Bartered Proposal: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 1 (A BDSM Erotic Romance) (2 page)

Or so I'd heard. And I'd heard a lot. Lately no one could shut the hell up about him for more than five seconds. He'd been on all the major magazine covers, sometimes twice, and even in my relatively television-free existence every other news report I'd happened to catch seemed to mention him in some way.

And here was a marriage contract, like something out of the nineteenth century, staring at me. With his name on it.

What's the catch?
I wondered. Because there had to be a catch. There was no
way
a guy like Anton Waters needed an arranged marriage to get him hitched. He made money and fucked bitches. Probably. That's what young, powerful, rich, handsome men
did.
My father had been one, once.

And look where it got him.

And mom,
a little voice whispered.
Look where mom is now.

I licked my lips. “What's in this contract?” I said.

“You'll want a lawyer to go over it with you,” he said, “but it's like a prenup.”

A prenup. Right. “And what business does Anton Waters have asking for an arranged marriage?”

My father looked away. “I don't know. He said his reasons were his own. You don't have to sign it. You can walk away. It's merely a condition for his backing.”
Walk away and leave your mother to die.
The implication hung in the air between us.

“He's going to pull your ass out of the fire and all he wants is to get married sight unseen to a woman he's never met before?” I asked him. Saying it out loud somehow made it sound even worse than it was.

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “Well, that, ninety-five percent of the profits, directional control of the venture—”

I held up a hand. “Stop. I don't care.” I reached out and gave the contract a tentative nudge, wondering if it were rigged to explode. It probably was, in a way. I was going to have to find a
good
lawyer. And not just a good lawyer, but a lawyer a lawyer unscrupulous enough to take part in essentially selling me off to be married like a piece of property.

Haha. Good one. I could just run down to the state bar office and throw a rock, probably.

I took a deep breath. The contract in front of me gave me the impression of a great weight, as though it had it's own gravitational pull, one strong enough to derail my entire life.

“What does mom think about this?” I asked quietly.

My father looked down at his hands. He fiddled with his fingers, pulling and kneading.

“She doesn't know, does she?” I knew it. And she hadn't told me when I'd talked with her two days ago because she didn't want me to worry.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“He wants to meet with you first,” my father said. “He said you should drop by any time you like. His door is always open to you. He wants to make sure you will... meet his needs in a wife.”

Meet his needs? Christ, that sounded ominous. A cold fist closed around my stomach and squeezed.

“This is completely ridiculous,” I said. “You know that, right?”

My father didn't answer.

I picked up the contract and stuffed it into my messenger bag. “I'll go talk to him,” I said.
And give him a piece of my mind while I'm at it.

The look of naked relief on my father's face made me want to punch him. He'd destroyed my mother's life without a thought, and now he wanted me to destroy my own by letting him use me as a pawn.

Well. I loved my mother, but I wasn't her. I stood up and walked out of the coffee shop, not even saying goodbye to my father. I was the master of my own fate. I wouldn't let some man control
me,
and if Anton Waters thought he could buy someone's hand in marriage in
this
day and age, he had another think coming.

*

Empire Capital, like most of its sister companies—each fairly interchangeable and all with thrusting, dominating names clearly compensating for something—stood on Wall Street. It looked like a mausoleum on the outside, so I was surprised when I entered the mezzanine to find the insides gutted and remodeled in an ultra-nouveau post-modern style. On the one hand, I could appreciate the fine, smooth lines of a well-designed space, but it made me angry that someone had been paid handsomely to minimize the character of the building while I, struggling alone in my art studio, strove to put character into the world. It was clinical. And also I liked old buildings.

Anton Waters, I decided then and there, was a jerk.

I strode up to the front desk, sleek and cleverly fashioned and utterly alone in the center of the dark gray slate floor. The receptionist behind it tapped away on a thin white keyboard and stared at a thin white monitor. She wore the tiniest of bluetooth headsets. Also white. Naturally.

