The Billionaire's Match Is Three Percent novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Against the Number

Dinner on Polish Hill turns into her couch on Butler Street, where the man who runs everything takes off his jacket because she tells him to.

I got to Pierogi Mary's twenty minutes late.

Winston Aldridge was already at a table by the window, in his navy suit.

He had a glass of water and his phone face down.

He had not ordered a thing.

"You said eight," he said.

"I said eight-ish."

"That isn't a time."

"It's a range."

He looked at me, and I saw the corner of his mouth move.

"I've been here since seven-forty," he said. "I wanted to see what the room sounds like before you got here."

"And?"

"It sounds like a hundred people who all think they're the loudest."

"That's Polish Hill."

The waitress dropped a basket of bread between us and a plate of potato pierogi that nobody had ordered.

She was already gone.

Winston looked at the plate for a moment.

Then he picked up a knife and fork and cut a pierogi into four neat pieces.

I took mine with my fingers and ate it in two bites.

"Tidiness," he said. "I see."

"Planning style," I said. "Also I see."

"Tell me the rest. Every bar. I want it from you out loud."

So I told him.

I told him that he said a hundred words a day to most people and I said a thousand.

I told him that when two people fight, the model wants one of them to throw something.

He would never throw anything and I would throw a shoe.

"And you think that's why it's three," he said.

"I know it's why it's three."

"What does the model say about wanting someone?"

I put the pierogi down.

"There's no bar for that," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because I couldn't figure out how to measure it."

He was quiet for a second.

His quiet did not make me want to fill the silence, which was a first.

"Tell me something that isn't on the page," he said.

I told him my mother died when I was fifteen.

My father and I ate cereal for dinner for a year.

At nineteen I built my first matching program.

I wanted to know if two people who loved each other that much could have been predicted.

"Could they?"

"My parents were eleven percent."

"And?"

"Nineteen years. Then she died."

He looked at his water.

"Mine would have been a negative number," he said. "They lasted four."

It was the most he had said in a row since I met him.

I reached across the table and took his phone and turned it over so the screen faced the wood.

"Nobody's calling you for the next hour," I said. "I decided."

He let me.

We walked to Lawrenceville because I did not want to take a car.

It was a mile and a half down the hill in the cold.

He walked on the street side without being asked, with his hands in his pockets.

Outside my building on Butler Street, he stopped.

"This is you?"

"Second floor. Brick. The radiator knocks."

"Good night, Daria."

I was suddenly angry at how polite he was.

"It's a mess up there," I said. "Dishes. Laundry. A bike in the hallway."

"Is that an invitation?"

"It's a warning."

"I'm not afraid of a mess."

"You should be."

"Tell me what to do," he said.

His voice had dropped.

I looked at him, tall and still and gray-eyed under the streetlight, and I understood that he meant it.

"Come upstairs," I said.

Inside, I did not turn on the big light.

I turned on the lamp by the couch, and the room was yellow and small.

He stood in the middle of it with a laundry basket at his knee and did not look at it.

He looked at me.

"Take your jacket off," I said.

He took off his jacket, folded it once, and put it on the arm of the couch.

"Now sit."

He sat.

I stood between his knees, and I had to bend a little to reach his mouth.

The first kiss was slow.

I had thought it would be polite, and it wasn't.

His hand came up to the back of my head, and his tongue touched mine.

I heard a small sound come out of my own throat.

He kissed me and meant to use all of it.

"Daria," he said against my mouth.

"Don't talk."

"Yes."

I got my hoodie off over my head and he stopped breathing for a second.

Under it I had on a plain black bra.

He put his mouth on my collarbone, then lower, and kissed me through the cotton.

I dug my fingers into his hair.

"Take it off me," I said.

He undid the clasp with one hand and still shook.

He cupped me and looked.

Then his mouth was on my nipple, warm and wet, and my knees nearly went.

I pushed him back into the couch and climbed over his lap and ground down against him.

He was hard.

I could feel it through his suit pants, hot and heavy against the seam of my jeans.

I moved over him slowly while he held my hips and groaned.

"You'll make me embarrass myself," he said.

"Not yet. Get on the floor."

He looked up at me.

"On your knees, in front of the couch."

He got down on the floor without a word.

I sat back and pushed my jeans and underwear off.

Then I was bare on my own couch with my legs open and the lamp on.

The most powerful man I had ever met was kneeling on my rug.

He looked up at me.

"Slowly," I said.

"Yes."

"Start with your mouth. Don't hurry."

He put his hands on my thighs and kissed the inside of one knee.

He kissed the other, then higher, and I felt his breath where I was already wet.

Then his tongue touched me, one long slow stroke from bottom to top.

I gasped and grabbed the arm of the couch.

"Like that," I said. "Again."

He did it again.

He was careful and patient and unbelievably good at following instructions.

When I said softer, he went softer.

When I said there, with my heel against his shoulder, he stayed on my clit and drew small tight circles.

I heard myself say his name over and over until it stopped being a name.

He looked up once and his eyes were dark.

"Tell me when."

"I'm not telling you."

"Daria."

"Keep going."

I came with my head back against the couch and my hand fisted in his hair.

The radiator knocked twice, and for a few seconds I could not think a single thought about percentages.

He kissed my thigh and rested his cheek there, breathing hard.

I pulled him up by the shoulders.

His mouth was wet and shiny, and I kissed it and tasted myself.

"Your turn," I said.

I undid his belt and his zipper and took his cock out, hot and thick and hard in my palm.

He dropped his forehead to mine and shook.

"I haven't," he said. "In a while."

"I know."

"How?"

"Three percent says you work too much."

He laughed, and the laugh turned into a groan when I started to stroke him.

I went slowly, with my thumb over the head, and watched his face come apart.

He put his hand over mine to show me what he liked.

I moved it away and told him to keep his hands on the couch.

He kept them there.

"Good," I said. "Just like that. Look at me."

He looked at me.

He came with a rough sound against my neck, hot and wet over my hand and his own shirt.

Afterward he sat there with his head on my shoulder, shaking a little.

I stroked the back of his neck.

"That was not in the model," he said.

"No."

"I'd like to see the rest of the model."

"Go to sleep, Winston."

I pulled the quilt off the back of the couch and put it over us both.

I thought he would leave, because men like him always have somewhere to be.

He stayed.

At some point I fell asleep against his chest with the lamp still on.

When I woke, the room was gray and the couch was empty.

There was a note on the coffee table in square, careful handwriting.

Day 1. Still three percent? G.

My phone buzzed on the cushion.

It was an email from Phyllis Greer, timestamped 5:58 a.m.

Subject: Lodestar Night prep.

Ms. Orlowski, Mr. Aldridge has asked that you join the technical team for the October 9 launch with Ms. Quist.

A car will collect you at nine.

I read it twice.

I looked at the note.

And I laughed, because the model had listed six reasons we would fail.

Not one of them had been this.

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