Page 78 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“Hell yes. I’m especially hoping you’ll come in the bath with me.”

He went little pink at that—but appeared no less confused. “If this is really how you’d like to spend the evening, then…certainly.”

“You ridiculous man.” I shoved my hand in his and he let me, folding his fingers tightly around mine. “I can’t imagine anything I’d like more.”

Chapter 20

Getting Caspian in the bath proved weirdly difficult. He didn’t exactly refuse, so much as made about a million excuses and then got very busy around the apartment. Which, incidentally, was exactly as I’d left it: pristine, gleaming, this space preserved in amber by a ruthless designer and a dedicated cleaning team.

The bath, though, the bath was fucking amazing. I’d only used the shower before, partially for convenience, but mainly because the bath was so ludicrously vast I was afraid of feeling lonely in it. Or, y’know, drowning. And being found the next morning—all soggy and blue and floating upside-down, like a baby octopus in a bowl of udon soup—by someone who did not need that in their life.

“You’re missing all the bubbles,” I called out.

Caspian finally appeared in the doorway and I did my best to look tempting, rather than just, well, wet. It semi-worked because he came over, crouched down and…brushed some foam off my nose.

Sigh. Sexy really did run the other way when it saw me coming, didn’t it?

Or maybe it all naturally flowed toward Caspian. Who was looking…teeth-achingly hot, right then, with his jacket off, and his shirt clinging to his arms, the tips of his hair already curling in the steam.

I peered at him hopefully. “Are you coming in?”

“I’m perfectly happy to wait. You’ll be more comfortable on your own.”

“No, I won’t. I’m actively less comfortable, in fact, because this bath is way too big for me.”

Caspian was still…hmm. In anyone else I would have called it dithering.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Don’t you want to?”

“It’s not that.” He wove his hands together in front of him—a gesture I was beginning to recognize as the trick it was. Stillness imposed on restlessness. “It’s just not something I’ve done before.”

Not even with Nathaniel? God, don’t be smug, Arden.

“And so,” he went on, “I suppose I’m somewhat uncertain.”

I offered my most winning smile. “Nothing to it. Clothes off. Hop in. Lesbians do it all the time.”

“Lesbians get in the bath with you?”

“No. With each other. On TV anyway. I don’t know what they do in real life. Probably fuck?”

Caspian was looking at me in obvious bewilderment. I guess I had kind of gone astray.

“You don’t have to,” I told him quickly, remembering all too vividly the last time I’d pushed him too hard. I really thought he was going to say no. And I told myself it didn’t matter.

But then he stood and started taking his clothes off. And, holy shit, I was rapt. Obviously I’d seen him naked and removing garments before, but I’d always been distracted. Or more naked myself. But now I got to sit there among my bubbles and watch…watch…watch.

He made no attempt to be even remotely seductive, except I was seduced regardless—he was just so beautiful, baring his skin for me without ceremony. His watch and cufflinks he left by the sink. His clothes he draped over the closed lid of the toilet.

It should have been so banal. But the steam from my bath curled around his hips. Licked at his throat. Left silver curlicues in his pubic hair. And I felt I was beholding something from a pre-Raphaelite painting. One of the racier ones. Echo peeping at Narcissus, as he lingered starkers in some verdant glen. If, that is, Narcissus had been comprehensively fucking unbothered by his own spectacular gorgeousness.

And then Caspian Hart was in the bath with me.

Caspian Hart was in the bath with me!

Hunched at one end, his arms folded tightly around his knees. “Now what?”

“We…relax? Blow bubbles. Splash about playfully. Wash each other in sexy ways.”