I cross the room and the foyer to enter the bathroom, which is also all gray with white accents. Once I toss the condom into the trashcan, I pull my pants on commando style and lean on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, and when I see my father in the image I look away; a thought I haven’t had for years. A symptom of being here, I despise this place but I can’t leave. I won’t leave, not without Harper and I’m in this with eyes wide open and it doesn’t seem to matter.
She’s dangerous in ways she doesn’t mean to be. She opens the door to this family, to the hate, on both sides. I’ve put her in the middle of that hate and she’s put me in the middle of that hate. But it has to be this way because she needs out. I’m her way out.
I exit the bathroom and glance up the stairs where her bedroom must be located, where I plan to spend the night. Seeking her out, to tell her just that, I enter the living room to find her missing. “Harper?”
“I’m right here,” she calls out, walking down the stairs, in a pair of black sweats and a pink T-shirt, her nipples that were just in my hands, puckering against the thin cloth. “I just couldn’t put those work clothes back on.”
I step to the bottom of the stairwell and when she reaches the last step, I wrap my arm around her and pull her to me. “I like you like this.”
“Grunge princess?” she teases.
“Natural,” I say. “I like you natural. Casual”
“Like you in your jeans and T-shirt at the office? That was a ‘fuck you’ to your father and brother, right?”
“I have no need to impress them,” I say, “but you are another story.”
“You impress me most naked,” she teases.
“Is that right?”
“Yes. Definitely right.” She takes my hand and starts walking backward. “I’m going to feed you now, but I have a condition.”
“Another orgasm?”
She blushes a pretty pink that defies her comment about liking me naked. “Orgasms are always good,” she says, releasing me as we enter the kitchen, “but I want you to tell me what all of your ink means.”
“My ink,” I repeat, when I’d expected her to want to know about my money, my success. Or even how I’m going to deal with Kingston. “That’s what you want to know about me?”
“Yes,” she says grabbing one of the takeout bags. “That’s what I want to know about you. Because every choice you made to ink your body has to tell a story.”
“It’s the story of my life, sweetheart,” I say, helping her unpack the food. “You’re right about that.”
“How old were you when you got your first tattoo?” she asks. “And before you answer, you’re okay with me popping these in the microwave, right?”
“Of course,” I answer, sitting down on a gray leather barstool. “And eighteen,” I say, replying to her first question. I watch her pop one of the takeout containers in to warm. “It’s a stopwatch that’s still on my right forearm in the middle of more ink.” I turn my arm and show her. “Pissed off my father which only made me like it more.”
“And it means what to you.”
“All things come in their own time. And that statement has meant many things to me in my life.” My eyes meet Harper’s. “Like us, sweetheart. It wasn’t our time six years ago. It is now.”
“All things come in their own time,” she repeats softly, her gaze sliding over both of my arms. “You only had one sleeve when I met you six years ago.”
“A lot has happened in six years.”
“For you,” she says. “I know it has.”
“Not for you?”
“I feel like I’ve done nothing but fight the same battle.” She gives a choked laugh. “You know that saying. The definition of stupid or insanity or whatever it is, is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. You’re right. Six years was too long.” Pain stabs through her eyes but the microwave beeps and gives her an excuse to cut her stare. She looks away and pulls the first tray out, checking it and then replacing it with the second.
“This one is ready,” she says, walking to set it in front of me.
I drag her to me, between my legs, not about to let her comments go unanswered. “You didn’t make a mistake. There were times when I thought I left too soon and too easily.”
“You didn’t. You would never have been accepted.”
“I know that,” I say. “I knew that at the party. I didn’t know it during some of those years in the SEALs.”
“Yes, well as you said, six years makes me a damn slow learner.”
“I never said that and it’s clear that you stayed for your mother.” The microwave goes off again. “How about some of that wine?” I ask. “It’ll take the edge off.”
“Yes,” she agrees, “that would be good right about now.”
“Where are the glasses?”
“Cabinet by the sink to the left.”
I cup her head and kiss her and between the two of us, we sip wine and finish preparing the meal. This isn’t a familiar thing for me. I don’t do relationships. It’s not what I want and yet, with Harper I enjoy this time with her and the very domestic act of preparing a meal together, even a warmed-up meal, is somehow more intimate than being naked on the couch earlier.
“It’s chilly,” she says when we’ve finished all of our prep. “I can turn on the fireplace in the living room if we eat in there.”
A few minutes later we’re settled on the floor in front of her coffee table eating. “My God, I missed this place,” I say, the sauce and pasta coming together perfectly.
“It’s really wonderful,” she says. “I have a lot of favorite places around the area. North is one of the few places that has been here since you were here.”
We sit and chat about the neighborhood until we’re both done with our food. As we sit back and turn toward each other, she reaches out and catches my arm, tracing the rows of numbers randomly placed between a clock and a skull with an anchor.
“What do the numbers mean?”
“Numbers are how I process everything. If I’m thinking about anything, anything at all, there are numbers in my head.”
“Even me?”
