartment in central London was “not so bad.”

I unpacked and changed into my whale print lounge trousers for the sake of my arse. Although not before I’d spent some time admiring how red and totally owned it looked in the bathroom mirror.

Then I arranged myself, stomach-down on the bed, and got to grips with the emails I’d neglected while in Kinlochbervie. I even made a spreadsheet so I could keep track of what I’d written, where I’d sent out, and what the outcome was. And, okay, it was only five lines long but it was still a motherfucking spreadsheet, motherfuckers. Finally, I settled into brainstorming up some fresh ideas. Because Caspian was right: even if Milieu rejected me, there were still countless opportunities for frivolous-article writing floating about in the universe.

And, no, it wouldn’t make me a billionaire or change the world. But a lot of things that changed the world were actively bad. And this was what I wanted to do.

I was so caught up in writing—a column pitch for GQ entitled “The Ten Most Awesome Things in the World Right Now” that I thought I could put together monthly and research entirely on the internet—that I almost brain-hazed right through the ringing of my phone. I scrabbled for it and answered about a second before I would have lost the call. “Uh, hello?”

“Arden?”

Caspian’s voice, perhaps still the part of him most familiar to me, slipped down my spine like an unexpected caress. “Gosh…it’s you. Hi.”

“Did I wake you?”

“N-no. I was just—what time is it?”

“It’s late. Nearly midnight, I’m afraid.”

I guess I’d stopped expecting more than terse little texts so this was almost as startling as it was gratifying. “Is everything okay?”