“I can’t go with you,” Harper announces as I walk into the living room. The last two days we’ve been packing or in bed. I just spent a long meeting nodding about financial arrangements and trying not to think about Harper. Now, finding her in the upstairs parlor, I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s in an oversize shirt that falls off her shoulders and yoga pants, and my eyes are locked on her breasts. Which is amazing, since they’re not visible, hidden by a bulky shirt and a bra. But she’s here, they’re here, and I’m apparently desperate to see them.
“Where?” I settle on Grandfather’s giant sage green couch, a few inches between us, close enough I can smell her vanilla lotion and watch the light play across her cheekbone when she tilts her head downward. She isn’t looking at me. I reach for her, but she flinches. I let my hand fall. “You don’t want to hit a movie tonight?”
“I meant New York.”
I sigh. Thought we had another day—maybe two, if I played off delaying my departure again—before we got to this conversation. “I didn’t think you would.”
Pain flashes in her sky-blue eyes, and she wipes her cheek. “You weren’t going to ask me, were you?”
“No.”
“That’s … harsh.” She sniffles and pulls further away. “I knew this was just a weekend fling but—”
“Harper, you can’t go. I’m not the asshole who asks a woman to abandon a cancer patient parent! Come on. Even I’m—”
“Don’t use Mom as your excuse.” The words are sharp as a knife, and this time, I’m the one moving back, as if a few more inches will blunt her anger.
“Fine. I wouldn’t ask you because you’re fucking terrified of the city. And society pages. I can’t wave a magic wand and give you that confidence—you have to build it on your own. Or you have to want me enough to risk it. But honestly … a new relationship has enough shitty pitfalls, I don’t want to add gossip columns.”
Instead of reassuring her, the speech adds another sob, and she puts her face in her hands. I’m frozen, instincts yelling at me to embrace her, but familiarity with her temperament telling me to stay out of arm’s reach.
“So this is revenge? Make me care and walk away, just to teach me a lesson!” She rears up, practically spitting the words at me. “Now it’s my fault. My family, my insecurity—a whole list of excuses and all on my account. You don’t want me, but it’s for my own good. Just like your grandfather.” She’s on her feet and rushing toward the doorway.
I should let her go. Give her the time to calm down, breathe. Think. But she’s crying, and I’m a goddamn idiot about her. I take a breath to figure out what the hell I’m going to do, then get up and run after her like some soap opera numbskull.
If the NYC society columnists could see me now, we’d be on the front page for a year.
She’s on the stairs, barely two yards ahead of me, and the world stops. She wobbles, coming down too hard on the ankle she sprained last summer—she’d laughed when she told me the story—and pitches sideways on the curving staircase.
“Harper!” I can’t reach her. She slams into the bannister, shrieking, and the thud as she hits the stairs knocks the wind out of my lungs. She falls backward, sliding down, her head thumping against the unforgiving wood. I catch hold of her trembling shoulder as I kneel on the steps next to her. She groans. Her eyes slant open and blink. Focus. “Harper, babe, you okay? Stay still.”
“I’m fine. I hate you.”
“That’s the embarrassment talking.” She’s allowed to hate whatever she wants until we know if she’s broken anything. “Just keep talking.”
Her cheeks go from ivory to rose, and she shoves my hand away to sit up with a pained noise. “Fuck off. Pity eyes are worse than you being a dick.”
“Catch your breath, then worry about insulting me.” I drape an arm around her shoulders that she doesn’t shrug off. “Can you stand up? I’m taking you to the urgent care.”
“My ankle’s weird, that’s all. And I’m going to have some bruises. No point in a doctor.” Despite the bravado, she lets me help her up and uses my arm to steady her balance as she limps down the last few steps. I leave her on the sitting room couch and grab some frozen peas from the kitchen. A pillow goes under her leg and I slap the bag of peas on her ankle.
“Sorry, sweetheart. Steve cleaned out the first aid kit last week when he got hungover. I’ll send him for fresh ice packs.”
“No need. I’m not staying.” Her arms cross defensively, but after a second she reaches down to adjust the bag of peas. “Just like you.”
“Really?” My eyes roll, and I pull the extra key from my pocket, dropping it onto the cushion by her leg. “Just in case, you should take this.”
“What?”
“A key.”
Her brows lower into a deadly scowl. “To what, Captain Sarcasm?”
“The front door.”
“Of where?” Her bright eyes are almost as dazed as they were minutes before. I lean in and touch her temple.
“Where do you think?”
A line forms between her brows and I hate myself a little for teasing her, but she’s so damn cute I can’t help it. “Are you trying to make me strangle you today?” She lifts one of the extra throw pillows, so I delicately pull it from her grip.
“I want you to have a key to this place. Since I’m staying in town a while, this house works well as anywhere for now. I already got cable laid ages ago, so I have the connection I need for work. Figure you should have a key if you’re going to be staying over this often.”
