Page 47 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“For God’s sake, you asked. Insisted even.”

I winced. “Yes, but…I didn’t realize how crap it would be. And, for the record, I think it’s really fucked up to submit to someone in order to prove you’re the better person.”

“It was what I thought I needed. So he gave it to me.”

“And how did that work out for you?”

“You know it didn’t.”

I swung my feet onto the…whatever it was I was sitting on. Ended up sprawled out and arched up like I was at the world’s lewdest psychologist. So much for looking cool and nonchalant as jealousy gnawed on my liver like Prometheus’s eagle. “Couldn’t he take it?”

“Actually,” said Caspian, very softly. “I couldn’t. He made me see this for what it truly was: cruelty from cruelty, and pain from pain. And it became unbearable, subjecting him to such…such debasements. I had to let him go. I didn’t deserve to be with him.”

“Oh my God.” I flailed upright, sheet flying. “Have you listened to yourself? Way to make me feel like absolute shit.”

“I’m not sure what’s going through your mind, but my previous relationship is—and should be—irrelevant to you.”

“But you do remember I like being subjected to debasements, right?”

“I…I”—he flushed—“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“You broke up with Nathaniel the Martyr because you believe the fact you’re kinky and he’s not makes him too good for you. So what does that make me, Caspian?”

He drew in a sharp breath. “I’ve treated you with far greater care than I ever showed Nathaniel.”

“You mean by keeping me at a distance and refusing to believe me when I tell you that I’m comfortable with my desires, and yours?”

“The reason,” he snapped, “you are comfortable is because I have kept myself in check. I have set boundaries and maintained them and protected you from the consequences of both my nature and your naiveté.”

I stared at him, shocked momentarily into silence, and thrown into such turmoil I couldn’t tell if I was angry or upset or both or neither. Finally, I got my mouth working. “This is such bullshit.”

“What is?” Caspian, as he often did after an outburst, had turned to ice.

“You. This. Everything.” Or maybe I was just tired. Heaviness rolled over me like I was being dragged through the floor soul first. “You’ve only gone and Madonna-whored me.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re fucked up about kink because your last boyfriend was a judgmental prick. And you’ll never think I’m as good as Nathaniel until I’m as judgmental as him or as fucked up as you.”

I gathered my garment, and what precious little of my dignity remained, and pushed past Caspian. There was no game plan here. All I wanted was away. From him and the room where RACK went to die.

Probably there would be crying at some point.

But I didn’t actually get very far. Caspian caught up to me in the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

It was a good question. “I guess I’m leaving?”

“Now? It’s five a.m. You’re in a sheet.”

I gave him a wild, senseless grin. “One of these is fixable.”

“Arden.”

“What?”

“I think, perhaps, we have both spoken too hastily tonight. Implied things we did not mean.”