Neglected and Ignored by My Billionaire Husband (Billionaire Marriage in Crisis: Newport #11)

1. Erika

— ? —

Erika

The dress arrived at three o’clock, and I’ve been staring at it for the past hour like it might disappear if I blink.

Even so, I run my fingers along the fabric, feeling the weight of it, the impossible softness.

Three months ago, I paused on a page in Vogue for maybe five seconds.

I didn’t say anything or point, I just looked, the way you look at a sunset or a piece of art you know you’ll never own, and Kai noticed anyway.

That’s the thing about being married to a billionaire. The things you want just appear. It’s like magic, except the magic is money, and the money is so vast that I’ve stopped trying to wrap my head around it.

“You’re not dressed yet.”

His voice comes from the bedroom doorway, and I catch his reflection in the mirror, freshly showered, towel slung criminally low on his hips, water still tracking down his chest like it’s trying to show off the route I should be taking with my tongue.

God, he’s beautiful. Four years of marriage and the sight of him still hits me right in the chest, steals my breath, makes me feel like that twenty-one-year-old girl who locked eyes with him across a crowded lecture hall and thought, well, shit, a week before he worked up the nerve to ask for my number outside a bar in the rain.

“I’m admiring your gift,” I tell him.

“The gift looks better with you in it.” He crosses the bathroom, bare feet silent on heated marble, and takes my waist from behind, hooking his chin over my shoulder so we’re both looking at my reflection. “But I have to say, I’m a fan of this look too.”

I’m wearing a silk robe with nothing underneath, and he toys with the belt, tugging gently. “Very accessible.”

“We have dinner in an hour.”

“Dinner can wait.”

“You flew in a chef from Tokyo, Kai. The man traveled fourteen hours to make us sushi.”

“He’ll keep.” He kisses that spot below my ear, the one that makes my knees go stupid, and whatever protest I was forming dissolves into a sound that’s frankly embarrassing. “I’ll pay him double.”

“That’s not…” I gasp as his teeth graze my earlobe. “That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” He slides his hands beneath the robe, palms warm against my stomach, and pulls me back against his chest until I can feel him hardening against my lower back and his heartbeat through the thin silk. “Because I’m having trouble remembering.”

“The point is…” I lose my train of thought entirely when his thumb brushes the underside of my breast. “Okay, I actually don’t remember either.”

He laughs, low and satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”

“Four years,” he murmurs against my skin, and his voice has gone rough in that way that tells me the chef is definitely going to be waiting. “Four years ago today, you made me the luckiest bastard on the planet.”

“You proposed a few months before that, in a Denny’s parking lot.”

“It was romantic.”

“It was two in the morning and you were drunk.”

“Romantically drunk.” He spins me around, hands framing my face, and those dark eyes pin me in place. “And you said yes anyway. Which means you’re either an idiot or you love me. I’m hoping for the second one.”

“Maybe both,” I admit.

His grin is crooked and devastating. “I can live with both.”

“I love you,” I whisper.

His expression softens into that private look that belongs only to us.

The robe hits the floor.

He doesn’t give me a second to feel exposed.

He’s on me before the silk settles, mouth on mine, hot and greedy, one hand at the back of my neck and the other sliding down my spine to grab my ass and pull me flush against him, and I can feel through the towel exactly how long he’s been thinking about this, and I can see it too, because I’m still watching us in the mirror over his shoulder, my bare back and his hands on it, the water still drying on him, the muscle in his forearm standing up where he’s gripping me.

I like watching him want me. I always have.

“Kai,” I get out when he lets me breathe. “The chef…”

“Is getting paid enough to wait.” He says it into my mouth, then slows down, sucking my bottom lip, biting it. “I’ve been thinking about this since you put that robe on. Since before that.”

He lifts me onto the marble without warning, and the cold against my bare skin makes me gasp, and the gasp turns into a moan when he steps between my thighs and kisses me harder, hands everywhere at once, cupping my breasts, dragging his thumbs over my nipples until they’re tight, then gripping my hips and hauling me to the very edge of the counter.

“Spread for me, baby.” He pushes my thighs apart with his palms and drops to his knees like he’s been waiting all day for exactly this, and there’s a thing about the sight of him down there that never gets old, this man who owns half a skyline on the marble floor of our bathroom with his face between my legs, looking up at me like I’m the only thing in the building worth having.

He starts slow, and he never starts slow, and it undoes me. One long deliberate lick from my entrance up to my clit, then another, his tongue hot and wet and unhurried, and he groans against me like I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted.

