The Princess

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  “He got in my head, sweetheart. It doesn’t matter what he said. I listened to him and I reacted rather than asking you questions first. And I regret it. If I hadn’t come back, I tell myself Adam was there and you would have been fine, but just thinking about what could have happened to you guts me.” His tone is guttural. He’s affected. He’s worried. I’m affected and worried. I have questions. I have fears, and not just about the attack, but the attack is what he’s brought to my mind. I’m suddenly back in the dark warehouse, firing that gun.

  “Eric—” The plane starts to move.

  “Buckle up,” he orders. “We’ll talk in the air. We’re flying through a storm the pilot hopes we’ll get past quickly.” He stands up and when he would move away, he leans down and brushes his mouth over my mouth and his lips are warm and wonderful. “No one is going to hurt you,” he promises. “I won’t let that happen. I got you now. You’re with me.” He releases me, and every warm spot he’s created goes cold as he moves to his seat next to me and across the tiny walkway.

  I inhale and replay his words: When I think what could have happened to you. And: No one is going to hurt you.

  Ice slides deep into my already chilled bones, turning them brittle. I can feel myself quaking inside, like some kind of internal tremble, and I can’t seem to breathe. Does he think those men were there to kill me?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Harper

  I grip the arms of my seat as the small private plane lifts off and climbs to the higher altitudes with jolts, jumps, and shakes, with only one thought: Oh God, please don’t let us crash. I’m terrified and not because I’m an amateur flyer. I’m not. I’ve flown. I’ve even flown in bad conditions, but nothing like this, with the plane jerking, violently pulling and pushing, but I can surmise why pretty darn quickly. Pilots don’t take off in conditions like this. Eric paid this one, and I suspect paid him well, to get us off the ground. Considering the conditions, I can only assume that he felt it was far more dangerous to stay on the ground than travel in treacherous weather.

  We jerk violently to the right and I stop analyzing Eric’s reasoning for taking off in this mess. I focus on praying that we survive the powerful gust of wind, tossing us around. The plane seems to hopscotch and my white-knuckled grip tightens right as we jerk sharply left and then drop a good two feet that leaves me gasping.

  Eric reaches over the small aisle and grabs my hand, his touch strong and warm. The minute he tightens his grip on me, I breathe out the air trapped in my lungs. I breathe when I thought I couldn’t. This man has a way of just crawling inside me and settling there. He’s a part of me in ways I have never understood until now. It’s like we haven’t spent all these years apart.

  He rotates his chair to face me when I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be locked down, not rotating. He reaches to the side of my seat, unlocks it, and then rotates me to face him. My seat tries to sway with the bumping of the plane, and he quickly holds onto it while leaning in and locking me back into place. Now we’re closer, and thanks to his long legs, our knees touch, while those blue eyes of his fix on my face. His hands settle on my knees. “I’ve flown through hell and back with a lot less skill controlling the plane. We have a military pilot in control. A man who flew in a combat mission while under heavy fire. He’s good. Really damn good.”

  “Which is why you paid him to take off in really bad weather,” I say and I can’t keep the accusation from my tone.

  “Yes,” he says. “Exactly.”

  We rock and sway. I grab his hands, but he switches our hands and presses mine to my legs, covering them with his. “We’re safe.”

  “You paid him to take off when he normally wouldn’t because you thought we’d get murdered on the ground.”

  “He wouldn’t have taken off if he thought it was too dangerous. He goes down with us, remember?”

  “I see how you avoided the part about us getting murdered. And as for the pilot, people do crazy things for money.”

  “Money does him no good if he’s dead. He goes down if we go down,” he repeats. “Let’s talk and get your mind off the flight.”

  “I’m not talking about what we need to talk about while fearing for my life.”

  “All right then. We have four hours in the air. Let’s start with something simpler.”

  “Define simpler,” I say cautiously, and the weather seems to answer, the plane leveling out, nice and steady.

  “You wanted to know about my tattoos. Let’s talk about my tattoos.” He releases me and starts rolling up his sleeves, displaying his incredibly intricate ink as he does. It distracts me. It has my attention, right up until the moment that the plane jerks again. I jump and Eric grabs my legs again. “I got you.”

  He has me. He does. I know that, but for how long? How long until this man is gone? How long until he breaks my heart? Because he will and yet when I’m with him I can’t seem to care.

  “I got you,” he says again, his eyes warm. I’m warm too now. “I did a horrible job of showing you that tonight but I’ll you’ll know soon. I’ll show you.”

  “I don’t know what to say to that,” I whisper.

  “Say you believe me. Say you trust me.”

  “Say you trust me,” I demand. “You didn’t trust me when Isaac of all people got in between us.”

  His reply is to hold out his arm, displaying his powerful forearm and colorful ink. “Ask me anything, Harper.”

  My gaze rockets to his and for a moment, I study that handsome, rugged face, looking for the meaning behind his offer and what I find is vulnerability. These tattoos are more than ink to him. He’s told me this. They’re his life. They’re his secrets. They’re a look into his soul. He’s offering me a window into that soul and trusting me not to abuse it.

