Beautiful Enemy (The Enemies Trilogy Book 1)

by Piper Lawson

  Tonight, I dress for the occasion. A cropped white top. A skirt that shows off my legs. The platform wedges Harrison got me. I try my hair a few different ways before twisting it up into buns on my head.

  I look like a warrior, and maybe I am one.

  It’s weird how it doesn’t feel as if Harrison and I are on opposite sides since he went on the trip to clean up his clubs in person.

  Tonight, we both want the same thing.

  La Mer.

  “Come on, Rae,” Ash hollers from the other side of my door.

  “Bossy, considering I invited you,” I call back.

  Harrison had frowned over his coffee when I informed him I’d called his brother, but he’ll get over it.

  If I’m being honest, it feels safer to have Ash there.

  The door opens without my permission, and Ash surveys me.

  “Jesus,” the younger King says before I can protest.

  I plant a hand on my hip. “Good Jesus or bad Jesus?”

  “There’s one Jesus,” Ash says solemnly. “And he’s always good.”

  I laugh as I follow him downstairs. “Wait. Where’s your brother?”

  “He said he’d meet us there. He’s doing business. And it’s a good thing because if he walked in on you looking like this, I’d be going to La Mer alone.”

  I glance down at my outfit. It’s more skin than I’d normally show but nothing compared to some of the outfits that grace Ibiza’s clubs every night, including Debajo.

  “It’s just me, Ash.”

  “You don’t understand. When Harry sees something he wants, it’s game over. He’s trying to stay away, but the fact that he can’t have you is killing him. It makes for solid entertainment.”

  I turn that over. As thrilling as it feels to be the object of Harrison’s interest, we can’t pursue it. Giving in to him feels like giving in to something bigger. A man like that casts a long shadow, and it’s only beginning to feel as if I’m getting myself back after the hellish year I’ve had.

  I won’t risk losing myself in him.

  Even for a night I’ve found myself fantasizing about more than once.

  Even if our moments of connection feel so fucking real.

  “Do you think he’ll ever trust someone again?” I hear myself ask. “After Eva, I mean.”

  “I hope so.”

  Toro drives us to the club, checking on us from the front with eyes crinkling at the corners. When we pull up, the door opens from the outside, and a hand extends to take mine.

  I shift out of the car and look up.

  My heart stops.

  Harrison King is breathtaking in chino shorts and a midnight-blue linen shirt, and I press my lips together as he surveys me.

  “You dressed down,” I say.

  “A necessary evil to be inconspicuous.” He cuts a look at Ash, who’s rounding the car with a shrug. “You, on the other hand, barely dressed at all.”

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  “You wore this for me?”

  “That’s a big leap from ‘I thought you’d like it’. Let’s not go crazy.”

  His attention pins me in place for a heartbeat, two, before the passing crowd makes me notice the doors of the club are around the corner.

  “I asked Toro to drop you beyond where we might be spotted,” Harrison supplies, refocusing on our surroundings.

  “And I told the guys from the club I’d meet them inside,” Ash adds.

  “Why do you want this club so badly?” I ask Harrison as I take careful steps along the sidewalk, sneaking another look at him. I’ve seen him in a tux, a suit, and almost naked. The casual clothes might be my favorite.

  “La Mer would be the crown jewel in my collection.”

  I groan. “What is it with you Brits and your crown jewels?”

  He ignores me. “Mischa wants it. I want to take it away from him.”

  “All because of what happened with your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” Ash says at the same time, glancing over his shoulder. “Don’t pretend it didn’t start sooner.” His gaze drops to Harrison’s chest so fast I almost miss it.

  “Mischa has a reputation,” Harrison says. “People who disagree with him get silenced.”

  “So, you’re the good guy.”

  He frowns. “Let’s say it’s good you called me out on my club’s security and not Mischa’s, or we wouldn’t be here talking.”

  The idea of a person more fucked up than Harrison, someone who’d stop at nothing to get what he wants, is enough to make me shiver.

  We approach the end of the huge line, and I reach for my wallet. “I have Christian’s card.”

  Harrison tucks it back in my bag, tugging me by the elbow toward a back door. “We’re not letting Christian know we’re here.”

  At the door, Harrison shakes hands with a security guy who lets us inside. Ash leading the way, Harrison at my side with his hand on my back, we head through a dark tunnel, only the music at the other end guiding us.

  “Did you fuck your hand to my new song last night?” I ask conversationally. He mentioned liking it, so I emailed it to him in the early hours of this morning. There was no response except an automatic receipt, which means he opened it.

  His arm flexes around my waist. “Did you lie awake all night thinking about it?”

  I catch a toe on the ground and nearly trip.

  The idea of Harrison King thinking of me while he unfastens his dress pants and shoves down the zipper is insanely sexy. His heavy breathing, roughened with pleasure and anticipation as he stroked the hard length of his cock. The flex of his muscles, the way he’d seek out his own brutal pulls as he cursed me.

  I wonder how it would feel to do it myself. To wrap my hand around him and watch his eyes narrow to slits. To reduce him to curses, then no words at all.

