Master Class: A Billionaire Romance

by Linnea May

  “You can hang it here,” he says from somewhere behind me.

  He didn’t take a sweater for himself, so he must still be half-naked. If I turn around now, I’ll be confronted with his chiseled physique once again.

  I will stare, I know I will. I’ve never seen a man this ripped before in my life. For real, I mean. Pictures, yes. But standing face to face with a body like his has a stronger effect on me than I could ever imagine.

  “Turn around,” he orders. “Don’t make such a fuss.”

  The impatient and pervasive tone of his voice causes me to relax and turn around automatically. Of course, the first thing my eyes do is travel down his exposed torso, vanquishing one tan hill after another before leisurely sliding along the low v-lines above his pelvis.

  I’ve heard girls calling men ‘delicious’ and visa versa, and always thought that only a very shallow person would come up with that description.

  Call me shallow, then.

  Mr. Portland notices my gaze, consuming his physique with my eyes. He likes me looking at him. Of course he does. Maintaining a body like this must be a shitload of work, take hours of training, most likely hitting the gym every single day. If he puts this much effort into maintaining his looks, it’s understandable that he wants to be seen and appreciated, especially by women.

  But why by his student?

  “Give me that,” he says, stretching his right hand out for the hanger with my damp blouse, the muscles flexing on his forearm.

  I hand it over to him and watch as he turns around and hangs it on a little hook on top of the bookcase, next to his own shirt.

  “You should put on a sweater,” I say, finally diverting my eyes from his gorgeous frame. “You’ll catch a cold.”

  I try to sound sassy, but my voice doesn’t cooperate. Instead my words come out weak and hoarse, breaking at the last word, so that I can’t even be sure that he heard me correctly.

  He casts me an impish smile as he walks past me, his hand softly touching my shoulder as he beckons me to move aside and make room for him to grab another sweater from the cabinet.

  The urge to lean forward and lick along his perfectly smooth skin is crushing. This man is the epitome of sexy, and he knows it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JACKSON

  Seeing her like this is driving me mad. Her soaked blouse emphasizing every little detail of her fragile body, her hair hanging in wet strands down her face, and her failed efforts at trying to maintain her composure. Other girls would be complaining, cursing about their makeup and hair being ruined, or just unloading a bundle of irrational hateful slurs toward the heavens.

  But she hardly acknowledges the rain and the fact that she is completely drenched. She was shivering before I made her change into one of my cashmere sweaters, but she didn’t complain that she was freezing or say anything about her physical discomfort at all.

  Her strangely dark blue eyes look up at me, filled with questions I won’t answer. She knows just as well as I do that there is no reason for us to be here. I’m sure she’s living in one of the nearby dorms, and it wouldn’t have killed her to run over there and change into something of her own, postponing our little chat to another time.

  But I didn’t want that. This thunderstorm is playing right into my hands, providing an excuse for us to escape to my office instead of having to meet in a public place. It’s dangerous, especially since I haven’t locked the door, because I don’t want to scare her away with misplaced assumptions. But seeing her wrapped up in my sweater now just accelerates the need I have for her to be mine. Her good girl nature, that tense pose she takes every time something unexpected or agitating happens - it lights me on fire like nobody’s business. She’s made for me. Breaking her into a shivering mess beneath my touch will give me endless satisfaction. I know it.

  She doesn’t… yet.

  I bet she’ll tense up when faced with unparalleled pleasure, too. I can’t wait to witness her lose that tension orgasm by orgasm.

  My cock is twitching against its fabric cage, eager to torment her with bliss. Not yet, I have to remind myself. She might not even let me in. She might not let me do what I want to do to her, despite the betraying look she displayed when she gave my body a once-over with her hungry eyes.

  “Coffee?” I ask, after pulling a sweater over the parts of me she was indulging in a moment before. “I can make you one here, while you warm up.”

  “One of those instant coffees?” she asks, casting a look over to the cabinet. “Are they any good?”

  Now that we’re both decent again, she’s found her way back to her usual snappy self.

  I raise an eyebrow at her. “If it’s good enough for me, it’ll be good enough for you.”

  She shrugs, trying to look nonchalant, when we both know she isn’t. “All right.”

  I have a giant thermos bottle conveniently placed next to the cabinet that is always filled with boiling hot water. It’s one of the very few assignments I’ve given my assistant so far. Now that the semester has begun, there’s very little for a teaching assistant to do outside of preparing lectures or grading papers, and I have even less for him to do seeing how I don’t need him to do either. Luckily, it causes him to take his water duty all the more seriously.

  “Sit down,” I tell her as I set to work preparing our coffee.

  She obeys immediately, no backtalk, no questions. I place one of the hot cups in front of her, taking the other with me as I sit down in the office chair opposite her. The sweater hangs loosely around her narrow shoulders, making her look even smaller than she is. She reaches for the coffee cup with both hands, the long sleeves protecting her palms as she carefully picks up the cup and lifts it up to her lips.

  “So you said there was something that caught your interest,” I say, resuming our previous conversation from before we were interrupted by that godsend of a thunderstorm.

