Caged how not to be sedu.., p.1
Caged (How Not To Be Seduced by Billionaires: Book 3), page 1
CAGED
How Not To Be Seduced By Billionaires (BOOK 3)
By: Marian Tee
Copyright © 2013 by BlueRibbonBooks.com
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Lesson #1
When you tell your billionaire you belong to him,
He will fuck more than your body.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Those were not the first words I wanted to hear from the man I had just realized I was in love with. I expected him to be surprised that I had come after him, but he wasn’t. If anything, he appeared furious, coldly and oddly so. It made me shift nervously on my feet, and my heels screeched against the floor as I did. The sound echoed around the conservatory, bouncing against the wooden domed ceiling.
A thick air of silent tension swirled around us, the heavy doors behind me succeeding in filtering most of the party music being played outside. The conservatory was as vast as the other exhibits of the museum, which his parents had rented out for their fundraiser.
The theme was black and white, and according to the message on my two-thousand-dollar ticket, it was supposed to emphasize how prostitutes should not be seen that way.
Even the conservatory had been redesigned to match the theme, with its original lighting switched off and replaced by black-and-white waist-high pillars illuminated from within and lining the pathways that weaved through the cultured rainforest behind the stone fountain. All in all, I felt like I had stepped into a giant-sized tree house filled with shadows and white light.
A carpet of Bermuda grass separated Constantijin and me, but it looked more like an entire ocean in my eyes. I willed Constantijin’s gaze to soften, to give me even the smallest sign that he still wanted me back. Because he had to – surely I couldn’t have fallen in love with a man shallow enough to leave me the first time I didn’t do something he asked?
But his beautiful face didn’t soften, and his silvery eyes remained impassive.
“I want to talk to you privately.” The words were supposed to come out even and confident, but they sounded squeaky instead. Shit.
His gaze strayed up, and my eyes followed his.
“Shit.” The word escaped my lips when I saw the CCTV dome cameras installed on the ceiling, a red light blinking underneath each and every one of them. Didn’t that mean it was recording everything going on here? Shit.
The dome camera suddenly moved, making me jump. I looked around and bit back a gasp when I realized all the cameras were trained on us.
Shit. It seemed to be the only word my brain could come up with. Was nothing really going to go my way tonight? Did they think I was cornering him here to do God knew what?
Shit.
I waved my hands madly above me, staring at the cameras. “I’m. Not. Going. To. Kidnap. Him.” I turned to Constantijin, exasperation briefly winning over my heartbreak when he remained standing there without uttering a word on my defense. “Please tell them I’m not going to kidnap you!”
He tossed me a glance of disgust before he started to move. When he reached me, he took a firm hold of my shoulders.
I froze, wondering madly – and hoping just as hard – if he was going to kiss me.
But all he did was set me out of his path and he continued past me to reach for the communication box planted next to the doors. He pressed the speaker button and said curtly, “Switch the camera off and don’t say a fucking word about this.”
Constantijin walked back to the fountain, as if he needed to place as much distance between us. Crossing his arms over his chest, he raised a brow at me.
“Let me explain about Drake---”
His face hardened. “No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
Brrr. He just kept sounding colder and colder. Taking a deep breath, I muttered, “If you don’t listen to me, I’ll---”
His eyes bored through me.
Oh, God, I hated it when he looked at me like that – like he was a god, and I was the shit he had just stepped on.
I knew that was how the world saw the two of us. After all, Constantijin Kastein was still the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life, with wonderfully soft golden-copper hair and eyes the shade of liquid silver. His body was just as beautiful, and the fact that I once had the right to touch his fair skin, to feel the hardness underneath it – a right I didn’t have now – it hurt.
Next to this man, who had every woman salivating for him not only for his sheer gorgeousness but also for his billion-dollar bank account, I was ordinary – an old-fashioned twenty-something woman who used to believe true love had to come first before lust.
But even though we were poles apart, he didn’t have the right to treat me like this – like I had to kiss his feet before he’d pay attention to me.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “If you don’t listen to me, then I might as well go back to Drake and be his!” The words were a high-risk bet. I knew my cards, and they all said that what I used to think was an obsessive sexual desire for him had deepened into love. Sometimes, the body just knew what the heart couldn’t even feel yet.
But I didn’t know what Constantijin’s cards hid – well, at least not exactly. I knew he was just as obsessed with me sexually. I knew he got jealous over me easily. And I knew he was still mad at me for going home with another man when he told me not to.
