Page 137 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

But it’s time for both of us to give in.

I bear down on his hand and meet his pounding dick pump for pump until I’m at the point of no return.

The crescendo grows until it’s filling my body, my head, until it has nowhere else to go, no other option but to explode in a monumental crash of cymbals that shatters through every part of me.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.” I’m pounding the bed with my fist now.

This one is even more powerful than the first, like he’s drawn it out from somewhere even deeper inside me.

Beneath me, his animal instinct takes over, pumping up into me the way nature intended, his head rocking from side to side as he gasps and groans and moans and shouts, his fingers digging into my butt, holding me, hanging onto me, keeping me for himself forever.

“Jesus. Fuck,” he cries.

And we come together, here on my bed, surrounded by boxes containing my former existence, as I prepare to shed my old life, my old self, and move into the future where I can be the real me with the man whose every part completes every missing part of me.

This is my future. Right here.

And it involves us both going back to the place where we found each other.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

JANUARY

MILLER

“Are you sure that office is big enough for you?” Frankie asks, pointing at the architect’s plans laid out on her grandpa’s kitchen table. “You’ll be working from home so much you might need more space than that.”

“It’s huge,” I tell her. “The main thing I need is a big enough area to spread out blueprints. Looking at them on a computer just isn’t the same. And I have that right there.” I point to a corner of the room where a drafting table with spotlights over it will go. “Plus, if I need to store more things, I’ll also have the workshop.”

Ever since I used the replacement plank for the back of the feed shed as a practice piece, my fingers have been itching to get back to woodworking. So the plans for our new house include a workshop where I can set up all theequipment my grandfather left me and I can, for the first time in my life, have a hobby.

“It’s going to be the most beautiful home,” Elsie says.

Sam and Elsie are sitting across the table from us, looking at the plans upside down.

“I still can’t believe you’re back for good.” Sam reaches across the drawing and takes hold of Frankie’s arm. “And right next door, too.”

“Yup,” I say, smiling at Frankie. “Guess I did end up buying some Warm Springs land to build on after all.”

“If it weren’t for you, none of us would be sitting here at all,” Sam says. “That awful man would be digging it up for his commuter homes by now.”

Frankie shudders.

“At least I succeeded in stopping that from happening,” I say. “Just not in quite the way I intended.”

I also solved the problem of Skinner and his friend in the New York state government who was going to block the retroactive application for the rescue registry. For the first time in this whole situation, my money and power came in handy, and I didn’t even need to set my lawyers on him.

Brooke did some digging, found out who Skinner’s so-called friend was—I will never believe he has anyactualfriends—and I went up to Albany to meet him. All it took was a very expensive lunch and a couple of hours of my persuasive skills to get him to understand what a toad Skinner is, and he promised to wave the Channings’ application through. Oh, and I might also have promised to renovate a crumbling public swimming pool in his constituency—a project that will likely win him a few votes in his upcoming election.

Frankie puts her hand on my thigh under the table,sending a shiver straight to my groin. I don’t foresee there ever being a day when her touch won’t light a fire in my body as well as my heart.

“We’ve been thinking,” Sam says with a sideways glance at Elsie. “Once your house is built and Frankie moves out of here…we thought…well…” He puts his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders. “That maybe Elsie might move in.”

Frankie gasps and claps her hand over her mouth, her eyes instantly bright with tears.

For a second I’m not sure which way she’s swinging with that.

But all doubt is gone when she springs from her seat and runs around the table to hug them both. “That’s fantastic! I’m so happy for you. But you can move in now if you like, Elsie. Don’t feel you have to wait for me to be out of here.”