The Last Eligible Billionaire(69)

It’s like my body has been saving up for this for years.

And it probably has.

Hayes collapses on top of me, his breath tickling my neck, before the last tremors of my orgasm have finished sending shivers through my body. I stretch my toes, let my legs fall more open, and my arms collapse to the ground too.

And then I giggle.

“Dear god, you’re going to murder me with sex, aren’t you?” Hayes murmurs.

“Can we do that again?”

“Correction: You would murder me with denying me sex. I would die of blue balls.”

I snort-laugh.

He sucks in a breath, his body going still, and I realize my vagina is squeezing his spent cock.

I love this moment.

I’m so very vulnerable. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

But also safe.

I know to the deepest parts of me that while this may only be a side benefit of our arrangement, Hayes won’t hurt me.

Not on purpose.

I trust him.

He lets me be me.

“Are you hungry?” I murmur into his hair as I find the strength to run my fingers through it once more.

He settles his head deeper onto my shoulder. “No,” he murmurs. “I’m too content to be hungry.” He kisses my collarbone. “Begonia?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you for being you.”

My eyes go hot, and I blink the sensation away as quickly as I can.

This might not be permanent, but it’s good, if only to show me what I truly want in a relationship.

To show me what relationships can be.

And I will never settle for anything less again.





26





Hayes



For the second night in a row, my dinner tastes as though it’s been sprinkled with fairy dust and dipped in flavors newly fallen from the heavens.

It’s a simple charcuterie picnic, with cheeses and prosciutto and capicola, grapes and figs, honeycomb and cornichons, crackers and dipping sauces.

But it tastes better for watching Begonia enjoy it.

Correction.

It tastes better for helping a very naked Begonia enjoy it.

“What kind of cheese is this?” she asks, leaning over to hold a cube to my mouth.

I eat it off her fingers and chew slowly while she watches me. “No idea. I need another.”

I’d swear her smile blossoms from the depths of her soul. It’s so wide, uninhibited, and joyful—so very Begonia. “Mr. Rutherford, are you trying to get me to feed you again?”

I offer her a fig, which she eats off my fingers. “What good is it to have a Greek painting brought to life if she doesn’t let me lie with my head in her lap and feed me grapes off the vine?”

“I am not a Greek painting.”

“Correct. You’re much lovelier.”

She scoots closer, her bare chest brushing mine as we recline on the blanket in the comfortable summer evening, and she dangles another cube of cheese over my lips. “You may have another sample, but not until you tell me if you’ve ever camped.”

“Like this?”

“No, like in a tent in the woods, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire and telling ghost stories until you can’t sleep because every raccoon or squirrel sounds like the claw coming to get you.”

“Not recently.”

She laughs, free and easy, and I tug her closer to kiss that sweet mouth.

I can’t remember the last time I felt free to laugh about the little things.

Or the last time I wanted to.

But she makes me want to smile. And laugh. And sleep outdoors in the light of the moon, wrapped in a blanket with a woman who’s asked for so very little and given so very much.

“You’ve slept outdoors often?” I ask her.

“When I was little, Hyacinth and I used to sleep wherever we got tired when we were running around our Dad’s camp all summer long. We woke up once in a canoe.”

“On the water?”

“I swore a blood oath to Hy that I’d never, ever, ever reveal more details than that.”

I chuckle. “And did you weave your secrets into friendship bracelets?”

“We did! And we made candles and tie-dyed T-shirts and that’s the first place I ever used a pottery wheel.”

“At your father’s camp?”

She feeds me a bite of prosciutto as she nods. “He had the most adorable art hut. Every summer after Mom and Dad divorced, we’d spend it out at Camp Funshine. And the minute Mom let us out of the car, Hy would race for the archery range or the ropes course, and I’d dash off in the other direction for the art hut.”

Camp Funshine. Of course. It couldn’t have been named anything else. “You miss it?”

“Dad gave so many kids the best memories of their summers, and we met so many kids from all over the world. There was this girl I met from—oh my gosh, you know what? I can’t start, because if I start telling you about all of the people I met there, I would literally never stop.”

I smile. That’s pure Begonia. “Have you been back as an adult?”

“No. The people who bought it when Dad declared bankruptcy just wanted the land. And the lake. And the stables. It’s—it’s not what it used to be.”