  She gingerly blows on the surface of the coffee and casts me a quizzical look.

  “My book,” I clarify. “You said you read it and you found something particularly interesting to you.”

  She suggests a nod and sips on her coffee.

  “I don’t want to be obnoxious or intrusive,” she says, clearing her throat.

  “You already were,” I reply. “Obnoxious, that is.”

  Her eyebrows furl with anger. “And I apologized for that.”

  I nod. “Not in a very elegant way, but yes, you did.”

  She puts the little mug back on the table and leans back, crossing her arms in front of her chest as if to protect herself from my potential fury.

  “Well, to me it seems that you spend a lot of time talking about failure and justifying your own incapacity,” she says. “The book isn’t really a memoir, but more of a self-marketing tool to convince the world that - despite your many shortcomings when it comes to education - you’re actually quite a successful.”

  “Miss Harlington, you really need to work on your conversational skills,” I retort.

  She gulps and lowers her eyes down to her lap. Her lashes are fluttering like trapped butterflies again. What an endearing way for her to react when she is nervous.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I really hate beating around the bush.”

  “I can live with that,” I declare. “It’s a refreshing change.”

  I don’t even have to lie to her. Despite the way her eyes consumed me a few minutes earlier, despite the obvious effect I have on her, she still doesn’t turn into a gushy admirer, but sticks to the uncomfortable truth, transparency. It shouldn’t surprise me with a girl like her, but I’ve never seen this particular feature running free in such an unfettered manner.

  “It makes me wonder,” she continues. “What’s the purpose of the book?”

  She lifts her eyes, now latching onto mine with an intense gaze of curiosity.

  “Why did you write it?” she adds. “Did you even write it yourself?”

  I smile at her, incapable of ignoring the satis
faction it gives me to see her wearing my clothes. She looks like she’s already mine, and I haven’t even touched her yet.

  Her question is justified. I’ve been asked the same thing before, mainly by journalists, and for them I had a ready-made answer that was only partly true.

  “The truth is,” I say, “I was idealistic, and maybe I still am. I took an unusual road to get to where I am now - and I thought my learning experience could be useful to others.”

  That is the partial truth I kept telling journalists. I never called myself idealistic to them directly, but I made my point clear about wanting to share the knowledge I gained from pursuing the unconventional route I did.

  However, I don’t believe that anyone will listen. They never do. People have their own ideas of what will work in this world and what won’t - and there is a widespread consensus that education is the key to anything worth striving for. While that may not be entirely wrong, I find myself arguing for an alternative.

  “Really? That’s it?” Miss Harlington asks, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. “You did it for the same reason you’re teaching here? Because you think you have something to share?”

  She doesn’t adopt the same arrogant tone I heard the first time she talked to me after class, but the implication is more or less the same. Miss Harlington, like so many others, lives in a small and simple world - and couldn’t be more wrong, especially in regard to what I could teach her.

  “I have many things to teach, Miss Harlington,” I say, deliberately speaking in a soft and seductive voice. My eyes search for hers, locking her in place once I find them. When I see her shoulders tensing up, inching toward her ears, I know that my attempt at touching her was successful. She is like a cute little puppy raising its ears for attention.

  “Like I said, I still think that-”

  “Let me ask you a question,” I interrupt her. I lean forward, placing my elbows on the desk separating us.“I’m sure you have a goal in life? Something you’re aiming for, something you want to achieve? Something that caused you to end up here, at an Ivy League school with, I assume, consistently good grades?”

  She stares at me, her eyes like drops of blue ink on a light sheet of paper. The rain messed with the little amount of makeup she put on this morning. I’m surprised to see her dark lashes painted at all, but the black mascara is striking now that it has started to dissolve around her eyes. She’d look like this after a good cry, too.

  Or after a thorough spanking followed by mind-numbing orgasms.

  “Well, yes,” she says. “I think I could be a good scholar. Once I’m done with my master’s degree, I’ll go for a Ph.D., like my sister.”

  “Your sister has a Ph.D.?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Not yet, but she’s working on it. At this university, actually.”

  I chuckle, adding a snide undertone when I say, “Your parents must be so proud.”

  Miss Harlington takes another sip of her coffee and shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. They’re both professors, so they probably expected no less from us.”

  “No less,” I repeat. “Anything else would be considered less?”

  She lowers the cup of coffee and looks at me, her eyes wide in surprise. “Yes, of course.”

  “See,” I point out, “ that’s where you are wrong. Where your whole family is wrong.”

  I expect some kind of reaction from her. Indignation, backtalk, outrage. But she just sits there and looks at me, her shoulders still tense, her beautiful eyes open wide, her imaginary puppy ears upright with attention. She looks at me as if I just expressed something she has been assuming for years, yet never dared say out loud.

  “When I asked you what your goal in life was, you didn’t tell me what you want to do, you just told me what you are going to do,” I add. “You said you think you might be a good scholar, just like the rest of your family, and you told me what you’re going to do next, but you never said that it is what you want to do.”

