“Why don’t I show you where we’ll be sleeping?” Saint suggested throatily.

“You’re losing your touch,” she teased, reaching back to comb her fingers into his silky hair. “I’m surprised you haven’t shown me already.”

“The maid needed time to unpack your six suitcases.” He was also teasing, but all Fliss could think was that they weren’t her cases. They might’ve been rose pink where his were black, but they’d been purchased by him and contained clothing he had bought. She’d approved the outfits after being coached on the robust itinerary of appearances and events and the expected dress code for each. One whole case was dedicated to lotions and cosmetics and hair products.

Hand in hand, they climbed the steps back onto the boardwalk. The house came into view in all its dramatic glory, wings reaching out like arms to cradle the glimmering pool.

“This is really beautiful.” She paused, absorbing that this property, along with all those other ones she hadn’t yet seen, would be his one day.

“I prefer my beach house in California.”

She swallowed a semi-hysterical laugh and let him lead her back to the house, then up some stairs to a massive suite decorated in powder blue and silvery white. Fliss took a moment to wander the sitting room with its small dining nook, then peeked onto the balcony with its view of the ocean. The sumptuous bathroom held a claw-footed tub and a shower that could have doubled as a parking garage. The bed was as big as the pool.

Saint came toward her from checking that both doors to the hall were locked, toeing off his shoes along the way, releasing the buttons at his throat as he did.

Her mouth went dry, always. He was so deliberate yet casual in his sexuality.

“This is the junior suite?” she said with a weak smile.

“The main one has separate bedrooms. Not something we’ll ever need, hmm?” He used the back of one crooked finger to caress the edge of her jaw.

Fliss had known he was rich, but this was...impossible. They were impossible.

“What’s wrong?” He tilted her chin up and frowned as he searched her gaze.

She was drowning. Suffocating.

“Nothing,” she lied, offering her lips.

Because, when he covered them, she melted into that different reality where she belonged right here, pressed up against him so tightly she imagined she could feel his chest hairs through the fabric of their shirts.

She was growing bolder, learning what he liked, and slid her hand to the front of his trousers to squeeze him.

Saint grunted and backed her toward the bed, tugging at her clothing as he did.

Moments later, they were naked on the sheets, covers thrown back, kissing passionately. “Be inside me,” she urged, finding the bold, aroused length that brushed her inner thigh. She guided him to her center. “I need to feel you.”

“Careful,” he murmured, caressing her briefly before taking control and sliding the damp tip of his erection against her sensitive inner lips. “You’re not ready yet. Why the rush? We have two hours before we’re expected to make an appearance.”

“I know, but...” Everything would change in a few hours. The gossip sites had cottoned on to their relationship. They’d been photographed going out to dinner and shopping, but now they would be scrutinized up close by his peers—she would.

“Let me make it good for you.” He began running his hands over her body as though learning her anew, until every skin cell was awakened to his touch. Then he followed with the lazy graze of his lips. Damp kisses made flames of yearning lick through her so she was aching with need by the time he tipped her thighs back and settled his mouth against her most sensitive flesh.

When she was quivering with tension and on the point of breaking, he rose over her. Now he surged into her the way she needed. She had the taste of herself on her tongue as he sealed his lips to hers in a ravishing kiss. The first ripples of climax had her moaning into his mouth, twisting in the agony of supreme pleasure. He held her in that state with his superior strength and the slow, powerful plunge of his sex into hers.

This was where she needed to be, encased in the electric excitement of raw lovemaking, connected to him in a way that transcended the physical.

Now she only needed to touch his shoulder and he knew what she wanted. He rolled onto his back, and she sat up to ride the rhythm he set. She pinched his nipple and played her fingers over where they joined, knowing he liked it.

Saint’s lips peeled back, baring his teeth as he fought to hold on to his control. His cheeks were flushed dark with lust. His fingertips would leave bruises where he gripped her hips, matching the ones fading from last night or the time before that.

When the intensity grew too much for her and she closed her eyes and let her head fall back, succumbing to her thunderous orgasm, he arched beneath her, lifting her off the bed as he shouted with his own release.

