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“I wish I weren’t,” I say, my eyes meeting his, “but you’re right. I am.”
“Yes, but trouble suits me, sweetheart. Wait and see.” He winks and my stomach flutters. God, how he affects me with the smallest of acts.
The waitress re-appears and in a few quick minutes, our food is boxed up, wine corked, and the bill paid, all the while I’m thinking about his comment about trouble suiting him. He’s not wrong. It does suit him, but I hope he remembers how tricky it can be. Trouble has a way of growing roots, and doing damage. I don’twant to be the end of him and I plan to tell him that when we’re alone.
Once we’re ready to go, we both stand and Eric laces his fingers with mine and leads me through the restaurant. With each step, I can feel the swell of need between us, the connection that is as combustible as it is dangerous. Because of that trouble. Because of all the trouble.
We pause to grab our coats and Eric helps me with mine. That simple act is intimate, the air around us charged.
We exit to the street and he folds his arm around my shoulders, and aligns our hips. We start walking, neither of us speaking for a full block, a mix of sexual tension and unspoken words between us. A push and pull of lust and need with questions that need answers. It’s then that this connection I have to Eric,withEric, drives home another feeling. Guilt dives about inside me and burrows deep.
I stop walking and turn to face him, the dim lighting of the cozy little neighborhood now mixed with the beam of a bright full moon. “I don’t want to be trouble for you, Eric.”
“I told you. Trouble suits me.”
“I was selfish asking you to come here. I know what Gigi did to you and your mother. All I could see was my own problems, my fear for my mother. I was selfish and wrong.I’m sorry.”
“I’m a grown ass man, sweetheart. I make my own decisions and you have nothing to be sorry for. As for Gigi fucking me over, she’s doing it to you, too,” he says. “You just don’t see it.”
“At least she wants what I want. That’s where my head is. I can’t do this alone. I’ve tried. I can’t get answers from Isaac or your father. I got shut out.”
“You have me now.”
“Because I pulled you in. Because I didn’t let you just do what you wanted and stay away.”
“I did what I wanted,” he says. “I came here for you. I wanted you. Iwantyou. I need to trust you, though, Harper. I don’t like your connection to Gigi.”
“Trust is two ways, I need to trust you, too. And to be clear, I’m done trying to save the company. I don’t care what your plan is if it saves my mother. Take the damn company. You’re right. I’m my father’s legacy. I don’t recognize Kingston as anything he was anymore.” My eyes burn and I glance skyward, a silent plea in my mind to my father, to forgive me for allowing his company to be destroyed.
Eric’s hands settle on my shoulders, his touch snapping my gaze to his, and then, and only then, he says, “Deep breath, sweetheart. Better things are coming. I promise you. You know what we both need right now?”
I laugh, knowing where this is headed. “To be naked?”
“Good answer. Yes. We need to go fuck and get lost in each other, and drive this damn family out of our heads, just like we did the night we met.”
“Is that what I did for you that night? Helped you drive them out of your head?”
“And a lot more, sweetheart, or I wouldn’t be here now. Come on,” he says, twining the fingers of his hand with mine and leading me down the sidewalk.
The remainder of the walk is a short one block, and everything but me and him, and all that is happening between us fades away. Already we’re driving away the Kingston family, lost in anticipation, in each other. And thereissomething happening between me and Eric, and it’s not just sex, and it simmers with intimacy between us. My skin is flushed. My sex has clenched just thinking about being naked and in his arms again. We turn down my drive. “Back door,” I say. “I always go in there.”
We close the space between it and us, that combustible need between us, just that, combustible. I’m burning alive, anxiously enough that my hand trembles as I unlock my door. So much so that Eric takes my key from me and finishes the job. We enter the house directly into the kitchen, white stone beneath our feet. I flip on the light, illuminating an island in more white stone, and cabinets a slate gray wood wrapping a half-moon-shaped room. I slip off my coat and set it on a barstool, turning to face Eric as he shuts the door and locks it.
We don’t speak. We don’t really have words on our mind.
He shrugs out of his coat, his T-shirt stretching over his broad chest, before he drops it on a stool next to mine, his eyes never leaving me. He steps close, aligning our bodies, and I feel the heat of him, the change in us. This isn’t a power play. This isn’t hate anymore.
His hands frame my face. “I nicknamed you princess because you were so fucking beautiful and regal standing there by the pool that night.”
The compliment sizzles through me, but I reject the comparison, and the idea it suggests that I am somehow above him. That we arenot the same. “I wasn’t regal,” I say. “I don’t want you to think of me that way.”
“In a good way, sweetheart. This is me telling you that you had me before hello.”
It’s everything I want to hear from this man, perhaps too much, because I’m not sure how long he’ll be in my life. I just know it won’t be long enough. “Did you know it was me? Did you know who I was?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I knew it was you. I’d seen pictures.”
