The Billion Dollar Contract: The Executive Collection (40 page)

“So if I told you right now to leave, you would do it?”

“I’d be confused, but I would do it.”

“And when midnight rolls around in another couple of hours?” Jasmine nudged his arm. “You gonna come back here and say I have to do what you tell me because it’s Saturday?” Even she wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not.

“Jasmine…”

She pulled her body up onto her bed and rested her head against her pillow. Ethan looked at her, but she kept her eyes transfixed on the ceiling, stained with dark splotches that had been there for years. “Then I guess you should stay. Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble waiting outside my door like a creeper.”

“We don’t have to do anything tomorrow. In fact I have an appointment early in the afternoon. A boring one.”

“Oh? Gonna turn your head and cough?”

“Not quite.” He leaned over the bed, one arm supporting himself while the other caressed the bottom of Jasmine’s bare leg. “Just taking care of some matters.” Fingers gripped her ankle.

She glanced at his hand and then back at his face again. “Come here.”

He crawled into the space beside her, kicking off his shoes before letting his feet rest evenly on the bed. Jasmine expected him to touch her, but he kept his hands folded on his stomach as his eyes traced the brown outlines on the ceiling. “This is going to sound strange,” he began, as Jasmine rolled onto her side facing him and pressed her cheek to the sleeve of his T-shirt, “but sometimes I wish I lived in a place like this again.”

Naturally, she scoffed.

“I’m not saying I wish I was poor. I try not to romanticize that time. Life was hard, and my father was a standoffish person. I’m sure he loved me, but his way of showing it was by keeping me alive. So I knew. I just never heard it.”

“Okay.”

His head turned toward hers. “What I mean is that I wish I didn’t have to live somewhere with lots of security. Although my ascent to this lifestyle was gradual over the years, there was a defining moment when I thought, shit. I’m a long way from Kansas. My version of Kansas was only a few blocks away from downtown.”

Why was he telling her all of this? Jasmine kept quiet.

“I miss being able to go out for a walk. A jog. If I want fresh air I have to be surrounded by people I know or somewhere secure. I can’t just go out to a park. Lots of people don’t know my face, but all it would take is one person. Of course, this is easier to do at the house, but when I’m living in the penthouse for a week I get cabin fever easily. Plus, sometimes I want to be around human energy that doesn’t want anything from me.”

Poor baby billionaire.
Jasmine cracked a smile and instantly hid it from him. “Is that why you really came over tonight?”

“Sort of. It’s not the freshest air, but I like your energy. On the way over here I was worried that you would turn me away. I didn’t know where I would go.”

Jasmine couldn’t prevent the words coming from her mouth. “You sound lonely.”

She didn’t expect him to say anything. But Ethan took in a deep breath, his chest rising and falling within that plain cotton T-shirt. “Is it that obvious?”

“But how could someone like you be lonely? Surely there are thousands of people lining up to keep you company.”

“It’s hard to explain. I do enjoy their company, but it’s fleeting. They’re busy, I’m busy. When you’re as busy as me, you only have time to talk to people who work for you and the people trying to take something from you. Everything is about business. I used to thrive on it. Then, I don’t know, maybe my priorities changed.”

“Priorities?”

“Don’t ask me what they are. I’m still trying to figure that out.”

Wouldn’t happen to do with your sex life, would it?
“Seems like a man who is so lonely shouldn’t be getting his girlfriends through contracts.”

Ethan stirred. At first Jasmine thought that she had offended him, and felt bad about it, but Ethan merely sat up in the bed and stared into the space in front of him. “You’re right.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a terrible way to find a girlfriend. Good thing I’m not looking for a girlfriend.”

The way he said it wasn’t flippant. It wasn’t malevolent, either. Instead Jasmine heard pain beneath his voice, as if it were about to bubble over from his throat and drown him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

It was impossible for her to say any softer. She didn’t want to offend him, but she also didn’t want him to play games with her. Everything would be a lot easier if Ethan would just really say what was on his mind. “I don’t know what else to tell you that I haven’t already. It’s as I said. I don’t have time to take care of a girlfriend emotionally.”

“Don’t have time… or don’t want to make time?”

This time Ethan really didn’t respond. He only clenched his jaw, a look that Jasmine did not like on him.

She sat up on her elbow. “It’s strange to me that a man looking for companionship would go about it that way. I get that you are busy… But it seems to me that there is another reason you do things this way. And it’s not about some undying love or desire for the lifestyle. You said so yourself that you’re not into it like a lifestyle thing.”

For a while she didn’t think that Ethan would answer her. Although his mouth was shut, his eyes fluttered open and closed as he chewed on her words and formulated his own response. It was slow coming.

“Did I ever tell you that I’ve been in love before?”

Jasmine moved back. “No. Who? One of your other girls?”

Ethan lifted his arms and entwined his fingers behind his head. Body relaxed against the wall, he said, “Adrienne Thomas.”

Now that name I do remember.
The last woman Ethan had a public relationship with. What was it, five years ago? “Go on.”

Ethan took a moment to collect his thoughts before continuing. “I met her in business school. We were the top two in our class. Not only was she beautiful, but she was funny, charming, and so smart that she would make you believe you were the dumbest asshole on Earth. So, total package. This may sound pompous, but I never really had trouble getting girls to go out with me…”

“You don’t say.”

