The Forbidden Billionaire

by Lexi Aurora

  I stayed on top of him afterward, letting my heart calm down. We gazed at each other, and I brought my hand to his face to stroke his cheek.

  “Marry me,” he said. I stared at him for a moment, too shocked to speak. Then I laughed.

  “I’m but a commoner, my lord,” I said softly. He smiled at me, shaking his head.

  “You are a lot of things, Miss Temple,” he said, lifting his face to kiss me. “But common is not one of them. Be my wife.”

  All I could do was regard him for a moment, drinking in his face, drinking in the moment. Then I nodded, my face breaking out into a smile. He smiled as well, nuzzling my throat.

  “God, I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too, Julian,” I told him, meaning every word of it. I kissed him again and then laid my head on his chest. I fell asleep like that, wrapped in his arms, knowing that nothing would keep us from touching each other ever again.

  The End.

  Bonus: Winds of Good Fortune

  A Paranormal Romance Short Story

  Chapter One: Change in Routine

  Constina sighed as she looked at her bills for the tenth time. No matter how she wiggled or waggled it, she was about twenty bucks short. And that was if she didn’t eat anything, which was something.

  The non-tourist season was so difficult to get through. She supposed she could get a part-time job, but by the time she filled out on the online application, went through the interviews and then her orientation, traffic would be ramping up again and tourist season would be rolling in.

  She supposed she could just let her phone service get shut off, but the reconnect fee was ridiculous. Forty dollars just because she was late on her bill? No thank you.

  At least her rent was ridiculously cheap and she could write it off on her taxes. If there was one benefit of running her small business from the comfort of her own living room, it was that it certainly helped at the end of the year when the ol’ IRS came knocking.

  The door at the front chimed and her head jerked in the direction of the bohemian curtains separating her reading room from her bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. Quickly glancing in the mirror, she made sure her kitschy headscarf was on straight before exiting through the curtains and sitting at her table.

  The customer entered through the other side, and she looked him over curiously, although she kept her expression flat and mysterious.

  He was handsome, that was certain, with short, auburn hair that was slicked back to his head and an intense gaze that seemed to analyze everything. He was tall -strikingly so- and his shoulders were both broad and defined. All and all, he looked almost like a rugged male model, complete with a white, button-up shirt, and tie.

  “Hello,” he murmured, voice so low it was practically a growl. And yet, there was a defined calmness to it. Like the gentle rumble of the earth as it floated through space, or the hum of a car engine. Powerful, but reliable.

  Or she had been watching too many dramas and was romanticizing everything. That was also an option.

  “Greetings, stranger,” she purred, putting on a nondescript accent that people seemed to eat up with a spoon. “And what brings you here to my table?” She quickly tried to think of what would work best on him. Cards? Potentially. Dice? Definitely not. Her crystal ball was an option, but she would have to see just how much he believed in her abilities before she tried that con.

  He sat down in the chair across from her, every movement so precise that it almost seemed rehearsed. “I am in a…difficult situation. I was hoping for a bit of guidance.”

  “Guidance? Of course. Who better to learn from than the spirits who have seen and experienced so much! I might be able to help you.”

  “That is what I was hoping,” he said. “I saw in your office that a reading was twenty dollars?”

  “Yes,” she answered, relieved that he had brought it up. The money part was always the easiest way to break the illusion and have a client walk away. “Of course, nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes the spirits refuse to lend their aid, no matter how hard I plead with them.”

  “I figured it was non-refundable. Such things usually are.”

  “Such things?” she echoed cautiously. “Things such as what?” She found herself holding her breath while she waited for him to answer. If he already thought this was a con then she was in for an uphill battle. After all, the easiest people to run a con on were the ones who wanted to believe it. Normally, she would just kick him out rather than deal with someone who saw through her for the next fifteen to thirty minutes, but she needed the money. Twenty bucks was twenty bucks and it was just what she needed.

  “Skilled labors. A pretty tough field to handle full-time.”

  “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Very well then.” Relieved, she immersed herself into the act. “So what kind of advice do we seek from the spirits? Perhaps something on money? Or work.” I looked at him through long lashes. “Or love, even?”

  “Work,” he answered, before going silent again.

  Okay then. Not exactly the most giving of clients but she could work with it.

  “Your hands please?”

  That seemed to surprise him, and his eyes widened. “Pardon?”

  “Your hands, on the table please with the palms up. I would like to read your lines.”

  “I do not see how that is necessary. I need to know about my work, not about my future love life or when I will die.” Although he was disagreeing, both his words were as polite and cordial as could be. It was clear this client had a strict code of etiquette, and it would have been endearing if it wasn’t needlessly taking up so much of her time.

