Billionaire on Board (12 page)

As if my mother had heard
my
thoughts, she changed the subject.

"Do you think we should take Mary Lou to the emergency vet? She did
not
eat the candles."

"I think if you give her some tummy drops she'll be fine. You can always go to the vet if she gets sick. She has survived more critical situations."

"Yes. You're probably right."

"How's Corinna?"

"She's asleep. Lilly's with her. Nicky pressed some funny point in her shoulder and she went limp. It was really rather dodgy."

"Oh dear."

"She only has herself to blame, darling. I've had a serious conversation with Christian. She needs to go into treatment urgently! Sybille was dreadfully embarrassed, she sends her apologies."

"Mary Lou has avenged me gloriously. All debts are settled."

"Your father is of the opinion you should—"

"Mum, we're at the hotel, I have to get out. Let's talk tomorrow?"

"Sleep tight!"

We walked through the empty lobby. The night manager greeted us with his usual aplomb and kept himself to himself. 

The lift arrived and we got in.

I turned towards the mirror.

I screamed.

"Ryan! Why didn't you tell me my entire face is covered in eyeliner?"

"I found it endearing. You're my little
sauvage
… on her path of war."

"Did I look like this at the wedding already?"

"No, it happened when you wiped your tears off in the car."

"Everybody in the lobby saw me!"

"There was only the night manager."

"The porter was there too!"

"They'll think we fought, you cried and we're about to have mind-blowing make up sex."

I tried to rub some of the stuff off with my hand."
Make up
sex… how suitable."

He smiled his heart stopping smile. "I don't care what kind of sex it is, as long as we're going to have it."

The lift door opened and we stepped into the suite.

"Before I do anything, I'll take a shower." I removed my earrings and my bracelet and carried Lilly's gift into the bedroom.

"May I join you?"

"Is the shower large enough for both of us?"

"It's large enough for you, me and Lakshmi."

"They'd never let her in there. It would ruin her leather seats."

The shower was large enough for a football team. 

We silently stood beneath the rainforest head and I let my fingers roam across Ryan's chest. It was wonderfully hard. I leaned my forehead against it and he rested his chin on my head. His hands ran up and down my arms, my back and onto my buttocks where they remained.

I licked a few drops from his skin.

"You're salty."

"Hm hm hm…"

I pushed myself away from him and looked into his eyes.

"Well, Mr. Corvera-Fabergé, did you have a pleasant evening?"

"Yes, I did. But I presume it's going to get better still."

I dropped to my knees. "You presume rightly."

His eyes went round. "Do you mean, you're going to—"

"Suck your dick?"

"Well, actually I was going to say fell—"

"Only if you'll never say that word again."

He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. "Never."

Sixteen

"Holy shit, did you learn that at yoga?"

I climbed off him and collapsed onto the bed where I remained, limp as a rag. I panted heavily. "No. It was a spur of the moment invention." 

"Uh."

I panted some more. "If anything, it was a variation of the tortoise pose."

Our conversation momentarily died. 

Nothing moved. Only our ribcages heaved.

After a minute he sat up and reached for his water bottle. "My turtles at home don't do anything of the sort."

By then, my breathing had calmed down and my brain was rebooting into cognitive mode. "You have turtles at home?"

"Yes."

"On Pink Pebble Cay?"

He gulped down half the bottle. "You remembered the name."

"Of course."

He held out the bottle to me. "Want some?"

"Yes." I drank. 

"They nest on the beach from February to July and we really have to be careful when they come. Someone has to check the island every day and mark the nests."

"Are they cute?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Almost as cute as you are. You're especially cute when you're in the tortoise pose. You do something funny with your nose."

"Do I? What do I do?"

"You wrinkle it."

"Aha." I had never been told I wrinkled my nose during sex. 

"It's enchanting."

"Interesting. Right, never mind. — What's it like, Pink Pebble Cay?"

