In Service To The Billionaire (14 page)

And then, Todd happened, and she thought it all changed. But he left her without any real good explanation just like Marcus had, leaving her crushed once more. All she could hope was that it never happened again.

She had been the one to tell Todd that she loved him. Before he left to go to Europe, he told her that he always felt pressured because of that—to become a person she loved, rather than just love her back.

Her thoughts drifted away from that unhappiness, back to the wonderful man who held her. That was what she wanted to focus on—so she did. If her Master wanted her as his happy, domesticated queen, that was what he would get.

She hoped the night would never end, but of course it did.

From Friday to Saturday afternoon, Sand went out of town on business. The entire time, she was convinced, totally convinced, that just maybe, this new happiness could never end. And then...

Chapter 16

Then, Friday evening, she got the phone message from Todd.

She had run out to Sand’s place, after visiting Elle, to pick up a few extra pieces of sexy clothing to wear for the next day when Sand returned—a totally hot leather skirt and some fishnet stockings. Elle had cheered her on.

“Look
hot
for that billionaire, babe.” She giggled a bit. “And for me, too, while you're at it.”

Elle had, over the past week, noted Sophia's more daring outfits more and more. Her sparkling blue eyes hovered frequently over Sophia's hotly bared physique.

Sophia, in the midst of so much sexual awakening by Sand, didn't mind in the least. Elle was hot. Why should Sophia mind if a hot girl thought she looked good?

Thoughts of propositioning Elle and bringing her into the equation with Sand crossed her mind from time to time...but she shelved them, for now. Sand was more than enough to keep her busy for the time being, after all.

But being with him, and knowing his sexual openness, had let her think about Elle more and more in that fashion. There was something hot and sensual about being with a woman that she didn't want gone from her life, no matter what.

Sophia felt weird about staying in Sand's place when he wasn’t there, and he hadn’t explicitly commanded her to stay over at his condo, so she had opted for sleeping at her own place for the time being. He hadn't quite said it yet, but she was already rather certain that he was going to ask her to move in sometime soon.

When she returned from the trip over to his condo, she found her phone with a red light beeping.

That she had a phone at all was Todd’s doing. He didn’t like the idea of calling her cell phone from overseas—they were too unreliable, he said. Before he left, he paid twenty dollars for the phone and the machine, putting up money for a phone bill for three months, just in case he might want to call her with some revelation.

That was the kind of guy Todd was. Overly prepared, and usually for all the wrong reasons.

In any case, he was one of the only people who even knew the number.

So when she came home and saw that light blinking, it took her several self-absorbed and full-of-dread moments before she clicked the button to play the message.

Sure enough, it was his voice: “Hi babe. I’m dying to talk to you. I’ve sent you a few emails, but you haven't responded. Is something wrong with your internet? Or did you get a job or something? I'd love to know...well, anything that's going on with you, really.

“Anyway, I’ve got big news. I’m coming home. I'm really ready to be with you. I miss you. I love you. I need you. Please, please come meet me Sunday when I get back. I'm desperate to talk to you.”

All of a sudden she couldn’t breathe. He was coming home. Oh god. He was coming home and he wanted to be with her.

What did that mean?

Did it have to mean anything?

No. No, it didn't.

Sand was taking care of her now. Sand had literally spent a
fortune
on her. She had looked up the prices of the pieces he bought for her by shopping around for similar jewelry, expecting her cunt to drip happily when she found out the sheer number of thousands he had spent.

But she was wrong, of course.

He had, if her estimates were correct, spent
millions
on her.

That was a number that was almost terrifying—the level of his devotion to her. Even
he
couldn't really just sneeze away a few million like it was nothing.

Or maybe it wasn't the level of devotion that was terrifying—maybe it was the level of his expectations that such prices represented.

Stubbornly, she tried to flit the idea away. But, made from her own stubbornness, it stuck around in the back of her head.

In any case, Todd had never done any such thing for her like Sand had with the jewelry, and nor would he ever be able to.

Exasperated with the situation, with Todd, with everything about her failed engagement that she
still
had not told Sand about, she collapsed on her floral-patterned couch.

It was cooling down outside. She was glad she had the heat turned up.

The night she knew she loved Todd was in her sophomore year of college. She had to study all night for finals. He had volunteered to stay with her, to be there to support her however she needed while she worked. His exams were already over, and all of his friends were going out drinking.

But even so, he also promised to stay there, to be totally silent and out of her way unless she called for him. In times of high stress, Sophia needed people around her—even if she wasn't communicating with them. And while she stayed awake cramming, he actually curled up into a ball and slept around her feet.

The next morning, of course, she would have totally slept through her exam except for Todd—who had a good night's rest and had gotten up early to cook her eggs and toast, placed neatly inside of a plastic container so she could eat it on the bus ride over to class.

That level of care and devotion, she thought, was something special. And for as long as they were together, that had seemed basically true and consistent. Though she hardly ever required him to do it, he was ready to drop everything at the drop of a hat to come and be with her however she needed. He told her this frequently, and she believed him.

She said
yes
to his marriage proposal, after all. His love was supposed to be everlasting.

And yet—it hadn't lasted. He ran away.

And now...now he would be back.

Anxiety rankled at her heart. All she wanted to do was call Sand and beg him to tell her what to do—but that would involve telling him that she had kept the truth from him.

She resolved again that Todd coming home didn't have to change anything. She would talk with him in two days, and she would let him know she found someone else.

And then, with it all finally resolved, she would explain the whole situation to her Master, and deliver to him a very deserved apology.

Part of her knew that—since she hadn't told Sand right away, when she knew she should have—knowing that she had to apologize anyway was delaying her speaking the truth. If she was going to apologize for being quiet for a few days, why not a week? Why not two weeks?

