Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(53)

“You played angry.”

He spreads cream onto the scone. “Yes, and like a robot. Without feeling. Terminator, you said. You heard it and you were right.”

“I didn’t say that to be cruel.”

“This might sound a little strange, but it meant something that you saw it. You saw me. It made me feel less alone.”





19




The world is your cocktail party; never forget it.

~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room





* * *



Max

I hit the button for my penthouse, relieved to have Mia all to myself without the eyes of the world on us.

The elevator doors shut and she leans back, hands on the rail behind her, luminous in her pink dress.

“Nice elevator. There’s just one thing missing,” she says. “What could be missing?”

I go to her and cage her with my arms. I love her sassy smile. I love that she gives me shit about the Max Hilton lines.

“What could it be?” she teases.

I shut her up with a kiss. She grabs my shirt, pulls me in hard. I’m stunned all over again at how well we fit. The more time I spend with her, the less I want to let her go back to her apartment, her job, her world.

The door opens and we’re there.

She turns. “So this is where you live.”

“When I’m in the city.”

“Ah, of course.” I can hear the smile on her lips as she says it. More Max Hilton mockery, but she likes that I’ve built this. Mia loves competence. She always has.

I hang behind and watch her look around. “Where are the giant freak lips?” she asks.

It takes me a moment to realize what she’s talking about—a massive posterized image of lips that was above the fireplace once upon a time. My designer hung it as a favor to the artist for the magazine shoots.

“Somebody is obsessed with me. Did you collect all of the articles ever written about me?”

“You’re inescapable,” she says. “You’re even on the sides of the busses? Somebody loves his own face.” She goes to the window and peers out over the park.

I go up behind her. I move her hair aside and kiss her neck. “I think you love my own face.”

She turns around in my arms. Her look says, aren’t you so full of yourself? It also says, I do love your own face. She kisses me and pulls away to continue her self-guided tour around the living room.

I love the sense of ease between us. I never brought women home into my private spaces. Never introduced them to my driver or made confessions about the music.

But no woman is Mia.

She runs her hand over the nubby blue couch and the antique lamp.

“This isn’t at all what was in the magazine. It’s so much more…” She turns around and looks at the painting above the fireplace. I bought it at a flea market in Amsterdam. It’s a crow in a tree, done in bold, heavy black strokes on a bright blue background. It’s not at all realistic, but there’s something I just love about it. I want her to love it, too.

“It’s so you,” she says.

“A crow?”

“It’s so straightforward, just the lines of it. Energetic and watchful. People think crows are carnivorous and mercenary, but in truth, they’re fun and smart and playful.”

“Are you saying people think I’m carnivorous and mercenary?”

She looks at me strangely. “Maybe.”

I don’t love that she’d say that. We’ve been trying to modulate that image lately. Not enough to defang the brand, but corporate responsibility is a thing with me these days. It’s a lot of what Catwalk for a Cause is about.

She moves on into the dining room. “It looked so different in the Architectural Digest article. This is much more human.”

“I’m still on the carnivorous and mercenary thing.” She looks thoughtful, as though she has something more to say.

I think she’s about to tell me, but then she spots the hot tub on the porch. “Look, Max, there’s steam coming out of there.” She points to the corner of the cover where steam leaks up. “Is that thing functional in the wintertime?”

“Maybe.”

“That is so decadent.”

“Decadence is the spice of life, baby.”

She gives the Max Hilton line an eye roll and I go to her, slide a knuckle along her jaw, down her neck, down the smooth silky bodice of her dress. I’m imagining her naked in there. “It’s amazing in the winter. You want to go in?”

“Would we need suits?”

“I have a no-suit policy for you.”

She gives me a sassy smile. “Oh really?”

“I’m sorry, but it’s a strict no-suit policy that I enforce in only the harshest way.” I slowly unzip her dress, kissing my way down, unwrapping her like an erotic confection. “I’m afraid I’ll have to enforce it.”

Her breath speeds. I love that I can affect her this way. I plant kiss after kiss along her spine. My cock is rock hard as I push her dress down in front of the panorama of the park. Her whole body shudders as I pull down her panties, get her to step out of her clothes. “Bra off,” I grate.