Submitting to the Billionaire(3)

He woke me up with butterfly kisses all over my body, and then he made  love to me. Mad, passionate love. It's been a very long time since he  was that hungry for me. He couldn't get enough.

When it was over and I had come hard, he held my face gently between his  palms and whispered that I was the most important thing in his life.  That he would die for me. It reminded me of how it was at the beginning  when we were in the first flush of love.

He was thirty-four and I had just turned sixteen when we met. I had gone  to a friend's birthday party and her uncle came along. The uncle was  Nigel. He was so crazy for me he would wait outside my school. At first I  wasn't sure, but he was so handsome and so experienced that from the  moment he kissed me I was a goner. Since I was so young we had to keep  it a secret from my father.         

     



 

I hated that, but I think the idea of our relationship being taboo  turned him on. I feel like a dirty old pervert he used to say as he had  me in lifts and the toilets of nightclubs. Then I turned seventeen, and I  refused to hide it anymore.

I told my dad.

Oh, my, he was furious. He called Nigel every awful name in the book and  said he was going to call the police. I told him if he did that I would  run away from home and he and Mum would never see me again. It was  Nigel or no one else for me. So, we carried on uneasily. Me sleeping  over at Nigel's at the weekends, and Dad huffing and puffing when I  returned home.

When I was eighteen Nigel asked me to marry him. The next day, I brought  him home and introduced him to my father. Dad distrusted him on sight  and never took to him. It made me unhappy, but what could I do? I loved  Nigel. When Dad walked me down the aisle, there were tears in his eyes,  and he told me my wedding day was the saddest day of his life.

Dad was wrong. Nigel has been good to me. The real irony is that it's  Nigel's money that's keeping Dad alive now. That hospital room he is  staying in costs thousands per week.





Chapter Four





Star





Quietly, so I don't wake Nigel, I slip out of bed. I tie my robe, lift  my phone off the bedside table, and go downstairs. In the kitchen I  switch on the coffee machine and set the dining table for two before  pulling open the heavy curtains.

Outside daylight is beginning to appear and I sigh with pleasure. The  garden always looks best at this time of the year when the honeysuckle,  freesia, sunflowers and roses are all out. I open the French doors and  go out into the cool, fresh air. This is my favorite time of the day.  When Nigel is asleep upstairs, the air is filled with the sounds of  birds, and my mind can plot out my storyline. My phone rings. I take it  out of my pocket and look at the screen.

"Hi, Nan."

"Good morning, Love," she greets brightly. Nan is like me. An early  bird. Sometimes she'll get up at five in the morning and start cleaning  out the garden shed. It drives my granddad crazy.

"You all right?" I ask.

"Other than my dodgy knees and your granddad's dodgy mouth, I'm just  fine. I swear that man has moved me to thoughts of murder more often  than I've had cooked dinners."

I smile as I turn around and go back into the house.

"Are you going to see your father today?" she asks.

"Of course," I say as I step into the kitchen.

"I'd like to come with you. Will you drop by and pick me up, then?"

I pour some bird seed into a small container "Sure. I'm going before lunch. Is about ten o'clock okay with you?"

"I'll be ready, Love."

We chat a little more as I tear some bread into small pieces and add it  to the bird seed. Finishing the call, I go out into the garden and toss  the mix onto the roof of the shed. I go back inside, and to my surprise I  hear Nigel's footsteps in the bathroom above.

How strange. He never wakes up this early on a Saturday. Nigel works  very long hours during the week, and the weekends are the only times he  gets to relax a little. In fact, I usually get hours of writing time in  before he wakes up.

If he's awake I know he'll be down in about fifteen minutes so I start  to prepare eggs and toast for two. Neither of us are big on breakfast.  Nigel appears in the doorway as I am cracking the eggs. His hair is  tousled, and the sight puts a big, sloppy smile on my face.

"Good morning, you gorgeous Sex God you."

Nigel is not a morning person, but even so his expression is particularly mournful as he returns my greeting. "Morning."

"Breakfast will be ready in five minutes," I tell him.

"I'm not hungry, Star."

My smile slips a notch. Nigel is not a man to skip breakfast. "Fine, sit down, and I'll get your expresso."