  “I understand that, but to petition the spirits, I need to know what kind of man you are. So, palms on the table.” She said the last part just as politely as his objection, but with a firm note of finality at the end. She knew how to handle his type, and it required occasionally jerking the reins.

  This time he didn’t protest, instead doing as she had asked. She bent over, examining with an expertise built over years doing as much.

  Except, she wasn’t looking at his lines as much as she was learning about him through all the other extraneous details that lurked on the palm – if one knew how to look for them.

  He had calluses almost everywhere, indicating whatever he did was at least a somewhat physical job, or he had a very intense hobby. His formal wear led her to believe it was the latter, but his hyper-composed way of handling himself made her feel it might be the former. Even with his knuckles facing downwards towards the table, she could tell that they were thick and hard, which meant dozens of micro-fractures over the years that had healed over each other.

  Some sort of fighter perhaps? Or even a bouncer who was looking to make a shift from his wild, nocturnal life to a business professional one. How interesting. It was far from her usual clients of ‘does so-and-so love me or not’ or ‘will I get a promotion?’ It was almost a shame she planned on making everything up.

  Oh well, she would at least try to be as genuinely helpful in her advice as she could.

  “Hmmm,” she murmured, pouring her hemming and hawing on thick.

  “Something of interest?” he asked, completely unruffled by the suspense or her dramatics.

  “No, just a fascinating story to be told. You should be careful of arthritis with all that you put your poor body through.” She watched his expression carefully only for it not to change in the slightest. This guy was either trained to be a rock or was just emotionless in general.

  “I see.”

  Nevertheless, she continued. “I think the cards would be the best way to commune with those that might help you.” With a deft hand, she reached over to the stand nearby and grabbed her tarot deck. She arranged it like she had a million times before and laid it out.

  “Shuffle this deck please.”

  “Why?” Again, it wasn’t a confrontational question. Just one with the intent to
know the reason behind everything. But why was someone clearly so logical driven to her shop?

  “To transfer your energy to the deck. We want a reading for you, after all, not me.”

  He nodded then did as she asked. He handled the slim, glossy cards well for someone who had such thick, callused fingers, and he set them back down before her a few moments later.

  “And would you cut it please?”

  The corner of his mouth went up in an almost imperceptible smirk. “If I am doing so much of the work, it is curious that you are the one being paid.”

  Oh, so he could be a bit cheeky if he wanted to? That was interesting. “Life is full of many mysteries. Now, your heritage has been whispering to me, and you’ll forgive me that I’m terrible with accents, but I’m sensing Irish or…Scottish?”

  “Irish,” he confirmed after an almost imperceptible pause.

  “I thought as much,” she said with a wan smile. “The Celtic Cross will be the perfect formation for you. Draw a card, and I will tell you how to position it.”

  She walked him through the steps, having him arrange them in a face-down position. While not necessary, she found that flipping them over dramatically helped her sell the bit. Once he was done, she leaned over the shape, holding her hands by her head and ‘calling on the spirits.’

  She almost felt bad for selling such horse-shit, but she had to make a living. Besides, this man came here because he already knew what to do, he just wanted some confirmation to tell him that he was on the right path. And she could help him with that.

  In a way, she was almost doing him a service.

  Finally, she was fairly certain that she had done enough theatrics, and she leaned down to turn the first card.

  The moment her fingers touched the glossed surface, electricity shot through her. She gasped, and tried to jerk back, but her body was locked in place. Panic drenched her, but before she could do anything, she was sucked into a swirling pool of colors.

  Chapter Two: Strange Revelations

  She emerged in a full-fledged stampede of people, screaming surrounding her. Yet, although terrified folk were buffeting her right and left, they passed through her like she wasn’t there.

  Because she wasn’t.

  “A vision?” she asked herself incredulously, staring at her translucent hand. But she was quickly distracted by a loud, wracking sob just a few feet away from her.

  Looking up, she saw a child standing less than a yard away, crying his heart out. “Mam!” he screeched, bracing himself against all the people running past them. “Mammy!”

  There was no answer, and her eyes scanned the crowd to try to find who the child was calling for. She couldn’t see anything except for the faceless, rushing people however. What were they running from? The fashion was certainly outdated, but not ancient, which meant this had to be some sort of relatively recent catastrophe.

  “Mammy! Where are ye?!”

  That was when it clicked. The child had an accent. A distinctly Irish accent. This wasn’t just a random vision assaulting her. This was her client’s memory.

  Constina’s body spurred itself into motion, and suddenly she was walking towards the child. When she reached him, she could finally make out his face. It was the client, all right, but his face unweathered by time and covered in grime. Or was it soot?

