Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (31 page)

“Shh. Wait, baby. Just wait.” My hands were stroking, whisper-light now, up the silky, softened skin of her thighs, nudging them gently apart, my thumbs tracing over that most sensitive spot, the inner thigh that was one of the sweetest places on a woman’s body. Up and down, until her thighs were parting more, because she couldn’t help it, until her sighs had turned to low moans, until she was nothing but wanting, nothing but needing. Craving everything I had to give her.

And then, when I’d stopped her hurting, had softened her skin and her muscles and the knots inside, too…then, I loved her. Slowly, and thoroughly, and with everything I had. Taking her into my mouth, running my tongue over her, painting her there, too, while my fingers probed and played and she forgot to be self-conscious, forgot that she was anything but a willing, eager body, that she was anything but mine. And when she was going hard, I used my teeth on her, on those sensitive inner thighs, and heard her gasp again. I bit her, gently at first, then not quite so gently, while my fingers moved inside her, until her hips were rising, her cries were broken, and she needed it too much for me to deny her anymore.

She did taste like a cookie. She tasted delicious, so I ate her up. And she didn’t even manage to put her hands in my hair. She just lay there, splayed on the bed, her arms flung up beside her head, and let me do it all. She let me love her with everything I had, let me drive her slowly up into a sweet, long, slow, rolling orgasm, and then another and another, because Hope could ride that rollercoaster like no woman I’d ever known.

When I slid over her at last, when I couldn’t wait another moment, when I finally pushed inside her and felt all the tightness and the heat of her, the drug I needed more than anybody had ever needed anything, she still didn’t hold me. She lay there, pliant, melting in my arms, and let me make her come some more. And I felt like the most powerful man in the world.

She didn’t say anything for long minutes afterwards, and she didn’t move. Finally, though, she stirred herself, left the bed, and went back into the bathroom to clean up, and I blew out the candle. She came back in the dark, climbed into bed again, and snuggled up against me without bothering to find her undies, all modesty forgotten, her oil-smoothed skin soft under my hands.

I pulled her in, spoon fashion, against my body, and put a gentle hand on her belly, there where I couldn’t soothe the hurt enough, but where I still wanted to try. I could feel the way I’d loosened her stiffness, though, how I’d eased the ache, and I loved knowing it.

She said, her voice barely audible in the darkness, “You are the best lover in the world.”

I had to smile, and I may have had to kiss her hair, too. “You may not be the world’s biggest expert, eh.”

“I don’t have to be,” she said. “I know for sure. Nobody could be better than that. Nobody could love me like you do. Nobody could be more generous, and nobody could ever be sweeter.”

“Shh,” I said, rubbing her belly a bit more. “Ruin my reputation, won’t you. Hard first day, then, there at the office?”

“Yes. No.” She sighed. “I don’t know. How about you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s better now.” And it was true.

Hope

Hemi Te Mana may not have been perfect, but he sure had his redeeming qualities.

The morning after he’d knocked my socks off yet again, I woke when he did, at the ungodly hour of five-thirty, and bundled the sheets off the bed while he laughed at me. “That’s why I pay Inez, you know,” he said. “All you have to do is leave it unmade, and she’ll know they need changing.”

I hid my face in white cotton of such a high thread count, I couldn’t feel the weave. “I’d die of embarrassment, though. They smell like almond oil. They’ve
got
almond oil all over them.” Not to mention a few spots of blood that I was going to have to wash out with cold water before putting the sheet in the laundry basket, because there was no way I was leaving that for somebody else.

Hemi came over to me, dressed only in some very attractive black briefs, tipped my face up, and kissed me. “Hate to tell you,” he whispered in my ear, “but I think she’s guessed we’re having sex. We’re engaged. It’s allowed.”

I took advantage of the opening. “How’s that going? With Anika?” Casually, as if it had just occurred to me.

He didn’t seem too convinced by my acting job. “Fine,” he said, dropping his hand from my face and heading back into the bathroom, which put an end to that particular tender moment.

I considered pushing it, but decided to drop it. What was I going to do, run after him and badger him? Whatever he gave to his wife, it really
was
none of my business. What he brought to the marriage, whether it turned out to be less or not, belonged to him alone.

I was trying to be reasonable, you see. And I’d figured out that I could marry a man who told me everything, or I could marry Hemi. I wasn’t going to get both, so I’d better pick my battles and save my energies.

For work, for example. Because over the next couple weeks, even as I became accustomed with frightening ease to having my meals fixed for me, my laundry done for me, and my surroundings perpetually and magically cleaned, I found myself completely unable to adjust to my new position at the office.

It wasn’t that being ignored was anything new. When I’d been a photographer’s assistant, I’d been all but invisible unless Vincent had needed somebody to yell at. But at least some of the models had been friendly. Now…I felt like a ghost. I did my assignments for Simon, but he didn’t critique them, even when I asked. He gave me such small projects, too, that as often as not, I found myself with nothing to work on, instead resorting to studying the Te Mana website or the retailers’ online stores in a desperate attempt to have something—anything—to bring to the party. Which was interesting for me, but nobody was exactly begging me for my insights.

