Taken by the Billionaire (21 page)

“But… after that, I want you to come back to Korčula again,” he whispered.

I looked up at him, confused. He gently reached out and wiped a tear from my cheek, and then he leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips.

“I don’t understand.”

“There is a lot that I need to talk to my mother about; there is a lot of misinformation… of outright lies… that Sergei told her about me that I want to clear up,” he explained. “But, there is one thing she is right about and probably always will be.”

“What is that?”

“She’s right that I’m an idiot,” he said quietly, and he looked embarrassed. “Keep that in mind when you go back to your apartment, please. It will all make sense then.”

I straightened up and stared at him coldly.

“I thought you promised you weren’t going to keep any more secrets from me.”

“I did promise, but I also know that you’ll make an exception for this one.”

“But…”

“Trust me,” he said, and he took my hand and kissed it before turning away and going back inside.

I decided to stay out on the balcony until I had my thoughts in order. I was out there for a very long time, and the sun had set long before I finally made it back inside.

"I
tried to sleep through the flight back to New York, but I wasn’t certain whether I preferred to be awake or asleep now. I was crammed into an uncomfortable plane with minimal leg room while I was awake, but Peter haunted my dreams when I slept.

He was holding me down against the conference table, lifting my skirt, yanking my underwear off and making savage, animal love to me. He was teasing and tormenting me during the call, dominating me both mentally and physically. I could almost feel him inside me now, feel the animal desires raging inside him as he took me for himself.

The dream shifted, and now we were together in my bed in Astoria. He was still rough—I liked it that way—but now there was something softer, more romantic about him, something loving and caring that hadn’t been there before. He was carrying me toward the bed, holding me gently in his arms, laying me down on the bed…

There was such a huge contrast between how he’d treated me before and now; maybe he
did
love me after all. But… if he did, why was I now watching him turn away from me in my dreams? He was rejecting me and sending me back to New York. I couldn’t stay with him...

I wanted nothing more than to stay with him forever, and he’d refused me that.

No, no he hadn’t! He told me to come back after I went home. Why? Why did he want me to do that? I didn’t understand, and he was still keeping one last secret from me. Even in my dreams, my heart and mind were still conflicted. He’d admitted to keeping a secret from me, even after promising over and over that he wouldn’t.

Was Peter still just using me after all? I kept floating in and out of sleep, caught between mental discomfort and extreme fatigue from the long flight.

If Peter was just dragging me along for the ride, I might as well enjoy the good parts of it. I let myself drift back off to sleep and back into his arms in my dreams.

He slipped my straps of my black dress down my shoulders and then slowly pulled the dress down my body, inch by inch, kissing me passionately as he held me up against the wall. He was pulling me down onto the floor, holding my wrists tightly as he took me for all that either of us was worth, and drawing screams of ecstasy out of me with each powerful stroke.

I was looking in on myself from outside, watching myself stand blindfolded and handcuffed in the middle of his bedroom. He kissed my neck from behind and cupped my breasts in his hands through the deep red corset. Where had that thing gone, anyway? If I ever saw him again—if he still wanted me—I could see myself wearing that to bed with him. He’d have to promise to use the blindfold again, though; something about that had been absolutely
magical
to me.

I woke up with a start as the flight attendant announced our descent into JFK Airport, and I groaned in disappointment. I was going to need one hell of a cold shower when I finally made it home.

Exhausted, I stumbled off of the plane like a particularly inept zombie. Dismal gray airport, blue suitcase against black-stained conveyor belt, bright yellow taxi against the gray sky and dirty brown of the city. Rain poured down and cut the back seat of my taxi off from the rest of the world, and I had little else I could do but sleep. An hour later, I was home.

The taxi dropped me off out front my apartment is Astoria. I tipped the driver, grabbed my suitcase, and lugged it as quickly as I could through the torrential downpour until I made it to the front door. Two flights of stairs later, I arrived at my apartment, where a FedEx envelope was sticking out from beneath the door.

Express Delivery from Vela Luka, Croatia.

“
Dear Sarah: Remember… I am an idiot. I forget things. Sometimes I forget them all the way across the ocean.

See you soon?

Love, Peter.
”

What on earth was he talking about? Why had he sent that letter? I certainly knew he was an idiot… he was an idiot who couldn’t keep his promises and who apparently wanted me out of his hair, too. Why else would he have sent me back to New York?

Was I angry at him? Was I sad? I had no idea what I was feeling as I closed the apartment door behind me and stuffed the letter in the garbage can. All I knew was that whatever the hell he’d sent me back here for, it’d better be…

…good
, I thought, staring at the tiny, brown felt-covered box sitting on the coffee table in the living room.

An image flashed through my mind as I remembered him slam the laptop shut and race for the door. He had to get to the U.N to save Anneke, and he’d left the box behind. I’d called after him, but he was already out the door.

My hands shook as I knelt down next to the table and opened the little box.

Inside lay a glittering, white-gold ring with inlaid, sparkling diamonds and deep blue sapphires that alternated one after the next around the entire circumference of the band. In the center atop the ring, glittered a single, exquisite diamond in a intricate and complex setting that weaved around the gem like ivy growing up an old garden wall. The gold weave encircled the diamond, both complementing it and holding it in place, and it gleamed brilliantly even in the dim light of my apartment.

This one piece little ring was worth more than everything I owned put together.

As I delicately took the ring out of the box, my eyes suddenly locked onto the tiny engravings on the inside of the band.

“
To Sarah… will you marry me?
”

“Holy shit… he forgot an engagement ring in New York. He really is an idiot,” I whispered, but the wide smile on my face told a very different story from what my voice did. The muscles in my face actually ached from smiling as I carefully slid the ring onto my finger.

It was the right size, too. How’d he get that right? I didn’t even know my own ring size!

Katrina!

Another image flashed across my mind, this time of the girl measuring my finger when she fitted me for my gorgeous black dress. Now she was kissing me on the cheek again, telling me to take good care of Peter, how he was perfect for me. She’d known the entire time.

Next, a vision crossed through my mind of Anneke was telling me I was part of the family.

The engagement notice. That fucking engagement notice.

Had that been the plan all along? Or did we accidentally make the engagement notice true?

I sat back on the carpet and started to laugh. I laughed so hard that tears rolled down my face.

“Yes! The answer is yes!” I called out to no-one, listening to my voice echo off the bare walls of my tiny apartment.

I couldn’t stop giggling. Peter might have been an idiot, but he was
my
idiot. I held my hand up to the light and watched in awe as the stunning jewels glittered in the light. It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen, from the most beautifully perfect, perfectly flawed man I’d ever met.

I leapt up and bolted into the bedroom to get my laptop. There weren’t many flights to Korčula, and I wanted to be on the next one out.

My idiot billionaire was waiting for me.

THE END

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