Free Bartered Bride: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 3 by Ava Lore Page A

us are lucky enough to marry money.”
    “Out!”
    She laughed as she exited my apartment and closed the door behind her, leaving behind the smell of cigarette smoke and her thick, heavy perfume.
    I sat down on my futon and closed my eyes, trying to relax. Usually after I saw Sadie, I felt better about things.
    This time, it didn't work. I still had that gut clenching fear crouching inside me. I sat up and took a few deep breaths and thought about calling my mother. I hadn't spoken to her yet, and I didn't know how to broach the subject of my pending nuptials. She still hadn't told me she was sick, but I could hear it in her weary voice whenever we spoke. The distance between us seemed to have yawned into a chasm almost overnight. Ever since my father showed up at my door, I hadn't been able to talk to her like I usually did, even though we had always talked, ever since I was a little girl. My father's constant betrayals had pushed us together, and she was my dearest confidant—or at least she had been.
    Now she didn't even know I was getting married, and I found I didn't want her to know until the last second. Anton Waters was a rich jackass, just like my father. In fact, he was even more of a rich jackass. I couldn't bear the thought of her thinking I was making the same mistake she had—she was the one who had told me to flee our toxic household and not look back—and I couldn't even tell her that I was the one paying for her chemo treatments, since she didn't want me to know about them...
    Shit. This was all my father's doing. He had a knack for screwing everyone else up just by existing. If he hadn't been such a shitty person none of this would be a problem.
    I rubbed my hand over my face and sighed, glancing at my phone. Only about thirty minutes until I was due out front for the car and I hadn't even had a shower yet. I knew I should get up, but I couldn't. I sat on my futon for probably ten more minutes before I finally found the motivation to stand up, and then I had to rush through a shower and makeup before throwing on clothes—less theatrical than my prostitute get-up I'd tried over lunch three days ago—and clomping downstairs to find the car already waiting for me and Zachary standing by the back seat, looking bored.
    “Sorry,” I said. He just smiled and opened the back door for me.
    Anton Waters was already inside.
    I hadn't seen him since he went down on me in the restaurant where we'd met to discuss our prenuptial contract. In persuading me to sign it, he'd ducked under the table and, hidden by the table cloth, fucked me with his tongue and fingers, wringing an orgasm from me that had been so powerful I'd screamed in front of everyone, even our waitress. The poor girl had been unable to look at me for the rest of the lunch, which Waters had insisted on eating through to the last course while I sat there, humiliated and horny.
    Yeah. Horny.
    That was the problem. I'd liked it just as much as I'd hated it. Who knew I was such a freak? Not me, and certainly not any of the boyfriends I'd had. Maybe they had been the boring ones.
    And now Waters sat in the back seat of the car, reading something on a tablet and completely ignoring me. Fear and excitement danced together in my chest, whirling around and around until I couldn't tell one from the other. Lifting my chin, I clambered inside. Zachary shut the door after me, and I crammed myself in the corner, half-fearing, half-hoping Waters would slip across the seat to join me.
    He didn't.
    In fact, he didn't even speak to me. He was too busy frowning at the iPad in front of him, and when I dared to peek at it I found it was full of small type. Some report or other.
    Ugh. Just like my father, though he'd dragged his briefcase and his stupid Wall Street Journal around with him all the time—when he'd bothered to be home, that is. Even when he was home with my mother and me, he wasn't really.
    What a douchebag. And here I was, about to marry someone just like