Billionaire Badboy

by Kenzie, Sophia

  I gave about ten minutes after the flowers were to be delivered, and made my way down to the beach, the spot where we had spent the night together. To my brief surprise, Ashley was already there, sitting in the sand. She was wearing a cute little flowered sundress and her hair was pulled back out of her face with a few sweeping wisps falling on her cheekbones. She was also wearing those silly blue glasses. They made me so angry. Inane, I know, but I wanted to rip them from her face.

  But as I was thinking about ripping those blue frames from her face, I thought also about pulling her hair free from its binding, and then ripping her dress off, button by button, and… so maybe the glasses didn’t make me mad as much as they made me uncontrollably concupiscent. Either way, I had met her there for a purpose; I couldn’t ignore that fact just so I could see what she was wearing under those flowers.

  But God, did I want to.

  “What’s up?” She stood when she saw me.

  I tossed the paper into her hands. “Do you enjoy writing about yourself?” I wasn’t kidding around, and she knew that.

  “Come on. I thought it would be funny.”

  “Funny for who, Ash?”

  “Us. Kind of like our own little inside joke.”

  “Except for me, it’s not on the inside. For me, it’s my personal life shared with everyone.”

  “Stop taking it so personally.”

  “What are you missing here? It is personal. That’s why it’s called a personal life. And you damn well made it sound like we were fucking, Ash. I thought… I don’t know, I thought after Saturday night, things were… different.”

  “Teddy,” she stepped toward me, “things are different. With us. But I still have to write this column. I committed.”

  “Well you can’t anymore.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. You need to stop writing your column.”

  “I’m sorry, who made you the king?”

  “God, Ashley, just for once, do as you’re told.”

  “Do as you’re told?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you don’t get to talk to me like that.”

  “Ashley, please.”

  “You know by now that you talking to me in such a way only makes me do the opposite of what you ask.”

  “And it drives me crazy.”

  “So don’t assume you have any control over what I do, and we’ll be good.”

  “You know what? Then suffer the consequences.”

  I turned around and started off, down the beach. I was furious, outraged. I could feel every muscle in my hands as they clenched into fists. She didn’t know what she was up against. She had no idea what power my father had.

  So why couldn’t I tell her?

  How could I break it to her that she didn’t earn her scholarship to study abroad on her own accord? She was so proud of that accomplishment; I didn’t want to be the one to take that from her.

  “Don’t walk away from me, Theodore!”

  Wow, Theodore-ed twice in one day. That was a new record.

  I turned around at her call, but she was already within an arm’s reach of me.

  “What did you mean by that?”

  “What?” I snapped. I knew what she was asking me, but I didn’t want to address it.

  “You said I’d have to suffer the consequences.”

  “You will.”

  “You don’t just say something like that and then walk away. Are you threatening me?”

  No, not me. I wanted to throw back at her, but I stopped myself. This was not the way to get what I wanted. Nor was it the way to protect her from my father, or herself, for that matter. But I was still raging. I hated her for elaborating on the night we shared together just for a story. I knew our relationship would eventually come out, it always did, but when the time came I didn’t want her to be thought of as the girl I banged on the beach. With her, I wanted things to be different.

  I took her hand and continued walking. I needed to blow off steam, but I figured this way, she would know that I at least wanted her by my side.

  After a few paces, she spoke up. “So are you threatening me?”

  “I’m not, Ashley, I just don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Power and money, remember? You don’t want to get on the wrong side of my family.”

  “Your family?” She stopped, pulling me to face her.

  I guess she had never thought when she picked me out of a crowd, she was also picking my family’s name and everyone attached to it. Her battle was becoming bigger than just a playground fight with a bratty little boy. She was attracting the attention of the big wigs, and with them, she was defenseless. Unlike me, they had nothing to lose; they weren’t falling for her.

  “If it looks like I’m unstable, it looks like my father can’t run his family. When it looks like he can’t run his family, people start losing faith that he can run an entire company. They pull their investments and stock prices fall, all because of an impressionable young gossip columnist. It’s so much easier to make that gossip columnist disappear. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  She stiffened, and for the first time, I saw fear in her eyes. They widened as she caught her breath.

  “What do you mean by disappear?”

  “Whoa, whoa,” I wrapped my fingers around her small shoulders, “My family is not in the killing business.” I pulled my head back, allowing a small, teasing smile to appear on my face. “Did you just take this there?”

  “You just told me it’s so much easier to make me disappear.”

  “Not in that sense!”

  “Then what sense were you talking about?”

  And now I had to tell her. There was no other way. I hated to break her heart, but it would be better than the alternative. Sure, the first ‘disappearance’ was a dream to her, but just as easily as my father could give her everything she always dreamed, he could take it away. And, he could take her away from me. I wasn’t ready for that.

