7. Rae
7
RAE
“T ime for bed,” Ash yawns half an hour later.
I drink the beer I’ve been nursing at the patio table while the guys kicked the ball around, trading stories and jokes.
“What’s Barney chewing on?” I ask, realizing the dog has been quiet since knocking me over, content to lie in the corner and ignore both the ball and me.
“Oh bollocks.” Ash cringes.
I cross to the dog and pull a pair of panties out of his mouth. “Seriously? You stole my clothes and fed them to Barney?”
“I stole. He fed.” Harrison glares at his brother. “Did you not take her bag up to my room like I told you?”
“I thought she’d like to make up her own mind about you.”
“Thanks. I think.” I frown as I stare at the mangled fabric.
“I’m going to take a shower before bed. Raegan, I’ll put your bag upstairs. You two sleep well.” Ash disappears into the house, followed by a whining Barney.
It’s just Harrison and me.
I drain the last of my beer and grab the other bottles from the table. “When I left, you were ready to beat the crap out of your brother. What changed?”
Harrison waits for me to go ahead of him into the house, and I try to ignore his physicality. He’s as strong as ever, naked to the waist, tan, carved muscles. His beautiful eyes track me, his cut jaw twitching.
“I asked him a question. He answered correctly.”
Inside, I turn so fast he bumps into me. “Whether I slept with your brother is none of your damn business.”
He takes the bottles from my hands and continues toward the kitchen, chuckling under his breath. “That’s not what I asked.”
The sound of water comes on upstairs. Ash .
“What’s so funny?” I call after Harrison, not bothering to keep my voice down now that his brother is occupied.
“It’s nothing.” He deposits the bottles by the sink before returning. “I’m going to clean up here.”
I’m surprised, but instead of commenting, I go upstairs and find my bag in my old room. Unzipping the suitcase, I retrieve my toiletries and some pajamas before realizing Ash is in the second full bathroom.
Harrison’s still downstairs, so I head into his bathroom. When I get there, I brush my teeth and wash the makeup off my face. I turn to hang the washcloth on the towel rack, noticing pieces of grass and stuck to the butt of my outfit, plus a smudge that’s probably a grass stain from when Barney knocked me over.
This wasn’t the plan for tonight. I was supposed to be having a long, hot bath before collapsing into bed at my hotel, twenty feet away from Ash’s soft snoring. Instead, I’m in Harrison’s bathroom, resisting the impulse to sniff his soap for another hit of familiarity.
I untie the halter neck and strip out of the jumpsuit, tugging it off my bare feet. I’m standing in my underwear, running the fabric under water, when the door opens.
Harrison fills the doorway, a silent, hulking presence. He’s stripped down to his shorts, his hard body impossible to ignore.
“Ash was using the other one,” I say over the thudding of my heart as I turn back to the sink, continuing to rinse my outfit.
“What is that?” He’s at my side the next moment, catching my wrist and turning it over so his thumb presses against the sensitive underside. He traces the shape, and his touch sends my pulse skittering more than the feel of the needle buzzing across my skin.
“A tattoo.”
“You copied my scar.”
My jaw drops at his audacity. “First, that’s not a thing. Second, it looks nothing like your scar. They’re crowns. That’s the only thing alike. Mine is small. Simple. These parts are curved, and… it’s part of my logo. Little Queen is part of me.”
I jerk my arm back, balling up the jumpsuit and dropping it on the counter.
Charged blue eyes lift to mine. “Why are you here, Raegan?”
“You’re a petulant asshole who stole my clothes.”
“In Ibiza.”
“You really want to talk about that now?”
“You’re standing half-naked in my bathroom,” he says softly. “You don’t want to know what I want, love.”
My eyelids drift down again to the outline of his thick erection against his black shorts.
Distance destroyed my heart, but it fed our chemistry. I’ve been without him so damn long, and every inch of me is begging to close the space between us. But letting him touch me will mess with my head, make it harder to remember we’re not together and we won’t be getting back together.
He circles my wrist with his large hand. There’s no way he can’t feel my thudding pulse.
“Tell me one thing and I’ll let you walk out of here. Did you miss me?” he asks.
“No.”
His lips caress my wrist, and my knees sag.
“Liar. I can’t read your thoughts, but I can read your body. The way your eyes shine. How you breathe through your mouth instead of your nose. The way you sway toward me, daring me to touch you. I know what you want as clearly as I know what I want.”