“Fuck,” he says into me. “You’re already soaked. Look at that.”

I look. Not at me. At him, at his dark head moving between my thighs and the wet shine on his mouth when he lifts it, at his eyes flicking up to make sure I’m watching, and I am, and he knows it, and that’s what makes him groan.

He spreads me open with his thumbs and licks again, slower, circling my clit with just the tip of his tongue, then flattening it and dragging it over me, and my hands go into his hair and hold on.

“Kai. Shit.”

He hums, and the vibration goes straight through me. Two fingers tease my entrance, circling, not pushing in, while his mouth never stops, licking, sucking, kissing my clit like it’s my mouth, and every so often he pulls back just far enough to blow cool air over wet skin and watch me twitch.

“You’re so sensitive tonight.” His voice is muffled. “Love when you get like this. All swollen for me.” He slides one finger in, slow and deep, and curls it. “Tell me how it feels.”

“Good. God. So good.”

“More?”

I nod, frantic, and he gives me a second finger, stretching me, pumping them in a steady rhythm while his tongue works my clit in tight relentless circles, and my hips start rocking against his face without my permission.

“That’s it.” He pulls back to kiss the inside of my thigh. “Ride my face, Erika. Use me.”

He sucks my clit between his lips and flicks it while his fingers curl hard against the spot inside me, and I’m gone, head falling back against the mirror, thighs clamping around his ears, coming so hard I say his name like a prayer, and he keeps his fingers moving until every aftershock has run out of me and I’m shaking on the marble.

He rises, and I watch every second of it, the slow unfold of him, wet mouth, wet chin, his chest going hard, and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and doesn’t take his eyes off me while he does it, and they’re black.

I grab him by the shoulders and drag him into a kiss, tasting myself, messy and deep, and bite his lip until he groans.

“Inside me,” I say. “Right fucking now.”

He drops the towel, and I look, the way I’ve looked a thousand times and still do, thick and flushed and hard enough it must hurt, the head already wet, and he strokes himself once, twice, slow, because he knows I like to watch him do it, and lines up, and doesn’t push in.

He kisses me instead, slow and filthy, and rubs the head of his cock up and down my slit, dragging it over my clit with every pass until I’m whining into his mouth.

“You want it that bad?” he murmurs. “Want me to fuck you open on this counter while the chef waits downstairs?”

“Yes. Please.”

He pushes in one slow inch at a time until he’s all the way in, and we both groan, and I watch his face while he does it, the way his eyes go unfocused and his mouth falls open a little, the way this man who’s never once lost his composure in a meeting loses it every single time he’s inside me, and he stays there, deep, kissing me like he’s trying to climb inside my skin, hands cradling my face, mouth on my jaw, my neck, my mouth again.

“Move,” I whisper.

He does. Long, deep strokes, hips rolling into me, every thrust pressing my back against the mirror until it rattles in its frame, and he gets a hand between us and rubs my clit in tight circles while he kisses me through every sound I make.

“You feel so fucking good,” he says into my mouth. “My perfect wife. My greedy girl.” His voice has gone to pieces, and I did that.

“Kai. Harder.”

He gives it to me. Skin on skin, loud in the tiled room, one hand on my hip hard enough to bruise, the other on my clit, and I can feel the second one building already, fast and inevitable.

“Come for me again,” he orders, wrecked. “Come on my cock, baby. Let me feel you.”

I do, with a broken cry, clenching around him so tight he curses, and I keep my eyes open for it, for the second he goes, the stutter in his hips and the way his whole body locks and his head drops to my shoulder and he says my name like it’s the last thing he’s got, and I hold his face up where I can see it, because that’s mine.

We stay like that a long minute, breathing each other, kissing softly between gasps.

“Okay,” he says eventually, hoarse. “Now I’m ready for dinner.”

I laugh, still trembling. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You married me.”

“I really did.”

We’re late for dinner.

The chef is gracious about it, which I appreciate more than he knows.

The terrace is set like a dream, candles flickering in glass hurricanes, the infinity pool glowing turquoise behind us, the city sprawled beneath like scattered diamonds, and course after course arrives, bluefin tuna that melts on my tongue, sea urchin so fresh it tastes like the ocean, sake poured from bottles older than both of us combined.

“Remember our honeymoon?” Kai asks, lifting a piece of hamachi with his chopsticks. “That restaurant in Shibuya?”