Because nobody talked to me. Maggie, my brunette non-friend, had a double cube next to mine, even though she was higher up the food chain. In fact, I should probably have been reporting to her. At least I’d been spared that. But I’d been right—my space was much too desirable for an assistant. And you can bet
her
head never once popped over the top of my cube. Her pals stopped by often enough, but they didn’t exactly pause for a cozy chat with me, and they didn’t stick around, either. Instead, Maggie would head off somewhere else with them, as if I actually
were
a spy.

That wasn’t quite fair, though. Everybody was civil to me, even Maggie. I guessed they thought they had to be. Gabrielle, the social media manager who’d talked to me over bagels, was downright friendly if I ran into her in the break room or the ladies’ room. But the one time I’d asked her, as casually as I could manage, “So hey…I was going to go out and grab lunch today. Want to come?” she’d answered with a laugh, “I don’t think I’ll be going out to lunch for about three months. Is this launch a killer or what?” And I’d laughed myself and said, “Yeah, stupid question. Never mind.”

I told myself that at some point, Simon and everybody else would get the message, and I’d become part of the team. And if they didn’t, I’d…well. I’d do something. This was getting embarrassing.

On the plus side, I saw more of Karen, and I knew she had adult supervision during the day to an extent I’d never been able to provide. Plus her popcorn-dispensing job on the weekends, to which Charles
did
drive her, making the whole endeavor a major net loss, economically speaking.

On the minus side, I didn’t see nearly as much of Hemi as I might have expected. He still took me out to dinner on Saturday nights, but gone were the summonses to his office and our midweek dates. Those three weeks in New Zealand had to be paid for, it seemed. He was flat-out, not coming home until eight most nights and working most of the day on the weekends, too. He left the apartment an hour before me in the mornings, sending Charles back to drive me to the office in a routine I’d surrendered to, as I’d accepted the rest of the conditions of my new life. They weren’t exactly hard to take, except when they were.

When Hemi did come home, he spent the first hour working out. I’d continued to join him for his sessions with Eugene, which never did get easier, instead leaving me shaky with an exhaustion I tried my best to conceal. After his workouts, I, and sometimes Karen, too, sat with Hemi while he ate a very late dinner at the sarcophagus and we didn’t talk about our workdays, because I didn’t want to whine and he didn’t want to share.

Not to say we didn’t talk at all. My swimming lessons were a particular source of amusement. Karen had taken to joining me for them, getting in some more of her own practice. As a result, she’d far outstripped me, which she loved.

“No, wait,” she said on our second Thursday night in the apartment, jumping up from her stool as Hemi ate his way through a plate of pork tamales wrapped in banana leaves. “Here’s Hope letting go of the side and swimming.” She bugged out her eyes, puffed out her cheeks, and scrabbled furiously at the air in a frantic dog-paddle, then dropped her hands and said, “She’s never going to make it onto the desert island. I’m going to have to tow her.”

Hemi smiled, and I said, trying for dignity, “But I did it, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Karen said gleefully, “and you almost made it ten feet across the pool, too.”

“Using the breaststroke,” I informed Hemi,
“not
the dog-paddle, whatever Karen tells you. Which is the
second
stroke I’ve learned.”

“Yeah, right,” Karen said. “You can call it that. Except that if you were teaching a dog to do the breaststroke, that would totally be the demonstration.”

Hemi actually laughed, then looked at me, cleared his throat, and said, “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m sure your breaststroke is very, ah, human.”

“And it wasn’t ten feet, either,” I said. “The pool is ten yards wide, for your information.”

“Well,” Karen said, relenting, “you breathed and everything.”

“Breathing’s good,” Hemi agreed solemnly. “How are you going yourself, Karen?”

“Just swam across the Y pool a few times, that’s all,” she said airily.
“And
I’ve started to learn to dive. But I’ve had more lessons. Plus, you know, I’m braver than Hope.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hemi said. “I think Hope’s got a fair bit of courage. Surprised me a time or two, hasn’t she. Have you met the heir to the throne yet?”

“Ha.” She plopped back down onto the stool beside me, picked up the spoon I’d abandoned, and started to eat the rest of my flan, another product of her lessons with Inez. It was safe to say that Karen’s cooking apprenticeship was going better than my marketing one. “No hot guys in the next lane at all. Some old guy who’s like, forty, that’s about the best I ever get.” The corner of Hemi’s mouth curled up, he glanced at me, and I made a face at him as Karen went on. “I was right, too. The oldest other person in the class is fourteen. He has a crush on me, too.
So
awkward.” She sighed, then asked me, “Don’t you like the flan? It took me ages to caramelize the sugar. I messed up the first time, and Inez made me throw it out and start over. It’s super creamy, though, don’t you think?”