Chapter 9 #3
“Bloody hell, Belle, would you just stop?”
He twirls me around to face him, a pleading look in his eyes. Glancing around with annoyance ticking in his jaw, he pulls me over to a brick doorframe in the alley. It’s not any farther away from the onlookers, but at least it’s out of the street lights.
“I’m sorry, all right. I didn’t mean what I said.” He moves his other hand to my free arm so he can force me to face him. The red wine has been wiped off of his face, but I can still see flecks of moisture clinging to his beard.
“Of course you meant it!” I rip my arms out of his grasp, not giving a shit that I’m shouting. “I make you miserable. Your words were very clear. Feeling’s mutual, arsehole.”
I turn to walk away, but his rough hand gently cups my cheek, giving me pause.
His other hand reaches up to embrace the other side of my face so he can force my gaze to his.
His face is dangerously close to mine as he speaks.
“It’s not you that makes me miserable. It’s this scenario. You can’t be happy with this either.”
“God, no!” I exclaim. “I don’t want to be here anymore than you do, but here we are. You need to commit to this, Tanner.”
The crowd feels as if they are slowly closing in around us. He swallows hard, looking like he wants to argue but knowing he needs to watch what he says so they don’t overhear. It annoys me. His weakness burns the very fibre of my being.
“Be a man for once in your life!” I snap. “Take responsibility and own this. The very least you can do is be a fucking gentleman. I know it’s a completely foreign concept to you and not one the Harris Hoes ever expect, but—”
Kiss.
He’s kissing me.
He’s pressing me up against the brick wall and he’s kissing me as if his life depends on it.
Perhaps in this case, it does.
But it catches me off guard. My stony lips reflexively soften as he tilts his head and increases the pressure on the inside of my mouth…with his tongue.
His tongue!
The cheeky bastard is completely out of control, and I’m still so mad at him. My adrenaline is still high, my rage still so acute. So I decide to fight fire with fire.
I bite down.
He lets out an audible growl against my lips and his tongue retracts, giving me room to sink my teeth down onto his pouty, smouldering, annoying as fuck, lower lip.
This elicits a different reaction than I expected.
He releases my face and lowers his hands to my waist, pulling my hips into his.
His body is rock hard against mine as he pushes us both further into the bricks.
Further into this madness.
My hands reach up and comb through the damp beard on his jaw, tugging softly and relishing in the coarse texture of it on my fingertips, lips, and chin. The messiness, the burn, the wild, beast-like feeling of him is intoxicating.
This foolishness has to stop.
I’m kissing Tanner Harris in a busy London alley with people snapping pictures all around us. And the way he rolls his hips into mine makes everything in my body quiver with need.
I need to get a hold of this situation.
Finally, I find myself again, no longer lost in his touch and his kiss. I pull back, breathing heavily on his lips. “What the fuck was that?” I pant.
The side of his mouth curls up. “Sorry, I’ve never been much of a gentleman.”
I grab Belle’s hand and pull her through the crowd of people flocking around us.
As we make our way back toward the restaurant, I’m praying like fuck that our seats haven’t been filled yet.
If they have, I’ll wait. I’m starving and that starter I had of Belle’s fucking lips did nothing to satisfy my appetite.
If anything, it made me hungrier.
What started as a simple solution—kiss her and make it look like a lover’s quarrel—quickly ramped up into, Holy shit, I need to be inside this woman right now. Sod all these prats watching us.
This situation with Belle is going to get very complicated very fast. I haven’t forgotten all the reasons I didn’t kiss her three months ago. But the fact that we’re being forced together for the next few weeks seems to overrule all those reasons.
Doesn’t it?
Even if it doesn’t, Belle certainly isn’t too keen on turning this fake dating into a friends with benefits scenario, which would suit me a lot better. So if monogamy is what will be required of me, I’m going to become very well acquainted with my hand over the next month.
I find our seats waiting for us when we get back inside and do my best to ignore all the people gawking at us.
Belle did just throw a glass of red wine in my face, so I’d probably be staring, too.
I zip up my jacket to hide the evidence of her outburst on my T-shirt.
Then, when the waitress comes over, I tell her to bring us a variety of whatever she recommends.
“I hope that’s all right,” I say, feeling tense and introspective and glancing awkwardly at Belle.