“I…” My hand covers her mouth, and she stops talking. Waits. I smile.
“You can’t leave your mom, but my work’s pretty mobile. I may have to be gone a lot, but if you can handle some sexting and snaps here and there…”
“This is real? Seriously real?” Harper’s red-rimmed eyes widen as she lifts the key in a shaky hand. “Y-you want … you and me? This is a thing?”
“Yes, sweetheart. This is a thing. But it isn’t final. If you’d rather break it off now, call it quits…”
“Never!” She catches herself and laughs, then lunges for me, spilling the stacked pillows and thawing peas onto the floor. I get hold of her waist and shove her back into the sofa, but follow with my body until I’m holding her, half splayed across the displaced cushions while she kisses me into forgetting her fall. I barely stop my hands from squeezing her hips. “Maybe, once things settle here … you and me … I could handle city life. With a lot of vacations. Learn how to handle your friends…”
“No. They learn to handle you, and graciously, or they aren’t friends. I’ve had enough of my grandfather’s plans, Harper.” I kiss her more gently, trying to remember she might be more hurt than she’s letting on. “My plans are just beginning. I’m going to take the company public and take the love of my life wherever she wants to go.” She nips my lower lip.
“You better take her however she wants, too.”
“Always.” I slide my hand along her back, enjoying the curve of her body, already imagining what she’ll look like in five minutes when I bend her over the edge of the couch and get my mouth on her. “As long as she wants me.”
“I always want you,” she whispers against my ear, finding the exact spot to make my blood run hot.
“I should spank you for doubting me.”
“Is that really a punishment when it makes me come harder?”
“Sweetheart, if I wanted to punish you, I’d refuse to get you off, not help it along.”
“So you just like spanking me? Sadist.”
“I like making you come until you can’t stand up. That I get to do so while enjoying the sight of that gorgeous ass turning bright pink is purely a bonus.”
“Were you this kinky at nineteen?”
“Probably. But too inexperienced to know what I wanted. And I was with a sweet, uncertain virgin, as I recall. I wanted her to know sex was supposed to be fun.”
Her expression turns rueful. “You ruined her for everyone else. Kink was the only answer after that.”
“Flattery will get you extra strokes. Once you stop throwing yourself down staircases.”
She grinds against my erection and leans in to rake her teeth along my throat. “I used to close my eyes and imagine it was you spanking me, making me say sorry for letting you go.”
My fingers clench on her hips at that. I grab her hair and hold her still for a long, hard kiss. I have to make this work, I realize. Because I can’t fucking stand the idea of any other man touching her. Jealousy, protectiveness, a shitload of Neanderthal instincts all light up my brain.
“Keep talking like that and I’m not getting shit done but fuck you.”
“Promises, promises. All that rich boy talk…”
I flip her, pin her to the couch, and shut her mouth with kisses. But she doesn’t quite stop giggling until I’ve got my finger on her clit. By the time I slide down and fasten my lips on her, she’s only capable of moaning.
****
“Don’t worry about taking the pills.” The second the words are out of my mouth I regret them. Harper stares at me like I’ve grown two heads. We are sprawled in the massive bed of a Las Vegas suite, the Strip a glittering panorama behind her. Light catches in her ebony hair as she shakes her head in warning or disbelief. I run my fingers through the silky strands, regardless of her displeasure. She slaps my wrist away.
“Excuse you?”
“If you want a kid, it’s not like I can’t afford the bills. Medical, everything else… It’s a whole arrangement we’d have to work out, but…”
“Remember our first night together, and I told you to shut up?”
“I know. But I don’t want you to avoid it because you think I want you to.”
“Jax, use your words,” she says with narrowed eyes. “Is this your totally backwards way to ask me if I’m serious about you?”
“I … I wouldn’t mind having a kid. With you. Looking at you sometimes, I get this flash of you and me, with a kid. And I guess it’s kind of nice. But I’m not pushing you. Your body, your rules.”
Harper laughs, then crawls over to cover me in giggly kisses. “You know it’s supposed to me trying to get pregnant, not you trying to get me pregnant. No benefits to you getting my bank account, gorgeous.”
“I don’t want your bank account,” I whisper. “Just you.”
“Just you,” she echoes before we get lost in a slow kiss. Her tongue against mine, her hand tracing my chest. “I love you, Jax. Kids, no kids. Money, no money. It’s all semantics. You’re all I need.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind getting married tomorrow?” I flick my thumb across her nipple and rake my teeth against the rise of her breast until she whimpers.
“I think I could… manage that.” She might’ve made a joke if I hadn’t thrust my hips against hers. Instead she cries out and arches. “More?”
“Say yes to me first.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes!”
“Keep saying it,” I order as her legs part. I’ll make a public proposal later. Tonight is for us.
The End
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www.evernightpublishing.com/allegra-grey