His irresistible bride

Heather's POV:

I was extremely happy.

With my limbs languidly splayed across the king-sized bed, and my nether regions still throbbing from the intense intimacy it just experienced with the man taking his bath the adjacent room, I couldn't help but feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

It wasn't every woman out there that could boast of catching the fancy of one of the nation's finest, youngest, richest and most endowed eligible bachelors, not to talk of having a conversation with him. Yet, here I was in Asher Welty's bed, naked—still recovering from a recent dance of passion, in his house.

No other woman on the surface of earth had that privilege but me.

It didn't matter that all of this was a super secret affair, or the fact that the terms of our little tryst were defined by him and the amount he insisted on paying to keep it going. What mattered was the exclusivity we had to each other's body. For almost three years, Asher's body had been mine alone and vice versa. It wasn't like I ever dreamed of being with anyone else besides him; he made me lose interest in other men since the first night we ever shared.

It was funny, how fate, which normally dealt blows that made my life a sick joke, decided to smile on me at the one of my darkest points; my mom had been terminally ill when I graduated from college, and while all her savings had gone into giving me a quality education, no one was willing to hire a designer with no work experience. I found myself stranded, broke and desperate to save the life of my mother–the only constant that remained in my life after the gruesome death of my dad.

My desperation had conditioned me, even though it took the death of every moral construct for me to do so, into being a stripper at an elite-only nightclub. Asher and I had met there, in a storybook manner if I might add; I was almost molested by a couple of spoiled children of moneybags and Asher had swopped in to save me. I couldn't say for sure if it was the instant chemistry that sparked up between us or because of my profuse gratitude that made me give in to his advances that night, but almost three years down the line, I was still so grateful for that that one-night stand that was the genesis of an amazing sexual adventure.

However, as I watched Asher barge into the room with an expression that was hard to read, wearing nothing but a heavy towel lazily wrapped around his lean waist, I couldn’t help but feel like something was off.

First, he had stood me up two months ago when he abruptly left the country. I wanted to ask him what was wrong when he texted me, long hours after his initial order for us to meet up, informing me that I should leave and that he wasn't going to be in town for a while. But I knew from past experience that he was likely to be irked by the question if I asked and would likely rub it in my face that I was neither his wife nor girlfriend, but a paid lover. So I'd held my peace.