  “He could make you disappear for, let’s say, a year and a half.”

  “What would…” Ashley’s shoulders dropped as she let sink in the realization. “No.”

  I pulled her into a hug, hoping to combat the pain she must have been feeling, but she pushed me away. She stared at me a long while, searching my eyes for any more information I might have to give.

  “Please, come here.” I knew she needed to be held; why was she resisting me?

  “Stay away.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this, Ash.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Her lips squeezed together, fighting the tears.

  I stepped closer again, but she flailed her arms, pushing me away. After a few rounds of the seesaw, and a few fists in my face, I finally got a hold of her wrists.

  “Let go of me.”

  “No.”

  “I said ‘let go of me’!”

  “And I said ‘no’!”

  I used a little more force than necessary, but I got her to stop moving and look at me. She was about to break; I could see it. But I wanted to be there for her; I didn’t want her to fight me. Slowly, and one at a time, I pulled her arms into my chest and wrapped myself around her. I brought her head down under my chin, fitting my palm at the back of her neck. My other hand draped around her back, pulling her in even tighter.

  “This was never my intention.”

  “What? For me to find out?” She whined through her tears.

  “No, not that. Of course not.”

  After a while, she stopped crying, but I still held on to her. It might have seemed like I was comforting her, but at the same time, she was comforting me.

  “Ashley, I never wanted you to leave.”

  “And yet you let him send me away.”

  “There’s no letting when it comes to him. He told me to keep you quiet; I didn’t, so he took matters into his own hands. And he’ll continue to do that unti
l he gets what he wants.”

  “So stand up to him.”

  “You don’t think I’ve tried? The man always wins.” I dropped my arms to my sides, letting go of her.

  “Then try something else.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know you have to fight for what you want, for what you believe in.”

  “Yes, but the thing is, Ashley, this… this I don’t believe in.”

  “What?” She seemed hurt, offended.

  “No, stop. Not you and me. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your little crusade with your little newspaper. I don’t agree with my father on a lot of things, but this one… he’s right. I have to look out for myself, for the company I plan to run one day. You’re trying to jeopardize that, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Stop. Just stop saying it’s about your job. Find something else to write about. I don’t deserve this.”

  “Or maybe you do.” Her words stopped me from walking away.

  “If this is all some drawn out ploy to get back at me for the night you spent in jail…”

  “It’s not at all.”

  “Then what the fuck are you trying to do to me?”

  “Show you who you are!”

  “I know who I am.”

  “Do you? Or do you know who you pretend to be?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Sure, I get paid to twist words and truth around, but it still stems from something real. You’re a public figure, you can’t fight that. But when you’re constantly in the spotlight, it doesn’t matter who you think you are on the inside. What matters is people’s perception of you. That’s who you are to everyone else, so that’s who you are. And sure, I help form that picture a little clearer, and maybe not in your favor, but if I wasn’t doing it, someone else would. And you, you’ve been feeding that tale for years. You’ve started to believe you are this person that you read about in the paper. And somehow, for some reason, you’re proud of that. But the minute I got involved, you decided I should see you differently than everyone else. And you get angry that I don’t. But what you don’t know and what they don’t know is that I have seen something else in you. You’ve shown me something else. You’ve shown me your strengths and weaknesses, your fears and your goals. Why me? Why am I so special? Why do you hide that from everyone else?”

  “I don’t hide.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about. Teddy, it’s human nature to put people into categories. You put yourself into the bad boy category all on your own, and that’s easy to report on because it’s easy for people to see as real. It’s a stereotype we all know. But you know what else is easy for people to see as real? When you show them that you’re human: that you have faults, just like them, fears, just like them. Then… then when you do something amazing, it means something. And they’ll love you for it.”

  Okay, that might have been better than my monologue earlier. Damn. She always wins. But could you imagine at twenty-four years old someone saying that to you? Sure, in the moment it was powerful, but as soon as our relationship began to frighten me, I blamed that day on the beach. I blamed her thinking I was ready to be someone who I wasn’t yet meant to be. You know, I wish she said it to me now, five years later. Maybe at this point in my life I would’ve been able to see it for what it really was: a wakeup call. I would’ve been able to turn my life around instead of using it as fuel when she made me angry, or when she inevitably left me.

  Come on, that’s no surprise, is it? You didn’t really assume that we’d been together the past five years, did you? And if you didn’t, you didn’t believe that it was she who was to blame for the break up? No, it wasn’t. It was me.

  “Then… then when you do something amazing, it means something. And they’ll love you for it.”

