Bartered Submission: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 5 (A BDSM Erotic Romance)

Bartered Submission: The Billionaire’s Wife, Part
5

Ava Lore

Copyright 2012 Ava Lore

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Bartered Submission: The Billionaire's Wife

by

Ava Lore

Part V

So it turns out that when you get secretly married to
one of the richest guys on the planet, it doesn't stay a secret for
long.

I slept on the plane back to New York while Anton
worked. His desire to bone until we both ended up in the Emergency
Room with third degree burns on our genitals seemed to be doused in
the cold light of a hundred and fifty urgent emails dinging on his
phone the next morning. We'd grabbed only coffee and pastries for
breakfast in Anton's haste to get back to work. By the time the
plane touched down, the news was spreading, and I knew it was only
a matter of time before it reached people I knew, if it hadn't
already. Sadie had a
really
big
mouth.

"Keep your head down," Anton advised as we ducked
into his town car.

"What?" I said, looking around. "Why?"

Anton gave an exasperated sigh. "Because," he said
patiently, as though explaining something to a very small child or
a particularly dim hamster, "there's paparazzi everywhere, and you
just gave them a great shot of your face. Congratulations."

"What?" Shit!" I was not at my chipper best.
Slingshotting to Nevada and back had made me crazy jetlagged and I
wasn't even sure what time it was. All I knew is that I wanted a
Filet o' Fish and a Dr. Pepper the size of my arm, and my chances
of getting one were vanishing with every merry
ding
of Anton's phone. I let my hair fall over my
cheeks as the driver—sadly, not Zachary—shut my door, and breathed
a sigh of relief when I realized the windows were tinted to hell
and back.

"It's inevitable that we will be uncovered," Anton
said as he scrolled through yet another email, "but you may perhaps
wish to do so on your own terms." He gave me an almost teasing look
from the corner of his eye. "Makeup, perhaps. And you might want to
have your hair done."

Distressed, I patted my face and hair, but to my
surprise, Anton reached out and grabbed my hand. "You look lovely,
Felicia," he said before releasing me. "Don't worry about it too
much."

"Easy for you to say," I snapped at him. "Not all of
us were born into this world with perfect looks."

His brows twitched. "You think I look perfect?"

Oh, jeez.
"Don't be a girl," I said. "You practically rolled
out of bed and into your clothes this morning, and you look like
you could be on GQ."

"I
have
been on GQ.
And there's nothing wrong with being a girl."

"Yes, I
know,
but if they were daily they'd just show up at your door
every morning and take a photo."

Anton tilted his head, and I saw that faint smile on
his face suddenly bloom into... dare I say? Almost a full blown
grin. No teeth yet. I'd get there someday.

"Thank you, Felicia," he said.

We stared at each other for a long moment, until the
air between us crackled and sizzled.

He broke contact first and shifted in his seat, as
though he had suddenly become uncomfortable. "At any rate," he
said, far more brusquely than usual, "we need to talk about living
arrangements."

"What?" I said. "Oh. Right. Shouldn't I just
come... live with you?" Crap. I didn't know
where
he lived. Or what his house looked like. What if
it was one of those really spare modern places with chairs you
couldn't sit in? Did it have a sex dungeon? It had to have a sex
dungeon. If it didn't have a sex dungeon I was going to have to
question everything I knew about Anton Waters, which still wasn't
much.

But every minute I spent with him taught me more.

His phone rang. Checking the screen, he cursed under
his breath. "Sorry, Felicia, I have to take this."

"Sure," I said, and pretended to inspect my nails as
I observed him from the corner of my eye.

"Waters," he said into the phone. "Yes. Yes. No.
That's not going to work." I listened as the person on the other
line burbled for a while. Anton sat with the phone to his ear and
smiled that faint smile. He was like a Buddha. A business Buddha.
Eventually the person on the other end of the line realized he was
talking to a brick wall and trailed off. Anton waited.

He'd used this very same tactic with me, and it was
incredibly effective. After a moment the voice burbled again, this
time sounding very contrite.

"Yes, thank you," Anton told them, and hung up, then
dialed a new number. "Arthur, I need to speak to Don Schmidt as
soon as I get into the office. Yes, clear that appointment." The
whole time he spoke in a slow, calm manner, his voice almost
soothing, unless, I suppose, you had fucked up in some way. Then it
probably sounded like a bomb about to go off. Unpredictable. And
yet I'd never heard him yell, and he'd only become closed off and
angry once or twice with me in private.

He had incredible control. I'd observed last night
that his need for control was consuming, and could be a weakness.
Say what you like about my father, but he tried to teach me—between
rounds at the golf course when he forced me to be his caddy—about
the business world. Some of it had sunk in, despite my best
efforts, and I found myself falling back on them now, trying to
decipher the enigma Anton presented. Before our ill-fated shopping
trip, I'd read up on him on the internet.

Anton Waters. No known family, though he had said
that his parents died in a car crash when he was young in several
interviews. He got his start in real estate, flipping properties
like pancakes as the bubble swelled. Money flowed from his real
estate ventures into finance and manufacturing, and he was known
throughout the business world as a man who made no attachments. He
held no trust in others, and others held no trust in him. His only
hobby, apparently, was cooking.

