My Wedding Was a Fake, So I Claimed My Fortune and a Billionaire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Stranger With the Letter

Auden Perrault, who mailed the tip, takes her to his suite, and his mouth makes her come twice on his couch before he stops.

The car smelled like leather and cold rain.

Auden sat beside me and did not touch me again.

He didn't need to.

I could feel him from three feet away.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"A suite I keep at the Ansley, ten minutes from here."

"That's what men say right before they kidnap a woman."

"It's what I say right before I give her a locked door she holds the key to."

He handed me a key card from his vest pocket.

I took it.

I was still shaking, and I hated that he saw it.

"Your car will be at the hotel in an hour," he said. "My driver has your keys. Your husband has nothing of yours."

"He's not my husband."

"No."

"I wore that ring for three years."

"I know."

"I wrote his name on my taxes."

"I know that too."

I turned and looked at him.

"Why do you know all of it?"

"Because he borrowed eleven million dollars from my bank against a house and a wharf that aren't his," Auden said. "I read people's paper for a living."

I looked out the window at Peachtree Street going by in the rain.

I did not ask what else he had read.

I told myself I'd ask upstairs.

The elevator at the Ansley was glass, mirrored on three sides, and it rose forty floors with just the two of us.

He pushed the button with the heel of his hand.

I stood with my back against the rail.

He stood across from me and watched me in the mirror instead of looking at me directly.

"You're going to cry," he said, "or you're going to hit something."

"I'm going to throw up."

"Then do it. I have a sink."

A laugh came out of me, wet and ugly, and then the tears came after it.

I pressed the heel of my hand to my mouth.

He crossed the elevator in one step.

He caught my chin in his hand, not hard, and tilted my face up.

"Look at me."

I looked.

His eyes were dark brown, nearly black, steady as water.

"You did that in front of a full restaurant with your head up," he said. "I watched you."

"I dropped a ring in a glass."

"You dropped it like a verdict."

His thumb wiped one tear from my cheekbone.

I don't know which of us moved first.

I know his beard scratched my chin and his mouth was warmer than the rest of him.

I kissed him back.

My hands went up under his jacket and found the heat of his back through his shirt.

He made a sound low in his chest and pushed me against the mirror.

The glass was cold on my shoulder blades.

He was hot all down the front of me.

He kissed me until the elevator chimed and the doors slid open on a hush of carpet.

"Lenora," he said against my mouth.

"Don't say my name like you're asking."

"I'm not."

He took my hand and walked me down the hall.

The suite was enormous.

A wall of glass looked over the whole city, lit up gold and wet.

There was a leather couch the color of strong tea facing the window.

He shut the door behind us, took my coat off my shoulders and put it on a chair.

He took his own jacket off, and then his vest, and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

His forearms were corded and dark with hair.

The gold ring flashed as he undid the first button of his collar.

"Sit down," he said.

I sat on the couch.

My legs weren't steady anyway.

He knelt on the carpet in front of me and put his hands on my knees.

For a second I thought he was about to say something kind.

Instead he pushed my knees apart.

"You've had the worst day of your life," he said. "I'd like to give you a good thirty minutes in it."

I opened my mouth to answer.

He slid his hands up my thighs and under the green dress, found the waistband of my tights, and drew them down with my underwear in one long pull.

I lifted my hips for him without being told.

He took them off over my shoes and dropped them on the floor.

"Look at that," he said, very low.

I was wet.

I knew it.

He looked at me there for a long, slow second.

"Touch me," I said. My voice shook.

"I intend to do a good deal more than that."

He leaned in and put his mouth on me.

I cried out, one raw sound, and my head hit the back of the couch.

His tongue was slow and wide and sure.

He licked me from the bottom to the top and settled on my clit and stayed there, circling.

My hands found his bare head and held on.

His beard dragged on my inner thighs.

He hummed against me and I felt the sound everywhere.

"Auden," I said.

"Again."

"Auden."

"That's it. Say it again."

He slid two fingers inside me, thick and steady, and curled them up against the place that made me see white.

I came so fast it embarrassed me.

I came with a shout and my thighs clamped on his ears.

He kept going, easing me through it with his tongue gone soft and flat.

"One," he said, and wiped his mouth on his wrist.

"I can't," I said. "I can't again."

"You can."

He lifted my left leg over his shoulder and opened me wider with his thumbs.

"You've been quiet for three years, Lenora," he said. "Let me hear you."

He went back down.

This time he took his time.

He worked me with his tongue and his fingers together, in and out, slow, and then faster when I started to rock against his face.

I said filthy things I didn't know I knew.

I said, "Right there, God, right there, don't stop, don't you stop."

He didn't.

When I came the second time it ripped through me from my heels to my scalp.

I heard myself scream his name into the glass and the city.

He held me through it with his palm flat on my belly.

When it was over, I lay there boneless.

My dress was shoved up around my ribs.

My hair had come loose and was all over the cushions.

He sat back on his heels, breathing hard.

The front of his trousers was tight enough for me to see exactly how much he wanted this.

I reached for his belt.

He caught my wrist.

"No," he said.

"No?"

"Not tonight."

I stared at him.

"You're hard," I said, because I didn't know what else to say.

"I am."

"I want to."

"I know you do." He kissed the inside of my wrist where he'd held me on the street. "You've had three years of a man who took what he wanted and called it love. Tonight I'm only giving."

"That's insane."

"Tomorrow, if you still want it, ask me."

"Ask you."

"Ask me for it out loud, with a clear head, in the morning." His voice dropped. "And I will give you all of it."

I should have been furious.

I was, a little.

But I was also thoroughly, shamelessly satisfied, and nobody had ever refused me anything out of care before.

He carried me to the bedroom and laid me down.

He drew the duvet over me and sat on the edge of the bed with his shirt open and his hand in my hair.

I slept almost at once.

I woke once, in the dark, and he was still sitting there.

I woke again at dawn to my phone buzzing on the nightstand.

Davis.

Forty-one missed calls, and one text, newer than the rest.

Come home. I can explain everything. Don't sign or say anything to anyone before Monday.

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