THE BILLIONAIRE'S GIRLFRIEND

TWENTY THREE

Once they were untangled, he led her over to a different lift. The doors were so discreet she hadn't even noticed them the last time she was been here. And tonight she'd been a bit busy for sightseeing. She was just staring blankly, but the pressure of his hand at the small of her back propelled her forward.

"Make yourself at home," he told her. "I need to clean up and finish my work. But I'll be with you as soon as I can."

It took a moment or two for the implication of his words to sink in. "Wait, you live here?"

"I have several houses. This is one of the places I stay when I need to." Since she was still nonfunctional, he pressed the button for her. "See you soon."

A few seconds later, Malora was blundering into his apartment. Or rather 'one of the places he stayed in.' While it had clearly been decorated in a no-expense-spared way Titan favored, it was nowhere near as opulent as One Hyde Park. In fact, in billionaire terms, it was positively monkish.

No personal touches, but she hadn't really expected it. The austerity, if nothing else, was Titan: the emphasis on smooth wood and polished stone, the slightly overwhelming sense of space created by the high ceilings and the triple aspect windows. The Sahara noir marble floors—beautiful though they were—were slippery and chill beneath her feet. Which meant her most overriding impression of Titan's penthouse was that it needed a goddamn rug or two

She penguin-shuffled into the bathroom, which was yet more marble, relieved, if you could call it that, by granite and gold, and reluctantly divested herself of his shirt. Then tried to figure what he'd written. Which wasn't actually that straightforward since it was either upside-down (if she used my eyes) or back-to-front (if she used a mirror).

In the end she took a photo with her phone. She was trying to get a good angle on the words, but it turned out to be a pretty good angle on her. She'd twisted round to expose the writing, so her body was all sleek curves and sharp edges. And for once her bony bits and squeezy bits were working in harmony instead of contriving to make her look like a knobbly gazelle. Her legs were crossed so it wasn't porny—more suggestive with the laddered thigh highs, the smudgy bruise shadows on her flanks and the vulnerable ridges of her clavicles. This was so getting a grainy filter and saved privately later.

Malora zoomed in so she could see what Titan had written. It was two lines, curling neatly over her hip a bit: what will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?

She had no idea what it was from. She could have googled it, of course, but that would've felt like cheating. She touched the loops where the ink was already blurring. Kind of a shame to wash it off straightaway. Except Titan would be along at some point and she didn't want to greet him smelling like the bargain basement option at a bordello.

He had one of those walk-in shower room type things, with about eighty multidirectional settings for water to blast you unpleasantly in the face. When she found one that wasn't overwhelmingly painful and hitting the right parts of her body, she had a hasty wash and enjoyed unparalleled views of the London skyline. It felt weird to be soaping her bits and staring at the dome of St Paul's but…that was her life now.

Curtains, she was starting to realize, were a poor people invention. If you were rich enough, you just got to move the world out of your way.

As she dried off, Malorw fretted slightly about him being witness to the carnage that was her hair post-shower. But then she remembered she'd vomited on his feet, shown him her privates , and begged him to spank her. So probably he could cope with her duckish floof.