  Too soon, we’re in the open-air club, and the impossible tension slips a few notches.

  I’m awestruck by my surroundings. It’s an ode to the stars. A spectacular amphitheater built for revellers.

  The crowd is young and beautiful and ready for the release this place promises.

  “If you buy it, you’ll need the best DJs,” I comment, breathless.

  “I’m not concerned. It’s not only the crowd that lines up for this place.”

  “I’ve wanted to play here forever,” I admit, soaking it all in. “To hear my songs, to feel them through the ground, like they’re moving the earth.” I cut him a teasing look. “If you buy it, you’ll let me play, right?”

  “La Mer is the biggest stage in the world.” His brows lift, and I feel my smile fade.

  Hurt slices at me, cutting deeper than I thought this man could cut me.

  “And you don’t think I’m good enough.”

  He was by my side as I breathed new life into his club, and despite his sparse praise, it felt as if he was cheering me on. That we were in this journey together.

  Harrison shakes his head as if I’m being unreasonable. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah, you did.” I twist away from his grip and slip into the throng of people.

  Watching the booth, envy settles into my gut like a throbbing mass. The man spinning tonight is Maxx, a DJ I met at Coachella. He has a reputation for being a dick to new talent, especially women.

  The thing is he’s not alone. Of Billboard’s top one hundred DJs in the world, only a handful are women. None of the top ten.

  I want to make that list, not only because that list determines who gets booked and who makes bank.

  Women have always been involved in music, but when it comes to recognition and compensation, it’s still a man’s world.

  I try to forget the hurt and dance with Ash and his friends while Harrison’s off doing whatever he has planned.

  A guy from Ash’s crew brushes up behind me. He’s fit and attractive, but when he moves closer, reaching out to draw me against him, I pull back. “I can’t.”

  He shrugs and
returns to dancing.

  I’m in the middle of the biggest club in the world, crushed because a rich, entitled man I have no reason to care for doesn’t believe in me.

  It’s not possible to hate someone and like them at the same time.

  Is it?

  I suppose I’ve had moments of hating myself over the years, for things I’ve done. For things others have done to me, and how I responded to them.

  But we all fall down sometimes.

  What kept me above the water when it felt like I was being dragged under was looking for the good things in myself. The things worth believing in, no matter how small or faint or seemingly irrelevant.

  Even when it was hard.

  Especially when it was hard.

  The next time the song transitions, everything changes.

  The first chords are familiar.

  More than familiar. I feel them in my body before I hear them.

  I spin and latch onto Ash, who’s dancing with a few other guys, by the front of his shirt.

  “Was this you?” I demand, but Ash shakes his head.

  I stumble back, searching for Harrison. Pushing through the crowd, I scan the sea of faces and bodies. It’s an impossible throng, but I wade through anyway, tripping over my shoes until strong arms grab me at the edge of the dance floor.

  I look up to find Harrison King looming over me, cool and breathtakingly beautiful.

  “It’s my song,” I shout, my heart thudding against my ribs.

  I squeeze my eyes closed, imagining me playing this song from the stage.

  As much as I’ve grown to care about Debajo, mixing at La Mer would make my career. Hearing my song in the place cements the possibility that it can happen.

  That it will.

  When I blink my eyes open again, he’s closer than before. He smells like man and the ocean, and in these clothes, he could be a gorgeous tourist instead of the CEO he is.

  We’re in the middle of a huge crowd, and I’ve never felt more powerful or vulnerable with him than I do in this moment.

  I tilt my head back to stare up at the sky.

  His hands find my waist when I threaten to tip over from the giddiness.

  I straighten with his help, his face inches from mine.

  Those eyes are hot, his mouth parted.

  I’m at the world’s biggest party, and all I see is Harrison, filling my vision.

  “This was you,” I accuse. My fingertips dig into his corded biceps, the tense muscles holding me up.

  “You fucking—”

  He shuts me up with his mouth.

  He’s warm and hard, delicious and sharp. His heat and scent wrap around me.

  There’s a desperate roughness under the surface. It’s less like kissing than an attack, but an unplanned one by a skilled fighter.

  The feel of him has me tingling, every nerve ending alive and throbbing. His hard body is pressed to mine, his heart hammering faster than the beat surrounding us—the one I made myself.

  His body is a wall of masculinity determined to make me feel every inch of him.

  And there are a lot of inches. The hardness grinding against my stomach would steal my breath if his kiss hadn’t already.

  The music pulses around us, the crowd throbbing.

  I’m throbbing.

  What he says about power is true—I feel his, and it’s pure temptation even before his touch strokes up my thighs, his hand gripping my ass to fit me against him.

  My spinning head can’t tell if it’s seconds or minutes later when he pulls back an inch, eyes dark as the sky.

  “You’re welcome,” he whispers against my mouth before letting me go and disappearing back into the crowd.

  14

  Harrison

  I’ll never admit it to anyone, but sometimes I’m a fucking idiot.

  Still, I’m never a fucking idiot two days in a row.

  I rise early and punish my body with a hard workout before showering and selecting a suit. It’s nearly ten when I meet Toro at the front of the villa for the drive to Christian’s house.

