The Billionaire's Match Is Three Percent novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Night Owl

He comes to her door at eleven and she keeps him up; in her bed she gives the orders and he follows every one.

On Tuesday night at ten past eleven, my phone lit up on the arm of the couch.

I'm downstairs. I know it's late. G.

I was eating cereal out of a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.

I looked at the clock, then at the dishes in the sink.

At my gray sweatpants with the hole in the knee.

I typed, It's not late. Come up.

He appeared at my door two minutes later, in a suit that had been ironed that morning.

He had a bag of oranges in one hand.

"I didn't know what to bring," he said.

"Oranges."

"They were open until midnight."

"Nobody brings oranges at midnight."

"Is this not a date?"

"It's whatever I say it is."

His eyes went dark and amused at the same time.

"Then it's a good thing I came to be told."

I took the oranges and set them on the counter, next to a pan from Sunday.

He did not look at the pan.

I could see him not looking at it.

"What time did you go to bed last night?" I asked.

"Nine-thirty."

"When did you last stay up past eleven?"

He thought about it honestly.

"Two years ago. A merger."

"Tonight you're staying up."

"Yes."

"Sit down."

He sat on the couch and I sat on his lap, facing him, with a knee on either side.

He held my waist.

"Tell me one thing," I said. "What's the worst part of your day?"

"Every decision is mine."

"All of them?"

"Forty by breakfast. I counted once."

"And you hate it."

"I'm very good at it," he said. "I don't know that I like it."

I put my forehead against his.

"Then stop deciding," I said. "For tonight. I'll decide."

"Daria."

"Say yes."

"Yes."

I kissed him.

This time it was slower than the couch, and hungrier.

His hands slid under my sweatshirt and spread across my bare back.

He made a low sound when he found no bra.

"Upstairs," I said.

My bedroom was up a short flight of stairs under the slope of the roof.

It had a bed with an iron frame, a window over the street.

A lamp with a scarf over it.

Clothes lay on every surface.

He stood in the doorway and I saw him take it all in.

Then look at me, and not say a word.

"Take off your shirt," I said.

He undid the buttons slowly.

He had a long, hard chest with a scatter of gray hair across it.

A thin white scar under his ribs.

"Appendix," he said. "Age twelve."

"Nobody asked."

"I wanted you to know."

I pulled my sweatshirt off and walked him back until his knees hit the bed.

"Lie down."

He lay down in the middle of my bed, in his suit pants, with his arms at his sides.

I took off the sweatpants and stood in front of him in nothing but my glasses.

He stared.

"You're so beautiful it's ridiculous," he said.

"Hands on the rail," I said. "Over your head."

He reached up and wrapped both hands around the iron bars of the headboard.

"Keep them there."

"Yes."

I unbuckled his belt and pulled his pants off, and he lifted his hips to help.

He was hard already, and I took my time looking.

Then I took off my glasses and set them on the nightstand.

I got on the bed and straddled his thighs.

I wrapped a hand around his cock and he jerked.

"Hands," I said.

They tightened on the rail until the knuckles went white.

"Do you want me?" I said.

"More than I can say."

"Then say it badly."

"I want to be inside you," he said, rough. "I want you to take what you want."

I lifted up on my knees and held him against me.

I was very wet.

I rubbed the head of him through it, slow, until he shut his eyes and cursed.

Then I sank down on him.

It was one long, slow slide.

I felt every inch of him open me, and I stopped halfway to breathe.

He made a sound I had never heard a man make.

"Look at me," I said.

He opened his eyes.

They were wide and wet at the edges, and they never left my face.

I took the rest of him, and he was all the way inside me, thick and hot and full.

I stayed there with my palms flat on his chest.

"Don't move."

"I won't."

"Good."

I started to rock.

I rolled my hips, forward and back.

Every time I came forward my clit slid against him and heat shot up my spine.

"Slower," I said, to myself as much as to him.

I slowed down.

He shuddered under me and his hips twitched up and I put a hand on his stomach.

"I said don't move."

"I'm trying."

"Try harder."

"God. Daria."

"Do you like this?"

"I've never," he said, and he had to stop and breathe. "No one has ever told me what to do."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Don't you dare."

I laughed, and the laugh went through both of us.

I leaned down and kissed his mouth and picked up speed.

Soon I was riding him hard, with my hair in my face and the bed knocking against the wall.

His arms strained at the rail.

"Please," he said. "Please let me touch you."

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"My hips. Hold on."

He let go of the bars and gripped my hips with both hands.

The change of angle made me cry out.

He thrust up into me in short deep strokes, matching me, and I felt the pressure gather low and heavy.

"Right there," I said. "Right there, don't stop."

"I've got you."

"Say my name."

"Daria. Daria."

I came with my forehead pressed to his, clenching around him in long pulses, and it went on and on.

He held my hips and let me finish.

Then he turned us over, gently, and I let him, and he braced above me with his arms shaking.

"May I?" he said.

"Yes. Come in me."

He drove into me three times, deep, and then he came with a groan I felt in my own chest.

He collapsed on top of me.

I held him, and my fingers moved in his hair, and neither of us said anything for a long time.

"That's the first quiet I've had in ten years," he said finally, into my neck.

"Quiet?"

"I didn't decide anything. You said slower, and I just did it."

I did not answer, because I thought my voice would crack.

I woke at five to an empty bed and the smell of coffee.

Downstairs, the kitchen was clean.

Every dish was washed and on the rack.

The pan from Sunday was dry, and the counter had been wiped, and the oranges sat in a bowl.

Winston stood at my sink in his shirt and his suit pants, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I woke at four forty-five. I couldn't lie there."

"You washed my dishes."

"I needed to do something with my hands."

"That's the tidiness bar."

"It's a red bar," he agreed.

I opened my laptop on the counter, because my brain needed a number.

There was a chart I had built months ago and had never shown anyone.

It showed how long pairs under five percent lasted on the live app.

The line fell.

The median was four days, and almost nothing lived past Day 12.

Winston came to stand behind me and read it over my shoulder.

His chin was almost on my head.

"Day 12," he said.

"It's only data."

"We're on Day two."

"I know."

He put his arms around me from behind and rested his cheek on my hair.

"Then we have ten days," he said, "to be a mistake."

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