  My attention immediately settles on his left arm, on the rows of numbers banding its width, and stacking on top of each other, some with images and others without. I run my fingers over a row of nothing but numbers. “This one,” I say, looking at him again. “What does this one mean?”

  “It says, ‘everyone has a price.’”

  My lips tighten. “You mean me.”

  “Everyone, Harper, not just you, but the truth is, that you, at least in part, inspired that tattoo.”

  My gut clenches, throat tightens. He still thinks that I stayed at Kingston for power and money.

  “I know why you stayed. You’ve paid a price and that price was years of your life.”

  “To protect my father’s creation, his empire.” I swallow hard. “His memory.”

  “I told you,” he replies softly. “I know why you stayed and I get it. I stayed for a long time, too. I wanted to be a Kingston but the price for me became too high.”

  “Was there a price you paid for leaving?”

  “You. I left you behind, but no matter how many regrets I have about that now, that was how it had to be then, Harper. I didn’t know me like I do now. I wasn’t the man I am now.”

  I think of my miscarriage, and how that baby wasn’t meant to be, but I wanted it to be. I wanted it badly. I swallow hard and look at another tattoo, a grim reaper with numbers next to it. “This one,” I say, before it hits me that this could be about his mother, but it’s too late. I’ve committed to the question, and he’s told me to ask anything. “What does it mean?” I ask, meeting his stare.

  “You would pick that right now, wouldn’t you?” he teases.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it—”

  “Tuus mors, mea vita,” he says. Latin for ‘your death, my life.’”

  His mother.

  I was right.

  This is about his mother.

  I swallow hard, feeling a punch of emotion for the young man who lost a parent and so very brutally. “What does it mean to you, Eric?”

  “It’s meant a lot of things to me at different times in my life, but ultimately ‘kill or be killed’ is the meaning it’s taken on in m
y later years. It’s about survival.”

  I accept this answer. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t about his mother at all. “Did you get it when you were in the Navy?” I ask.

  “No. You can’t tell now, since it’s surrounded by the rest of my ink, but it was one of my first tattoos. I got it after my mother committed suicide.” He glances skyward and seems to struggle with what he is about to say before he fixes me in a turbulent stare. “My mother wrote those words to me in her suicide note. My death. Your life.”

  Emotion balls in my throat. “I’m sorry I chose that tattoo.”

  “I’m not,” he says, squeezing my hand. “You want to know me, you have to know her and how she affected who I am. Harper, I protect myself but I also protect those I care about, the way she did. She protected me. She made the ultimate sacrifice for me. When another person would have fought for a cure to cancer, for more life, she fought for me. The way I’m fighting for you. You just don’t know it yet and with good reason. I haven’t shown you, but I will. I am. Wait and see.”

  The plane shakes and then immediately enters calmer air once more. The plane is steady, the flying smooth, but I’m in knots. His mother died. He has no real family left, but I was carrying his child. I don’t know what that means to him but it meant, it means, so very much to me. It’s time to talk. We have to have this conversation no matter what the outcome. We have to talk about the child we lost.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Harper

  Suddenly, I’m the one jumping subjects and driving us to the place I didn’t want to go. “I would have called you if I hadn’t miscarried. I swear to you, I would have, but what was the point once—once I lost the baby?” I choke up and try to turn away, but my seat is locked and Eric is holding my legs.

  I look down at my lap, at our hands, and Eric cups my face, forcing my eyes to his. “Tell me. Tell me everything. Forget you said anything on my voicemail. I want to hear it from you.”

  “What did Isaac tell you?”

  “It doesn’t matter what Isaac told me. It matters what you tell me.”

  “Because I didn’t tell you when it happened?”

  “You told me why. I understand why.”

  “Mostly on voicemail, though. I didn’t know if you would believe the baby was yours, and it was. I hadn’t been with anyone else. And I thought you’d think I had some Kingston agenda for telling you when you could do nothing to change what happened.” The plane shudders a moment, as if warning me to stop now.

  “I might have,” he admits. “I don’t like to believe that I would have, but I saw you on that stage with the family at the party, and I left believing you were one of them. And that means manipulative and self-serving. In my mind, at that point in my life, I left you before you burned me.”

  “I know,” I whisper, my throat thick. “I know that. I knew that. That was why it just didn’t make sense to call you, but I wanted to. You were the only person who it might matter to like it did me. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “But Isaac knows because he was there when it happened,” he confirms.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me,” he urges again, a gentle but forceful push to his voice. “I wasn’t there then. Let me be here for you now.” He hesitates. “If you can.”

  I swallow hard. “Yes. I can. You deserve to hear the story, but I want you to know that I was going to tell you. I almost told you back at my house, in my bedroom when we were—when you thought something was wrong—”

  “The condom,” he supplies, following my lead. “You were thinking about this when I was putting on the condom.”

  I nod. “Yes, then, and several times that night. God, how I wanted to just tell you, but we kept having visitors and problems come up. I couldn’t find just one good moment alone with you that felt like the right time to talk about this.”

  “I’m here now. We’re here now.”

  It’s another prod and I don’t make him push me harder. “I didn’t know I was pregnant. Honestly, I didn’t even suspect it. I was late starting my period, but I’ve had that happen on occasion and I was working long and hard hours.”

