“I can’t remember a time I’ve slept better, honestly.”
“Good, we have a big day today.”
“Oh? This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
“That’s because it is a surprise. Is there enough coffee for me?”
“Yeah, should still be hot.”
I am amazed at how quickly we have fallen into a comfortable routine. It is as if my whole life up until now has been just a preparation and now I am finally where I am supposed to be. I feel at home out here on the sea, on this boat, with this man.
He leans over and gives me a kiss on the top of my head, dripping cool seawater onto me. The salty tang gets into my nose. He is about to walk past and head below, but I grab his hand to stop him. Pulling him back toward me, I don’t need to give him much encouragement. He sinks down to kneel beside the seat. I run my other hand through his short, dark, sea-drenched hair. He leans forward again and kisses me deeply. I can taste the Aegean on his lips.
“Blake,” I say after coming up for air. “This has been the most amazing few days of my life. I can’t imagine going back to a time when I didn’t know you.”
He hooks his finger around a loose strand of my hair, looping it behind my ear.
“You won’t have to. I love you, Emma.”
I feel my heart beating faster and my stomach tightens up. I’ve been waiting for him to say that for, well it feels like forever, though I’ve only known him a little more than a week.
We sail out of the anchorage a little later that morning and arrive at Delos early in the afternoon. Blake leads me around the island as if he grew up here, pointing out numerous sights that I had read about in college. Finally, we arrive at the theater. The ancient amphitheater, which had been built entirely in marble, is now covered in green, its past glory only peeking through. We climb to the top and look down on the stage and the sea beyond. I transport myself back thousands of years, imagining a full house gathered to hear the latest from Sophocles or Aristophanes. It has been a perfect day.
The sun begins to set, turning the white stones orange, then pink. Blake and I sit in silence, holding each other’s hands, enjoying each other’s presence. As the sun begins to kiss the horizon, Blake turns to me.
“Shall we head back to the boat?”
I nod and stand up. Blake doesn’t let go of my hand. I turn back to him and he is still on the ground, kneeling. My breath catches in my throat as he reaches into his pocket.
“Emma,” he says, opening a black velvet box to reveal a massive diamond set in a platinum ring. The setting sun’s red-orange rays set the brilliant stone ablaze.
“Yes!” I shout, not waiting for him to finish. “Yes! Yes!” My voice echoes around the ancient amphitheater.
I doubt these stones in their two thousand plus years have seen anyone as happy as I am when Blake lifts me into his arms and kisses me.
* * *
The End
FREE BONUS Book! Auctioned to Him
Aiden Black wanted to own her from the minute he saw her. He paid good money and has the paper to prove it. The contract is unbreakable. Ellie has to do everything he wants tonight. But he doesn’t want just sex. Oh no…he wants more.
Tonight, there are no rules.
It was just supposed to be a luxurious yacht party. Until Ellie discovered that all the female guests were going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. If you don't want to play, you can’t stay. But if you stay, you're in for a night of whatever he wants and you get to keep all the money. Ellie’s friend thinks she’s crazy. But she owes $150,000 in school loans. Plus, the guys are hot and very rich. What can go wrong?
WARNING: This is a HOT, modern day, dark erotic romance with an alpha billionaire for fans of EL James, Pepper Winters, and Alexa Riley. It contains light bondage, NO CHEATING, and a HEA.
1
When the invitation arrives…
“Here it is! Here it is!” my roommate Caroline yells at the top of her lungs as she runs into my room. We were friends all through Yale and we moved to New York together after graduation. Even though I’ve known Caroline for what feels like a million years, I am still shocked by the exuberance of her voice. It’s quite loud given the smallness of her body.
Caroline is one of those super skinny girls who can eat pretty much anything without gaining a pound. Unfortunately, I am not that talented. In fact, my body seems to have the opposite gift. I can eat nothing but vegetables for a week straight, eat one slice of pizza, and gain a pound.
“What is it?” I ask, forcing myself to sit up. It’s noon and I’m still in bed. My mother thinks I’m depressed and wants me to see her shrink. She might be right, but I can’t fathom the strength.
“The invitation!” Caroline says jumping in bed next to me. I stare at her blankly. And then suddenly it hits me. This must be the invitation.
“You mean…it’s…”
“Yes!” she screams and hugs me with excitement.
“Oh my God!” She gasps for air and pulls away from me almost as quickly.
“Hey, you know I didn’t brush my teeth yet,” I say turning my face away from hers.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go brush them,” she instructs.
Begrudgingly, I make my way to the bathroom.
We have been waiting for this invitation for some time now. And by we, I mean Caroline. I’ve just been playing along, pretending to care, not really expecting it to show up. Without being able to contain her excitement, Caroline bursts through the door when my mouth is still full of toothpaste. She’s jumping up and down, holding a box in her hand.
“Wait, what’s that?” I mumble and wash my mouth out with water.
“This is it!” Caroline screeches and pulls me into the living room before I have a chance to wipe my mouth with a towel.
“But it’s a box,” I say staring at her.
“Okay, okay,” Caroline takes a couple of deep yoga breaths, exhaling loudly. She puts the box carefully on our dining room table. There’s no address on it. It looks something like a fancy gift box with a big monogrammed C in the middle. Is the C for Caroline?
