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His lashes lower and now he cuts his gaze, like the idea of me going there actually affects him, and when he looks at me, his blue eyes are laden with emotions I can’t read. “I had to leave.”
“I know,” I say, because I do. He hates that place. He hates me as an extension. How can I want a man that hates me?
The doorbell rings again and it’s sweet relief and my escape. “That’s my food. You can go. I know you won’t help. I knew almost the moment I walked into the lobby today.”
He studies me a moment and turns to the door. My heart squeezes with how easily he’s going to leave, how certain his steps, when I just told myself and him that’s what I want. He opens the door and I hurry around the table to greet the delivery person. Eric steps back and allows the woman to enter, and I expect him to exit,but he doesn’t. “Where would you like it?” the woman asks of the tray in her hand.
She asks this question of Eric, but he casts a querying look at me. “Right here,” I say, indicating the coffee table.
The woman sets everything up for me and still, Eric doesn’t move. I give him a “you can go” look and he replies with a short shake of his head, a silent no, and the look in his eyes is pure heat. I cut my gaze and sign the ticket with a generous tip. The woman hurries to the door and then I’m alone with Eric again. He saunters to the couch and sits down in front of my tray, and when he tries to lift it, I have no idea why, but it sets me off.
I rush forward, sit next to him and hold down the lid. “You don’t get to know what I order or what I like. You left. You’re going to leave again. Who I am and what I like isnotyour business.” I stand up. “Leave now.”
He pushes to his towering height and faces me, and I’m immediately aware that joining him on this side of the table was a mistake. He’s close, big, and he smells all earthy and perfect. I have about ten seconds to have that thought before he drags me to him, and my God, he feels just as good as he did back then, and it’s too much but not enough. “You keep talking about me leaving,” he says. “Why? Because you can’t believe that the bastard could walk away from the princess?”
Anger flares hard and fast. “I’m going to forgive you for saying that because I know how they treated you. I know where it comes from, but you told me not to make us about them, but you did, then and now.”
“I was wrong when I said it wasn’t about them. I saw you up on that stage, with them, a part of them.”
“Really? Because I looked for you and saw you leaving.”
“I was there just long enough to see who you are.”
“You didn’t see me at all. You saw what you wanted to see and for a really smart person, that was a shallow way of thinking. You barely knew me. I barely knew you.”
“Do youwantto know me, Harper?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “You’re leaving again. You won’t help. You won’t—”
“Do you want to know me, Harper?”
“I’m pretty sure you’ve already shown me the parts I need to see and they don’t work for me.”
“I was pissed when I saw you up there.”
“I was pissed when you were gone.”
His hand goes to my jaw and he tilts my face to his. “And yet here we are,” he says, his mouth lowering, lips just above mine, his warm breath teasing me with the promise of a kiss that I shouldn’t want. He’s the bastard by his own admission and we both know he revels in living up to that title. He’s trouble, but my God, I have long hungered for another taste of that trouble.
Chapter nine
Harper
Eric’s mouth closes down on mine and it’s like I’m six years in the past. Just like then, I’m aware of the forbidden element of us like this, just as I’m aware of the divide, too, all too aware, and try to resist, I do. But I can’t. The taste of him is like a drug on my tongue, addictive, sweet, and impossible not to crave. I know this whole “princess” label is all about conquest and division—his conquest, our division. I tell myself this isn’t good. Iknowit’s not good. I can’t be with a man who ultimately hates me and that thought is a dash of cold water on the heat burning between me and this man.
I shove on his chest. “Stop.”
“Are we doing this again?” he asks, his voice husky, rough. “Because I really don’t think either of us wanted to stop then and I sure as fuck don’t now.”
“How many times did you stand on a stage or just by their side, Eric? How many times in the years you were part of that family?”
“Thatfamily?” he challenges. “You meanyourfamily?”
“We both inherited them. I didn’t ask for them, but you judged me for standing on that stage when we both know you did it, too.”
“I’m not on that stage with them anymore.”
“You were. For years, you were. We both know you were.”