And crazy sex.
Couldn't forget that part.

Anton hung up and turned to me. “Where were we? Oh,
yes, living arrangements.”

“Am I not coming to live with you?” I asked.

“Do you want to?” His green eyes bored into mine,
intense in the dim light inside the car. Outside the sky was gray
with late-autumn clouds, and everything was gloomy. Strange how his
eyes burned so brightly, even in this light.

“I don't know,” I said. “I don't even know where you
live.”

“I have a mansion on Central Park West,” he said.

“Of course you do.”

He smiled faintly at that. “But if you would like to
live separately for a while, I have no problems with that, as long
as we are together for the agreed-upon number of nights as
stipulated in our prenup.”

I put a hand to my forehead and began to rub little
circles over my nose. “How many was that again?” I asked. “Per
week?”

“Three,” he said. “Or ten days in a row per month.
Open to negotiation, of course.”

Of course.
Anton was a very particular man, but for a guy who
was famed for no attachments, he had attached himself to me in a
very big way, without even knowing me.

“I think I'll move in with you,” I said. “But I need
a place to sculpt.”

His eyes widened a bit at my answer—perhaps our first
encounter, when I barged into his office and demanded to know who
the hell he thought he was, trying to arrange a marriage with me,
had left a more lasting impression on him than my current, slightly
softer feelings. Nevertheless, he recovered quickly. “Of course,”
he said. “Would you like to keep your apartment as your studio, or
something closer to... home?”

Hmm. Studio in Manhattan, or studio
anywhere else in the
world?
Gee, what a
dilemma. I opened my mouth to tell him to move my shit to an
expensive little corner apartment in one of the arty districts, but
then I shut my mouth again. My apartment was
mine.
Did I really want to leave it behind just because
I was technically moving up in the world? “I'll keep my apartment,”
I said after a moment. “I like it there.”

He nodded. “Very well. You can pack up your personal
effects if you wish, or I can arrange to have that done for
you.”

“How fast can it be done?”

“By tonight, if you like.”

I like to keep it real, but not
that
real. If I didn't have to wrap
up my shitty mismatched glasses personally, then I'm not going to.
“Yeah, have someone move that stuff,” I told him. “Anyway, what's
on the agenda for today?”

A vague look of regret passed over his face. “I'll be
in meetings and at work all today, but I will be home in time to
take you out to dinner tonight. In the meantime, why don't you take
the time to get acquainted with your new home, and perhaps call
your, ahem, new personal assistant?”

Personal assistant? Oh, right! Sadie.
She is going to
plotz.
“Great. Coffee
with girlfriend, dinner with, um...” I trailed off. “You,” I
finished awkwardly.

The shutters behind his eyes closed, and I sighed
inwardly.
Good going.

“Husband,” he supplied.

“Husband,” I said. “Sorry, it's all a bit sudden and
a little weird.”

To my surprise, he rubbed a finger against his
temple, and his shoulders relaxed. I hadn't even noticed them
tensing. “You are right,” he said. “This is very sudden for you.
I'm sorry.”

I could only nod as the car slowed down, and then we
were at Anton's house.

*

"Jesus shit," Sadie said when I opened the door later
that day, and I have to say I agreed with her assessment. Anton had
dropped me off at the house, telling me to explore to my heart's
content, then given me a quick kiss on the cheek and jetted off to
work, leaving me with a battered suitcase and an overwhelming
desire for some McDonald's. I'd called Sadie immediately and told
her where to meet me—with a Filet o' Fish—and set about
exploring.

And holy shit. A mansion on Central Park West. Even
in my father's wildest dreams he couldn't have afforded this
place.

Five floors and a basement. That's all I can really
say about it. Huge. Wood floors, stained glass, a garden, a
terrace, and, high on the fifth floor, the master bedroom
underneath a skylight, painted white, lined with bookshelves and
filled with light, even on this cloudy day. It was sick. Just
sick.

I loved it.

"This is just sick," Sadie said. "I love it."

"That's what I thought!" I told her. "But that's not
the best part. Anton wants me to have a personal assistant, and I
told him I already had one."

She cocked an eyebrow. "You do?"

And I'm the thick one? "You, dummy."

Sadie failed to faint at my feet in gratitude. "What
if I don't want to be your personal assistant?" she said. "What do
I look like, the help?"

I rolled my eyes and pulled her to the back of the
ground floor where the kitchen and breakfast nook stood, looking
out onto the garden. "Don't you get it?" I said. "This is free
money. You get hired, we spend the day hanging out together, you
get paid and don't report back to Anton any of the suspect stuff I
do, and we all go home happy."

"What
suspect stuff?"

"Like figuring out what makes him tick," I told her.
"Here, have some coffee. It took me like fifteen minutes to figure
out how to use Anton's crazy coffee maker so you'd better drink
some."

Sadie pulled away. "Felicia," she said, which she
never says unless she is trying to be serious with me.
"What
is with you calling him Anton
all of a sudden? And why would he want me to report back to
him?"

I poured her some coffee and shoved it into her
hands. "He's got some control issues. And I think we're on a first
name basis now. You know, since we're married and all."