Page 50 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

Caspian was watching me, hands resting in his lap, the epitome of composure but for the hint of tightness at his knuckles.

Fuck. He was going to dump me.

He’d brought me orange juice and now he was dumping me. It was the orange juice of condolence. Or maybe he just thought I wouldn’t hit him if I had something in my hand.

He was probably right.

I was trying to work up the courage or cruelty or whatever it took to dash my drink in his face, when he said, “Please don’t go back to Kinlochbervie.”

I inhaled in shock. Except my mouth was full of liquid so mainly what I did was splutter. Attractively.

“I know,” he went on, “after what happened, the way I made you feel, that I have no right to ask. But I don’t want Nathaniel, Arden. I want you. I can’t change that I loved him once, but you are not, and have never been, in his shadow.”

Oh God. It was so much what I needed to hear that I nearly cried. If I’d had any dignity, I would have accepted the reassurance. As it was, I said “R-really?”

“Of course. I’m appalled that I made you doubt it for a moment.” He reached out and did this totally movie cheek-cupping thing. And somehow I didn’t feel ridiculous. “Love is a complicated experience. And so powerful that it can sometimes become its own justification. Nathaniel gave me hope that I could be a better man. You make me believe that I’m not such a terrible one.”

“I don’t,” I wailed. “I tried to make you do sex things with me that you didn’t want to do. That’s awful.”

“I don’t believe we came anywhere close to that.”

“But I triggered you.”

He gave me an incredibly cold look. “Can we please refrain from throwing around this pop psychological jargon?”

“Um, sorry.”

“I experienced a regrettable loss of control brought on by circumstance. Certainly not by you.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Maybe this was how he needed me to see what had happened. “Okay.”

There was a long silence.

While there’d definitely been improvement, things were still not a hundred percent comfortable. I would have put them at maybe fifty-five to sixty. Sixty-two at the outside.

Eventually, Caspian got up and prowled about, like an agitated fashion plate. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this but—”

I wasn’t liking the sound of that. “What?”

He drew in a long, careful breath. “I think we may have to…talk about sex.”

“Baby.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” Apparently there could be a wrong time to invoke Salt-N-Pepa. “Ignore me.”

“You said last night that I…that my…” He paused and went at it again. “I don’t want you to feel that I am condemning your…your ease. On the contrary, I admire it greatly. And very much enjoy what we do together.”

God, he looked incredibly uncomfortable.

Part of me wanted to let it go. Spare him an awkward discussion. Except that kind of thing had led us to yesterday, which—even with my zero experience—I could tell was crap. Nil points. F- boyfriending.

So we had to have this conversation. And I had to get it right this time. But I just didn’t know how. And I wasn’t inclined to trust Caspian’s judgment either, because his relationship with Nathaniel had basically been a masterclass in fucking each other up.

And then it struck me: he might not have recognized it, or even believed it, but Caspian had shown me what to do. Every time we’d had sex: the care he’d always taken with me, his perfect blend of cruelty and mercy, of knowing when to push and when to be gentle, and when I was strong enough to hurt a little.

As he was now. For me. For us.