She didn't even look up at me for a full minute. It figured. I was dressed like... well, like a boho hobo who had just crawled out of her weed den. Streaks of dried clay marred my work clothes, cracking and crumbling. Even as I stood there, not moving, tiny flecks flaked away and floated to the immaculate floor.

Good. I wasn't going to be the perfect little wife Mr. Waters probably wanted, and I was happy to show it in whatever way I could.

Finally the receptionist deigned to glance at me. Her perfect nose wrinkled. The clothes she wore probably would have paid for a month's rent.

“May I help you?” she said.

This was going to be fun. “Yeah,” I said. “I'm here to speak to Anton Waters. He's expecting me,” I added, hoping this would help my case. It didn't.

She blinked politely, and I felt a tiny bit bad. She probably thought I was a crazy person who had refused to take her meds. I kept a close eye on her hands in case she had a secret panic button concealed under the lip of her desk. “Is he?” she said. “May I ask who is calling?”

“Felicia Dare.”

At the sound of my name her entire demeanor changed.

“Oh!” Her pretty eyes grew wide. “Of course, Ms. Dare. I'll call up and let them know you're here.”

So he
was
expecting me. That was... unexpected. Frankly, in my experience, powerful rich men made their own schedules and everyone else had to keep up with them. That I wasn't going to be kept waiting was... nice. “Er... thanks,” I said. I glanced around for a place to sit down while she hurriedly punched numbers into the sleek numberpad sitting next to her computer.

“Yes, Felicia Dare is here to see Mr. Waters,” she said. Someone burbled at the other end of the line. “Yes, thank you,” she replied, and hung up. She flashed me a huge smile. “He'll be waiting for you. Top floor, of course.”

“Thanks,” I said again, feeling lame. I skirted the desk and the now-beaming receptionist and made my way to the corridor of imposing elevator doors. They looked like something out of some old sci-fi silent film. One of the creepy dystopian ones. I pressed the button for the doors that led straight to the top, and they opened immediately. I stepped inside. They shut behind me, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach as it shot up.

Now that I was inside the elevator and clearly on my way to actually
see
Anton Waters, my nerves began to fail me. What was I thinking? What was I
doing?
I should have ripped up that contract and thrown it back in my father's face and not even bothered to come here. I could take out a line of credit to pay for Mom's treatments. Couldn't I? Like everyone else and their dog applied for credit cards and ran up crazy massive debt. I could do that too! And then I could declare bankruptcy! Everyone wins!

Yes. That was what I would do. I'd yell at the billionaire for a bit, and then turn around, go back to my apartment, and drive myself into financial ruin. Hey, it worked for my father.

No sooner had I reached this conclusion than the elevator came to a heart-stuttering stop, and the doors opened wide.

The top of Anton Waters's personal financial behemoth resembled the bottom only in that they were both huge spaces. Where the bottom floor had been all brushed steel and dark gray slate, the top floor of the building was laid in white marble and gold. Everything, from the white marble floor to the delicious dark brown leather furniture to the rich mahogany desk to the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling—a chandelier! in a corporate office!—spoke of tastes too sumptuous for mere moral minds to ken.

Behind the desk, a man whom I could only assume was Mr. Waters's personal assistant stood and bowed to me. Like, actually bowed. Full tilt and everything. Perhaps the firm did a lot of business with the Japanese or visiting Arab royalty and it was just a reflex? This place was too much. My vague, dim memories of my father's offices were of stately grandeur, not spartan modernity or spa-weekend getaway gaudiness.

“Ms. Dare,” the man said. “You may call me Arthur. Mr. Waters is waiting for you inside.” And he gestured to the right, at a pair of double doors, the twins of the doors on the left.

Butterflies raged in my stomach but I lifted my chin. I was not going to be cowed. “That's tits,” I said. I had the satisfaction of his startled face as I swept by him and through the doors.