I can’t hold in the moan, not when his tongue traces the same path as his lips, sending trails of fire up my arm that have my breasts pulling tight.
His eyes darken with intent. “You have five seconds to leave before I push you against the wall and take what’s mine.”
“My body doesn’t belong to you,” I whisper, not moving to leave.
“No. But the way you react to me does. Five.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“You’re about to be full of me. Four.”
I look past him toward the door. “You’ll never have me back, Harrison.”
“Three,” he rumbles with a wink, and I feel the shiver from that wink all the way through me. “Last chance.”
“Go to hell.”
“Only if you’re coming with me. Two.”
I try wiggling out of his grasp, but his grip tightens, pulling my body flush against his. His heat and strength make me gasp.
“Don’t play games that I’ll win.” He swivels around so my back is against the wall. “You knew the second you walked in here where this would end.”
Unbelievable.
My heart thuds against my ribs as he waits me out.
I angle up my chin. “Well? Are you ever going to get to one, or is this just?—“
He kisses me.
In the quiet moment before his mouth touches mine, I know I could step away, or say no, or even push him away. But I don’t. I don’t want any of it.
At the first brush of our lips, I open. His tongue slips past mine, and he threads his fingers through my hair, silently begging for more. I give it to him, kissing him back.
His hands drag up my sides, cupping my breasts. The touch feels so damned good, and too soon he’s reaching back to unfasten my bra, dragging it down my arms.
He groans against my lips as he grabs my ass. “This get bigger?”
Despite the angst of being apart from him, I’ve done better at taking care of myself, eating healthy and working out rather than ignoring my body’s needs. “This isn’t the time to accuse a woman of stress eating?—“
“Not what I meant. You’re fucking hot, Raegan. Every second that passes, you only get hotter to me.”
This is a bad idea. But the arousal pounding through me like a tidal wave won’t let me say no.
The apathy I’ve been dealing with in my gigs, the fatigue, the restlessness, I want him to fix it tonight. And tomorrow can’t possibly hurt more than today or yesterday or the hundred days before that.
I brush my fingers across his hard length through the fabric and he twitches against my touch.
I’ve missed every part of him, including this one. I close my grip around his length, straining to encircle him all the way. A tight exhale forces itself from his lungs, but the look on his face screams approval.
“Yes. Touch me.” His hiss turns me to liquid.
I free his cock from his shorts with impatient hands.
He’s thick and proud, jutting up toward his clenched abs, his swollen tip already leaking.
My body aches at the sight of him.
“You open that mouth any wider, I’ll think you want me to fuck it.” Harrison’s low rasp strokes along my skin like a dirty caress.
“Keep dreaming.”
Far away, I hear the sound of the shower click off.
Harrison boosts me up so I’m braced against the wall. My breath is uneven, my legs wrapped around his hips and my grip on the back of his neck. Our foreheads press together, his fierce blue eyes boring into mine.
My body’s resistance is nothing compared to gravity, and he fills me completely on a single stroke. I’m stretched full of him, our angle making him sink farther into me every time I exhale. The feeling of his cock rooting deep leaves me gasping.
As he rocks into me, I grip the back of his neck, holding on for the ride.
“Jesus, Raegan,” he mutters against my ear as if I’m the one tearing him apart instead of the other way around.
When I lean in to kiss Harrison, he fuses our mouths. The kiss deepens, his tongue fucking my mouth while I clench harder around his cock. He shudders, releasing the kiss so I can breathe and cry out.
White-hot pleasure burns, makes me rock my hips against his to chase every bit of friction.
Every second is meant to make up for a day, a week, a month. It has to. Because every gig, every smile, every picture was a lie to bury the truth:
That when Harrison King left me, it took an entire persona to hide my anguish.
He swivels his hips, making me whimper. “You’re so fucking tight.”
Damn, I’m not going to last. I’m too fucking sensitive from missing him, and everything about tonight has me wound tighter than a drum. I’m about to go off.
“Come for me,” he murmurs.
The next time he pulls back, my back slips down the wall an inch. I dig my nails into his neck. Instinct.
“Not letting you go.”
He means he won’t drop me. But as the feel of his body, his closeness, his Harrison-ness, drags me over the edge after all this time, and as my orgasm triggers his, making him clench and spurt inside me…
It would be easy to imagine he means something else.
When he carries me to his bed, tucking me in next to him and locking an unyielding arm around me, I could dig an elbow into his gut and run for the door.
I don’t.
Tomorrow, things will go back to the way they were, but I let myself have tonight.