“Yes. Even you. It’s a part of my life in all ways. It’s how I make money. It’s how I negotiate. It’s how I brush my damn teeth. It’s how I saw mission paths in the SEALs that no one else saw.”
“SEAL Team Six,” she says, running her finger over the skull and anchor before looking up at me again. “That’s intense. You saw blood and death. I’m sure you had to take lives.”
I cover her hand where it rests on my tattoo, and I don’t even think about denying who I am. I was done with that a decade ago. “Is that a problem for you?”
“Of course not. You’re a hero. I just hate that your family drove you to that life. You could have died. You have to have baggage from it.”
“Less than you might think,” I say. “I compartmentalize extremely well.”
“I don’t,” she says. “I’m pretty all-in emotionally when I’m in. You should know that about me.”
All in.
I want her all in.
I lean in closer, my hand on her cheek. “I want you all in.”
Her hand covers mine on her face. “Until you leave again.”
“Let me clarify what I just said. Yes, I shut people and things off easily, but not you. Never you.”
“I didn’t see you for six years, Eric.”
“I told you. I thought of you often.”
“As one of them.”
“As the woman who wouldn’t just fucking get out my head.”
She pulls back. “Well, you wouldn’t fucking get out of my head either.”
“But you didn’t come to me, did you?”
“You left in a way that made it clear you were done with me.”
I lean back and hold out my right forearm, running a finger along a line of numbers with a crown at the end of it. “Do y
ou know what that is?”
She sucks in a breath at the crown and covers it with her hand. “Is it bad? Is it something bad about me?”
“It says Princess in the numbers that correlate to the alphabet. I added it two full years after our night together.”
“You tattooed the nickname you gave me on your body?”
“Yes, princess, I did. Now do you believe that I didn’t forget about you?” I tangle my fingers into her hair and her hand settles on my chest. “Now isn’t like the past. You know that, right? I didn’t come here to walk away. Not from you.”
“Eric,” she whispers and I lean in to kiss her right as the doorbell rings, followed by pounding on the door. “Open up, Harper!”
At the sound of Isaac’s voice, my jaw sets hard and Harper’s eyes go wide. “This can’t be good,” she says, launching herself to her feet.
I’m standing with her by the time she’s fully straightened. “Relax sweetheart,” I say, my hands settling on her arm, “He’s a gnat that needs to be swiped. Nothing more. I’ll handle my brother.” I start to turn away and Harper grabs my arm.
“Wait,” she says, pulling me around to face her. “Let me talk to him. Obviously my mother told him you’re here. He’s going to make a big deal out of this. I can shut it down.”
I drag her to me. “You mean deny we’re together?”
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Good. Because we’re together now. That means we don’t hide. And if that makes the Kingstons uncomfortable, fuck them. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” she whispers. “You’re right. Fuck them.”
“Then I’ll handle Isaac, sweetheart. No one has my brother’s number like I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Eric
“Oh no,” Harper says, catching my arm as I try to leave her to answer the door again. “I’m fine with Isaac knowing about us,” she says when I turn back to her, “but you’re shirtless and commando with your pants unzipped. That screams ‘we’re fucking’ not ‘we’re together.’ I draw the line there.”
I cup her face and step into her. “Anyone in the same room with us for sixty seconds knows we’re fucking, sweetheart.”
“Don’t taunt him with me. I don’t like that. I don’t want to feel like a weapon between two brothers, not even in a war I invited you into.”
“I don’t like how that sounds,” I say, catching her hips and walking her to me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Not now. Later. Right now, we have to deal with him so please, zip your pants and put on a shirt before you walk to the door.”
I reach down and zip my pants before scooping up my shirt, my eyes never leaving her face. “You’re going to explain whatever that was to me.”
“I will,” she promises. “I’ll tell you.”
“Yes, you will, princess.”
Her eyes go wide and flare with anger that I don’t stay to answer. Not when Isaac is shouting at the door again and pounding while holding a finger on the bell. “Jesus,” I murmur, running a hand through my hair. “His degree of ridiculousness obviously hasn’t changed.” I take off for the door and this time Harper lets me go.
The ring and knock cycle has started again by the time I get there, along with another shout of, “I know you’re in there, Harper! Damn it, open up.”
I unlock the lock, open the door, and greet my brother, who’s wearing a trench coat over the same three-piece suit he had on today that no doubt cost thousands. It also, from what I can tell, comes with a stick up his ass. “You’re here for me, right?” I ask. “Here I am.” I step forward, crowding him and forcing him onto the porch.
“I’m here for Harper,” he says, unbuttoning his jacket and settling his hands on his hips.
After the exchange I just had with her, those words punch me in all the wrong ways. “To warn her away from me,” I state, disliking the obvious history I don’t know and Walker Security didn’t tell me about in advance.
“Her mother is worried about her.”
My lips quirk. “And you’re the superhero here to pretend to save her while saving yourself? How’d that superhero routine work for you in the past?”
“There’s nothing here for you.”
“We both know that’s not true. We both know that’s never been true.”
