Page 49 of The Elusive Billionaire

“Or because my cock drills into you like no one else ever has.” And now my cock is hard. “What else?”

“There was Patch Daddy, but I thought you’d like that too much. Then Commander, but it felt like too much of a compliment. Mechanic was in the running for a while too.”

My lips curl. She has me so damn curious all the time. “Why Mechanic? Because I like to dirty you up?”

“Jesus, no. Because you think you can fix the whole damn world.”

I suddenly feel lighter than I did moments ago. She did that. She breathes fresh air into my stale, stagnant life.

“You’ve put a lot of thought into a nickname for me.” It’s as though she’s injected me with the swagger of Iron Man, and I stand a little taller.

She grumbles and looks away. “I had to. If I kept calling youCrotch Rocketin my head, it would’ve eventually slipped out, and Madi wouldn’t have thought it was as funny as I do.”

A bark of laughter rips from me, shaking my shoulders and causing a stitch in my side, but she frowns—the seriousness of earlier circling back and hitting me square in the shoulders.

“Do you think our friends have left us out here to try and clean up whatever mess is out there?” she asks. “Or do you think we’re still here because of the hurricane?”

The collar of my T-shirt presses against my throat tighter than the tie I once allowed Sage to tie on me when he was seven. I miss my suits, but it seems out of place to wear them here while she’s stuck in my oversized T-shirts and lounge pants.

My suits are my armor, protection. And my gut says she’s going to need all the protection she can get.

“I don’t know,” I say.

She shifts back to the swamp-like pond before determination wraps her entire form in Kevlar. “Are you up for a hike?”

She can’t be serious.

“You don’t have to come, but I can’t just sit here anymore either. Not if…” Her beautiful green eyes connect with mine, and the pain I find hidden in their depths steals the air straight from my lungs. “It doesn’t matter. If Madi is trying to protect me, I just— I can’t, okay? If she and Brax are doing something to shield me…” Her throat works hard to swallow. “Madi has been through enough with the media. She doesn’t deserve to go through my shit too.”

“What shit, Monroe?” I’m officially losing my temper with her, and my voice rattles Mother Nature’s soothing sounds. “What the hell kind of skeletons could you possibly have?”

When she looks up at me with so many painful secrets swimming in her beautiful green eyes, terrifying sensations swirl in my gut.

Ever since my father locked my sister, Violet, in her bedroom for the duration of her pregnancy when she was just seventeen years old, I haven’t handled having choices taken from me well.

After Violet went into early labor and passed away from the lack of medical care, the will to protect has become my entire personality. And staring at Savvy now, every molecule in my body says that she needs my protection.

I failed with my sister—I won’t allow that to happen again.

“The kind I’ll do everything in my power to keep from the people I love.” She glances back out over the swamp, and sadness I’ve only ever experienced firsthand envelops her in a cloud of grief. “Even if that means I have to leave them to protect them.”

Panic. That’s the uncontrollable heat feeding on my veins like cancer. “Fuck that, Sav. You’re not that dumb, are you? Have you met any goddamn person in this town? Not one of them is going to let you just walk out of here to deal with anything on your own.”

Especially not me.

As if she can hear my unspoken words, she drifts closer. Close enough for me to see the dash of gold in her left iris. She pats my chest, twice, then walks into the house.

“Stay here, Patch.” Her smirk is an injection of adrenaline straight to my soul. “I’ve never counted on a white knight, and I don’t need one now. I’ll call you from the inn if I find out it wasn’t the storm holding us hostage.”

I growl like a bear in her direction, and it vibrates through each vertebra of my spine.

“Fuck you, Monroe.” I lower my voice—a warning that makes most people back up a step. But not her, no, never her. She moves closer. “If you think I’m letting you walk out into the unknown alone then you don’t know me at all.”

She pauses, and we meet at the stairs, her chin dipping toward her chest. “Does anyone know you? Really know you?”

Flames lick at my ribs, the fire in my veins flooding my system. She’s trying to pick a fight, and I can’t allow it. Not now. “You almost did, Monroe. Almost. Now pack a bag and grab the first aid kit from my bathroom. We have no idea what we’ll encounter—if we can even find a way around the remaining water. Even the driveway that we can see on the other side of the pond is corroded, and who knows what will happen once we meet the main road.”

“You really don’t have to come with me.” She sighs, and it feeds my own frustration. “I’m perfectly capable of figuring out how to get through mud on my own.”