Surely all those gave me reason to hope that eventually there could be more.
At my words, something flickered in his eyes, and then it was gone so quickly I almost thought I imagined it. But I knew I hadn’t, and my chest tightened.
Nik – my best friend’s husband – had been right. Once, when Daria hadn’t yet come into his life, Nik could have been Constantijin’s twin – wealthy, gorgeous, and arrogant. He hadn’t needed love, and he hadn’t believed in it. But Daria had changed him, had made him see how love changed what could first appear set in stone.
Nik told me that even the world’s hottest-looking billionaires had their weaknesses - the kind that made them more human. Daria had been his, and If Nik was right, I was Constantijin’s weakness.
Constantijin said with icy hauteur, “If you want to go to him---”
“I don’t,” I interrupted in a small voice, now immensely sorry that I said those words at all.
His body tensed even more. “I don’t want to play any fucking games---”
The hurt in my chest spread. Constantijin’s face was still a cold blank slate, but in his eyes I still saw pain that he couldn’t hide. He really did believe I had chosen Drake over him, and that now I was toying with him. It still shocked me he could think like that of me. I never even had a boyfriend before he came to my life, never ever thought I could lose sleep at the memory of the taste of a man’s kisses and the feel of his touch.
He had changed me, claimed me, and ruined me for all the other men in the world. He was irreplaceable. How could he not know that? And how could I have not seen that Constantijin also had his doubts the way I did?
My voice cracked as I spoke. “Constantijin, I’m not playing any games.”
He didn’t answer.
The silence was intolerable, and I was beginning to appreciate why it had constantly driven Constantijin crazy whenever I used to answer his questions with silence. It just plain sucked.
“I thought it was the best thing to do,” I whispered. “Please try to look it from my side. If I had stayed with you that night, people would have started talking about us. And that time – I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t take the risk. I didn’t want anyone to know because a part of me was still scared. I wanted to protect myself – in case you left me, no one would know.”
Yet Constantijin still didn’t soften, not even a bit.
“Constantijin, please. You know---”
“Didn’t you ever pause to think that I had the same fucking fears, too?” The coldness was gone, but the bitterness that replaced it wasn’t any better. “You were the first woman who mattered to me. Didn’t I fucking tell you that? Didn’t you know---”
“I panicked. I’m sorry, I just panicked.” Surely he should know that about me by now? Panic was my freaking middle name, and I had a tendency to experience it every time I encountered something I didn’t understand. Like guys, sex, and love – in any order.
He spat something in Dutch, which sounded painful enough to hurt.
Tears stung my eyes. “I wouldn’t have left if I had known you’d feel so strongly about it.” My voice shook as I continued, “Constantijin, you screwed me up twice. Now, I screwed up – but not as worse as your screw-ups. Are you not going to forg---” I couldn’t say anything anymore, not with Constantijin’s lips on me.
The tears fell freely even as I weaved my arms around his neck, bringing my body as close to his as I could. The relief of being back in his arms was almost painful, and I couldn’t stop myself from shaking.
His fingers suddenly tightened around my hair, and then Constantijin was using it to pull my head back with gentle firmness, forcing me to look up to him. “You chose him over me,” he growled.
It was scary and exhilarating, the way my world had suddenly found itself revolving around Constantijin.
Almost impatiently, he took my chin and covered my lips with another breathtaking kiss, his tongue entering my mouth just as his hands spanned my waist and pulled me towards him. I gasped against his tongue when his fingers started a tantalizingly sensual trail on the curves of my body before lingering on the undersides of my breasts.
He reared back abruptly, making me look up at him in confusion. “Did you do it to make me feel jealous?” He pinched my nipples at the last word.
I shuddered even as I protested, “No.”
He pinched my nipples again. “I don’t think I believe you.” But this time, there was a smile in his eyes as he spoke. He was back to the wickedly teasing Constantijin I knew and loved.
I couldn’t help smiling, too, even as I said, “Well, now that you’ve---aaah.” Constantijin had suddenly lowered his head, sucking and biting my nipple through the thin silk of my gown. I sank my fingers in his hair as I lifted myself toward him, loving and missing the feel of his tongue caressing my body. By the time he moved to my other nipple, I was bucking helplessly against him, unable to control my response.
And then it was over.
Blinking at Constantijin, I stammered, “Wha-why?”