But no—this was good. After Sunday, there would finally be some closure.

Right?

Unbidden, she found herself comparing the two once more.

Sand—rich, hot, severe, demanding, and rigorously sexual.

Todd—amiable, joking, supportive, and very certainly safe.

That word, safe, rolled around in her head for a bit.

The way that Sand spoiled her made her somewhat nervous, she had to admit. It made it seem like he had such
expectations
for her to live up to—expectations that she had no idea if she could meet. Someone like him probably had something like a
princess
in mind for a wife, or a duchess, or a supermodel. And Sophia felt she was attractive and desirable, but she wasn't the upper-class.

With Todd, that word stuck out again—safe. She could be married to him. She could be a wife—she could be someone with a
husband
. Just thinking about it in those terms gave her an oddly satisfied sensation.

As much as she may have wanted it, she didn't think that was really, truly possible with Sand. She, to be completely honest, did not feel worthy of the admiration that he gave her.

Her deepest fear was that she would screw up with Sand, somehow. Her terror, growing and growing behind all their fervent passionate encounters, now unlocked with this call from Todd, was that he would unveil her charade and cast her down, proclaiming her as totally insignificant to him as she had always feared.

But no. No. Certainly he wouldn't do that to her, would he?

But if not, why hadn't he said he loved her? Hadn't he seen it in her eyes, needing him to say it to her?

She was terrified to tell him that she loved him. And she did, she absolutely did. But after telling Todd first...god, that just became a mess, with her getting all the blame for his indecision.

Of course the rational part of her brain told her that the swept-away feelings she felt with Sand were just due to body chemistry. In another six months, probably she’d feel just as fed up with him as she did with Todd, just for different reasons. Maybe. God, who knew what the future held?

“Shit!” Sophia groaned loudly, and then, because she was afraid she was being too loud, she smothered her voice with a couch pillow. “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

She knew that must have spoken volumes about her—that even in her time of most serious distress, she couldn’t help but cover up the problem and try to pretend to others around her that all was well. Even, or especially, when she knew for a fact there was no one at all around her to notice.

Maybe what she needed, really, was the simplicity of telling everyone the truth.

Ugh.

As with most things in her unwieldy, mercurial life, Sophia would do anything for the gentle, direct knowledge of what to do next.

Chapter 17

Ten years ago, Gerald met the first woman he fell in love with.

He was in Spain, on vacation. Having just completed a successful purchase of a series of profitable factories in Eastern Europe, he felt he was due for a little break. He enjoyed negotiations, but they exhausted him as well.

In the city of Toledo, he found himself admiring the tilted nature of every street, and the free anonymity with which he wandered around. In the States, even then, with his wealth just burgeoning into the upper ranks of the world, it was hard to be in public without at least a few people recognizing him.

Largely, he understood that they recognized him because he kept dating supermodels, and supermodels kept him in the tabloids. Over and over, he told himself to stop—but there was just something so alluring about these unattainable women prostrating themselves before him.

And, of course, they always did.

A little bored after tasting his fifth free serving of marzipan, he decided to go to a small local showing of Hamlet.

It was all in Spanish, of course, but he was familiar enough with Italian—and so most of the Romantic languages—and a big fan of the play, besides. So, he could follow along.

Playing the role of Ophelia was the most gorgeous brunette he had ever seen. Tall, lithe, and undeniably Spanish from her regal nose and noble jawline.

She had a sort of hot, demure innocence about her—as if she had never once been kissed or held, and yet knew genetically how to make it as hot as possible regardless.

After the show, the actors all chatted with the crowd, answering questions about the play. He found out her name was Carmen. He told her he was a hotel owner, looking for a new location overseas. This wasn't entirely untrue, as Gerald did indirectly own two or three hotels stateside.

An hour later, he was having drinks with her in a bar, and he found all the things she loved—family, dogs, working with children, and acting.

Two hours after that, in his hotel room, he found out all the things she needed—being taken, being put under his control, being choked while he entered her again and again.

After a week, in the small apartment that she shared with her mother and three brothers, he revealed to her the truth of who he was. After the initial shock at his deception, for which she pummeled his arm ruthlessly, she was rather overjoyed at his exuberant wealth.

She had big plans for all the good she was going to do with him and all the resources he had access to. With her at his side, he was going to open charities, build expansive and elaborately well-to-do orphanages, encourage local governments to look after the poor and the sick, that sort of thing. Gerald had no problem with any of this, no objections. He liked people—but with business being what it was, he just wasn't able to think about them very often.

But he loved that about Carmen, how she humanized him. The same day that he told her who he really was, he told her he loved her.

She, of course, reciprocated.

And then, after another week of making passionate, endlessly hot love in his hotel, spending all his time alone with her as his devoted, eager slave, he had to return to the states. He wanted her to come with him, of course, but she couldn't leave her family behind.

He told her to bring them along.

“Anything you need,” he said. “Anything at all. Forever. You're taken care of, now. I take care of my own...and everyone you care about is under my care now.”

He insisted on paying for the flight, using a jet and a pilot that he trusted. But she insisted more than he did—in fact, her whole family insisted they pay their own way.

“If we are going to live comfortably with you,” she said to him, “at the very least, we will pay our way there.”

Her flight was Atlantica 877—the biggest navigational disaster in years. Struck by a seemingly random lightning bolt, the plane briefly lost power somewhere near Greenland. But, when power returned after only a few moments, the pilot resumed their path. Or, he tried to. But the lightning bolt had fried the plane's guidance system, and they were led straight into an enormous storm. It just almost managed to land safely on the coast of Maine—but the heavy winds and torrential downpour overpowered the plane's systems and sent it crashing into the waves.