Billionaire Badboy

by Kenzie, Sophia

  “Well, I assumed as much.” Another pathetic save. “I figured you weren’t the type of girl to stand me up on our date after I tried so very hard to get you to agree to one.”

  She sort of chuckled. “I am sorry about that.”

  Then more silence.

  The sun had set long enough ago that the stars were clearly shining above us. The sound of the waves crashing at our toes was intoxicating. It was too romantic, too perfect, and yet, I couldn’t make a move. What the hell was wrong with me?

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.” She whispered. Was she reading my mind? Again? That was creepy.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re making this a bigger deal than it needs to be.” If only she knew how big of a deal this really was to me, how much I had thought about the next time I would see her. “Here.” She took the blanket and the wine out of my hands and placed them in the sand next to her flip-flops. She then turned toward me and grabbed my hands, setting them on her hips. She swung her arms up, resting them on my shoulders, and rose to her toes, bringing her face right to mine. “What should you do now?”

  “Are you telling me what to do again?”

  “Not yet. Are you going to make me tell you what to do, or are you going to do something?” Then she purred, right on my lips.

  Sure, I wanted to talk. I wanted to know all those things about her, and blah blah blah, but seriously? I am a man… there were only so many times I could try to be a gentleman.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing.” I growled before I aggressively took her lips with mine. It was hard, powerful, but that’s what she was asking for. I slid my hands down her backside, lifting her thighs onto my hips. She followed my lead, wrapping her legs around my waist. I then moved my hands up her back and into her hair as I pushed my tongue deeper into her mouth. We moaned together as our kiss deepened even further. I wanted her; I wanted all of her, and my body wasn’t hiding that fact. Our tongues danced around one another, and I deliberated over which of the one of two ways I could take this. I could either throw her down onto the sand and have my way with her, or I could slowly calm myself down and treat her the way I truly did want to treat her.

  The crazy thing was, I don’t know if she wanted to be treated that way. She was the instigator, both this time and the last. She had wanted to shut me up. She had wanted me to take advantage of her. And that kind of energy was hard to turn down. Hell, it’s every man’s dream. Had it not been for my father’s words still ringing in my ears, I would’ve taken her advances to the next level. I would’ve given her exactly what she wanted. I would’ve taken what I wanted.

  But I couldn’t hide from him.

  “All she needed was a good fuck from me and she would’ve known her place. She would’ve shut her mouth forever.”

  I slowed our kiss, tasting her lips with my mouth, pulling away from each bite. I moved to her cheek, her jaw, her chin, her throat. She threw her head back as I moved down to her chest, nibbling at the spot above her bikini top.

  “I’m going to set you down now.” I whispered between nips.

  “Down to the ground?” She teased.

  “No, down to your feet.”

  She cocked her head, trying to figure me out. But I couldn’t even figure myself out; I doubted she’d have any luck.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” It was as close to the truth as I could get.

  She released her grip on me, found her way to the ground, and then stepped back. “So I guess I really am a waste of a condom.”

  “Ashley, no.” I hated that I had said that to her. What the hell prompted me to be so callous?

  “Listen, I get it. I’m not in your…”

  “Don’t finish that sentence. It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  “The fact that you think this has anything to do with family name or wealth…”

  “So it’s not.”

  “Not at all.” I tried to defend myself.

  “Then it’s me. Just plain me. I’m not good enough for you.”

  Open mouth: insert both feet.

  “Shut the hell up.” In normal conversation, this wouldn’t have been the direction I would’ve taken this, but something just wasn’t adding up. Why did she feel the need to play this card? What was so wrong with her that she felt she needed to throw herself at me?

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You know what, Teddy?” She bent down to grab her wine, and then flipped her hair as she took a step away from me.

  “No.” I reached out, grabbing the knotted tie of her sarong and pulling her back. “This is not when you walk away from me. This is when you talk to me.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.” She defiantly sneered at me.

  “Put the wine down.”

  “No.”

  “Put the fucking wine down, Ashley.”

  She caught her breath and froze. I was breathing heavy, hard, and my eyes were glaring. I unwrapped her fingers from the neck of the wine bottle and dropped it into the sand. I then skimmed my hands up her arms, over her shoulders, around her neck, and then cradled her cheeks into my palms, angling her face exactly where I wanted it.