He was breathing hard, but there was a gleam in his eyes that made me catch my breath. It was so…wicked. Almost playfully so, and Constantijin in a playful mood was enough to make even the grouchiest spinster swoon. “Punishment.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Punishment?”
“All this time, Yanna, you had me following your every order like I was a fucking slave. You made me fucking court you, fucking ignore that other men could talk to you without knowing you already belonged to someone else, and when you were finally mine, you wanted to keep it a fucking secret. If I could replace you, I would. But I fucking can't!”
I breathed unevenly, “Constantijin, are you saying that this time you didn't sleep with the woman I saw with you on TV?” It was my greatest fear, something I couldn't even share with my friends. I didn't want them to know that I might just be weak enough to still take Constantijin back even if he had slept with another woman...again.
He glared at me. “Did I not just say so? Is that so fucking hard to understand?”
Words failed me, and I could only stare at him helplessly. Didn't he see how fucking hard that would be to understand...for everyone? He was Constantijin Kastein. The last time we had a fight, he did replace me. In his mind, his bed, his life. But this time he didn't. He couldn't. Another smile fought its way to my lips, but I did my best to put it off, the same way I was doing my hardest not to let him know how I was doing a crazy happy dance inside my mind.
He had been faithful.
There was a time when he would have taken another woman to his bed just to spite me. But this time - now that he actually had a semblance of a reason to do so - he didn't. Constantijin chose to be faithful to me even though we both knew every woman in this party – and outside it – would have done anything just to have one night with him. The realization was enough to make me forget all the heartbreak he had caused me. I no longer cared about the bimbo I saw with him on TV or the fact that I practically had to crawl back to him begging before we could be together again.
One day, I promised myself, it would be different between us. One day, he wouldn’t be able to wait for so long because he’d find life as unbearable as I did if we weren’t together. One day Constantijin would feel like that and more because that was how I felt about him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he suddenly snapped, making me jump in surprise.
“Wha—how am I looking at you?”
“Like you want to fucking eat me.”
I blurted out, “But I do.”
Constantijin’s eyes flared wide.
Shit – did I really just say that?
Me, the oldest virgin in the state of Florida? Me, the only woman whom Netherlands’ #1 playboy still wasn’t able to, well, fuck?
Spinning around, I almost tumbled out of my heels in my haste to walk away. I didn't want to be around when he got over his shock. If he did, I was dead. I said nervously, “It’s, umm, really late and I still have to get to work early tomorrow---”
“Yanna.”
And that was it. I was dead now. Why did my name on his lips sound so irresistible? I slowly turned around, cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
He beckoned me to come forward, and like a puppet I did so, stopping only when I was just inches away.
Without warning, Constantijin cupped my sex, his fingers delving deep until he was practically pushing them inside me, a bunch of fabric caught between his fingers and my now aching folds.
I gasped.
He started to stroke me, gently and seductively, his silvery gaze burning with so much passion it made my throat dry. Every touch of his fingers made me feel like he was closer and closer to devouring me. And I wanted him to.
“Do you really want to eat me?”
“Yes?” It came out as a gasp as well, a strangled one.
“Can I eat you first?”
I didn’t want to answer. It was too embarrassing.
“Yanna.”
Oh, God. Why did his Dutch accent always bring out the slut in me? I whimpered, “Yes.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes.” I said it simply, without artifice.
Constantijin’s fingers tightened around my sex, his gaze burning even more brightly, like silver caught on fire. “Tell me you won’t deny me anymore. When I say we will let everyone know about us, you won’t argue.”
“Yes.” Oh God, a thousand yes to anything he asked just as long he continued touching me like he was right now.
“Good.” He took my hand, guiding me deeper into the manmade forest, the dimly lit room turning the evergreen leaves into black shadows. He stopped when we reached the edge of the room, where flowers bloomed from the spread-out branches of a large tree.
Constantijin lowered himself to the ground, leaning against its wide bark. He crooked a finger towards me once more. “Strip, Yanna.”
I glanced up at the CCTVs. “But...”
“Every one behind those cameras is my security team, and they follow my orders and no one else’s.” When I still hesitated, Constantijin said, “I’m too possessive of you. Isn’t that obvious? Do you think I’d risk having any man see your naked body?”
I smiled weakly. “I can’t help being shy.”
“I know that. And I love it. But I also want you to try to be more open, with me – only me. I’ve always wanted to see you proudly giving your body to me.” His voice thickened. “Will you do that for me, Yanna? Will you strip for me?”
