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“I have a situation,” he says, scrubbing his jaw. “I can’t meet with you tonight.”
Eric steps to my side. “Hi, Jim,” he greets, and it feels familiar, like they know each other.
“Eric,” he bites out. “I just heard you were back in town.”
“I noticed,” Eric says dryly.
Jim’s lips thin and he looks at me. “I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow.” He opens his door.
“I thought we were talking through the hot points?” I press.
“I told you,” he says, pausing with his hand on his door, “Ican’tmeet.”
Hecan’t. What is going on? “What about in the morning?” I press, confused by this change of attitude.
“I’ll see you at the meeting,” he replies, cutting his eyes and disappearing inside his car. His engine revs and he’s backing up in sixty seconds flat.
I rotate toward Eric, holding out my hands in utter frustration. “What was that?”
“The Bennett Corporation operates one of the largest law firms in the world. We’ve had a few thousand dealings with the union.”
I shake my head in instant rejection. “No. No, he was afraid of you. He knewyou.He feared you.”
“He fears the beast that is the Bennett name and I’m a large part of Grayson Bennett’s brand.”
“There’s more to what just happened,” I say, a cold gust of wind biting through me, while Eric seems immune to anything as real as the weather. He’s colder than I thought. He’s harder. Why didn’t I know this? He’s a self-made billionaire and he didn’t get there by being a bleeding heart and gentle soul. “You said you want more from me,” I say. “You demanded more of me, and yet all you’re giving me is accusations and a blow-off answer to something that directly affects me.” A few people walk out of the coffee shop and I lower my voice. “You want more. Well, I want more, too. Idemandmore.” I start walking to the car, my steps thundering on the pavement, my heart all but bursting from my chest. I need in the car. I need away from him before I lose my shit, and I’m so close. With shaky hands, I open the door. And then he’s there.
Eric shackles my arm and drags me around to face him, sinewy muscle and warmth touching me everywhere, and Lord help me,that’s where I want him. Everywhere. I want him so badly it hurts, even though I know that he’s going to hurt me, maybe even destroy me. “You want more?” he hisses, his voice sandpaper rough.
“Yes,” I hiss back, and do so without hesitation, some part of me aware that this moment defines us, it defines me in a way I do not yet understand, and yet, my answer is unchanged. “Yes,” I repeat, barely able to breathe for the combustible heat between us. It’s suffocating me. He’s suffocating me. And God, I think I might want to die just like this, next to him, craving him.
“Say it,” he orders as if he thinks I can’t or won’t. As if he needs to know I know what I’m agreeing to, and I do. “Say the words. I want more.”
“I want more.” My voice trembles with the declaration.
His eyes glint fire and ice in the same moment, still managing to burn me alive. “You sure about that? You might not like where this leads you, Harper.”
Somehow my hand has settled on the hard wall of his perfect chest, and his heart thunders under my palm. We’re not talking about the Kingstons anymore. We’re talking about me and him and I’m already all in, already drowning in this man. There’s no reason to hold back. My fingers ball around his shirt. “But youcannotwalk away this time.”
“You should. You don’t know who I am or what I am capable of.”
His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue licking into my mouth, a deep, drugging stroke followed by another before he rips his mouth from mine, my breath heaving from my chest as he orders, “Get in the car, Harper.”
Chapter twenty-two
Harper
Iclimb into the car, letting the soft leather absorb my body. He shuts me inside, and in a few moments, he’s here with me, the implication of what just happened between us, and where it leads, crackling in the air, sexual tension off the charts to the point my body trembles. The tug of war between us all lust and hate, and I tell myself that is dangerous.Heis dangerous. And yet, I sit here, alive in a way I have never been alive before with this man.
He doesn’t immediately turn on the car. He just sits there next to me, seconds ticking by until a long exhale escapes his lips and he tilts his gaze in my direction. “Are you hungry?”
A bubble of strained laughter escapes my lips. “Am I hungry? Not, are you lying to me?”
There’s a punch of something in his expression there and gone before I can even try to understand it. “We need to exist outside of that family, so yes, Harper.Are you hungry?”
Now I breathe out, his reasoning warming, calming me, giving me hope we can exist outside that realm where there is only lust and hate. Seconds tick by and the simple question settles easily between us, the tension of moments before uncurling just that easily. This is new territory for us. We have never shared a meal or a real conversation and I am quick to welcome such a thing. “Yes, actually, I am. I had a power bar today. That’s all.”
“I had a bag of peanut M & M’s which I promise you were better than the power bar. Let’s go to Cherry Creek and eat. I know you live there and it’s also where I booked my hotel and not because I’m stalking you. It’s my old stomping grounds and I wanted to revisit some of my favorite spots while I’m here.”