  “Listen to me. Do not talk. Listen to me.” I let her steep in my power for a brief second before I continued. She looked frightened, but intrigued. She was precisely where I wanted her. “I am so God awfully attracted to you. You need to know that. I look at you, and my blood burns in me. The fantasies I had when we first met, when you showed up at my party, even these last eighteen months… you wouldn’t believe what I have done to you in my dreams. You haunt me. Your big eyes, your always-blushed cheeks, even that obnoxious laugh of yours… I can’t get you out of my head. In that sense, I couldn’t care less what your name is or where you come from. I don’t care what you’ve done or what you plan to do. I want you. I want all of you.” I looked away from her at this point. I wasn’t ready to tell her something real. And yet, I so badly wanted to. “But what’s strangely more overpowering is that I want to know you. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I am dying to learn what you know. I am asking to know who you are. And you throwing yourself at me doesn’t allow me do that. You’re taking that away from me. So I’m asking you, honestly, truthfully: do I not deserve to know you? Tell me that now, Ashley. Tell me I don’t deserve to know you, and I’ll take you right here on this beach. I will throw you down and have my way with you for as long as I so damn please. I will live out every single fantasy. But if it’s something else, you need to tell me. I need to know if I could possibly mess up something great.” And although I seemed impossibly close to her, I found a way to bring my lips, my body even closer before I uttered my simple question. “Ashley, do I have the ability to hurt you?”

  Okay, I’m just going to take a brief pause right here. God, I am good, right? Never in a million years would I have thought a monologue of such passion, of such intention, could ever escape my lips. But there I was, holding her face in my hands, and speaking the truth. I mean, bring me my Oscar: that was brilliant. And the even crazier thing: it was completely from the heart. I had no idea what I was about to say as I started. The words just came to me as I looked into her giant, begging eyes.

  Now, okay, I could’ve done without the obnoxious laughter bit, but I think it made it just that much more honest. I mean that’s the true marker of something greater than lust, right? When you start to crave someone else’s faults, you’re done. That’s it. Although I barely knew her, although we had been apart for a year and a half, that was the moment I realized I was in love. Maybe I refused to admit it to myself, but never once had I felt such purity when begging someone else for a piece of them. Anything else she had to tell me could only make me love her more. I knew that then, and she only proved my suspicion over and over again that early summer night on the beach.

  I think you deserve to hear that monologue one more time. Or
at least, I’d like to live through it one more time, and as I am the one dying, I ask that you indulge me. It might very well have been my proudest moment. I’d almost say that’s pretty sad, but it wouldn’t be the truth. Shouldn’t your proudest moment be when you’re telling someone else that you love them? At least I had that.

  Okay, let’s just rewind a bit to get the full effect.

  She brought up the time I had told her she was a waste of a condom. I know, I still regret ever saying that, but everyone says stupid things when they’re having trouble expressing emotions. I then told her to “shut the hell up.” I’m really not making myself look good in this recap, but I’m sure it’ll just make my monologue that much more enticing.

  Then she tried to leave, but I grabbed her, swinging her back to me.

  “Put the wine down.”

  “No.”

  “Put the fucking wine down, Ashley.”

  I don’t drop the F bomb very often, so when I do, you know it means something. I was serious, and I was about to get my point across. Here we go:

  “Listen to me. Do not talk. Listen to me.” *A dramatic pause accompanied by a deep breath. * “I am so God awfully attracted to you. You need to know that. I look at you, and my blood burns within me. The fantasies I had when we first met, when you showed up at my party, even these last eighteen months… you wouldn’t believe what I’ve done to you in my dreams. You haunt me. Your big eyes, your always-blushed cheeks, even that obnoxious laugh of yours… I can’t get you out of my head. In that sense, I couldn’t care less what your name is or where you come from. I don’t care what you’ve done or what you plan to do. I want you. I want all of you.” *A histrionic look away to show the importance of what I was about to say.* “But what’s strangely more overpowering is that I want to know you. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I am dying to learn what you know. I am asking to know who you are. And you throwing yourself at me doesn’t allow me do that. You’re taking that away from me. So I’m asking you, honestly, truthfully: do I not deserve to know you? Tell me that now, Ashley. Tell me I don’t deserve to know you, and I’ll take you right here on this beach. I will throw you down and have my way with you for as long as I so damn please. I will live out every single fantasy. But if it’s something else, you need to tell me. I need to know if I could possibly mess up something great.” *And another dramatic pause. * Ashley, do I have the ability to hurt you?”

  And the Oscar goes to Theodore Vincent Stoneguard IV! I mean, come on! Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself and a little too cocky, but thank you for indulging me. I needed that moment again. That was the start of the best night of my life, and that night was the start of the best summer of my life. I want to warn you of that now, before the memories continue. It only lasted a summer, but it was perfect. She was perfect.

  She nodded. She nodded. That was it! Just a nod!

  “Really? I just gave you that ridiculously beautiful speech and you’re just going to nod?” I was kidding. She knew that. I was finding a way to deflect from the awkward moment that I wasn’t sure we were ready to share.

  And then she erupted with the baby otter laugh.

  “And now you’re giving me the baby otter laugh.”

  “And now you’re making fun of me again!”

  “I really don’t mean to… it just sort of happens.”

  “You were on the right track, Teddy. You were so there… but now…”

  “No, no, don’t say I messed it up.”