Fliss slumped weakly upon him in the aftermath, loving the descent almost as much as the pinnacle. She liked feeling his heart pounding against her breast and hearing the rattle of his breath and knowing she’d done that to him. She liked the twitch of him still inside her, slowly relaxing. She liked the lazy way his hands petted her back in such a tender way.

“See?” he murmured. “We even have time for a nap.”

She carefully extricated herself from him and drew the sheet up so it fell between them, forming a small barrier because she had realized what was really bothering her.

People were going to look at her and see not just that she lacked an Ivy League education and wasn’t rich and famous and couldn’t tell a thoroughbred from a pack mule. She could stand that. She didn’t care about them enough to care what they thought of her.

But they would see that this was all she had with Saint. Sex. They hadn’t known each other long enough to even form something that could be called a true friendship, let alone the warmer connection of real lovers.

Actually, it wasn’t even that other people would guess how little she meant to him. It was her. She was realizing that even though he was considerate and generous and gave her such high-voltage orgasms they could power a small country, he didn’t really care about her. Not any more than he would about Willow or a stray kitten they found on the beach. He would look after her and be kind to her, but he wouldn’t give her his heart.

And that hurt.

Because there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

CHAPTER TEN

“THE BELTON-WEBSTERS ARE some of my parents’ oldest friends,” Saint told Fliss two days later, when an older man sent a friendly salute of his rolled program from another box at the track. Saint tipped his straw boater hat in reply. “Walter is on the board at Grayscale. They have a home in Water Mill. I was at Harvard with their eldest son, Kyle. If we don’t see them at lunch, we’ll meet them tonight at their party.”

They were in the shade, but it was hot enough that Saint wanted to unbutton the cream-colored vest he wore with matching trousers over a pale blue shirt and a navy bowtie.

The clubhouse lounge, which his mother bought out every year as a giant flex, was air-conditioned and had an open bar along with the buffet she provided to her carefully curated guest list. It wasn’t enough to have an owner’s box, where a server brought them drinks and snacks on demand and they had a front-row seat to the finish line along with the entertainment between races. He and Fliss also had it to themselves. Norma was currently down at the paddock. Saint’s father wouldn’t turn up until the big race tomorrow.

“That will be nice,” Fliss said with a blank smile, feigning enthusiasm.

He’d been introducing her to people nonstop, first at dinner, then a cocktail party appearance, brunch yesterday, an afternoon garden party and another soiree last night. This was all very rote to him, the faces all slotted into their pigeonholes of usefulness.

Fliss was holding up well. Today she wore yet another perfectly on-point outfit that was sufficiently demure to meet the expected dress code but was also flattering enough to stop traffic. Her pink-and-green floral lace dress hugged her figure and fell to her knees in front, draping longer in the back. The sleeves flared at her elbow, and the neckline plunged enough to make the most of her spectacular chest, which Saint had adorned with a vintage gold necklace he’d chosen for its horseshoe charm. Rather than a hat, she wore her hair in a tight bun wrapped in a pink band. A pair of cats-eye sunglasses and bold fuchsia lipstick completed the look.

Despite the sophistication she projected, she was tense, struggling to smile at each new face. Sometimes he caught her stifling a yawn.

“Dad had an affair with Mrs. Belton-Webster,” he said, leaning closer to confide.

Fliss swung her head around and tipped her sunglasses down to look over them, eyes glimmering with shock.

That woke her up. Saint shrugged.

“They don’t know I know. I figured out that Mom knew about it when they didn’t show up to their daughter’s wedding. It’s all water under the bridge now. I think one of the reasons Mom stayed with Dad was because she was more afraid of losing that friendship than him. Or her place in all of this.” He used his chin to gesture to the racetrack. “You’ll keep all of that to yourself.”

“Of course.” She sipped the straw of her mint-julep mocktail. “Why did you tell me if you thought I would repeat it?”

“You seemed bored.” And he’d never had a confidante to tell. He’d had to let things like that fester inside himself, trying to work out what to do, how to react and when to let it go because his parents had.

“I’m not bored. I’ve just given up on trying to keep it all straight. I mean, I can’t get to know every person and every horse. You seem to have friends everywhere, though. You came here often growing up? I don’t mean the track. The beach house.”