Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 143

Chp 143: Deep Water.

Aurelia’s POV

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The horse yard was bigger than any I had ever seen, a wide green bowl of land surrounded by black mountains, and in the middle of it Kaelen sat a horse the colour of storm clouds.

He saw me at the fence and grinned.

“You came.” He walked the horse towards me, easy, one hand loose on the reins. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Sonia said fresh air. She didn’t mention the horse.”

“The horse is the fresh air.” He swung down smoothly, all six and a half feet of him landing light as a cat. Up close he was too much, too warm, the wild pine and snow of him rolling off his skin. “Come. I’ll teach you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I have never been on a horse in my life, Kaelen. I am not starting on the side of a mountain.”

“Then it’s long past time.” Before I could argue he closed the space between us. “Don’t move.”

“What are you…”

His hands closed on my waist.

He lifted me like I weighed nothing at all, up and onto the horse, and the ground dropped away and I grabbed a fistful of mane and a small undignified sound came out of me.

“I’ve got you,” he said. And then he was up behind me, one smooth pull, and there was no space left between

us at all.

His chest against my back. His thighs bracketing mine. One huge arm banded across my middle, holding me to him like he had done it a thousand times, his breath hot against my ear.

“Breathe, little thing. He can feel you shaking. Breathe, and he will settle.”

“This is not…”

“Breathe.”

I breathed. And the horse settled.

“There,” he whispered, and I felt the word more than heard it, low in his chest against my back. “You see. Your body still knows how to trust something. It has only forgotten it is allowed to.”

“You are very sure of yourself for a man I have met three times.”

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16:51 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

“I’m sure of you.” His arm tightened, just slightly, just enough. “That’s a different thing.”

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I sat locked against a man who wasn’t my husband, feeling his heartbeat come through my spine, and I told myself that the heat crawling up my neck was just fear.

We rode.

He kept me caged in his arms the whole way, whispering low things to the horse and lower things to me, and the mountains opened around us, and I hated how good it felt.

I hadn’t felt good in a long, long time. I had forgotten what it did to a body.

“You are quiet,” he said against my hair. “Good quiet, this time. Not the running kind.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

I felt him smile. I didn’t have to see it to know.

We stopped at a spring. Not a garden fountain. A wide clear pool cupped in old stone at the foot of the mountains, the water gone green and gold where the light struck the bottom, steam curling off it into the cold. air.

He slid down first, then reached up and lifted me after, and his hands stayed at my waist one beat too long.

“Swim with me,” he said.

“It’s freezing.”

“It’s warm. It comes up warm from under the mountain.” His mouth curved. “Swim with me, Aurelia.”

“No.” I stepped back. “I am married, and I am cold, and I am not swimming with you.”

“Suit yourself.”

And then, calm as you please, he reached back and pulled his shirt off over his head.

I immediately shut my eyes.

I actually shut my eyes, like a girl, heat flooding my whole face, listening to more clothing hit the stone and despising myself for the picture my mind kept imagining.

“You can open your eyes,” he said, laughing. “I’m decent enough. Barely.”

I opened them.

I shouldn’t have. He stood at the edge of the spring in nothing but the low light and the rising steam, all scarred golden muscle and that wild grin, staring at me stare at him, and my mouth went dry as bone.

“See something you like, little thing?”

16:51 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

“I see a man very impressed with himself,” I managed.

He laughed, delighted, and my traitor heart turned clean over in my chest.

“You are staring,” he said.

“I am deciding whether to push you in.”

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“You would have to catch me first.” He waded backwards into the steaming water, unhurried, never once looking away from me. “Come in, Aurelia. Just once. Out here there is no husband. No tower. No contract with your name signed under someone else’s plans. Only water, and a sky, and a woman who has forgotten she is allowed to want things.”

“Stop.”

“Make me stop wanting you, then. I have all the time in the world.”

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I didn’t hear the horse come up behind me.

One second I was standing on the edge of the spring with my arms crossed and my dignity mostly intact, and the next the great warm nose of the animal shoved hard between my shoulders, and the world tipped, and I went into the water with a shriek and a graceless splash.

The cold wasn’t cold. He had told the truth. It came up warm, and I came up gasping, soaked to the skin, my hair plastered across my face, and Kaelen was laughing so hard he had to brace his hands on his knees.

“You did that,” I spat, shoving the wet hair out of my eyes.

“I swear on my life I didn’t. He likes you. He was only helping.”

“I’m leaving.” I hauled myself towards the edge, dripping and shaking and angry and something else I refused to name. “I’m going back to the house, and I’m going to…”

Just then a hand closed around my arm.

Not hard. But sure. He had come through the water without a sound, the way big men who are secretly quick always can, and now he stood over me with the steam rising off us both and the laughter gone out of his face, and what replaced it stopped my breath.

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