“Quickly,” Eric adds, impatience to his tone that he makes up for by adding, “There’s a big tip in it for you.”
Her eyes go wide and she rushes away. Eric immediately leans over and brushes his lips over mine again. “You taste like trouble.”
“I wish I weren’t,” I say, my eyes meeting his, “but we both know 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. Once we’re ready to go, we both stand and the minute we’re on our feet, Eric laces his fingers with mine and leads me through the restaurant. With each step, I can feel the swell of need between us. We pause at the door 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 pulls me under his arm 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, with Eric, drives home another feeling. I have so much guilt where he’s concerned.
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.”
He cups my face. “I told you. I’m good with trouble.”
My hands go to his face. “I was selfish asking you to come. I know what Gigi did to you and your mother. I’m sorry.”
“And she’s doing it to you, too,” he says. “You just don’t see it.”
“At least she wants what I want,” I say. “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 gone.”
“I did what I wanted,” he says. “I came here for you. I wanted you. I want you. I need to trust you, though, Harper. I don’t like your connection to Gigi.”
“I know that. I’ve been honest with you about it. And I need to trust you. 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.”
“Deep breath, sweetheart. Better things are coming. I promise you. You know what I need to do for you right now?”
“Do for me?”
“Yes. Do for you. What you did for me the night we met. Fuck this damn family out of your head.”
“Is that what I did?”
He lowers his head, his lips near mine, breath a warm fan on my cheek. “And a lot more, sweetheart, or I wouldn’t be here now.” He brushes his lips over mine. “Come on,” he says, turning us back onto the sidewalk.
This time, we have a short one-block walk and everything but that need between us fades into the wind. There is something happening between me and this man, and it’s not just sex, but it drives that need to be intimate between us. My skin is flushed. My sex has clenched just thinking about being naked and in Eric’s 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, combus
tible. I unlock my door and we enter 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, before setting the take-out on the counter to his right. 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 into me, aligning our bodies, and I feel the heat of him. I feel the change in us. This isn’t a power play. This isn’t us climbing walls to get to each other. The dynamic between us has shifted.
His hands frame my face. “I nicknamed you princess because you were so fucking beautiful and regal standing there by the pool that night.”
“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. “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.”
“And?”