“But I was nervous asking her out. Turns that I didn’t have to ask her out. She asked
me
out.” Ethan chuckled. “Brains, beauty, and enough confidence to suck you into her world. I was done for even before our first kiss.”

Jasmine sank down into her bed, her head instinctively searching for Ethan’s side as she picked at her fingernails and listened.

“I don’t know what else to say. We dated for a while. Things were always hot and heavy, but still our relationship took a gradual shift into how serious it was. People were speculating when we would get married. I admit, three years into the relationship, we still didn’t live together, but I was thinking about marrying her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I took so long to ask because this was when business was starting to take off. She had her own business ventures too. We agreed not to get involved in each other’s careers. She was never as successful as me, but she never wanted for anything, including pride. I was proud of her too. So proud that when I went to pick out a ring I had no idea what to get her. It seemed wrong to pick out a ring for her. So I decided to ask her without one.”

“And?” This pause was killing Jasmine.

“Long story short, she said no.”

“I’m sorry. Why?”

“I’ll be asking myself that for a long time still.”

Jasmine perked up. “So basically you got your heart broken and life sucked.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Her hand slapped onto his stomach. “And now you just buy women.”

She waited for a testy retort, but it never came. Instead Ethan glanced over the edge of her bed, moved with a start, and reached down into her open nightstand drawer.
Oh no, not the silicone boyfriend!
Ethan’s ego would be a bit bruised seeing that thing.
I swear a real one is better! It doesn’t give me carpal tunnel!

But it wasn’t a toy he pulled out. It was a thin stack of bound paper, one that Jasmine instantly recognized. “Well would you look at this?” Ethan flipped open her copy of their contract and laughed. “Some light reading material before bed, Miss Bliss?”

At least it wasn’t something else. Jasmine slumped onto her side. “I don’t know where else to put that.”

Ethan stopped to read some parts of the contract. “I don’t remember that…”

“How the hell could you not? You wrote the damn thing!”

“Actually, I got it off the Internet.”

“
What?
”

“Wrote parts of it myself too. The first woman and I…”

“Who?”

Ethan looked up from the contract. “Celeste. She was the first woman I approached about a contract like this, although she didn’t take me up on it until a year ago. She helped me write it up. Most of the original stuff was her idea.” The contract turned upside down in Ethan’s hands. “Like this nugget right here.” He pointed. Something about riding crops. “She loved that shit.”

“Someone told me that you and her were really close.”

The smile fell off Ethan’s face. “I suppose.”

“Did you love her too?”

Ethan put the contract back in the drawer. “I don’t know. I wasn’t given enough time to figure that out.”

He seems to be the type that falls in love easily.
Not the kind of love that was fleeting, but the kind of love that reached out to others. He had loved Adrienne, and he probably loved Celeste. Jasmine didn’t know either of these women, but she was curious what they were like.
They must be special.
From what she understood, they were both beautiful and smart, good at their jobs and not afraid to stand up to Ethan.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Those words brought Jasmine back to the present. “I…” She felt the warmth of his skin beneath her cheek; inhaled the scent of his body and his aftershave; heard his breaths beneath the sound of his voice. “I think so. It sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

But Jasmine didn’t want to talk about it. She curled her arm around Ethan’s torso, determined to savor every moment of him being there in her bed.

When his hand gently landed on her shoulder, holding her closer and closer, she nearly lost herself to the madness that they both spoke of.

“Am I just a Band-Aid?” Jasmine asked, her voice struggling to be more than a whisper. “Is my point to make you forget those other women?”

“No.” Offense was not taken. That meant Ethan knew that she was thinking it already.

“If I’m not a sex toy, and I’m not a Band-Aid, then what am I to you?”

“Why does it matter?”

Jasmine sat up, her body halfway to looming over Ethan’s. “What do you mean why does it matter? You’re giving me money to be your girlfriend, but in truth I’m not your girlfriend at all. I follow your rules, play your game, and in return I get…”

“Money?”

“I’m not sure. But if I’m not just a lay to you, then you’re not just money to me.”

He stroked her hair, still damp from her shower. “I think we might be friends.”

“Friends who have sex in supply closets.”

“I can’t help it.” His smile was that of a stupid boy’s. “You’re too much to resist.”

“Prove it.”

Jasmine should have known to not ask for what she might not be able to handle. Like Ethan suddenly rolling against her, his lips pressing against hers.

She couldn’t handle it because she knew it was too late for her.
I’m in love with him.
She held it back, denied it, pretended that she lived by any other truth than that.
I can’t.
The moment his lips teased her cheek she was gone. Ethan didn’t have to do anything else to her.
Just love on me. I’m yours.

Deep down she knew he didn’t love her. At least not with the same intensity, the same desire drawing her to him. She could have said no – but she didn’t want to. In her off time she wanted to be with him as well. It was only strange now because they were in her world. Casual. Flirty. Doing things a normal boyfriend and girlfriend would do. No Lamborghinis and no extravagant dinners. No ridiculous gardens or nights at the opera. Just her, him, the cat making a mess in the living room, and the familiar sounds of her own bed creaking to the movements of their lovemaking.