“You don’t need the money. You want what no bastard deserves and you’re using her and her ridiculous paranoia. She’s your damn stepsister and you’re fucking her, you sick fuck.”
I smirk, unaffected by the ridiculous remark meant to get under my skin. He stopped getting under my skin about a year into this family. The problem for him is that’s when I started getting under his skin. “Harper and I aren’t blood,” I say, “but we are, and we both know that’s why she doesn’t scare you, but I do.” I step closer to him, damn near bringing us toe to toe. “And you should be afraid because we both know you’re hiding something and we both know how good I am at finding out your secrets.” It’s a past that he can’t run from, a past I don’t want to run from. But then why wouldn’t I? I’d fast-tracked to law school and joined him there. He’d hated it. He’d wanted an edge. He fucked our law professor to try to destroy me. He almost succeeded, but I one-upped him.
“I could have ended you.”
“You should have done it while you could because that ship has sailed. Walk away, Eric. You don’t know what pot you’re stirring.”
“But I want to and I will.”
“I don’t care about your fortune or the Bennett Empire behind you. Walk deeper into this and you might not walk away in one piece.”
I arch a brow. “You’re threatening me?”
“I don’t need to threaten you. I’m stating a fact. Consider this a brotherly warning. The only one you’ll receive. Get away from her before you take her down with you and all of us for that matter.” He pokes a finger at my chest and that’s one thing Isaac doesn’t do. He doesn’t get physical. “Go home now.” He glares at me, but in the depth of his eyes, I see fear, the kind of fear I’ve seen in men’s eyes seconds before they ended up dead. He turns and walks down the stairs, leaving every instinct I own saying this is bigger than I thought it was. Isaac is into something he can’t get out of and it’s time I meet with my father and find out if he’s in it, too.
I walk to the railing to ensure Isaac leaves, a muscle in my jaw ticcing as I watch him shut himself inside his silver BMW. My grip tightens on the wood beneath my palms with a mental replay of his words: I’m here for Harper. Get away from her before you take her down with you and all of us for that matter. Isaac backs out of the driveway and I don’t move until he’s out of sight, my certainty that Harper is now ten feet deep in something that smells dirty and dangerous, absolute.
I turn back toward the house, an icy gust of wind rushing over me. It’s nothing compared to the cold I’ve experienced in the past, during those years in the SEALs, and in too many ways, the year of my mother’s death, ending in her suicide. Gigi had been the last one to see her, the last Kingston to taunt her. Nothing about that has ever felt right to me, which is exactly why Harper’s alignment with Gigi will never be a comfortable one. I’ve accepted her reasoning, but her fucking Isaac and then me in whatever order that I might have occurred, would not be.
I’m about to open the door, but at the same moment it flies open and Harper is standing there. “What happened?” she asks.
I advance on her, shut the door and lock it and then turn her to press her against it. “Did you fuck him?”
“No,” she says. “I didn’t fuck him. He tried. I turned him down. He’s treated me like shit ever since.”
“Then why protect him?”
“Protect him?” she asks, her tone incredulous. “I didn’t protect him. I protected me and you. He's vicious. He lashes out. He competes with you and I'm not interested in being a pawn. And come on, Eric, you didn’t want me to be a pawn to
Gigi. But you’re okay with using us to taunt him?”
“If he’s uneasy, he makes mistakes. I’ll catch him making those mistakes. I’ll get you out of this.”
“It’s more than that and you know it. You want to hurt this family.”
“Yes. I do. And I could have a thousand times over. Wanting and doing are two different things.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I look skyward, that question one I’ve asked myself over and over and come back to one place. I look at her and go there now. “Because my mother didn’t want that. She protected them when they destroyed her. It was in the letter she left me. Which is exactly why I eventually left for the SEALs. I could have ruined Isaac. I wanted to. The temptation was too great. I had to leave. Every time I’m here, I have to leave. That’s why I don’t come here, but I came for you.” My eyes meet hers. “The idea of you fucking him and fucking me is not a good one.”
“I told you—no, I was never with Isaac.” Her hand settles on my chest, that small touch burning through my body, she burns through me. “I didn’t fuck him. I never wanted to fuck him and he hates me for it. Like you hate me. Princess. Already I’m her again and I can’t be her.” She shoves on my chest and tries to move away. “Let go.”
Let go.
I should. I could. I’d be smart to do just that, but that’s not going to happen. I’m not letting her go. I’m not going to walk away, and that might end up being the worst thing that ever happened to this family.
I tangle fingers into her hair and stare down at her. “I don’t hate you. I’m obsessed with you.”
“You can still hate me and be obsessed with me.”
I kiss her, my tongue licking and exploring, looking for lies that I don’t find. There’s just a moment of resistance, then her sweet, soft submission, her soft curves melting against mine, her desire moaning from her lips. I want her submission. I want her desire. I want more than I should when I know I’m headed down a deep, dark rabbit hole, but Isaac was wrong. I won’t be the death of her, but she might be the death of him because she’s why I’m staying. She’s why my mother’s letter can’t save him this time.
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