  Again, she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she starts chewing on her lip, just like she did earlier. Topped off by a new round of fluttering of her black lashes, she really looks like a trapped butterfly. Hauntingly beautiful and so fucking vulnerable.

  “You’re thinking in steps - in your case, degrees,” I continue. “You’re completing one level after another, a life of graduations and certificates. To me, it sounds as if going to school is an end in itself for you, and not a means to an end.”

  “Becoming a professor is a goal,” she interjects. “An end.”

  “Yes, sure,” I say. “So that is what you want? You want to become a professor?”

  She continues chewing on her lower lip, so much so that I’m starting to worry she might hurt herself.

  “It’s not that easy,” she mutters. “I mean, getting a tenure-track position is very, very hard. They’re so competitive. If I don’t get one as soon as possible after completing the Ph.D., it’ll be nearly impossible and then I’m left with nothing.”

  “But is it what you want?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Maybe. Why not?”

  I shake my head. “It cannot surprise you that this exchange doesn’t sound the least bit convincing to me.”

  “I don’t know,” she adds, in a surprisingly loud voice. Her eyes wander back to her lap, lashes still fluttering anxiously as she watches her fingers, playing with the black ceramic ring. “I never really thought about it.”

  I watch her as she nervously plays with her fingers, her shoulders lowering in defeat, and the fluttering eyelashes accompanying her active mind working through a sea of thoughts.

  This is a first. I’ve had confrontations similar to this one, but I never saw anyone crack as quickly as she did. I almost feel bad for causing it to happen.

  “You never dared to look at the alternatives hiding behind the label of less,” I formulate. “Because who really wants to be less, am I right?”

  She lifts her eyes up to mine, her face shrouded by an unreadable expression. “I guess so.”

  “It takes a strong person to confidently stand above such nonsense,” I say, reaching for my own cup of coffee.

  “Such as you?” she asks, casting me a condescending look.

  I nod. “Exactly.”

  “Success made you arrogant,” she states. “It’s not a very attractive quality.”

  I smile at her, unfazed.

  “People now come to me for advice,” I say. “I’ve been successful at what I do, because I have a passion for it. I found a path that is different, and probably more difficult, than the ordinary and conventional route - and I made it mine. I own this success. I think I have every right to be proud of it.”

  “Pride is not the same as arrogance,” she inserts.

  “They’re practically twins.”

  I lean back in my chair, my eyes never leaving hers.

  “Do you know what an angel investor is?”

  She shakes her head no.

  “People like me,” I explain. “People with assets and a good comprehension of the market. Young startups not only ask for my advice, they ask for my money, too. We’re called angels, because we serve as a guarantee when it comes to making dreams come true.”

  She scrunches her eyebrows. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’m telling you this because this is the part of my success that I enjoy the most,” I explain. “I failed, again and again. I failed at things that didn’t matter in the end, but I also failed in things that did matter. And now I’ve become someone who can help others navigate those inevitable failures along the way. Because I know what I’m doing - and because I have money.”

  “Mhm,” she mumbles, showing no sign of admiration.

  “I could help you, too,” I say, trying to make things a little clearer for her to understand. “But I’d have to know what it is you want to achieve.”

  “Why do you think I need your help?”

  “I think you do.”

  Our eyes lock for a f
ew long moments before she breaks away to finish her coffee.

  “Why do you care?” she asks then, her eyes low on the table between us.

  “Because I do,” I say, watching her fingers trail around the empty cup. Her hands are so petite and delicate, they almost look like they belong to a child and not a graduate student, a grown woman.

  The thought of seeing them wrapped around my hard cock sends painful shivers through me. The conversation took a different path than I had anticipated. The way she’s feeling now, contemplative and diffident, doesn’t allow me to approach her intimately. I’m sure I could get her back there by getting rid of my sweater, but I don’t want to do this to her right now. She needs this, she needs room to think.

  So instead, I’ll leave her with something else.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LANA

  Weeks have passed since that fateful thunderstorm announced the definite end of summer - and the beginning of my weirdly intimate interactions with Mr. Portland. I can’t get him out of my head, and it doesn’t help that I’m confronted with him every Monday morning.

  He’s getting to me. I don’t understand why his words stuck with me the way they did. Is it just because he is who he is? It’s obvious that his surreal attractiveness has an impact on me, as shallow as that may seem.

  His face, his eyes, his muscles. How can a man look like that and put his eyes on me the way he does? He looks at me as if I was the one with the alluring appearance, when it’s so obvious that there’s nothing exceptional about me, especially not my looks.

  But it’s not just that. The things he’s saying stir something within me, an omnipresent dissatisfaction with the direction my life is going. He’s opening doors that I thought had been securely shut and locked for years. Doubts that haunted me years ago, but not since I pushed them aside. I thought they had disappeared the same day Olivia left my life.

  In fact, Mr. Portland reminds me of her. She was the only real best friend I ever had, and we had been inseparable during junior high school. We were young and naive, dreamers who swore we’d do something great in life, something special, something crazy. We made an oath never to become like our parents - mine, the ivory tower scholars, and hers, the narrow-minded lawyers. We were the perfect hippies - anti-everything.