“Is this how it came? There’s no address on it?” I ask.
“It was hand-delivered,” Caroline whispers. I hold my breath as she carefully removes the top part, revealing the satin and silk covered wood box inside. The top of it is gold plated with whimsical twirls all around the edges, and the mirrored area is engraved with her full name, Caroline Elizabeth Kennedy Spruce. Underneath her name is a date, one week in the future. 8 PM.
We stare at it for a few moments until Caroline reaches for the elegant knob to open the box. Inside, Caroline finds a custom monogram made of foil in gold on silk emblazoned on the inside of the flap cover. There’s also a folio covered in silk. Caroline carefully opens the folio and finds another foil monogram and the invitation. The inside invitation is one layer, shimmer white, with gold writing.
“Is this for real? How many layers of invitation are there?” I ask. But the presentation is definitely doing its job. We are both duly impressed.
“There’s another knob,” I say, pointing to the knob in front of the box. I’m not sure how we had missed it before.
Caroline carefully pulls on this knob, revealing a drawer that holds the inserts (a card with directions and a response card).
“Oh my God, I can’t go to this alone,” Caroline mumbles, turning to me. I stare blankly at her. Getting invited to this party has been her dream ever since she found out about it from someone in the Cicada 17, a super-secret society at Yale.
“Look, here, it says that I can bring a friend,” she yells out even though I’m standing right next to her.
“It probably says a date. A plus one?” I say.
“No, a friend. Girl preferred,” Caroline reads off the invitation card. That part of the invitation is in very small ink, as if someone made the person stick it on, without their express permission.
“I don’t want to crash,” I say.
Frankly, I don’t really want to go. These kind of upper-class events always make me feel a little bit uncomfortable.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I ask.
“Eh, I took a day off,” Caroline says waving her arm. “I knew that the invitation would come today and I just couldn’t deal with work. You know how it is.”
I nod. Sort of. Caroline and I seem like we come from the same world. We both graduated from private school, we both went to Yale, and our parents belong to the same exclusive country club in Greenwich, Connecticut. But we’re not really that alike.
Caroline’s family has had money for many generations going back to the railroads. My parents were an average middle class family from Connecticut. They were both teachers and our idea of summering was renting a 1-bedroom bungalow near Clearwater, FL for a week.
But then my parents got divorced when I was 8, and my mother started tutoring kids to make extra money. The pay was the best in Greenwich, where parents paid more than $100 an hour. And that’s how she met, Mitch Willoughby, my stepfather. He was a widower with a five-year old daughter who was not doing well after her mom’s untimely death. Even though Mom didn’t usually tutor anyone younger than 12, she agreed to take a meeting with Mitch and his daughter because $200 an hour was too much to turn down. Three months later, they were in love and six months later, he asked her to marry him on top of the Eiffel Tower. They got married, when I was 11, in a huge 450-person ceremony in Nantucket.
So even though Caroline and I run in the same circles, we’re not really from the same circle. It has nothing to do with her, she’s totally accepting, it’s me. I don’t always feel like I belong.
Caroline majored in art-history at Yale, and she now works at an exclusive contemporary art gallery in Soho. It’s chic and tiny, featuring only 3 pieces of art at a time. Ash, the owner - I’m not sure if that’s her first or last name - mainly keeps the space as a showcase. What the gallery really specializes in is going to wealthy people’s homes and choosing their art for them. They’re basically interior designers, but only for art. None of the pieces sell for anything less than $200 grand, but Caroline’s take home salary is about $21,000. Clearly, not enough to pay for our 2 bedroom apartment in Chelsea. Her parents cover her part of the rent and pay all of her other expenses. Mine do too, of course. Well, Mitch does. I only make about $27,000 at my writer’s assistant job and that’s obviously not covering my half of our $6,000 per month apartment.
So, what’s the difference between me and Caroline? I guess the only difference is that I feel bad about taking the money. I have a $150,000 school loan from Yale that I don't want Mitch to pay for. It’s my loan and I’m going to pay for it myself, dammit. Plus, unlike Caroline, I know that real people don’t really live like this. Real people like my dad, who is being pressured to sell the house for more than a million dollars that he and my mom bought back in the late 80’s (the neighborhood has gone up in price and teachers now have to make way for tech entrepreneurs and real estate moguls).
“How can you just not go to work like that? Didn’t you use all of your sick days flying to Costa Rica last month?” I ask.
“Eh, who cares? Ash totally understands. Besides, she totally owes me. If it weren’t for me, she would’ve never closed that geek millionaire who had the hots for me and ended up buying close to a million dollars’ worth of art for his new mansion.”
Caroline does have a way with men. She’s fun and outgoing and perky. The trick, she once told me, is to figure out exactly what the guy wants to hear. Because a geek millionaire, as she calls anyone who has made money in tech, does not want to hear the same thing that a football player wants to hear. And neither of them want to hear what a trust fund playboy wants to hear. But Caroline isn’t a gold digger. Not at all. Her family owns half the East Coast. And when it comes to men, she just likes to have fun.
