Page 33 of The Elusive Billionaire

“Classic.” Grey’s muttering slaps my already bruised ego.

Pausing my recording, I glare at him. “Something you’d like to say?”

“No.”

My lips press together to the point of pain. Why did I ever like this asshole?

Because he wasn’t always an asshole. Scratch that. He wasn’t always an asshole all the time.

My finger is hovering over the button to start the recording when Grey slams his laptop down onto the bed between us.

“The few podcasts I’ve listened to, you’ve been smart and honest.” He’s angry but complimenting me. I can’t wait to see where this goes. “People respond to your advice because it comes from the heart, and you’ve truly got this shit figured out. But now you’re going to sit here and lecture people about trust? Trust, Monroe? What the fuck do you know about trust?”

I shake my head. “Until you can learn to step outside yourself and see our situation from all sides, you’ll never understand, so it’s not worth my time trying to explain it to you.”

Look at me, staying calm and collected while my insides burst into flames. Go, me!

“Step outside myself?”

A bolt of electricity rolls through my bloodstream. This is where we thrive. Somewhere between banter and bickering, we come alive with the kind of truth we can’t say out loud, so we bury it in sarcasm and sparks.

This is us, and I feel stronger in this moment than I have in months.

“Your habit of regurgitating my words is beneath you, Grey. If we’re going to fight, at least attempt to be creative.”

His eyes are huge in his skull. “How do you expect me to step outside myself and look at our whole situation when you won’t give me the goddamn details? Of course I’m pissed off, Monroe. I have one side to go on—my side—the side that you screwed over as if I’m an emotionless monster.”

His breathing is heavy and erratic as he keeps going. “How can I make informed choices when the only information I have is that you lied to me for months, even knowing my history and hang-ups, huh? You tell me it’s your story, and it’s apparently a sob story, but you won’t share a goddamn thing with me.”

He’s agitated and fighting with the sheets tangled around his legs. “So no, I don’t believe you should be lecturing anyone on something as precious as trust when you pretended to be my potential surrogate—the only one I wanted to match with, by the way—then mined personal details I’ve never shared with anyone else to use against me when you came at me as Savvy. Yet you keep your secrets locked up and expect me to just get over it?”

My heart grabs hold of my ribs and shakes them as though they’re the steel bars of a prison I built myself. It hurts. His words hurt because he’s not wrong, but he’s not entirely right either, and the anger builds in my limbs, searching for an outlet.

“Mine isn’t a sob story, Grey, it’s a cautionary tale.” My voice wavers, so I clear my throat and call on my feminine rage. “One that brings out the witch hunts and the pearl clutchers. And I don’t lecture. I listen, I reflect, and I give the mostknowledgeable answer I can based on years of experience, years of training, and years of working my ass off in school. So yes, you may never be able to trust me again, but I do know about trust and relationships, so you can fuck right off to the hell you’ve locked yourself in.”

Agitation isn’t the right word for the swirl of emotions inside me, but I feel it, the shakiness in my chest, the inability to take a full breath, the panic simmering just below my surface.

“Something tells me our pasts, while different, probably left very similar scars, Greyson, so before you throw stones, just remember we both come from glass houses, and once the cracks begin to show, it’s only a matter of time before complete and total destruction follows.”

Without waiting for him to answer, I press play…or I start to, and realize I accidentally hit record at some point. “Shit.” Checking the time stamp, I make a note for my sound engineer to have our little war of words removed from the podcast. Then I turn up the volume and completely tune him out.

“This question comes from Jaida M. from Boston. Hi, Jaida, what have you got for us tonight?”

“Oh my God. Hi. I’m such a big fan. Okay, so I’ve been reading a lot of romance novels lately that make me question where my limits begin and end. I know that reading romance is an escape from reality, but for months, I’ve been wanting…more in the bedroom. I never thought of our sex life as vanilla or boring, but now I’m having trouble climaxing because my brain won’t let go of all the things I want to try. My husband makes fun of me for reading smut already, so how do I approach this with him?”

Grey shifts next to me, and the air grows thicker. Did he just slide closer to me? Against my better judgment, I chance a peek to find he’s staring at my screen. That’s…interesting. Technically, he owns the platform that airs my podcast—well,Omni-Reyes does—but it never occurred to me before now that he might actually listen to it.

Something about that makes my skin flush hot.

“Well, Jaida. First, reading romance is not smut or something to be ashamed of. Sex is a healthy, normal part of life, and while I agree with you that many romances push the limits of fantasy—don’t get me started on a guy who can have three orgasms in a row or go all night—the stories you’re reading are about love first. They’re about relationships and human connection, so don’t you dare let anyone shame you for your reading preferences, not even your husband.

“Second, what kinds of things are we talking about? A little light spanking, or are we going straight to whips and ball gags? Give me a reference point.”

Grey lifts his knees and rests his arms on them. He seems uncomfortable, and it makes me want to laugh because this podcast went deliciously off the rails.

“I want him to pull my hair a little. Tell me what to do in the bedroom. I want him to… I don’t know.”Jaida’s face is obscured for her privacy, but the way she touches her forehead tells me she’s embarrassed to ask for what she wants.

“You want to be dominated in the bedroom, is that it?”