Romancing the Billionaire (Billionaire Boys Club #5)(53)
Author: Jessica Clare

“I can honestly say I completely forgot what my safe word was supposed to be,” she said breathlessly.

He tensed. “Did I hurt you?”

She snorted and sat up as the bonds on her wrists released and she rubbed them. They didn’t hurt except for where she’d been straining against them. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jonathan. If I was screaming, it was because I was out of my mind with pleasure.”

He relaxed and got back into the bed. Before she could head to the bathroom to clean up, he put his hands around her waist and dragged her body against him. “Don’t leave me yet.”

Those words were like knives in her heart. Don’t leave me yet. Poor Jonathan. She snuggled close to him and enjoyed that she got to touch him now, finally. She rolled onto her side, facing him, and began to slide her fingers up and down his flat stomach.

“Mmm,” he said softly when she dragged her fingers through the thin line of hair below his belly button. “Next time, no hands tied. I like your touch too much.”

Would there be a next time, Violet wondered? Then she decided, yes, there would be. She wasn’t an idiot; if Jonathan gave her mind-blowing, weak-in-the-knees sex, she’d gladly take it every chance she could get before they had to part.

Then she frowned. They did have to part. It wasn’t a good idea to fall in love with Jonathan again. She might always be fond of him. She might love the sex he gave her. But she didn’t know that she was ready to go all-in once again. Her heart still carried the bruises from last time.

Troubled, Violet rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

“You all right?” Jonathan’s hand brushed her arm.

“Just thinking.” Her thoughts sucked, too. They were full of her returning to her quiet teaching job back in Detroit, and Jonathan going back to his whirlwind lifestyle of fascinating projects and exploring famous and dangerous places and running his car company. Even though they’d fit together as college students, she’d switched directions once she’d returned home. They didn’t fit as adults. Jonathan was a billionaire with a hectic lifestyle. Violet was, well . . . boring. She was just a schoolteacher.

He’d get tired of her in another week or two.

Which was why it was so important that she keep her heart locked down, no matter what. They could have sex, they could laugh and play together both in and out of bed, and she could kiss him, but she had to keep her heart her own.

Because if it broke again, she’d never be able to recover.

Violet sighed and stared at the ceiling without seeing it. She did notice, however, that they’d knocked the picture on the wall askew. It hung over their heads, a few feet above the headboard, and was tilted distinctly to one side. That was rather funny. “I think we were a little overly vigorous,” Violet said with a smile and pointed at the picture.

And just then, she noticed the picture itself. With a gasp, she sat up and whirled around to stare at the picture. It was a giclee, a mass-produced print of a pastoral scene that was probably sold in multiple hotel catalogs full of ugly but unobtrusive furnishings. She hadn’t paid a bit of attention to it before, and she probably wouldn’t have noticed it now except for one thing: the pastoral scene of a river that flowed toward a mill and a gigantic waterwheel.

A wheel.

“Do you see what I see?” she asked, pointing at the picture.

Jonathan sat up. After a moment, he laughed and quoted the first line of the poem again. “‘Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel.’”

“You think that’s our wheel?” Violet asked eagerly. She hobbled forward on her knees on the bed and pulled the picture off the wall, looking at the back of it. Nothing.

“Well, my note did say Kallista Hotel,” Jonathan agreed. He ran a hand over the cardboard backing of the cheap picture. “So it has to be something with this hotel.”

Violet stared at it, thinking. “This isn’t an original. I wonder if the other rooms have a similar painting in them?”

Jonathan gave her a musing look. “You want me to rent out the entire hotel?”

“Can you do that?”

He gave her that slow, lazy smile that made her heart turn over. “A billionaire can do whatever he wants, love.”

THIRTEEN

The next morning, Jonathan had rented out every room on their floor—the second floor. They’d gone through every room and only found two with the same painting as the one she’d been staring at in bed, and neither had a message written on them.

They’d returned back to Jonathan’s room, no closer than when they’d started.

Puzzled and frustrated, Violet returned to the poem, studying it over and over again. “That has to be the wheel. It has to.”

She leaned over the tablet, staring at the scanned message and wishing inspiration would strike.

As she did, Jonathan leaned over and murmured in her ear, “Shall I rent out another floor?”

“That’s just a waste of money if we’re on the wrong track,” Violet said, though she shivered at the feel of his breath caressing her ear.

“You know I don’t care about the money,” he said, and leaned in and kissed the side of her neck.

Violet gasped and arched, giving him more access to her throat. After last night’s marathon loving, they’d slept for a few hours, and she’d woken up to Jonathan’s hungry kisses in the middle of the night. They’d made love twice more, each time more fierce than the last, and when dawn had hit, Violet had fallen into an exhausted, dazed slumber.

Even now she was curled up in the blankets, naked, and seated at the table in their room despite the late afternoon hour. After finding no luck with the second floor, they’d returned to their room and made love again.

And again.

Jonathan had just showered and he smelled fresh and clean, and she wanted to lick the droplets of water off of his bronzed skin. God, the man was delicious.

“Some of us are trying to work here,” she teased him as he continued to nibble at her neck. She squirmed away from him with a grin and pointed at the tablet. “Look what you made me do.” Her fingers had hit the screen when he’d kissed her and she’d accidentally zoomed in, the handwriting on the note enlarging to an extreme degree.

“It’s fine,” Jonathan said, his mouth moving to her ear and his nibbling continuing onto her earlobe. “Just ignore it. We’ll work on it later.”

“You’re incorrigible,” she told him with a grin.