So I had this totally crazy dream. I dreamed I met a billionaire called Caspian Hart and he kind of liked me. Well, he liked me enough to put me up in a ludicrously expensive London flat, but not enough to trust me, talk to me, or spend any time with me. A sufficiently self-esteem-tanking level of liking that I ended up running back to my family’s place in Scotland. But, also, a sufficiently something level of liking that he wound up following me. And telling me a bunch of things, which made me realize that not only did my level-of-liking scale need serious recalibration, but I liked him enough to give it another go.
Except, oh wait, that wasn’t a dream.
It had really happened.
And there was Caspian himself, tucked into the corner where the bed met the window, watching the distant sea. He was pale in the cool, blue-tinted morning and a little tousled—that one wayward lock of his fallen free again. The smile he gave me, as I emerged from the duvet, was slightly shy as if he wasn’t sure how to greet me.
“Good morning.” I stretched with abandon, spine arching, toes uncurling. “Did you sleep okay?”
“I’m fine. I saw the sunrise.”
“Really?” It was a little hard to imagine. Or maybe not? He was probably the only person I knew who would have the patience to do something like that: watching and waiting as the light cracked wide the night. Kind of lonely, though. With me snuggled and oblivious right there beside him. “Um, maybe you should have woken me? Or…I don’t know. I might have been grumpy.”
“I didn’t want to wake you. You looked, frankly, terribly cute.”
I looked what now? I wrinkled my nose, unimpressed. “Cute in a way that makes you want to do bad things to me?”
“Oh yes.”
He crooked a finger and—after a second of omg, will I taste of mornings-based hesitation—I dived under the duvet, surfacing again between his knees. He wrapped his arms around me, hauled me up and kissed me—not roughly exactly, but without mercy. Prizing my mouth open like the lid of a treasure box and taking possession. These simple caresses were infinitely preferable to whatever Ellery had given me that time in London. No feverish ecstasies, but a deep, heavy, and all-consuming bliss. A spell to turn me to butter.
He was smooth and silken against me—his hair surprisingly soft, though I could also feel the wicked tightening of his nipples and the hot pressure of his cock. He smelled of warmth, if that was a thing that was possible. A cozy, sleep-clinging scent of skin with only the faintest trace of sweetness from his cologne. This unexpected nakedness that was just him.
He made a low sound at the back of his throat—almost a growl—and flipped me. I went gladly, though the bed made a god-awful telltale creaking as I landed on my back amid the pillows and rucked-up sheets. I wasn’t even sure Caspian noticed, let alone cared, as he came down on top of me.
I’d been kissed and delightfully manhandled enough by him that I had a pretty good notion of what he might like. So I stretched my hands over my head. Giving him my surrender—the safety and the dark thrill of it.
His eyes glinted. Turned stormy.
And he reached up, dragging a finger from my wrist to my shoulder, making me very aware of that line of pulled-tight skin, all exposed and unprotected and held that way by nothing but the desire to please him.
Though, admittedly, there were limits to my good behavior.
As he settled between my thighs I couldn’t help arching my spine and tilting my hips, making very, very explicit all the places of my body I was up for yielding.
“God, Arden.” I was pretty suspicious of the phrase “ground out” when I saw it in books, but it seemed to apply to Caspian’s words right then. Especially when you also took into account what he was doing on top of me. “You’re such a…”
“Wanton?” I offered, tightening my calves around him.
“Tease.”
Tease. My cock gave an eager throb.
I loved this kind of talk, but it was tricky. There were lines in my head even I didn’t properly know how to navigate. And I’d found that asking people to call me names tended not to go so well.
It seemed to make them either act weird or get nasty.
Neither of which I was into.
But tease…that was lovely. Made my toes curl with the naughty delight of being bad.
And Caspian said it just right too. In this sexy-angry way.
As if being a tease was something wicked, not something wrong.
I was already swooning slightly—because of that, and also because his cock was pressed right against the warm, tingly space beneath my balls. But then he twisted a hand in my hair, yanking my head back, and my overthrow was complete.
The breath shuddered in my throat.
The fear was animal, instinctive, and so very sweet.
He leaned down even further and licked a long wet stripe up my trembly, stubble-speckled Adam’s apple.
I made a sound.
I guess you could have called it a whimper.
His teeth found the tender places under my jaw. Playful little nips that didn’t really hurt so much as spark.
And then he pressed his open mouth to the side of my neck and—
Oh oh oh.
Something at once familiar and surprising about that damp suction and the blunt edge of his teeth: pleasure with a hot heart of pain.
It was sufficiently sanity-consuming that I forgot myself, moaning shamelessly as I curled my palm around the back of his neck, holding him to me. That strange and glorious push-pull of yes-no-doitharder.
My skin was as fiery-achy as my cock by the time he drew back.
He stared down at me, mouth red and eyes wild. “What the hell am I doing?”
“Um.” I touched my fingers gently to the throbbing circle he had left on my neck. “Giving me a hickey, I think.”
He winced. “I’m so sorry. I’m not some brutish adolescent. I don’t know what came over me.”
It was a little bit ridiculous.