  “You didn’t have morning sickness?” he asks.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know it was morning sickness. I was barely sleeping. I had no reason to suspect I was pregnant. I thought I was just pushing myself too hard. We didn’t finish what we started that night. I didn’t think I could be pregnant.” My lips purse. “Of course, I found out in a brutal way how wrong I was on that.” I squeeze my eyes shut and when his fingers brush my cheek, I look at him. “I was cramping, so I thought I was finally going to start my period.”

  Suddenly I’m back in the past, back in my office, and reliving that night all over again in vivid color.

  “I was sitting at my desk, sorting through a stack of files and I couldn’t find the one that I needed. Frustrated that I couldn’t finish my report without it and finally get out of there, I knew I had to hunt it down or miss the critical deadline for the production department. I stood up and rounded my desk when a punch of cramps hit my belly. I slouched forward as another punch hit me and then radiated through my womb.” I close my eyes and for a moment I’m there. “Oh god,” I whisper, just like I did that night.

  Eric’s hand comes down on my hand and he squeezes. “We don’t have to do this.”

  “We do,” I say firmly, refocusing on him. “We do.” I launch back into the story. “I tried to move, but my feet were heavy, like they were planted in the ground. I looked down and blood was seeping through the skirt of my cream-colored dress. I just stared down at it as if it wasn’t real, as if it was happening to someone else but then the cramps radiated through me again. I tried to get to my desk and my phone, but I couldn’t. The pain was extreme, and the blood just started pouring like a faucet. It scared me and I started screaming for help.”

  “And Isaac came to help.”

  “There was no one else in the building but Isaac, and there’s nothing between me and him. There never has been. I wasn’t lying about that. I haven’t lied to you.” Now I’m the one squeezing his hand. “Please tell me you know that.”

  “I know that,” he says.

  My mind goes back to us outside of the Kingston building, and him pretty much telling me to go to hell before he left. “You didn’t know earlier tonight.”

  “I did know,” he promises. “That’s why I came back. I did know. I told you. I let Isaac fuck with my head.” He cups my face. “We would have made a beautiful baby together.”

  Tears well in my eyes. “We would have, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes. We would have. We still could.”

  I blanch. “What?”

  “I’m only saying, just because you lost that pregnancy doesn’t mean you can’t carry a baby. It wasn’t our time.”

  “Do you want kids?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t know, Harper. You’ve made me think about a lot of things in my life.”

  “I don’t know if I even can. They said I had a problem with my uterus.”

  “Don’t put that pressure on yourself or us. If you can’t, you can’t.’

  “Yes, but—”

  He leans in and kisses me. “If you can’t, you can’t. I want you, Harper. Just you. Like I have never wanted anyone.” His lips close down on mine, and then his tongue does that deep sultry dance it does, and I feel each stroke everywhere. My nipples ache. My sex clenches. My entire body is humming and he’s done nothing but kiss me. Some part of me knows I need to talk to him about what happened in Denver. Some part of me knows we need to talk about what he believes his brother is really doing. Some part of me knows that if someone tried to kill me tonight, they will follow me to New York City, but right now, I just want him to keep kissing me. I just want him to drug me the way he drugs me with his touch, and when he unhooks his seatbelt and mine as well, I let him pull me into his lap.

  I let him turn and lower the seat and pull me down
in the chair beside him, the two of us facing each other, his lips parting mine briefly, his breath fanning my cheek, my lips. “We can’t do this here,” I say weakly.

  “I pulled the curtain, which means we’re left alone,” he promises even as he caresses my skirt up my legs. “And I don’t have a condom,” he adds. “I say we roll the dice.”

  “What?” I try to pull back. “But what if I get pregnant again? Eric, we just—”

  He kisses me and cups my backside, pulling me against his thick erection. “Quam quae potest esse diligentissima,” he murmurs next to my lips. “Another one of my tattoos that means—”

  “What is meant to be,” I whisper, “And I’m thankful now that my father taught me Latin.”

  “Yes,” he replies. “What is meant to be. This is our time, Harper.” And then he’s kissing me again, and I have no protest in me. This is our time, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll end up together. What is meant to be might be the end of us, and that thought has me throwing caution to the wind. I kiss him with all that I am, like it’s the last few hours we’ll ever share, and I don’t know why I fear that it is.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eric

  The past—three hours ago, right after Eric found out about the miscarriage…

  My phone rings about a dozen times before it goes silent, every call from Harper. Every call ignored while I drive way too fast to be safe, as far away from her as I can get. We’re done. We were done before we ever started. We were all about who could fuck who and turns out, for the time being, it’s me that got fucked.

  I turn down a narrow road, headed toward the private airport that is my destination, thinking Harper is just another Kingston. Princess fits her so damn well, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I can’t seem to shut down the storm exploding inside me. The idea of her pregnant with another man’s child about kills me. The idea that Isaac has touched her when she swore he hadn’t, destroys me right along with the miscarriage news. And the panic in Harper’s face when I confronted her about it destroyed me, too. It is destroying me. Holy fuck, I think, I was going to be stupid and fall in love with her.