She nods woodenly, and I just now notice that her dark lipstick is smeared on her face.
“You, uh…” I gesture toward my lips and she immediately touches her mouth.
“Will you excuse me?”
I nod and she gets up and walks toward the toilets.
I take the moment of solitude to give myself a quick pep talk so I can get out of my head once and for all.
I’ve been going about this situation all wrong.
I’ve only been thinking about myself and haven’t been listening to what she needs out of this.
I need to quit being the Tanner Harris I’ve been for the last couple of months and start being the Tanner Harris that Vi would expect of me.
This arrangement is important for Belle’s job, too, and it’s time I be considerate of that.
When she gets back, she barely sits down on her stool before I puke out the words that have been rolling around in my mouth.
“I’m sorry, Belle. I said stupid things.
Awful things. I was being a prat and only thinking of myself and you didn’t deserve that.
I’m also sorry for attacking you out there like that without any warning.
I just…felt everybody surrounding us, and it was the only thing I could think of to salvage this evening. I am sorry.”
“You called me Belle again,” she replies, frowning.
After everything I said, her response is unexpected.
“Do you prefer I continue calling you Ryan?”
She adamantly shakes her head. “No, no, it’s just something I’ve notice you do when you’re not being the arrogant arse the papers all portray you to be.”
I swallow a drink of my now slightly warm beer and mull over her observation.
I guess I started calling her Ryan after that night at Old George when I realised we could never be anything more than acquaintances.
Maybe it helped establish some boundaries for me. Boundaries seem rather irrelevant now.
She interrupts my thoughts. “I’m sorry, too, for erm…throwing my wine in your face.”
I smile. I can’t believe I’m smiling. A crazy chick tossed a drink in my face and I’m smiling at her like she couldn’t possibly help herself. “It’s okay.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not. It’s awful. I have a hair-trigger temper and it gets me in trouble…a lot.”
My brows climb. “What kind of trouble? Like at work?”
“No, actually. That’s the one place I’m completely level-headed.
I think the drama of the medical situations I’m faced with are so intense there’s not really room for me to be irrational.
” The waitress sets fresh drinks down between us and we both take a necessary gulp.
“My family life, on the other hand, is a whole other story.”
“You said you and your dad aren’t close?”
“No. I’m not close with any of my family. All of this”—she gestures to her face and body—“is just a bit much for their scene.” She lets out a sad sort of self-deprecating laugh that bothers me.
I eye her objectively for a minute and can’t find a single flaw. “What does that mean?”
Her dark eyes pin me with a look that tells me she thinks I’m clueless. “It means that if I would have tossed my wine on anybody in their social circle, I would be written out of the will.” She pauses and frowns at me. “Why is it you seem to be so forgiving?”
“For you throwing wine on me in public?”
She nods.
I shrug. “I guess I can admire someone who’s passionate about their convictions, even if it is at the expense of mine.”
“Aren’t you equally passionate?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m quite laid back for the most part. Growing up with four siblings and a father who cares more about football than he does about anything else sort of forces you to be.”
“Then we’re a match made in heaven, Tanner, because my passion, as you so kindly called it, usually sends men running for the hills.” She looks at me for a few seconds. “Then again, I forgot the fact that you are not here by choice.”
The chef behind the counter interrupts our quickly darkening conversation by serving us several small plates of food. It all looks and smells amazing. Plus, I think we both know that more eating and less talking is probably for the best.
We tuck into it all like it’s our last meal.
I don’t know what the majority of the food is when the waitress tells us all about the various sauces and seasonings, but I don’t have to understand what I’m eating to know it’s incredible.
Belle seems to be enjoying it just as much.
I guess this would be a perk of monogamous dating.
Restaurants, good food, good drinks, attractive company. I can see the appeal.
But nothing about the night tops the way Belle’s eyes light up when she sees they have a dark chocolate ganache truffle dessert. She looks like a kid getting a puppy on Christmas morning. It’s sweet and hilarious and innocent.
Watching her eat it, however, is the exact opposite description. Her large, touched-up lips wrap around the spoon of chocolate like she’s devouring the most sensual thing on the planet. I suppose it is to her. To me, I’m envisioning something a bit more salty tasting.