“Kitchen,” I bellow, hoping he hears me over the blare of some pop song playing on his phone.
That man has the worst taste in music, but I manage to love him anyway.
Vin eyes me appreciatively from where I’m standing at the stove. For him, the paisley printed apron I’m wearing might as well be lingerie. Maybe it’s because he never had a real mother, but watching me pretend to be a housewife is the sexiest thing he can imagine.
“What’s for dinner?” he asks, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing himself against my back. “Something smells delicious.”
His tone makes it clear that it isn’t only the food that he’s talking about. I try to push him away, but it’s like shoving a brick wall. “The roast is going to burn if you don’t keep your hands to yourself.”
“Let it burn,” he growls against my neck, nipping the skin hard enough to make me gasp.
“First lesson on not being rich is that you don’t let food go to waste.”
Vin licks the sensitive spot behind my ear. “Is the second lesson that you have to make your own fun? Because all the best things I can think of right now won’t cost a dime.”
Vin fits in to life in Los Angeles the same way he fits in everywhere else, like the world was designed with him in mind. He managed to get himself enrolled in classes at the last minute, probably with a sizable donation involved. Most of his coursework is at the business school, because he needs to figure out how to rebuild the Cortland fortune after it disintegrates.
I assumed the thought of being cut off financially would bother him, but he has taken it completely in stride. It doesn’t escape my notice that all it would take to right the ship would be a pregnancy, a real one this time, but he hasn’t brought it up in months, and I’m starting to think he never will.
He was true to his word about getting me on the pill, going as far as to remind me to take it every day. As if I’m the kind of girl who would forget something like that.
“I am not burning this dinner, doesn’t matter what you do. This beef cost almost twenty dollars.”
“And maybe all I want to eat is you.” He nuzzles my neck again and bites down on my earlobe, just hard enough to leave a sting that he soothes away with his tongue. “Did you take your pill today?”
He doesn’t know that I stopped taking the birth control pills months ago. Just like I didn’t know that poking holes in condoms is so easy, it makes you wonder how the things are at all effective in the first place.
There are test results in a manila envelope on the table. I just have to figure out the best way to let him know what they say.
His hands roam over my body, making it easy to forget that our dinner is sizzling on the stove in front of me. Switching the knob to low, I turn in his embrace and wrap my arms around his neck. “You have ten minutes before this burns.”
Vin smiles at me in a way that is frankly carnal. “With the way you come, I only need five.”
He carries me away as I laugh.
Vin
I’ve been spending money like there is no tomorrow, because there isn’t.
Zaya’s tuition at UCLA is paid in full for the next four years. I gave the landlord of our apartment as much money upfront as he would take. My unfettered access to the Cortland fortune is on a ticking clock, and I intend to take full advantage.
The codicil requires that she be pregnant within a year of our marriage, and we’re ticking over into month eleven. Another few weeks and the money will be out of my hands forever.
I’ve been trying really hard to decide what I think about that, but it’s been easier not to think about it at all. The money itself doesn’t mean anything, but I do sometimes wonder how I’m going to take care of her. There is a pressure to being a husband that I hadn’t anticipated.
Zaya is mine, which means all of her needs are, too.
Nothing else seems important when my head is buried between her legs and she writhes against my tongue.
If someone had asked me six months ago if I was willing to give up everything I had for Zaya Milbourne, I would have laughed in their faces.
Now, it doesn’t feel like I’m giving anything up at all.
When she has come enough times to forget that our dinner is burning on the stove, Zaya stares up at me with wet eyes.
“Are you really willing to be poor with me forever?”
“I’m willing to be pretty much anything, as long as it’s with you.”
She rolls her eyes, but I can tell my response makes her happy. “We’re still in the honeymoon phase, though. What happens in ten years when you wake up in a shitty apartment with no money in the bank and hate me for it?”
“For starters, our honeymoon period happened sometime around the 3rd grade. As far as I’m concerned, our first wedding anniversary might as well be our tenth, considering everything we’ve been through together.” My voice is stern, but I can’t stop the gentle way that I cradle her face so she can’t turn away when I glare down at her. “You don’t have to convince me that I’m giving up too much to be with you because I’ve known what you’re worth from the very beginning. I would give up billions of dollars before I let you walk away from me. Do you get that, or do I need to pound you into this mattress a few more times before it all becomes clear?”
She gasps in surprise when I push into her without a condom on, but doesn’t push me away. Instead, her
