Bartered Submission: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 5 (A BDSM Erotic Romance) by Ava Lore Read Free Book Online

Part V
     
     
    So it turns out that when you get secretly married to
one of the richest guys on the planet, it doesn't stay a secret for
long.
    I slept on the plane back to New York while Anton
worked. His desire to bone until we both ended up in the Emergency
Room with third degree burns on our genitals seemed to be doused in
the cold light of a hundred and fifty urgent emails dinging on his
phone the next morning. We'd grabbed only coffee and pastries for
breakfast in Anton's haste to get back to work. By the time the
plane touched down, the news was spreading, and I knew it was only
a matter of time before it reached people I knew, if it hadn't
already. Sadie had a really big
mouth.
    "Keep your head down," Anton advised as we ducked
into his town car.
    "What?" I said, looking around. "Why?"
    Anton gave an exasperated sigh. "Because," he said
patiently, as though explaining something to a very small child or
a particularly dim hamster, "there's paparazzi everywhere, and you
just gave them a great shot of your face. Congratulations."
    "What?" Shit!" I was not at my chipper best.
Slingshotting to Nevada and back had made me crazy jetlagged and I
wasn't even sure what time it was. All I knew is that I wanted a
Filet o' Fish and a Dr. Pepper the size of my arm, and my chances
of getting one were vanishing with every merry ding of Anton's phone. I let my hair fall over my
cheeks as the driver—sadly, not Zachary—shut my door, and breathed
a sigh of relief when I realized the windows were tinted to hell
and back.
    "It's inevitable that we will be uncovered," Anton
said as he scrolled through yet another email, "but you may perhaps
wish to do so on your own terms." He gave me an almost teasing look
from the corner of his eye. "Makeup, perhaps. And you might want to
have your hair done."
    Distressed, I patted my face and hair, but to my
surprise, Anton reached out and grabbed my hand. "You look lovely,
Felicia," he said before releasing me. "Don't worry about it too
much."
    "Easy for you to say," I snapped at him. "Not all of
us were born into this world with perfect looks."
    His brows twitched. "You think I look perfect?"
    Oh, jeez. "Don't be a girl," I said. "You practically rolled
out of bed and into your clothes this morning, and you look like
you could be on GQ."
    "I have been on GQ.
And there's nothing wrong with being a girl."
    "Yes, I know, but if they were daily they'd just show up at your door
every morning and take a photo."
    Anton tilted his head, and I saw that faint smile on
his face suddenly bloom into... dare I say? Almost a full blown
grin. No teeth yet. I'd get there someday.
    "Thank you, Felicia," he said.
    We stared at each other for a long moment, until the
air between us crackled and sizzled.
    He broke contact first and shifted in his seat, as
though he had suddenly become uncomfortable. "At any rate," he
said, far more brusquely than usual, "we need to talk about living
arrangements."
    "What?" I said. "Oh. Right. Shouldn't I just
come... live with you?" Crap. I didn't know where he lived. Or what his house looked like. What if
it was one of those really spare modern places with chairs you
couldn't sit in? Did it have a sex dungeon? It had to have a sex
dungeon. If it didn't have a sex dungeon I was going to have to
question everything I knew about Anton Waters, which still wasn't
much.
    But every minute I spent with him taught me more.
    His phone rang. Checking the screen, he cursed under
his breath. "Sorry, Felicia, I have to take this."
    "Sure," I said, and pretended to inspect my nails as
I observed him from the corner of my eye.
    "Waters," he said into the phone. "Yes. Yes. No.
That's not going to work." I listened as the person on the other
line burbled for a while. Anton sat with the phone to his ear and
smiled that faint smile. He was like a Buddha. A business Buddha.
Eventually the person on the other end of the line realized he was
talking to a brick wall and trailed off. Anton waited.
    He'd used