Billionaire Bad Boys of Romance 1(82)

In the few hours I was awake, I tried to contact Malcolm, but his bail had not been posted. His assets were frozen, and, I suspected, he didn't really want to be sprung from jail anyway. It was just the sort of thing a guy filled with self-loathing and melancholia would eat up, although if he actually went to prison I suspected the experience would begin to pall fairly quickly. His lawyers stonewalled me, and I eventually stopped trying.

Going to see him was out of the question, too, since paparazzi had surrounded both Felicia's house and my apartment. Malcolm was obviously all over the news, and as his “kidnapping victim” so was I, even though kidnapping had been dropped from his charges. Terrible photos of me beamed out across the airwaves and showed up online.

I'd been a genius at helping Felicia defeat the reporters back when she and Anton had been in and out of the tabloids for kinky sex in semi-public, but now that it was me in the spotlight I was utterly helpless. I had no idea how to protect myself. I was slow and stupid from the sun, fucked into a gentle torpor, but also ripped open and rubbed raw, and even after I'd closed the wounds the muscle underneath still needed to heal.

I turned completely inward, focusing on the ache Malcolm had left in me, slowly processing our time together. Torn apart, it felt as though as he had died, all our unspoken words still hanging between us. It was a ridiculous way to feel, but I still wandered the house like a ghost and stepped outside more times than I could count, meaning to suck down a quick cigarette in an attempt to fire my mind out of its sluggish repose, but the moment I did I would remember that I was a sudden celebrity and I would curse and dart back inside. But of course just a second was plenty of time to land me back in the celeb news cycle at least once.

But most of the time I just slept. It was easier than thinking.

On the third night I dreamed about him. We stood naked on the deck of his boat. The sun beat down, but it was nothing in comparison to the heat of his lips on my throat, my mouth, my breasts, his hands on my body. Gently he lifted my arms, holding them out, and with a delicate touch he peeled the tattoos from my skin. Fish and spiders and fire birds slipped away from me, leaving the scars beneath exposed.

Then he lifted each tattoo to the azure sky and, one by one, the sea wind whipped them from his fingers and carried them away.



On the morning of the fourth day I awoke and finally felt awake. I descended the stairs, feeling restless, and, drawn by the smell of coffee, wandered into the kitchen.

Felicia wasn't there. There was only Anton, who sat at the table in the breakfast nook reading some dumb business bullshit on his tablet. I still didn't know Anton very well, so I had to force myself into some semblance of levity. Shuffling over to the table, I cocked a hip and put a hand on it.

“I really need a cigarette,” I informed him, my voice rusty with disuse. “Don't you have any secret passageways I can duck into for a smoke?

He didn't look at me right away. That's what I hate about Anton. He's just gotta make everything into some kind of dick swinging contest.

Finally he lifted his eyes to mine. Cool, calm. Unperturbed. “Of course not,” he said.

“What kind of billionaire are you?” I complained. “How can a guy as rich as you not have a secret passage in his house?”

He sipped his coffee and raised a brow. “One who walks around unashamed,” he said.

“What about when the revolution comes? You'll be first up against the wall while the proletariat screams for your head. You'll wish you had a secret passage then. Actually, you should put one in before the revolution happens. You'll thank me when you're ruling a drug cartel in Mexico.” I surprised myself with my little rant. Apparently I was feeling a bit bitter about the world.

Anton was not amused. “And even if I did have a secret passage,” he said, choosing to ignore my dire warnings about the imminent communist overthrow of capitalism, “I would not allow you to smoke in it. It's a filthy habit.”

“You're not the boss of me,” I said.

“Actually I am.”

...Fuck. He was right.

We stared at each other for a moment before he looked back at his tablet and sipped his coffee again. Pulling my best sullen teenager face at his unconcerned face I turned and stalked away.

In the kitchen I poured myself some coffee and stomped around the island, as restless as one of those tigers in cages at the zoo who contract OCD from being cooped up all the time.

Anton ignored me, studying the screen in front of him, as cool and unruffled as a statue of a sphinx, and just as mysterious. It occurred to me that Anton would never let someone betray him the way Malcolm did. Why couldn't I have gotten involved with one of the billionaires who crushed people without regard for sentimentality? It would have been a lot less stressful. I wouldn't have been interrogated by the feds for starters...