Archie Standish might be brutal in how he handled others, but that side of him never touched me. Not that way. “I love you,” I told him.
“And I love you, stop trying to distract me. Even if you presented me with your delectable breasts and begged me to suck the nipples until you were so wet, I could lick your juices from your thighs, we still need to talk about this.”
Goddammit.
I shifted on the sofa and pressed my thighs together. His utterly unrepentant grin made my stomach do a flip-flop. “You know exactly what you do to me.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he replied, humming a pleased note. “It’s only fair since you utterly devastate me. Now focus, Frankie, before we have to resort to birth names and you threaten my balls.”
Laughter bubbled up through the desire he kindled, and I cupped his cheek. “You’re terrible.”
“And all yours, so deal with it.”
Yes, he was mine.
“Focus, Frankie,” he continued, and I stuck my tongue at him. He only winked. “The point here is you have access to a great deal of wealth, and I want you to be comfortable with it. You do not have to make a lot of decisions right now, but some are necessary. For example, the shares you have in Standish gives you voting rights.”
I groaned.
“Hush and listen, my beautiful, brilliant lady. That mind of yours is as sharp as your heart is big. You can handle this.”
The encouragement was almost as sexy as the dirty teasing. Pulling my legs up so I could sit crisscross, I turned to face him. “Okay, I can handle it. Tell me what you’re thinking, because I know you. You have a plan.”
“I have the elements of a plan,” he conceded. “I cannot, however, dive into it without involving you. This has to be your call, even if I would be delighted to deal with every single battle for you, this one included.”
“But you trust me to make those decisions for myself.” I don’t know which of us was more impressed. Archie or me. Still…
“I trust you to know your own mind, Frankie. I trust you to follow your instincts. Making those decisions for you might protect you in the short-term, but it doesn’t help in the long-term. You want to be partners, not the princess.”
“Who says I can’t be both?” Not that I had any desire to be the princess, but Archie got that and his eyes warmed.
“You’ll always be my princess, and I will always protect you,” he told me in the most sincere tone that could have been sappy as hell, yet wasn’t. “But as your partner, I want to advise you that your income has increased significantly. The amount already available to you from your trust fund will not only pay for the relocation to Manhattan, but cover all four years of your college and probably two years of a master’s, as well as cost of living in the city with extras thrown in. Easily.”
I wanted to throw up.
“Breathe,” he told me, tracing his fingers up to my temple before beginning to massage my scalp as he brushed the hair away from my face. “That doesn’t take into account the fact you have a scholarship to cover college.”
Right. That kind of seemed unfair now. Someone else…
“You earned it,” Archie reminded me in a tense tone, as if he could sense the direction of my thoughts, and I wrinkled my nose. “But that said, your shares in Standish will also pay dividends quarterly. At the moment, you’re looking at earning somewhere between three and six million per year, depending on our financial returns.”
Holy.
Shit.
“Now, you can turn around and reinvest that money or put it into a portfolio that we can then diversify. But before we make any calls like that, I want you to get a financial manager, preferably one vetted by me and Wittaker, with Wittaker taking an advisory role.”
My head kind of spun for a moment. It was a lot to take in. “Wait…you don’t want to do it?”
“Babe, I have a financial advisor,” Archie told me, and I blinked. “But in the effort of total transparency, I don’t want you to think I’m taking over your money or trying to control it. I want you to have the control. I want you to understand the decisions being made. More, I want you to make the decisions with me and to tell me what you think. I love the way your brain works, but this—this is not what you’re used to.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. “Archie…I don’t know what to do with all of it. Wittaker wanted me to talk to the financial advisor the week after my birthday when they released the trust to me, but I honestly don’t know what to do with that kind of money.”
“First, you stop being afraid of it,” Archie told me almost sternly, and I scowled.
“I’m not afraid of it.”
“You are, a little. Because you know how to live paycheck to paycheck. You know how to stretch a dollar out. You know how to use coupons and find the best deals.”
Honestly, I was so proud that he listed those attributes as positives not negatives that I leaned in and gave him a kiss. He caught me close and kissed me again, this time possessing my mouth with a sweetness that had me sighing as his tongue sought mine. I would never get tired of kissing him or falling into his orbit. He pulled every part of me.
“Okay,” I admitted when he released my lips. “I don’t want to become someone else because of the money.”
His expression gentled. “There it is. Do you think I’m so terrible?”
“Of course not, but…”
He raised his eyebrows, a hint of shock on his face. “But? Did you seriously end
