Ignored and Humiliated Wife of a Billionaire Husband (Her Marriage in Crisis #129)

1. Margo

— ? —

Margo

There are worse ways to wake up than with a billionaire’s mouth working its way down your spine.

Sunlight spills warm across the bed. His arm is a weight around my waist, his lips tracing along the curve of my shoulder to my neck, and I feel the exact moment he realizes I’m awake, because he smiles against my skin.

“Morning, beautiful.”

I roll over to face him, and there it is, that stupid boyish grin, the one the boardrooms and the magazines never get to see. His hair is a mess, his jaw is rough with sleep, and he looks about ten years younger than the man who runs a shipping empire.

“You’re still here,” I say. “I checked the calendar twice to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated you.”

“Careful. That almost sounded like you missed me.”

“It almost did, didn’t it? Terrifying.”

Sebastian laughs, low, and then he kisses me.

It stops being lazy somewhere in the middle. His hand slides up my back and pulls me flush against him, and I feel the shift in it, the want, the way his fingers press into my spine as if letting go isn’t an option he’s considering.

His other hand finds the hem of my nightgown and slips beneath it, palm splaying warm and possessive across my bare hip, dragging me half on top of him as if he’s decided I belong there and the matter isn’t up for discussion.

When he breaks away, it’s only to drag his mouth to my jaw, my throat, the soft spot below my ear that he knows undoes me.

“Do you have any idea,” he murmurs against my skin, “how hard it is to leave this bed every morning… to leave you?”

“So don’t.” It comes out closer to a whine than I mean it to, my fingers fisting in his shirt to keep him where he is.

He lifts his head at that, and the humor in his eyes softens into a look that lingers a beat too long to be entirely a joke.

“Don’t tempt me.” His voice comes out low and rough with sleep. “I’ll cancel the entire launch. Thousands of guests, and I’ll send them all home.”

“Bold words.” I drag my fingers up into his hair, slow, watching his eyes go heavy as he tilts into the touch, and a low rumble of approval works loose in his chest. I let my smirk widen, because I know exactly which buttons I’m pressing.

Then I taunt him, “But we both know you’d never survive a morning without an audience applauding you. ”

Sebastian goes still and fully lifts his head this time. One brow arches and a glint sparks in his eyes that I recognize about half a second too late.

“An audience,” he repeats. “You think I need an audience?”

“I think your ego does, yes.”

“Careful, baby…” His voice drops, and the smirk that curls his mouth is nothing but trouble as his hand slides down from my hip, his lips following after it, tracing a slow path lower along my ribs. “You know exactly what happens when you talk to me like that.”

Heat floods everywhere his mouth has been, and I feel my resolve going, and then his fingers dig into my side without warning.

“Sebastian…” It comes out as a strangled laugh. I shove at his shoulders, useless. “That is cheating, that is not fair…”

“Take it back.”

“Never…”

“Take it back, or I keep going.”

His fingers find every spot that betrays me at once, and I dissolve, laughing so hard I can barely breathe, swatting at his hands and scolding him between gasps, losing on every possible front.

And the worst part is he’s enjoying every second of it. The composure is gone, the sleepy roughness gone, and what’s left is just Sebastian, grinning down at me bright and open, laughing along with me as I squirm uselessly beneath him.

“Sebastian, I swear…” I get a hand up against his chest and push. It does absolutely nothing. “Stop! I can’t breathe…”

“Say it, then.”

“Say what, that you’re insufferable? Gladly…”

“Mhm, no. Wrong answer.” His fingers skate along my ribs, and I buck, shrieking. “Say it, and I’ll consider mercy.”

“That’s… two things…” I gasp out between fits. “You can’t just… add demands…”

“I run an empire, baby. I can add whatever I want.”

He digs in again, right at the curve of my waist where he knows I’m helpless, and I come apart completely, kicking at the sheets, tears in my eyes, laughing so hard no sound comes out at all.

“Fine! Fine, you win, you’re the only man, no audience, whatever you want…”

“Was that so hard?” He’s laughing too now, the pleased-with-himself laugh that I’d find unbearable if I weren’t so gone on him, and he catches both my wrists in one hand and pins them loosely over my head, leaning down to kiss the surrender right off my mouth…

The bedroom door bangs open.

“Good mooorning!”

Sandy stands in the doorway in her rumpled pajamas, hair a wild halo, announcing her consciousness to the world as if it’s breaking news.

She takes in the scene, her parents tangled and laughing, and her whole face lights up with the pure outrage of a child who suspects fun is happening without her.

