Eric
Harper steps in front of me and Isaac and I offer her my hand. “Nice to meet you, Harper,” I say, and when our eyes meet at this close proximity, the spark between us is so damn combustible there’s no way it goes unnoticed.
She presses her palm to mine, her gaze dropping to a portion of my inked arm to the collection of colors and designs that make up my full sleeve and reflect everything and somehow nothing in my life. Her lips part, her expression intrigued by the design, not at all the disgust I expect from a perfect princess. She tightens her grip on mine ever-so-slightly and looks up at me. “Nice to finally meet you,” she says, and fuck, the raspy quality to her voice makes my cock twitch.
“Finally?” I ask, arching a brow and forcing myself to release her.
“Harper’s become quite the protégé the past year,” my father says. “You’d think she was blood like you two, but then, her father owned a competing business we’ve now absorbed.”
“I was with him night and day,” Harper says. “I learned a lot from him at a young age.”
She’s my father’s protégé and if she didn’t want to fuck me as badly as I want to fuck her, she’d probably want to fuck me right out of town. Yet another priceless moment. “I need to make a phone call,” I say, and I don’t wait for anyone’s permission.
I down the whiskey Isaac handed me, set down the glass, and step around Harper, my destination once again the castle-like house that is the centerpiece of the property. No one stops me. No one welcomes me because this isn’t home for me and they know it. If this trip has done one thing for me, it’s to remind me that I’m not in the midst of the Grayson Bennett clan, and a family that takes care of each other and wins together. These are the Kingstons, one step up from the devil’s own family.
I reach my destination and enter the back door, directly into the kitchen which is the size of the mobile home I grew up in with my mother, right up until the time she killed herself before the cancer took her. Of course, she didn’t leave me in that trailer. She spent her dying days proving that I was the bastard child of Jeff Kingston and forcing him to claim me. I walk through the archway and down a hallway to the right toward my father’s office, which is where I’ll find whiskey a few grades higher than the bullshit Isaac gave me like I wouldn’t know better.
Once I’m inside the man-cave of an office, with bookshelves lining the walls and a sunken seating area with couches and chairs, I walk to the bar in the corner, pour a thirty-year-old whiskey and sit down in a chair. After a damn good taste, I pull my phone from my pocket and dial Grayson.
“My man,” he says. “That stock you hooked me up with came through in a big way. You’re a beast. That IQ of yours is financial genius.”
That IQ I inherited from a mother who never put hers to use for anything but bad. “Glad it worked out, man. Are we even now?”
“You paid for the past two years at Harvard and then some. I took the extra money and invested it back into the stock, for you.”
“Consider it yours. Interest for loaning me the money.”
“I don’t need the money. I’ll reinvest it in you ten times over, but I know you have your own empire to run down there in Colorado.”
I down the whiskey and decide I’m done. I’m going to get drunk if I don’t slow the fuck down. “I’m the heir bastard, not the heir apparent. You know that.”
“I know what you are,” Grayson says, “and it’s nobody’s bastard. You have a place right here by my side, not in some office two buildings over, if you decide you want it. Otherwise, I want a piece of Kingston Motors, if you’re running it.”
That’s not going to happen. The question is, do I want any part of aiding in its success? I must. Why else would I be here? “Orian. Buy big. Buy fast.”
“You want in?”
“Yeah. Anything you made for me, put it in.”
“You got it. When do you have that meeting with your father?”
“Tomorrow after this godforsaken launch party.”
“Call me after it’s over. Just remember you owe him nothing. You paid for your own school and you have a brilliant financial mind. He needs you. He knows it. Don’t let him convince you it’s the opposite.”
“Right. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
We disconnect and I stick my phone back inside my pocket before pulling a mini Rubik’s cube from my pocket, rotating the puzzle in my hand, and thinking back to the psychologist who’d placed the first one in my hand. My father had hired him to try to “normalize” my behavior. A savant, the physiologist had said, needs a focal point, a way to slow the data in my head, and he was right.
I scramble and solve the cube three times, settling my mind into a place of reckoning, and then shove the cube back in my pocket. The bottom line: I don’t belong here. I never belonged here. I stand up and walk to my father’s desk where I sit down and think about those words: You owe him nothing.
Not exactly true. My father took me in when my mother died. He petitioned to get me into Harvard based on my academic record, which had been dismissed because of my trailer trash background. I owe him, but I don’t want to owe him anything more. I’m not going to work for my father. I’m leaving. I grab a pen and a piece of paper and write a note to my father:
In payment for the whiskey I just drank and the roof over my head. If I were you, I’d invest big in Orian and do it quickly. —Your Bastard Son.
I drop the pen and stand up, walking toward the door, my decision made. I’ll stay for the meeting tomorrow, simply because he did give me a roof over my head, even if it was to push Isaac, which meant shoving us at each other like a dog fight on repeat. That’s what he wants now, to use me to drive Isaac, but Isaac is vicious and not all that smart. I’ll eat Isaac alive. I just don’t want to anymore.
I exit to the hallway, and when I look left, Harper is exiting the bathroom. I don’t even hesitate. I walk toward her while she freezes in place. I don’t stop until I’m standing directly in front of her. She looks up at me, the scent of roses lifting in the air and apparently I like roses a whole hell of a lot more than I thought I did because her scent is driving me wild. I don’t know what the hell happens, but my hand slides under her hair, and I lean in, my lips next to her lips.
Her hand settles on my chest and grips my lapel, that perfect mouth of hers tilting toward mine as if she’s offering it to me. “What are you doing?” she demands, sounding breathless.
“What does it look like I’m doing? Kissing my sister.” My mouth slants over hers and my tongue slides right past those perfect lips, and with one deep stroke, she moans, and I’m undone. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone more than I want to kiss this woman right here, right now. I deepen the kiss and press her against the wall, my free hand at her waist, her hand on my hand. Her tongue meets mine for every lick and stroke until I pull back and stare down at her.
Voices sound nearby and I take that last few minutes and decide to do her a favor and be honest with her, like no one else in my father’s world will. “He’s using you, just like he’s always used me. We’re the ones who push Isaac to keep him sharp. You’ll never inherit. You’ll never be anything but The Princess standing next to your King and brother. And just for the record. I’m not your fucking brother.” I release her and walk away, making a fast path through the kitchen and out of the house.
Once I’m in the midst of the crowd, I cut through the mess of people and find my way back to the path to my cottage where I enter and have every intention of packing up and getting the hell out of here. I’ve barely shut the door when the bell rings. Who the hell followed me to the cottage, because someone sure as fuck did. I fling open the door to find Harper standing there.
“Because why would anyone think that I have anything real to bring to the table, right?” she challenges, as if we were still in the middle of our prior conversation, her beautiful blue eyes sparking with anger. “Because all my time with my father, learning his business, taught me nothing.”
I grab her and pull her inside the cottage.