  “Pleasant evening?” he asks, meeting my gaze in the mirror.

  “Interesting.”

  Getting Rae’s song played last night at La Mer wasn’t planned, but then she walked away from me, looking gutted.

  I believe in her, but I’m practical too. The business part of my brain reminded me La Mer has its pick of the world’s top DJs regardless of who owns it.

  I didn’t immediately think I could use that platform to help her become one of those DJs.

  And she will be one.

  The possibility that she needed to hear that had never occurred to me because she’s so damn independent.

  I had to fix it.

  I’m supposed to want to put things right in my business, and my life. It matters more than anything. Except…

  All I could think about last night was proving myself to Rae. Torn between sweeping her off her feet and laying whatever I have at them.

  So, I grabbed her and did what I’ve been thinking about for fucking weeks.

  Kissing her on the dance floor wasn’t planned, but when I saw her cutting through the crowd, searching me out, a beast unfurled inside me. One that wanted to protect her. To make sure nothing ever hurt her the way I had.

  My reward was the single hottest kiss of my life.

  I want her under me. Stripped down to nothing so she can’t hide behind a costume or anything else. It’s all I can think about.

  She’s infiltrated my life, and I have no one to blame but myself. I brought her here, was hellbent on punishing her and reclaiming what she’d cost me.

  Instead, she’s turned me inside out.

  She’s a siren with a sound system and the power to move everyone she can reach. And even though she hasn’t spilled her problems at my feet, I see her pain as plainly as if she had.

  The woman lives out of a single suitcase, has a love-hate relationship with the bottle of pills she hasn’t touched since I replaced them, and creates extraordinary music.

  But I have to keep the part of me that’s obsessed with Raegan Madani in check this morning because we’re back to business and Brioni.

  “Well, if you have more interesting evenings planned, I hope you will celebrate her birthday,” Toro says.

  “Her birthday?” I echo.

  “This weekend.”

  I bite my tongue before saying what comes to mind. What the fuck do you get the woman you can’t get out of your head when you have no business thinking about her?

  We’re not dating. At worst, she’s my hostage. At best, my employee.

  Except neither of those labels feels adequate to describe what’s happening between us.

  I want her in my bed. But more than that, I want to do something for her, something she can’t do for herself.

  I can’t get her what I’d get any other woman, or she’ll look at me as if I’ve missed the obvious, the way she did when I bought her the espresso machine.

  When we pull up to the villa, I shift out of the car and fasten my jacket, thanking Toro before I take the steps two at a time.

  My intention is to conclude this deal today. Of course, the signing will come later, but Christian is a man of his word. He won’t reverse once we shake on it.

  The door is opened by a young woman with light-brown hair and a familiar bone structure. “Mr. King. Please come in.” Her light French accent matches Christian’s.

  She shows me to a study where the man in question is watching a baseball game.

  “Americans. I will never understand them and their sports,” he muses.

  “But you want to enough to watch a twelve-hour-old Yankees game.”

  “Don’t tell me the winner.” He grins. “Perhaps I will need a house there when I retire.”

  He could buy a dozen. More, if he wanted.

  He adds, “My daughter has taken a liking to you.”

  I glance toward the now-closed doors, remembering the woman who let
me in. “That’s very flattering.”

  Christian makes an espresso from the machine in the corner and holds it out. I take the coffee as he makes another.

  “As uncivilized as it is, let’s be direct,” I say. “My interest in the club remains unchanged.”

  “I’m sure it does.” He smirks.

  “Your club is unquestionably one of the best. But it is not without weaknesses.” I rhyme off a list of things I observed last night, things he must know about.

  His smile evaporates, leaving a deep frown.

  “All of these things would lower its market value. But I’m prepared to pay full price.”

  “How gracious of you.” His tone drips frost. “Just because you have an idea of what the club needs to be does not mean others share it. You bring it under your empire, it will become a commodity like the others.”

  “I will not commoditize your venue, Christian. It’s a cathedral.”

  I think of Rae’s comments about me being unreasonable and try a new approach. “You knew my parents. You trusted one another, even worked together on a few deals. I’m my father’s son, and you can trust me to take care of your legacy.”

  Christian nods toward two armchairs framing a window, and we each claim one. “On the last point, I agree.”

  My hands tighten on the overstuffed chair. “So, you’ll sell me La Mer.”

  He takes a sip of his drink—the slowest fucking sip I’ve ever seen. “Why don’t you show my daughter the city first? After, we can talk.”

  A dawning sense of horror starts at my toes, creeps up my spine, and finishes on a long inhale. He wants me to take his daughter out?

  “…finishing her third year of university,” he’s saying. “Sylvie hasn’t spent time here since she was a child.”

  She still is one.

  There are two reasons a woman would want me, and only one of which her father would approve of—my money.

  I’m not looking to saddle myself with a charge—even if it means landing the property I’ve coveted for as long as I can remember.

  My refusal has nothing to do with the face of another woman occupying altogether too much space in my brain. One who’s also too young for me but who elicits an entirely different reaction at the thought of being saddled with her.