Page 116 of Caught Between Two Billionaires
Well, maybe that’s the difference.
I’m not completely clueless when it comes to boys, but Christopher and Sutton—they aren’t boys. They’re men. And I’m finding them as mysterious as living, breathing surrealist art.
Yes, Daddy made me cynical about men. Maybe my mother did that too, marrying so many rich assholes after him. I assume the worst about them, but they just keep proving me right. Even Christopher, which breaks me anew every single time. Who puts me back together with those rare moments of tenderness.
Around eight o’clock there’s a knock on my front door. I open the door, ignoring the sense of relief that at least I guessed this part correctly. A mysterious man, a tormented man, but still a man.
Sutton fills the doorframe, his body ridiculously handsome in a thin T-shirt that hugs his arms and falls loose at his waist. And the torn jeans that have no right to look that sexy.
His face is in shadows, but I feel the torment radiating from him. “Can I come in?” he asks, a little gruff. I’ve seen him in a business suit making decisions around a conference table. I’ve seen him with his sleeves rolled up and a hard hat on, giving orders to a construction crew. There are a hundred ways he shows his strength, but he’s never seemed as masculine as he does now—when he’s achingly vulnerable to me.
“Is this a booty call?” I ask, hand on my hip.
He looks down at the row of pumpkins, each featuring a different-shaped cock. There’s long and short, thick and curved. “Is that what you want?”
“A bunch of cocks?” I glance back to where Casablanca plays on the TV. Mom fell asleep before the French national anthem drowned out the German soldiers. “Maybe it’s what you want. We should call Christopher so you can have a good time.”
The words are a challenge, and Sutton responds with a small laugh. “Call whoever you want, sugar. But don’t pretend it’s because you don’t want him.”
I reach for his wrist, ignoring the spark when we touch, ignoring the play of tendon and muscle within my grip as I pull him inside. “Oh, come in.”
He leans back against the door after he closes it. His arms cross, which make them bulge in a way that’s hard not to admire. “Where did you see all those, anyway? I know you were a virgin when Christopher fucked you.”
“There’s lots of different kinds of experience,” I say in a haughty voice, as worldly as Ingrid Bergman on the big screen. She was a lover to one man and married to another, a feat she managed with total grace. I bet she never wondered if she was going insane.
Sutton doesn’t look convinced, so I admit, “Naked models in art class. They aren’t really supposed to be erect, but someone would usually tell dirty jokes until they got hard.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Okay. Yes. God.”
His lips quirk. “And I bet they went home and jacked off all night long.”
I can’t help but dip my gaze to the bulge in his jeans, the denim worn around the edges. My breath hitches as I remember what he felt like inside me. He makes a growling sound. “If you look at me that way, I’m going to do something about it.”
My feet back up before I can plan a retreat. Apprehension and desire war in my body. “Mom’s not in bed yet. We’re watching a movie.”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “I can wait.”
That’s what I’m worried about. I’ve never met a man with more patience. More determination. And it’s scary, because I can feel my defenses crumbling every second. Only I’m not sure what he’s fighting for—Christopher or me.
Or maybe some combination that can never come true.
Sutton helps me wake up Mom, who says she hadn’t actually slept for an hour of the movie. She insists on playing cards with Sutton, who agrees with an easy smile. I make hot cocoa for everyone—extra marshmallows for Sutton—while my mother wins three rounds of gin.
It’s almost possible to believe she isn’t sick until it’s time for her to go to sleep. Then I help her walk up the stairs because she’s too weak to climb them herself. I tuck her into bed like she’s a child, because it’s one of the only things I can do.
There is an assortment of herbal medicines I hand her, one after the other. The only prescription medicine she allows is something that helps her sleep.
“That Sutton is a nice man,” she says, her voice soft. “Not like your daddy.”
Acid burns my throat because I think she’s right.
And because I think she’s wrong.
He’s not mean like Daddy, but even Daddy was nice once. He had been in love with the woman who now looks so frail beneath the pin-tuck comforter. It was his own ambition that made everything terrible, and both Sutton and Christopher have plenty of ambition.