"It's small. Forty-five acres which to you would be about eighteen hectares, I think. It has two white beaches, one in the north and one in the south and a hill to the east which breaks off in a steep cliff. As for buildings, there's the main house and the three guest cottages. The house rests on top of the cliff. It's kind of spectacular."

"It certainly sounds it. How did you come to live on an island anyway? Did you buy it?"

He perched himself onto an elbow and looked down at me. "I don't really live there, I mean, I wish I could live there, at least outside the hurricane season."

"But you have to go to London and New York all the time."

"Yes, and Tokyo. By the way, what time is it?"

"1.45. You still have 45 minutes."

"Until what?"

"You have to call Shiro."

One corner of his mouth went up. "Did you eavesdrop?!"

"About five seconds then I fell asleep."

"I see. Right. To answer your question, no, I did not buy Pink Pebble Cay. I inherited it. It was part of my grandfather's estate."

"What did he do?"

"He was the Duke of Heresford."

"Oh, I see." 

The Heresford heirs were, behind some Russians and a few Indians, the richest family in Great Britain. I had never known Laetitia to be one of them. 

Did she have bodyguards back in school, I wondered? Where were they when she had given head to the rugby team?

"The title went to some distant cousin of his because my mother was his only child and females can not hold it as yet. But the money and the land went to us."

I frowned. "Why did
you
get the island if your mother's still alive?"

"The children got everything. My mother was cut out."

"Oh my! You make it sound like a Jackie Collins novel, what happened?"

His index finger circled my navel. "It's a bit complicated. You see, my father lost all our money in the Argentine Depression."

"All your money?"

"Nearly all of it. It was not completely his fault, it happened to many people. The Corvera-Fabergé family owns a lot of land over there but during those days it was worthless. They've always been big in breeding polo ponies, but they weren't businessmen in the real sense of the word. — My father played polo for Argentina. He met my mother at the Queen's cup. He was dashing, she fell in love with him, they got married and not even a year later, there I was. On the day I was born, my grandfather set up a billion pounds in my mother's name to maintain her and her growing family in style. He liked it grand. It certainly created some tax benefits too. Anyway, in 1998, most of it was gone. Poof. My grandfather died of a heart attack at the shock but not until he had blamed it all on my father for being an incompetent and on my mother for having married my father. With his last force he wrote the money over to us and when he died my mother got very little. The bulk of the fortune was divided between the four of us. It was 1.7 billion pounds each including real estate, aircraft, gold and all the rest. Nothing went into charities. I got Pink Pebble Cay in the bargain."

"Sounds suffocating."

"I don't ever grasp it, mentally. It's just there, floating through the aether. Probably it would be different if I had made it myself. You know, we always had more than enough, now it's just… enough-er. And anyway, we were always going to get it, some day."

I experienced a sheer vertigo when I translated the figure into my own currency. Over 2 billion euros, or to my international readers out there, almost 3 billion dollars! To each child! Madness!

"I see. Did your mother blame your father too?"

"No, not really, but she blamed him for Simon."

"Your brother."

"Yes," he sighed, "my father was so shattered over the debacle, he got drunk almost every night and when Simon nicked the Lambo, he didn't notice. My mother wasn't at home, only my father was there, asleep in his study. The terrible thing is, even if they did not get my grandfather's money, they did get Simon's share after he died. There they were, billionaires again, by the death of their fourteen year old boy… my mother never got over the terrible irony, she lives like a recluse in Mallorca. Understandably, she can't stand to see my father anymore. — They're not living together now but they never got a divorce. Too complicated. My father manages the stud."

"Oh."

"Yes, the whole money thing was a total cock up. A lot of people lost their jobs because of my father's bankruptcy. Only the stud remained. I guess that's why I'm such a workaholic, I'm always afraid I'm overlooking something and boom!"