  Before she could think it through, her hand was lifting to wipe one of his tears from his face. Instead of passing through him, as she had with all the other people in the vision, her finger made contact with his skin.

  His eyes flicked to her and she had never seen such utter sadness in a child. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “Who?” she asked, her voice sounding strange and alien to herself. Like she wasn’t really there; just an echo on the breeze.

  “My mam.”

  She stood and looked around to be certain. As far as she could tell, they were still surrounded by the same sea of running, faceless people who stopped for nothing. “Yes,” she answered honestly.

  The boy started to cry again in earnest and her heart ached. Kneeling down, she took both of his hands in her own. “Hey, I know it’s super scary but I promise everything is going to work out. You’re going to get past this, and one day you will be a big, strong, strapping man with an amazing career and some kick-ass hands. You got that?”

  “How do you know that?” he whimpered. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Just trust me, alright?” Her hands went to either side of his small cheeks and wiped the last of his tears away again. “You can do anything, my friend.”

  And just like that, the vision snapped itself away, dumping the fortune teller back into her body and reality.

  She gasped, starting to her feet before she could collect herself. Eyes wide, she looked to her client, who was staring at her curiously.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, sounding dubious at best.

  “Y-y-your mother.” She breathed, tongue barely willing to move in her mouth.

  Suddenly he didn’t look so critical and his expression darkened. “What about my mother?”

  She knew that she should probably just drop it and move on, but she couldn’t get the child version of the man in front of her out of her head. “What happened to her? That day with all those running people?”

  “How do you know that?”

  She recovered slightly, her heart returning to a normal pace. Quickly her brain tried to scramble for a reasonable explanation, but then she realized she didn’t need one. She was a fortune teller after all. “The spirits whisper strange things. I couldn’t quite grasp what they meant.”

  “I don’t see why it’s relevant.”

  She shrugged and sat down, pulling her mysterious façade back in place. “It is not if you do not wish to tell it to me.”

  He remained quiet for several beats before sighing.

  “There was an explosion. A terrorist one. My mother was an unfortunate casualty of the tension between Ireland and England.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “As am I. Does any of this have to do with the career advice I came in for?”

  Oh crap. That was right. He had had a purpose for coming in. Quickly, her mind scrambled to find something satisfactory. “The spirits say that you have been through much worse before and you will persevere still. Trust yourself and your strength on the path you’re on.”

  He was silent again, but she resisted the urge to fill the quiet. He wanted a fortune and she had given him a fortune. Along with an unnecessary line of questions about a painful memory about his dead mother.

  “Thank you,” he said finally, pulling a bill out of his wallet and placing it on the table. “This has been enlightening.”

  “You are welcome. And may the spirits be with you, uh… what was your name?”

  “Did the spirits not tell you that?”

  “No, they did not.”

  “Gabriel. And yourself?”

  “I am Madame Constina. Be safe, my friend.”

  He tilted his head in agreement then rose to leave, long legs taking him out in seconds. She waited until she heard the bell on the door that confirmed he had left before melting into her chair.

  Gods, it had been years since she had had a vision. Why had it suddenly cropped up without warning? After so long shoving her abilities back down where they came from, it was incredibly upsetting that they were reasserting themselves with a vengeance.

  Shakily, she got to her feet. She remembered when her abilities had first randomly manifested in the middle of math class in elementary school. One second she had been sitting, trying to take notes, the next she had been surrounded by dozens and dozens of people all trying to scream different things at her. She had been so terrified back then, and honestly, she didn’t feel much better about it now.

  It wouldn’t have been that bad if it had ended there, at a simple trip to the psyche ward for a week and some meds for anxiety. But it hadn’t ended there. The next thing had been her dreams,
twisting into violent and terrifying visions. And then it had occasionally been people’s thoughts echoing around them on repeat, circling around their heads like floating holograms.

  It had taken her years to learn to ignore it. Painful, terrifying years that had left her ostracized from everyone around her in the small town. She had been the crazy girl. The psycho.

  When she had finally escaped to college, she spent a solid year doctor-shopping so she could cook herself up a cocktail of anti-psychotics that would finally quiet the furor constantly going on around her. Finally, she had found peace.

  That had been years ago. So why was this happening? Sure, her chosen career as a fortune teller which really was a con-artist was mildly triggering, but as long as she kept herself doped up, that didn’t matter.

  Speaking of which, she made a beeline towards her medicine cabinet. With the ease of ritual, she opened them all up and popped back the two pills from each without water. Once she was done, she felt a familiar sort of sleepiness sink in. It was too soon for her drowsy-aide to kick in, so she guessed it was the placebo effect of knowing soon the burden of consciousness would be lifted from her. Shuffling back to her bed, she slid under the covers.