“You started the tickles without me!”

She launches herself across the room before either of us can respond, scrambling up the side of the bed and onto Sebastian’s back, small arms locking around his neck.

He lets out a theatrical groan and collapses face-first into the mattress with her riding him down, and she squeals in triumph, and just like that, the morning belongs to the three of us.

“I’ve been ambushed,” Sebastian says into the pillow. “This is a mutiny. I don’t negotiate with pirates.”

“I’m not a pirate, I’m a princess!” Sandy sits up straighter on his back, indignant. “Princess Sandy. And I say more tickles!”

“The princess has spoken.” He rolls over, catching her before she tumbles, and deposits her between us.

“Oh, more tickles?” I lean over her, and she’s already shrieking before I get there, wriggling and clutching at the blanket. “You heard the princess. Royal decree.”

I press a kiss to her tummy and blow a raspberry against it, and she absolutely loses it, kicking and laughing and shoving at my face with both starfish hands.

“Mommy, no! Not the belly, not the belly…”

“The belly is exactly where the tickles live, everyone knows that.”

She dissolves into that helpless, hiccupping laugh only little kids have, and for a little while, there’s nothing in the whole world but the three of us and the warm light.

Sandy, breathless, finally catching her breath to narrate the plot of a dream she had about a whale who owned a bakery.

But it doesn’t last.

It never does.

Sebastian’s phone starts buzzing on the nightstand, and I watch the change move over him, my husband and the father side of him folding away as the CEO surfaces. He silences it and it starts again.

This time his eyes flick to the screen, and whatever he sees there straightens his spine.

“I have to take this.”

“You always do,” I say, but I say it gently, because his hand is still resting warm on Sandy’s back and I don’t want to be the one who ruins a morning this good.

He presses a kiss to the top of Sandy’s head, breathing her in, and then he leans over and kisses me once more, slow, as if it’s an apology for a thing that hasn’t happened yet.

“Later,” he says against my mouth. “I’ll catch up with you both.”

And then he’s up, phone already to his ear, voice dropping into the clipped register of a man with a billion-dollar problem, pulling a shirt on as he walks out of the bedroom, out of the morning, and out of reach.

The door shuts behind him.

Sandy has already lost interest, burrowing into his warm spot on the mattress, and I lie there a moment longer holding onto the last of it before I make myself get up.

Because the truth is, mornings like this are rare now.

Rare enough that I mark them, the way you mark anything you’re afraid of losing. Most days I wake to cold sheets and a text explaining where he’s gone.

This was the exception, and we both knew it, which is probably why he kissed me that way.

I pull on a robe, gather Sandy up, and go to start another day back to reality.

***

The Austen family portrait is twelve feet tall.

I know this because I’m watching four crew members in matching navy polos wrestle it into position on the atrium wall three decks below, and even from up here in the owner’s suite, even through floor-to-ceiling windows that cost more than my parents’ house, the thing is enormous.

Oil paint and gold frame and four generations of Austen jaw lines staring down at anyone who dares board this floating monument to old money.

I’m not in it.

The portrait was commissioned before our wedding, and Dorothy, my mother-in-law, the woman who has never once called me by my first name without making it sound as if it’s a medical diagnosis, never saw fit to update it.

Five years of marriage, one grandchild, and the official Austen family portrait still features a blank space where Sebastian’s wife should be.

Nobody thinks this is strange but me.

“Mommy.”

Sandy tugs at my silk sleeve, her small fingers leaving a smudge I’ll pretend not to notice. She’s four years old and already bored of the most expensive ship ever built, which honestly tracks. Four-year-olds have no respect for billion-dollar engineering.

“Mommy, when is Daddy done with his boring meetings?”

I crouch down to her level, smoothing a curl away from her forehead. She has Sebastian’s eyes, that particular shade of gray-blue that looks as if they’re storm clouds over water, and the rest of her features are mine, which Dorothy has never forgiven either of us for.

“Soon, baby.”

“But you also said soon yesterday!”

“I know.”

“Mommy said it lots of times…”

“I know that too.”

She considers this with the solemn intensity only small children can muster. “Is Daddy’s work more important than Sandy and Mommy?”

The question lands somewhere between my ribs and stays there.

“Of course not,” I tell her, and I sound convincing because I’ve had years of practice. “Daddy’s just very busy making sure this big boat works properly. Once the boat party is over, he’ll have lots of time for us.”

Sandy’s nose wrinkles. “Promise?”

I kiss her forehead instead of answering, because I’m trying very hard not to lie to my daughter more than absolutely necessary.