Caspian Hart—billionaire, sophisticate, chess grandmaster—and me with what was probably a glowing red-purple bruise. The proud teenage symbol for “getting some,” Which, embarrassingly enough, I’d kind of missed out on when I was an actual teenager, on account of being basically the only gay in the village. And English to boot.
I’d made up for it at university—although now that I thought about it, while I’d occasionally been bitten (with varying degrees of conviction), I’d never received an actual, 100 percent genuine, bona fide hickey.
Turned out, I was oddly glad it was Caspian.
And I liked—more than liked—that he wanted to mark me.
Unfortunately, he was looking a little bit traumatized about it.
“No, no,” I said quickly. “It was lovely.” I twisted my head helpfully. “Do it again.”
He laughed, and kissed the bite so that it lit up like a flare and made me gasp. “I think I might have been wrong when I called you a tease.”
“I’m not a tease?” I just about managed not to pout, but I couldn’t keep the disappointment from my voice.
“I think perhaps”—he’d gone all husky again—“you’re worse.”
I brightened. “Coquette?”
He didn’t answer, just tongued at the wildly sensitive spot beneath my ear.
“Uhh.” I swallowed. “Minx?”
He shook his head.
“T-tart?” It was getting increasingly difficult to think of, well, anything. But every suggestion sent a pulse of whiskey-rough arousal through me.
“Worse,” he whispered.
And, God help me, it felt like a caress. Like a compliment.
I tried to breathe and realized I was already panting. “Um…”
His eyes had that all the better to eat you with, my dear gleam as they found mine. And pinned me as surely as his body. “What are you, Arden?”
I wanted to say it so badly. Have him brand me with it like a badge of honor and sexual freedom.
But I was sort of…scared and squirmy at the same time. In case it wasn’t true. Or it would be different outside the safety of my head.
“Arden.” There was a low note of warning in his voice this time. It sounded so deliciously dangerous that I nearly came.
And then—just like that—whatever was holding me back wasn’t there anymore.
Broken or yielded or simply vanished.
“I’m a slut,” I gasped out. “Am I a slut?”
He slid a possessive hand up the naked underside of my thigh. “Yes. Yes, you are. A very depraved, wayward little imp of a slut.”
“Oh God.” I squirmed frantically. “W-what happens to…slutty little imps?”
“What do you think happens to slutty little imps?”
My tongue flicked across my lips and, wow, they were dry. Almost as if every spare ounce of fluid I possessed had already leaked out my cock. “Do they…do they get punished?”
Which was when he rolled away. Taking all his heat and strength and the promise of erotic cruelty.
Before I could panic or complain, he covered his face with his hands and gave a deeply gorgeous groan. “Get dressed, Arden. I need to get you to London. I need to get you to London right now.”
Gah. He had to go and remind me that we weren’t living in some kind of magic sex wonderland.
My sudden silence must have been pretty expressive because Caspian looked up again. “Have you changed your mind?” he asked softly.
Last night I’d agreed to go back with him. Live in his apartment and resume our…thing. Only hopefully with more care and openness on both sides. I wasn’t regretting the decision exactly, but returning to London didn’t just mean returning to Caspian. It meant having to think about my life and my career and my future. Everything that scared the crap out of me.
I shook my head.
“Then what’s the matter?”
I stared at my toes. The polish needed touching up. Also, maybe Sally Bowles green hadn’t been the best color choice—I looked a little gangrenous down there. “I don’t know. I think maybe I’m failing London.”
“How could you possibly be failing London?”
“Same way I failed Oxford.”
“You have no idea whether you failed Oxford.” He curled a comforting hand over my knee. “Your results haven’t even been released yet. And, when they are, you’ll get a two-one, just like everyone else.”
He was probably right. You had to work super hard to get out of Oxford with anything less than a 2:2—probably because it made everyone involved look bad. But that sort of led to a situation in which a lower pass was practically an admission of failure anyway. “Even if I do get a two-one, I won’t deserve it.”
“It’s hardly an assessment of your moral character, Arden.”
“I just mean…I got offered this incredible opportunity. And I squandered it.”
Caspian sighed. I thought he was about to tell me to grow up and stop whining but, instead, he tucked an arm around me. And I was more than happy to take advantage of the opportunity to tangle my feet with his and snuggle in close. “Oxford is just a university,” he murmured. “And there are many things besides the academic to learn at university.”
“What, like how to go six weeks without doing any laundry?”
“Like what sort of man you wish to become.”
“I’m not sure I even figured that out.”
“Yes. You have.” He angled my face to his and kissed the tip of my nose.
The playful gesture was a strange contrast to the sincerity of the words. But I treasured both. Believed in both. Mustered a slightly wavery grin. “Well, I must be doing something right since you like me. But, when it comes to everything else, I don’t have a clue.”
“You told me you were interested in journalism.”
“I am. Except all I’ve done so far is write a few articles.”
“Have you been able to place them?”
A couple of emails had come in during my Kinlochbervie heartbreak exile, except I hadn’t really been in any state to appreciate them. “Yes. I mean, mainly online and stuff.”