I look at the time. It’s my day off, but that doesn’t mean that I want to spend it in bed in my pajamas, listening to Caroline obsessing over what she’s going to wear. No, today, is my day to actually get some writing done. I’m going to Starbucks, getting a table in the back, near the bathroom, and am actually going to finish this short story that I’ve been working on for a month. Or maybe start a new one.
I go to my room and start getting dressed. I have to wear something comfortable, but something that’s not exactly work clothes. I hate how all of my clothes have suddenly become work clothes. It’s like they’ve been tainted. They remind me of work and I can’t wear them out anymore on any other occasion. I’m not a big fan of my work, if you can’t tell.
Caroline follows me into my room and plops down on my bed. I take off my pajamas and pull on a pair of leggings. Ever since these have become the trend, I find myself struggling to force myself into a pair of jeans. They’re just so comfortable!
“Okay, I’ve come to a decision,” Caroline says. “You have to come with me!”
“Oh, I have to come with you?” I ask, incredulously. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”
“Oh c’mon! Please! Pretty please! It will be so much fun!”
“Actually, you can’t make any of those promises. You have no idea what it will be,” I say, putting on a long sleeve shirt and a sweater with a zipper in the front.
Layers are important during this time of year. The leaves are changing colors, winds are picking up, and you never know if it’s going to be one of those gorgeous warm, crisp New York days they like to feature in all those romantic comedies or a soggy, overcast dreary day that only shows up in one scene at the end when the two main characters fight or break up (but before they get back together again).
“Okay, yes, I see your point,” Caroline says, sitting up and crossing her legs. “But here is what we do know. We do know that it’s going to be amazing. I mean, look at the invitation. It’s a freakin’ box with engravings and everything!”
Usually, Caroline is much more eloquent and better at expressing herself.
“Okay, yes, the invitation is impressive,” I admit.
“And as you know, the invitation is everything. I mean, it really sets the mood for the party. The event! And not just the mood. It establishes a certain expectation. And this box…”
“Yes, the invitation definitely sets up a certain expectation,” I agree.
“So?”
“So?” I ask her back.
“Don’t you want to find out what that expectation is?”
“No.” I shake my head categorically.
“Okay. So what else do we know?” Caroline asks rhetorically as I pack away my Mac into my bag.
“I have to go, Caroline,” I say.
“No, listen. The yacht. Of course, the yacht. How could I bury the lead like that?” She jumps up and down with excitement again.
“We also know that it’s going to be this super exclusive event on a yacht! And not just some small 100 footer, but a mega-yacht.”
I stare at her blankly, pretending to not be impressed. When Caroline first found out about this party, through her ex-boyfriend, we spent days trying to figure out what made this event so special. But given that neither of us have been on a yacht before, at least not a mega-yacht – we couldn’t quite get it.
“You know the yacht is going to be amazing!”
“Yes, of course,” I give in. “But that’s why I’m sure that you’re going to have a wonderful time by yourself. I have to go.”
I grab my keys and toss them into the bag.
“Ellie,” Caroline says. The tone of her voice suddenly gets very serious, to match the grave expression on her face. “Ellie, please. I don’t think I can go by myself.”
2
When you have coffee with a guy you can’t have…
And that’s pretty much how I was roped into going. You don’t know Caroline, but if you did, the first thing you’d find out is that she is not one to take things seriously. Nothing fazes her. Nothing worries her. Sometimes she is the most enlightened person on earth,
other times she’s the densest. Most of the time, I’m jealous of the fact that she simply lives life in the present.
“So, you’re going?” my friend Tom asks. He brought me my pumpkin spice latte, the first one of the season!
I close my eyes and inhale it’s sweet aroma before taking the first sip. But even before its wonderful taste of cinnamon and nutmeg runs down my throat, Tom is already criticizing my decision.
“I can’t believe you’re actually going,” he says.
“Oh my God, now I know it’s officially fall,” I change the subject. “Was there actually such a thing as autumn before the pumpkin spice latte? I mean, I remember that we had falling leaves, changing colors, all that jazz, but without this…it’s like Christmas without a Christmas tree.”
“Ellie, it’s a day after Labor Day,” Tom rolls his eyes. “It’s not fall yet.”
I take another sip. “Oh yes, I do believe it is.”
“Stop changing the subject,” Tom takes a sip of his plain black coffee. How he doesn’t get bored with that thing, I’ll never know. But that’s the thing about Tom. He’s reliable. Always on time, never late. It’s nice. That’s what I have always liked about him. He’s basically the opposite of Caroline in every way.
And that’s what makes seeing him like this, as only a friend, so hard.
“Why are you going there? Can’t Caroline go by herself?” Tom asks, looking straight into my eyes. His hair has this annoying tendency of falling into his face just as he’s making a point – as a way of accentuating it. It’s actually quite vexing especially given how irresistible it makes him look. His eyes twinkle under the low light in the back of the Starbucks.
“I’m going as her plus one,” I announce. I make my voice extra perky on purpose. So that it portrays excitement, rather than apprehensiveness, which is actually how I’m feeling over the whole thing.
Acquired: A Billionaire Auction Romance Page 10