"Ah, now we get to the bottom of things. Here's your self-defining complex. If you need a therapist, I'm sure we can call on Corinna for help. She'd be only too willing to advise you, don't you think?" This was the moment for comic relief and no doubt about it.

"You're a rattlesnake." 

"You seemed to enjoy my bite enormously."

He rolled on top of me. "How much have we remaining?"

"About thirty-two minutes and forty-nine condoms."

"That's a tight fit." He grinned. "I'm certainly going to need a bit longer this time after those acrobatics of yours in the last lap. You nearly blew my head off." He kissed me for a while and soon he was up to the job again. "Does Mademoiselle have any preferences?"

I squirmed. "Hmmm… I've done all the work until now."

He knelt, took me by the hips and pulled me towards himself. "As you wish. But after this I'll be drained."

Seventeen

The next morning after breakfast I noticed Ryan was growing restless. We had spent a pleasant morning involving room service and other particular services but after we were finished with the pancakes, he was not as fully focused on me as he had been on our earlier tumbles.

"Ryan?" I stepped out of the shower, slipped into a mammoth bath robe and covered my head in a towel turban, not unlike Nicky's, only much bigger.

"Yes, Poppy Jude?"

"Ryan, do you have to work?"

"I do," was his guilty reply. "I've already skipped two days…"

"Then why don't you say it? I don't mind."

"Yes, but I had promised you a twenty-four hours tantra workshop."

I marched into the sitting room where he lounged on the couch with a towel swung around his hips.

"You're not responsible for my entertainment, you know? I live here. I can go home, work on my thesis and you can pick me up for dinner tonight. I have nothing to wear except last night's dress. I reckon it makes sense if I dash over there, no matter what our plans are for later."

"No, no,… I don't want you to go, don't leave the hotel, I don't want to burst our little bubble. I absolutely hate to, but I have to check these numbers. My people need my response before the markets will open tomorrow. — Why don't you have one of those absurd treatments in the spa for a couple of hours and when you come back we can resume our sexual duties?"

"I don't think I want to be screwed within the next twelve hours. There's only so much my punani can take. What's it you have to do?"

"Some calculations. Probabilities, you wouldn't understand."

I gaped at him with my mouth hanging open like a broken garage door. "I beg your pardon? I wouldn't
what
?"

His face changed. He had obviously realised his blunder. "Sorry, I— I'm just not used to—"

"To thinking women?" I had to laugh. "Have none of your girlfriends ever asked you anything about your work?"

He mumbled something.

"Come again?"

"I don't do the girlfriend thing!" 

That was a clear statement if there ever was one.

"Yes, fine, but one or two of your acquaintances must have voiced an interest in your activities at some point and don't tell me all models are stupid, because they're not. There
are
intelligent models. It's in fact one of the most unfair circumstances in our universe."

"No, what I wanted to say is, I'm never having anybody around when I'm working, only when I'm not"

"I see, you only fuck recreationally. Thank God for Lilly's condoms."

"Come on, I'm not your usual billionaire playboy, I'm far too busy. I do have some regular 'acquaintances', or however you want to put it, and they don't ask any questions as long as they're driven around in a Bugatti, but I'm not a man-whore."

I tousled his hair. "You're extraordinarily vigorous for an occasional offender."

"Yes, because I'm insanely turned on by you."

I was greatly pleased by this admission. 

"Why are you doing it, when you hate it? Work, I mean?"

"Somebody's got to do it, it won't do itself."

"No, but why not sell out? Go to your island, restore classic yachts, protect the turtles. Give everything to Unicef… Not necessarily to Lilly and Nicky, they'd spend it on retro sport's cars."

"Impossible. I have too many responsibilities. I'm involved in over three-hundred companies, I could never pull out."

"What would happen if you did?"

He pursed his lips. "You wouldn't— it would be a terrible chaos and I'd lose a lot of money in the process."

"I thought it was just floating around in the aether? Why not set up a nice fund, live on the interest of the interest of the interest and do whatever you like?"