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I open my mouth to tell him to get it over and done with. I’m not bleeding anymore. There’s no reason for him to hang around anymore. Before I can say anything, he lowers his face to mine.
“I’m sorry,” Henry whispers with a light kiss to the tip of my nose. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like this…” Stroking his thumbs down my face, he trails them over my lips to my chin, following the curve of my throat as he tips my face back and peppers light kisses down to the marks he left on my neck.
“I’m sorry too.” My actions were reckless and selfish. I didn’t think about how he would feel about it. I didn’t think about much other than what I wanted. “I should’ve told you.”
“But you’re right,” he says, tipping my face back to his as he straightens. “I would’ve stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he breathes out, wiping his thumbs across the bottom of my eyes. “Because you’re delicate, Eve…you’re fragile. And a man like me—” He swallows hard. “—a man like me isn’t gentle. I’m not built for delicate things.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” he asserts, tunnelling his fingers into my hair to stop me from shaking my head as I protest, “You’re being gentle right now.”
I hate this. Whatever this is feels like he’s letting me down slowly. Trying to gently break my heart instead of just smashing it in one blow. I can’t bear it. The world is screaming around me as I watch him ponder the best way to obliterate me. This is worse than waiting under cover for the storm to hit. You can feel it in the air, smell it all around you. You know it’s coming, but you’re still waiting and anticipating. On and on and on. Then it hits.
“Eve.” Henry blows out a breath, and his hands fall to my waist, holding me still. “You see gentleness on the outside, but on the inside, I’m a grenade ready to blow. You can’t contain me. No one can.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.” Dark eyes narrow on mine as I rake my fingertips over his stubble. God, I love the scratch of the thick hairs on my skin with the heat of his body seeping into me. “I mean…”
“You mean?” he asks with a lick of his lips when I pinch his chin and lean closer.
“What if I’m made for you?” Rising onto my knees, I nudge the tip of my nose over his. “What if I’m your pin, Your Grace?”
“I’d have to keep you,” he replies with a nip to my lip. His arms wrap around me tighter than ever. So tight that I can’t move when he softly bites a trail over my jaw to my ear. “I’d have to keep you really fucking close.”
“Yes.” A giggle bursts from me when the soft nibbles morph into light licks and the occasional suck. “Yes, you would.”
I really hope he keeps so close that I’ll never be rid of him ever again.
* * *
Henry’s staring at me intently as I drink my tea. He’s quiet, pensive, more so than he usually is. But even in slept-in clothes, he looks handsome. A whole of a lot more put together than some of the guys in the trendy coffee shop he’s brought me to.
“Do you have plans tonight?” he asks me, taking a sip of white coffee.
“It’s a Saturday, so I’m at the club?” That’s where I am every Saturday evening. With him.
“Yes.” Henry nods, and a small grin tugs at the corner of his mouth as he grabs my tea from me, tugging me up as he stands and puts my tea back down on the table with a scowl at the cup. “It works out well.”
“What works out well?” I bluster as he walks me out of the coffee shop and straight to his car.
The smell of waxed leather envelops me again, along with a hint of tobacco and his cologne. It’s so perfect and warm that when he opens his door and the cold air rushes in, I’m desperate for him to close it again. Being in his SUV is like being in a concentrated Henry bubble.
“I have a function this evening,” he tells me as he starts the car and drives off without telling me where we’re going. “But I’m leaving early. I have a meeting at the club, and then we can have the rest of the evening together. We can have dinner together again.”
“Is that an order or a request?”
He gives me the side eye. “What does it matter? You’re on my time, aren’t you.”
The sound of his statement doesn’t sit well with me. Me being on his time implies that he’s paying me to spend time with him, and everything that happens during that period is all paid for. It doesn’t matter how much I like him; I’m not that girl.
“Henry—”
“Don’t start an argument, Eve. We know it doesn’t end well,” he warns, levelling me with his dark gaze as we stop at a red light.
“It’s not an argument if we talk like civilised people.”