“That’s wonderful.” Oh God, he sounded all proud of me. “And seems to directly contradict your assertion that you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I just feel like I’m fucking up another amazing opportunity. You take care of everything and what do I have to show for myself? A satirical review of expensive mineral water brands.”
“It’s a perfectly reasonable start.”
“But I had weeks. I could have learned Mandarin or written The Great American Novel.”
“Do you want to learn Mandarin or write The Great American novel?”
“Um, not really.”
That made him laugh, his breath ruffling my hair. I guess I was being a bit ridiculous.
“I wrote something I thought might work for Milieu,” I admitted. “But I haven’t dared submit it yet.”
“Why not?”
“Well...” I squirmed.
He poked me. Caspian Hart actually poked me.
Which I would have found hilarious if I hadn’t been in the middle of a major moop attack. “What if they say no? I’ll be crushed. Devastated. Destroyed. Annihal—”
“I think I get the picture.” He was silent for a moment or two. Probably contemplating the fact that, after everything he’d just said about discovering who you wanted to be at university, who I’d turned out to be was a loser. “Journalism isn’t an industry I’m particularly familiar with, but I do know there are many aphorisms on the subject of trying.”
“I am trying.”
His eyes—too sharp, too beautiful—caught mine. “But are you trying to succeed, or are you trying to fail on your own terms?”
“Um, why would I be trying to fail?”
“Because that way you will not have to feel vulnerable. You will not have to admit what you want. And you will never have to confront your own limitations.”
Wow. Way to flay a boy.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That was probably too…much.”
It wasn’t too much. It was too right.
And, suddenly, Caspian’s arms were less comforting and more kind of twitch-making. I pulled out of them and away. Tucked my knees under my chin. And sat there in a sullen huddle. “No, it’s, y’know, fine. It’s just a bit weird to be getting this speech about facing up to failure from someone who’s never failed at anything ever.”
“Of course I fail.” Caspian sat up, too, bracing himself against a pillow. Somehow, he still managed to look elegant. Whereas my body always liked to be as small as possible—as if it had some kind of moral objection to being attractive. “And it’s natural to fear it. But I try not to let it prevent me from pursuing what I truly desire. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“But you didn’t really think I’d say no, did you?”
He reached for my hand and interlaced his fingers with mine until we were palm-to-palm, like Romeo and Juliet. “As it happens, I did. And it would have been excruciating. But I would have found it infinitely worse to lose you through inaction. Or by convincing myself I didn’t care.”
I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around the emotional risk Caspian had taken for me. And I couldn’t help wondering how it would have gone if the situation had been reversed—probably I’d have hidden under the nearest duvet and emerged only to scavenge for food in ruined supermarkets after the fall of civilization.
Urgh. It was pretty shaming, really. I gazed at our gently touching hands. “I…I’ll try to do the same. I mean, if you ever need me. To come for you.”
He laughed, not exactly in a mean way, but I hadn’t been joking. On the other hand, I guess it probably sounded like I was to him. Given he was, well, him and I was, well, me…I couldn’t quite imagine in what topsy-turvy looking-glass world he would need me to play rescuer. Getting into stupid scrapes was my gift.
“And”—I took a deep breath—“I’ll send my article to Milieu. If they don’t want me…they don’t want me.”
“There will always be another dream. Always another opportunity.”
“I thought you were only supposed to have one dream.”
“That’s a sinister lie perpetrated by Hollywood. You can have as many dreams as you dare imagine.”
I pulled a dubious face. “If you say so. I’m still trying to figure out what happens when…if…Milieu say no.”
“You find something else. Whatever quickens your magnificent heart. And success will follow.”
“You really believe that?”
He gave me a smile so full of warmth and pride that, right then, I could have turned tides. Pulled the stars from the sky. “I do.”
“Does, um, multinational banking and financial services quicken your magnificent heart?”
“I’m not you, Arden.”
He sounded sort of quelling and sad. And both were walls, in their way. I gave his cold fingers a little squeeze. “It doesn’t mean you have any less of a right to happiness than I do.”
“You make me happy.”
I wasn’t sure if that was romantic or a lot of responsibility. Maybe both.
“Um,” I said, “as much as I’d like to lie around in bed with you forever…we might have to move if we want to get back to London. It’s hours, and trains are really ropy at the weekend.”
“Then it’s fortunate I have a plane waiting at Inverness.”
“You have a—” Of course he did. “Oh wow. But we’ve still got to get to Inverness.”
“I hired a car.”
“You can drive?” I blurted out.
He gave me a reproving look, softened by the hint of amusement in his eyes. “And I can tie my own shoelaces, too.”
Being whisked to London in a billionaire’s private jet made such a ludicrous contrast to my miserable, lonely—to say nothing of lengthy—journey up. But I guess that was life with Caspian Hart. And life without him.
“And,” I couldn’t help asking, “you definitely want to go today?”
He went a little pink. “I want to do things to you that I would feel deeply uncomfortable enacting beneath your parents’ roof.”
“Sure that wouldn’t just make it kinkier?”
“Absolutely not.”
I laughed and went to dress.