Survival of the Richest (The Trust Fund Duet 1)

Higher, higher. He likes to tease me. There’s something playful about him that’s at odds with the burden he carries. Even the gods know how to make light of themselves.

And then he kisses my clit, and I lose the ability to think. My shoulders press into the wall. My hips push out toward his mouth. There’s nothing but his mouth and the magical things he can do with it. I cry out, and the sound of it echoes back to me in the empty hallway.

Even in this he has that terrible patience. That terrible playfulness that lets him nip at my skin, lets him tug and tease me until I’m shameless—pressing myself against his mouth, his nose, his chin, desperate for that friction my body demands.

His laugh surrounds me, piercing the madness that consumes me. “I should leave you like this,” he says, murmuring almost to himself. “You’d fuck yourself against the bedpost all night long, but it wouldn’t be the same. Wouldn’t be enough.”

“You wouldn’t,” I say on an aching gasp. “I’m dying here.”

He looks up at me, and it’s strange that he does have sympathy for me. It’s there in his blue eyes even while his lips shine with my arousal. “Are you?” he asks, his voice not shaking one little bit. Not like mine. “Or I could lay you down on the bed and tie you there, so you couldn’t get off. You’d keep trying all night, this gorgeous body fucking the air, desperate for relief. I could watch you all night.”

“Nooo,” I say, pushing my hips toward him as if that might convince him.

I’m beyond logic right now. Beyond anything but pure undiluted begging. I’ve never been more desperate than in this moment; this is what he’s reduced me to. This is what he holds in his hands.

“Whatever you want.”

And the bastard, he sits back on his heels. His hands fall to his side, somehow more powerful that way, his head looking up at me. He commands this hallway. This hotel. He commands the whole world from his goddamn knees. “Now you’re ready to make a deal.”

“Ruthless.” The word spills from my lips before I’ve thought it through. I’ve known so many men who were ruthless, including Christopher, but never one who’s managed to disarm me as much as Sutton Mayfair. That makes him infinitely more dangerous.

Casually he trails two fingers up my calf and back down. “Yes.”

“Because you’ve been poor longer than you’ve been rich.” It’s made him hungry, and I can’t really blame him for that. I’ve known what it was like to be poor, painfully poor, in small, infinitesimal drips. In the space between my mother’s husbands.

“That,” he says, with a faint dip of his head. “And because I don’t underestimate you, Harper.”

I swallow hard, because I’ve been underestimated all my life. Is that why he told me the story about the little boy who everyone underestimated? Suddenly that strikes me as totally unfair. “You didn’t tell a secret about you. You told me a secret about a wild horse.”

A faint smile. “The secret is that I wasn’t the boy with a family and a ranch. I was the one who showed up with bruises. I was the one who tamed Cinnamon.”

“No,” I whisper.

“I told you, Harper. The story had a happy ending.”

Touching him is as natural as breathing, as inevitable as the ache in my chest. Bristles on his jaw brush my palm. “I wish that hadn’t happened to you.”

“Maybe the moral of the story is that I can tame wild animals.” He’s a little mocking, making fun of himself. I’m the one worried that it might be true.

I snatch my hand away. It would be a lie to say I’m not a wild animal, since I’m considering scratching him in response to the ownership in his blue eyes. “I’m not tame.”

There it is again, that warm persistence that has made him rich when he was poor. It earned him enough money and know-how to partner with Christopher, a man who, for all his many faults, is admittedly a business genius. Not yet, he seems to say without words.

And I’m not entirely sure he’s wrong.

The elevator down the hall dings, and in a startled rush I push down my skirt. I expect to see the disgruntled businessman who’s staying in the room beside me or one of the other occupants I haven’t passed yet.

Instead Christopher Bardot steps off the elevator, his dark eyes narrowing on mine immediately, emotions flashing across his face before he manages to put a cold mask over them all. But I saw them. For that brief second I saw jealousy and anger, and something that breaks my heart—hurt.

In front of me Sutton moves much more slowly, getting up as casually as if he had been sitting at dinner, taking the time to straighten his shirt.

Then, impossibly, he runs a thumb across his bottom lip. And presses it between his lips to savor the taste of it. Of me. It’s the most explicit thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and we’re both fully clothed and covered.

Christopher’s eyes flash. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I’m not the kind of girl that men fight over, am I? I didn’t think so, but there’s leashed violence simmering in the air.

“Do you need it spelled out?” Sutton asks in that drawl I’m coming to realize is a sign of danger. The kind of danger that most people don’t expect from a Southern boy.