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I lean back and hold out my right forearm, running a finger along a line of numbers with a crown at the end of it. “Do you know what that is?”
She sucks in a breath at the crown and covers it with her hand. “Is it bad? Is it something bad about me?”
“It saysPrincessin the numbers that correlate to the alphabet. I added it two full years after our night together.”
“You tattooed the nickname you gave me on your body?”
“Yes, princess,I did. Now do you believe that I didn’t forget about you?” I cup her face and her hand settles on my chest. “Now isn’t then, it’s not the past. You know that, right? I didn’t come here to walk away. Not from you.”
“Eric,” she whispers, her voice trembling with emotion and I want those emotions, I want to know how they taste on my tongue. How she tastes right now, this night, in this room.
I lean in to kiss her, right as the doorbell rings, followed by pounding on the door. “Open up, Harper!”
At the sound of Isaac’s voice, my jaw sets hard and Harper launches herself to her feet. This can’t be good.”
I’m standing with her by the time she’s fully straightened. “Relax, sweetheart,” I say, my hands settling on her arm, “He’s a gnat that needs to be swiped. Nothing more. I’ll handle my brother.” I start to turn away and Harper grabs my arm.
“Wait,” she says, pulling me around to face her. “Let me talk to him. Obviously, my mother told him you’re here. He’s going to make a big deal out of this. I can shut it down.”
I drag her to me. “You mean deny we’re together?”
“No. That’s not what I meant. Of course, that’s not what I mean.”
“Good. Because we’re together now. That means we don’t hide. And if that makes the Kingstons uncomfortable, fuck them. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” she whispers. “You’re right. Fuck them.”
“Then I’ll handle Isaac, sweetheart. No one has my brother’s number like I do.”
Chapter twenty-eight
Eric
“Oh no,” Harper says, catching my arm as I try to leave her to answer the door again. “I’m fine with Isaac knowing about us, but you’re shirtless and commando with your pants unzipped. That screams ‘we’re fucking’ not ‘we’re together.’ I draw the line there.”
“Anyone in the same room with us for sixty seconds knows we’re fucking, sweetheart.”
“Don’t taunt him with me. I don’t like that. I don’t want to feel like a weapon between two brothers, not even in a war I invited you into.”
I catch her hips and walk her to me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Not now. Later. Right now, we have to deal with him so please, zip your pants and put on a shirt before you walk to the door.”
I reach down and zip my pants before scooping up my shirt, my eyes never leaving her face. “You’re going to explain that little weapon between two brothers comment.”
“I will,” she promises. “I’ll tell you.”
“Yes, you will,princess,” I reply and make sure it bites.
Her eyes flare with anger that I don’t stay to answer. Not when Isaac is shouting at the door again and pounding while holding a finger on the bell. “Jesus,” I murmur, running a hand through my hair. “His degree of ridiculousness obviously hasn’t changed.” I take off for the door and this time Harper lets me go.
The ring and knock cycle has started again by the time I get there, along with another shout of, “I know you’re in there, Harper! Damn it, open up.”
I unlock the door, open it, and greet my dear brother. He’s wearing a scowl and a trenchcoat over the same expensive ass three-piece suit he had on at work today. It also, from what I cantell, must have come with a stick up his ass. “You’re here for me, right?” I ask. “Here I am.” I step forward, crowding him and forcing him onto the porch.
“I’m here for Harper,” he says, unbuttoning his jacket and settling his hands on his hips.
After the exchange I just had with her, those words punch me in all the wrong ways. “To warn her away from me,” I state, disliking the obvious history I don’t know about and irritated as fuck Walker Security didn’t tell me about in advance.