He forces a smile and, turning around, heads towards the dining room.  Now I know for sure: something is very wrong. Abandoning the eggs, I  make his expresso the way he likes it, and follow him into the dining  room. I place his coffee on the table, and take the seat next to him. He  thanks me quietly, but does not look my way.

For a few moments neither of us speaks.

I clasp my hands in my lap and watch him sip his coffee. All of this is  so unlike Nigel. He is a man on the go. He wakes, showers, gets dressed  and eats breakfast whilst he reads the morning paper or checks his  emails. When he's running late he'll shout down the stairs for me to  make his coffee, down it in one hit, peck me on the cheeks and disappear  out the door.

"What's going on, Nigel? Why are you acting so strangely?" I ask quietly.         

     



 

He shakes his head the way someone who has lost everything would do.

"What's the matter? Don't you feel well?"

"I feel sick to my stomach with what I've done."

My stomach drops. "What have you done, Nigel?"

He slaps his hands on his cheeks and looks at me, his eyes distraught.  "I have to tell you something, Star," he says, his voice cracking.

In a split second two scenarios cross my mind. He's lost a lot of money  at the brokerage, or, oh God, he's got another woman. I'm strong enough  to handle the money thing, but not the other woman.

"What is it?" I ask nervously.

"I'm in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Big trouble," he says swallowing a large mouthful of air. "I've been such a fool, Star. Such a colossal fucking fool."

For a moment, the horror of anticipating what he is going to tell me,  dumbfounds me. In my mind I hear him saying I cheated on you, Star. It  was just a one-night stand. Or worse. I've fallen for someone else and  I'm leaving you.

I just stare at him, hardly daring to breathe.

He opens his mouth. "I owe money. A lot of money."

My breath comes out in a rush of sheer relief. Okay. This, I can deal  with. I take a few shallow breaths and straighten my spine. This I can  definitely handle. "Do your bosses know yet?"

He frowns. "Bosses?"

I stare at him. "At work?"

He shakes his head slightly. "This is not work, Star. This is my personal debt."

"A personal debt?" I ask. I feel confused and frightened suddenly, as if  I am standing on shifting sand. "Why did you need a personal debt,  Nigel?"

He doesn't answer me straight away. Instead, he stretches out a hand to cover mine.

"Nigel?"

He removes his hand, and my skin feels cold and empty. My mind goes  blank as I watch him buy time by swallowing the last cold coffee dregs.

"I'm a gambler, Star. I owe four hundred and fifty thousand pounds."





Chapter Five





Star




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3Vdo5etCQ

Don't Speak





His words don't even register. I shake my head. I can't have heard right. "What?"

"Oh, darling," he croons. "Don't look at me like that. You know I can't take it."

"What are you talking about, Nigel?" I ask slowly.

"I'm an addict. I'm addicted to gambling," he mutters.

"Gambling?" I repeat stupidly.

He nods, a pained expression on his face.

"What? At work?"

"No." He exhales loudly. "In casinos."

I stare at him blankly. Nothing makes sense. We've been to a casino  once. Two years ago. We sat together at a blackjack table. Nigel refused  to play, but I did. He looked on with a slightly disapproving  expression as I played three rounds and gleefully collected my winnings.  Three hundred pounds. "But you don't even like gambling!"

He runs his fingers through his hair. "I like it too much."

"Since when?"

He shrugs. "Recently. It started off as just a little fun, small  amounts, letting off some stress. You know the intense stress I'm under  in the city."

"Stress?" I echo.

"You have no idea how much stress I have to cope with at work. It wrecks you."

"What? I begged you to leave your job, but you insisted that you thrived  on the high-powered stress. Your exact words were, ‘Thank God stress is  not a woman, or I'd have to fuck her.' So don't you dare tell me that  you started gambling because of the stress."

"Well, whatever the reason was, I started gambling, okay," he cries.  "It's not really my fault. I was only gambling small amounts. Everything  would have been fine if this stupid guy at work didn't tell me about a  place where we could make a killing. That's where it all went wrong. I  was so sure I'd get it all back. I was so close to winning, Star. You  don't know how close. If only I could have had another chance  … "