  Of course I kissed her. I grabbed her hair in my fingers, pulling out the bow she had so neatly tied. I drew her ever so closer, wanting more and more of her. I then clutched at her legs, pleading her to wrap her hips around mine. She did just that, and I walked with her to the point where the cliff met the beach. I pushed her back up against the rock, crushing her between the earth and my chest. She didn’t argue, just followed along with the movements of my tongue in her mouth. My fingers fumbled with her dress buttons as she clawed her nails into my back, pulling up my shirt in the process. I dropped my hands for a moment to help her slide my tee shirt up my torso and off completely. She tossed it to the sand as she stared at my bare chest.

  “Well done, sir.” She whispered close to my ear. The tingling sensation shot throughout my entire body, and I moaned in appreciation. My mouth found her neck, and I sucked my way down lower and lower, pushing her up with my hips. I reached the cup of her bra, and slid my tongue under the fabric just slightly. She let out a small squeal, which only made me grow harder beneath her. I slipped my fingers behind her back, and with one slight movement, unhooked her bra. I slithered both sets of straps down off her shoulders, allowing me to witness her bare chest. She gave me an impish smile as she took my hands and cupped her breasts with them. I pushed and squeezed them in my fingers, but it wasn’t enough. My hands moved to her ass so I could lift her nipples in line with my mouth. I kissed them hard, licked them hard, sucked them hard, all the while her yelps heightened. The intensity was growing too strong for me. I needed her. I needed the release.

  Ashley tightened her legs around my hips and lifted my face from her chest. She kissed my mouth with the passion of a woman who wasn’t quite ready to stop the train we had set in motion. She then reached into a little hidden pocket on the side of her dress and pulled out a condom, which she pointedly placed in my hand.

  “Only if it’s not a waste.” She winked.

  “I’m never going to live that down.”

  I wrapped my fingers around the wrapper, taking it from her.

  “You do that. I’m going to do this.” She pulled me into another kiss, not allowing me to take control. She was leading this leg of our combined desire, and for once, I was completely comfortable with letting go of the power. She was handling it quite nicely. I covered my erection, and then moved my hands up her thighs to her hips.

  I pulled away from her embrace. “Are you not wearing underwear?”

  “Left them at work.” She casually announced.

  “You’re a little siren.” I growled at her.

  “I just know what I want.”

  And so did I. I quickly licked my finger, sliding it down her torso and under the shade of her dress. I teased her briefly before pushing my finger inside of her. She was warm and wet and I couldn’t hold out any longer. I slowly guided myself inside of her, feeling her stretch with my girth. Her muscles tensed around me, causing us both to groan involuntarily. I pushed deeper, wanting to feel her surround me completely.

  “Relax.” I whispered.

  “Yes.” Was all she replied.

  She let me in; she let me take her. I stayed slow, enjoying every push and every pull in and out of her wanting body. I watched her nipples twist and the sweat bead up on her chest. I watched the pain and pleasure on her face as I angled deeper and deeper into her. I thought of all the ways I wanted to have her, all the different positions I could put her in, but right then I just wanted to watch her. I wanted to see her respond to me.

  I moved my hands to her hips and she moved hers to my back. As I pushed her down, she tore her nails into my skin. It was intoxicating, better than any fantasy I had of her in her absence. Her yelps turned to screams, which only heightened my pleasure and made me want to hear just how loud I could make her. I sped up the flow of my hips, accelerating the movement even faster by lifting her up and down on top of me. Her eyes shot open and her breath hollowed.

  “Teddy.”

  “Ashley.”

  “I… I can’t…”

  “Yes, you can. Hold on
for me. Just a little longer.”

  The truth was, I could’ve absolutely exploded in that second, but I loved watching her struggle because of what I was doing to her. I delighted as each subsequent crash made her swallow with angst. She may have started with the power, but I got it back in the end.

  “Okay, three more. Ready?”

  “Mmm hmm.” She managed.

  “One.”

  “One.”

  She repeated me with her half voice as I pulled each thrust.

  “Two.”

  “Two.”

  “Okay last one.”

  “God, just…”

  “Three!”

  Her sharp intake of air and the feeling of her clenching muscles around me as I released proved just how much power I really did have in that moment.

  I pushed her hair out of her face and caught her lips with mine. She tasted different now that I had taken her. She tasted satisfied and satiated.

  “Well done, sir.”

  I let out a deep chuckle. “Well done to you too, ma’am.”

  She released her grip on my hips and lowered to the ground. We both collapsed against the cliff wall out of exhaustion, and slid down until we landed on the sand. I took her hand in mine and raised her fingers to my lips, softly kissing the back of her hand. Her eyes were closed, but she softly smiled and cooed.