  “You messed it up.”

  …Further proving how much she messed me up.

  “You want the monologue again? I can probably do something close.”

  We were teasing each other, laughing, smiling, forgetting who we were for only a moment. Ashley looked up at me, and in a moment, I saw her eyes moisten with tears.

  “Hey, hey, come here.” I pulled her into a hug.

  “Teddy?” She choked as she pulled from our hug. “Ha. This is so silly.”

  I looked into her eyes, truly seeing her for the first time. Never once before then, or since, had I looked so deeply into another person’s eyes: into their soul.

  “Nothing you could say would be silly.”

  “Oh, you just wait.”

  I ran my fingers through her hair. “I’ll wait as long as you need me to.” Wow, I was like a character out of a cheesy 90’s movie. It was amazing to watch.

  “I was so mean to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have no reason to care to know me.”

  “It’s weird, I know.”

  “And I had no reason to miss you.”

  “Okay, ouch, I’m not going to pretend that didn’t hurt. I thought we were talking about how I was the better person.” Again, I was deflecting.

  “Let me finish.”

  “Not sure if I really want you to, but, by all means.” Okay, Teddy. Shut up and let the poor girl talk.

  “I had no reason to miss you, but I did. Every day. It was so stupid, and I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Hell, I had my editor send me letters from readers who felt as though they needed to keep me updated on your every move.”

  “My every move?”

  “Every single move.”

  “So you heard about the parade?”

  “I did hear about the parade.”

  “Damn, I was kind of hoping we could just sneak by that one.”

  “No, no we’re going to come back to that.”

  “But right now we’re talking about how much you missed me.”

  “Shut up, or I’m going to stop talking.”

  “Lips, locked.” I did one of those silly things where I closed my lips and threw away the key. It was like I was thirteen all over again.

  “And I’m going to pretend you didn’t do that.” As she should have. If my lips weren’t sealed, I would’ve apologized for my embarrassing behavior. “But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I missed you.”

  I found her hands with mine, offering comfort while she continued speaking.

  “Teddy, I don’t know you too well, I’ll admit that. I know facts and stories, but not you. But the facts and stories lead me to believe that you’re this stereotype that drives me crazy: this privileged ass that gets exactly what he wants whenever he wants it. Then, the first time I meet you, you try to kiss me and then I end up spending the night in jail, which only proves the stereotype further. I have so much hatred building up toward you and I don’t know how to hone it. I can’t do anything with all this… energy between us.”

  She was getting adorably worked up trying to explain our relationship. But I knew exactly what she was talking about. I got her locked up, she wrote stories documenting my every step… we weren’t very nice to each other.

  “And then I just thought, ‘hey, maybe it’s sexual tension?’ You’re gorgeous, so obviously I’m attracted to you, and I’m, well… you know.” She looked at me, maybe for a compliment, but I was enjoying her spiel. I let her finish her thought. “Well, I’m not too bad to look at. So I thought since you were so keen on getting me drunk that night at school, that maybe you felt the same way. I’m not shy; I take what I want, I wanted you, and so I went for it. But then you… ha, well, you gave me the whole waste of a condom bit, which only made me hate you even more. And sure, a part of me figured that you were hiding something, that you used that excuse only because it was rooted in something much deeper, something you weren’t yet willing to share with me, but it was so much easier to just go on hating you than to analyze you. So I did. Or at least I said I did, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. Can you please say something now?”

  “I’m actually really enjoying this. You should keep talking.”

  I wanted to pinch her cheeks. It was an odd desire, kind of like the pinky on her nose thing. But I couldn’t help it: she was just so gosh darn cute. When Ashley gets excited about things, she talks really fast, kind of like the girls in those cheerleader movies… you know, th
e really dumb ones? But Ashley is actually really smart. So while she’s talking fast, you can see her mind work. Everything she says is calculated; it’s sort of puzzled out. There’s so much information, and maybe not all of it is necessary, but she spits everything out, and from there, you can tell how she’s truly feeling about a situation. You can’t even consider talking while she’s doing this. It’s just too interesting to watch. And she uses her hands a lot. That’s also adorable, for some reason.

  “So I knew how I wanted to feel about you, but these other feelings kept popping up. I kept saying to myself ‘you hate him, you hate him’…”

  “Thanks.”

  “Shut up.”

  Was I supposed to say something? Was I supposed to shut up? God, she needed to make up her mind. Women.

  “And I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but if I do have feelings for you, like more than lustful feelings, I don’t understand why.”

  I know she prefaced it with ‘and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way’, but seriously? Of course I’m going to take it the way it sounds, which is that I have no redeemable traits, and I’m a surface level type of person whom no one can have a real relationship with.

  Okay, she didn’t say that, but I thought it of myself enough times to immediately jump to that conclusion.

  “Because you don’t know me?”

  “I don’t.”