BILLIONAIRE (Part 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

eyebrows.  Already, I was learning his little idiosyncrasies and for some reason this pleased me immensely.
    “Seven years,” he said.  “And you were thirteen.”
    “I don’t really want to talk about that anymore.”
    “No. I’m not.  I’m just doing some basic math over here.”
    Ah.  He’d figured out one of the details I’d yet to share with him.  “And how’s that going for you?”
    He gave me a sideways glance.  Damn, he was gorgeous.  With his white cotton shirt, exquisitely made but worn to the point of being visibly-comfortable, the rich shine of his ink-black hair, the seraphic beauty of his absurdly-stunning tanned face, he was outshining the art.  “You’re twenty ?”
    “Nicely done, professor,” I said.  “Now I get why you’re the CEO.”
    “Are you kidding me?  You’re not even old enough to legally drink?”
    “I am in France.”
    “Good point.”
    “And I’ll be twenty-one in two weeks.”
    He shook his head in disbelief, but he was smiling.  “I know you got your degree in three years, but that would make you –”
    “I also skipped seventh grade,” I said.
    “All that library time,” he smiled gently.
    “Yeah.  And the osmosis.”
    “I’m glad you told me.”  His comment was quiet, almost off-hand, like he didn’t want to kick up any regret.
    “And I’m glad you told me,” I said, finding, oddly, that I was.  On both fronts.  I felt closer to the elusive billionaire Alexander Wolfe than I’d ever felt to anyone in my entire life.  I didn’t know what that said about me, or him, and I didn’t particularly care.  All I knew was that I was glad I’d survived all those dark days and terrifying nights, all that work and struggle and desperation.  Because it had all brought me to this one moment of such glittering magnificence that it almost felt worth it.
                                                           
    We sat at a cozy but very expensive restaurant on the Champs d’Elysee, in a corner table by the front window.  The restaurant was busy but our little enclave felt secluded.  We were early for our appointment, so Alexander ordered a bottle of champagne and some hors d’oevres .  His command of French, like so many things about him, was impressive.  He must have taught himself a couple of languages, somewhere between working those odd jobs, raising Jake, and clawing his way onto the honor roll.  It felt different now that we knew each other’s secrets.  Connective.  Our pasts were both riddled with deprivation; we had that in common.  That we now knew this about each other seemed to hinge us in a more profound way.  Like the broken pieces of us somehow fit together.
    Our bond had begun with a rampant sexual attraction that had seen us forsake every consequence.  And now it was blooming into something else altogether.  Something equally as powerful and just as urgent.
    Studded now with the effect of our confessions, our sexual attraction was more relentless than ever.  By this point, it had been many hours since we’d left the plush haven of our bed in Alexander’s hotel suite.  In our ten days together – and this seemed astounding to me, that we’d only known each other for just under two weeks – we’d made love so frequently that our bodies had become accustomed to a certain timetable.  Our need for each other was so ridiculously intense that this long stretch of hours of constant contact had driven us to a sort of fever pitch of foreplay and anticipation.
    I was wearing a black plunging V-neck silk-knit top, a short, flouncy black skirt, my new pink scarf and my Balenciaga boots.  And nothing else.
    As we were waiting for our food to arrive, I got up to go and check my face after my gushing tell-all in the Louvre.  I probably looked like a train wreck.  Oddly, when I went to check my reflection in the mirror, I found I didn’t look stricken or shattered.  My face