Another small foyer waited behind the doors. This space was decorated much more sparingly, with a large aquarium full of brightly colored fish and a few zen fountains dotting the corners and walls. Two grand doors of frosted glass stood in the center of the wall across from me. A small, understated name plaque simply said, 'Waters.'

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Anton Waters stood behind his desk staring out at the New York skyline from one of the windows. He turned when I entered and watched as I marched to the center of his office.

I didn't even look around. I'd seen his face everywhere in the past few years, and he was, depressingly, just as stunning in person as he was on magazine covers. His dark hair was a perfectly coiffed mess, and his vivid green eyes were visible even from across the room. The light fell on them beautifully, as though the whole world were set up to highlight his incredible looks. High cut cheekbones framed a straight, powerful nose, but his lips were full and sensuous. He had a chin you could cut diamonds with. And, judging from his comfortable and yet oh-so-GQ attire, he had the body to go with it.

I hated him on sight. For guys like Anton Waters, earth was a photography studio, not a planet, and everyone was a sycophant telling him to make love to the camera. In fact, my first thought was,
Man, I'm going to hate this guy.

Unfortunately for me, my second thought was,
Holy shit, he's hot.

Even more unfortunately, my third thought was,
Those are some lips you could really ride until morning.

Goddamn hormones. I hadn't gotten laid in six months since I broke up with Steele—no, that hadn't been his real name and yes, he had been just as much of a douche as you would expect from a guy who willingly called himself Steele—and it was showing.

I crossed my arms. “So what's this about us getting married?” I demanded.

He stared at me and didn't react.

My words seemed to fall to the floor between us, clattering like spilled silverware. The longer he stared, the more I realized that he was no ordinary handsome man. Even from across the room I could feel the magnetic charge he gave out. It was terrifying, intense, turbulent. The force of his personality far outweighed his beautiful face, even when he wasn't even moving.

This was a man who could rule the world, if he wanted to.

You know. Like the antichrist.

Finally he smiled faintly. “Hello, Miss Dare,” he said.

Vaguely, I wished I'd been sitting down. His voice was like... something really sinful. Deep. If he'd been singing, he might have reached the great depths of a basso profundo. It was the kind of voice you could turn up really loud and then sit on your speakers to. Not, of course, that I'd ever done that...

Oh, fine. When it's three in the morning and you've had too many PBRs everything is a great idea, okay? And if I'd had his voice stowed away in a little file on my computer, I'd have played that damn thing on repeat for an hour.

I shook myself, trying to focus. “Yeah,” I said. “Hello.” I forced myself to look away from him and tried to concentrate on studying his office.

Except there was nothing in it. There was only his desk with his chair and his computer at one end of the room, and just to my left, two sofas arranged across from each other with a spartan coffee table between them. The only nod to individuality he seemed to have given was another small fountain sitting on the coffee table, the water running over carefully placed river stones.

A small, hysterical part of myself wanted to laugh.
Waters! i
t said, and I had the sudden, wild idea that Anton Waters was just like poor, dumb old Steele, except with actual charisma. He'd chosen a name for himself—a far better name—and gone out to conquer the world. The fountains were a hint to anyone keen enough to decipher them.

No, that's stupid.
I was almost afraid to look back at him, but I did it anyway.

He hadn't moved. He was still staring at me with that faint smile on his face.

I never
had
known when to keep my mouth shut.

“Looking's free,” I snapped, “but touching will cost you.”

Slowly, deliberately, he tilted his head. “Nothing is free,” he said.

If he had been any other person, the words would have been laughable, comical, a real human being trying to sound like a Bond villain, but the way he said it, his entire demeanor, screamed that he had given those words serious thought and he had said them because of a long struggle to find the truth.

I swallowed and tried to stay calm. Against my will, my heart was picking up speed. For a second I couldn't quite understand why, but then he broke out of his stillness.

Slowly, he rounded the desk and walked toward me. His gait was graceful and flowing. Like a predator. Like water.

I stood my ground as he approached and forced myself to remember just what I was here for. I was pretty sure it wasn't sex. What was it again?