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God damn me, I reach for a lock of her blindingly bright hair, pushing it off her face. “Pearl,” I whisper, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. I need to get her back to her own room before the house wakes up. “Pearl, wake up.”
Her lashes flutter, her eyes opening. There’s a fleeting moment of confusion on her face when she sets eyes on me, her chest lifting from the bed, her head craning to check where she is. Yes, gorgeous, somewhere you definitely shouldn’t be. Even now I’m fighting the urge to crawl on top of her again. I intended to fuck her. It didn’t quite work out that way. I tried to pull it back when we moved from the office to my bed, told myself repeatedly to bang her hard, treat her like I’ve treated them all, with little courtesy and less tenderness. I couldn’t. It’s fucking with my head. But I couldn’t fuck her. Her age? The circumstances? I can’t save her from those fuckers and then treat her like an object.
So I should have left her well alone.
“Morning,” she croaks awkwardly, pulling the sheets in as she sits up.
“Hi.” Hi? I roll my eyes to myself, searching my head for the right words. There are none. She’s in my bed butt naked, I’m sitting here fighting the blood from surging into my dick, and I give her a hi. “It’s?—”
Knock, knock.
My body freezes, but my heart clatters, as I look over my shoulder to the door. “Brad, are you awake?” Beau calls through the wood.
“Fuck,” I whisper, ready to push Pearl down under the sheets, but when I face the bed again, she’s not there. I see her fly into the bathroom, slamming the door, just as Beau pushes her way in. She looks at me sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, my palm over my dick as I pull a sheet onto my lap. Then she looks at the bathroom door, obviously having heard it slam. “Why do you bother knocking if you’re going to walk right in anyway?” I ask irritably.
Eyebrows high and interested, Beau sends a scornful look my way. “I thought we didn’t have . . .” She pauses, thinks, obviously trying to muster a more appealing word than what I know she was going to say. “Lady friends back at the house anymore.” Her frown deepens. “In fact, you’ve never had lady friends back at the house.”
Yes. Always hotels. Never my apartment and never the mansion. My apartment was my peaceful place. The mansion was a place for an in-house whore. I never utilized the in-house whore, always sourced my own. How admirable of me. “Beau, it’s five thirty in the fucking morning, for Christ’s sake. What do you want?”
Not easing up on the questioning in her eyes, she holds up a pot of something. “Try this.” And tosses it at me. “Lawrence said it works wonders with restlessness.”
“Restlessness?” I look down at the label. I’m not restless. I’m fucked. “What is it?”
“Some magic potion. Lavender, chamomile—this, that, and something else.”
Lavender. Fuck me. “And you thought you’d drop it off now?”
“Well, you’re usually awake at this time of day.” Her eyes fall to the bathroom door again. “And alone.”
“Go away.”
She pouts, backing up. “I’ll be in the gym if you’d like to talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I shift, uncomfortable, mindful that Pearl can probably hear every word being said. And . . . “Should you be working out in your condition?”
“I’m pregnant, Brad. I don’t have a condition.”
“Still, he’s happy with that, is he?”
“He was a little distracted last night.” She takes the handle of the door. “What happened at the club?”
Yeah, not telling her that. “Time to go,” I say, standing with my sheet and walking toward her, effectively forcing her out. “Take it easy in the gym.”
“Or else?”
I scowl, letting her catch it before the door meets the jamb. And I smile, because that look on Beau—the serene, chilled, light one—is beautiful on her. She’s waited a long time for that, and not even the new unrest can take it away from her. The Bear’s dead.
She’s free.
Now, back to my problem. I go to the bathroom door and knock lightly. “She’s gone,” I call through the wood. I get no answer. “Pearl?” I listen. Nothing, no words, no movement. So I back off, going outside for another smoke, collecting my cell as I pass the bed when it rings and leaving the lavender potion in its place. I answer to James. “Are you cool with your wife working out?” I ask in answer, lowering to the chair, lighting up.
“Brad, let me teach you a thing or two about women.”
“I don’t need to learn anything about women.” I smile, remembering the day James Kelly walked into Hiatus again. The Enigma. On the warpath. And now, married with a kid on the way. Under the thumb like The Brit.
“What do you need to talk about?” he asks.
“What?”
