Chapter 8 The Real Andrew Harding #2
He remains standing there, full-Harding—all loose hip, one hand pocketed, keys clinking in the other. His chin nudges toward the wine glass, then the bottle. “You eat somethin’, or just drink your dinner?”
She didn’t drink the wine. It’s a prop to curate the moment and set the scene.
She used it to stain her lips, then poured it out, one glass at a time.
She wants him to think she’s drunk, gone, grief-wrecked, bottle-brave.
Because drunk girls don’t pay attention to where a man’s eyes drift to, or how long they stay there, or remember what they say.
If Andrew thinks she’s tipsy, too faded to remember, then he doesn’t have to be on guard or careful. He’ll show his cards, his true colors. The real him will slip out, and she wants to know what makes him lean in, tick, hold back, and what would make him break his own rules.
“You know how it goes. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. I’m a cliche.” Her gaze drifts to the daybed across from her. “I bet your feet hurt. You been on ‘em all night.”
She doesn’t ask him to sit. She only needs to make him feel the soreness in his heels so he’ll sit on his own, planting the idea, letting it take root.
And sure enough, he caves.
A dry sigh rasps out of him as he drops his keys into his pocket.
“That your way of sayin’ sit the fuck down?” he asks with a cocked brow, bone-tired, lowering himself onto the edge of the daybed, the wood groaning under his weight.
She stiffens, not thinking he’d catch on. But all that matters is he’s across from her now, knees spread, forearms dropped heavy between them, head hanging after the night wrung him out. Sweat’s drying at the hollow of his throat, his hair pushed back in a lazy, it’s-too-fucking-late way.
He looks up at her through long lashes.
A fuck-me pose he plays off as exhaustion, but she knows better.
She talks in drunk circles for ten minutes.
Roger this, Roger that, how they both hated kids, wanted a golden retriever named Sal instead, how she picked the engagement ring, letting him think it was his idea, found a place in Montclair with a dumbwaiter, even though she had her heart set on Westchester.
She says how fast things change. One second, you’re bickering over square footage.
The next, you’re sobbing into a wineglass gone dry.
Through it, her ramblings turn slurred—mourning from her lips, seduction in her movement.
Some true. Most is bullshit. She lets it all pour out like grief, but built like bait because somewhere between the countertops she fantasized fuckin’ on and the car she picked out, her knees slowly fall open.
And he looks, eyes trailing up the inside of her thigh, nostrils flaring at the spread of her pussy. His lids fall heavy, and he bites his lip to keep the filth from spilling out of his mouth.
When his eyes drag back up to hers, a breath leaves him—part dry chuckle, part sigh. He drops his head, wipes a hand down his face, then gestures lazily at her spread thighs. “You always cry with your pussy out, or is that for me?”
“Huh?” she asks, stupid, like she forgot. “Oh. I don’t wear panties to bed.” A smirk rises on her face as she tilts her head. “Havin’ a hard time not lookin’?”
He leans back, eyes on the floor. “That why you hit me up?” He leans forward again, elbows dropped. “It’s four in the mornin’. I just got off two shifts—sixteen hours straight. I’m too tired for games. So cut the shit and say it. Roger’s gone, so now you usin’ me or what?”
He’s avoiding her gaze.
Him leaning back? He’s fighting himself.
She knows he’s trying not to want her, and pissed at himself for it.
She opens her knees wider, fingertip tracing the seam of her shorts.
“Usin’ you?” She laughs. “C’mon, Andrew. Don’t tell me you don’t want me. That you’re not sittin’ there wondering.” She catches the seam between her fingers. “So what’s it gonna be? Gonna make a move, or starve? ‘Cause your eyes been sayin’ grace since I opened my legs.”
He looks away—skyward, somewhere safer—then scratches his jaw.
“Yo, you really think that’s where my head’s at?” A short laugh leaves him. “C’mon. If I wanted you, I’d’ve had you by now. You said you were hurting. I came. That’s what friends do. Ain’t no fuckin’ angle here, Elle. I ain’t about that.”
She shrugs. “Still dodgin’.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sta merda, giuro su Dio…” he says, shifting in place. “Nah—you’re just not hearin’ me.”
He wipes the corners of his eyes, then spreads his hands.
“Let’s be real, yeah? You didn’t want my ear or my shoulder, you wanted my mouth. ‘Cause you know about me, so you set this fuckin’ scene—porch, wine, the whole act—backing me in a corner.” His grin’s worn-out. “That what you want? My fuckin’ mouth?”
He cocks a brow. “That all you want? Say it, and I’ll give it to you…” His grin fades as the next words drop. “But if this is some drawn-out tease? I’m gone. I got work in the mornin’.”
She smirks, knee swaying side to side. “It’s a yes or no, Harding,” she says into her wineglass, bored. “Just admit you want me.”
He huffs a laugh, dry as dust. “Nah—I don’t say shit like that.”
His eyes lift. There’s no flirt in them, only a long, heated pause.
“So you bringin’ that pussy over here or not?”
She stands with a lazy shrug. “Relax. No need to beg, I’m not heartless,” she teases, then stumbles a little, catching herself on the daybed arm.
A giggle falls out of her from the wine she didn’t drink.
She’s still testing him, waiting to see where he’ll put his hands, his mouth, what he’ll reveal if he believes it’ll fade by morning.
She steps between his knees, her shoulders dropping.
“I really do miss him,” she whispers. Because the lie has to taste true.
If he doesn’t buy the sadness, she won’t get a second night.
“You don’t miss him,” he says. “You miss who you thought you were gonna be.”
His gaze peels off her, peering out into the night. “You’re pretendin’ to grieve the man. When really, you’re grievin’ the version of you that got buried with him,” he mutters.
She freezes, fingers digging into his shoulders as she stares ahead.
He blows out a harsh breath. “You’re angry. So be fuckin’ angry. Grief’s got a hundred faces, and anger’s one of ‘em. But don’t act like I can’t see what’s happening here. Girls been comin’ at me like this for a decade. I just… wasn’t expectin’ this from you.”
And it stings. Not because it’s false, but because he thinks it’s true. In his eyes, she just became another girl on the list.
But that’s where he’s wrong.
Yes, she staged the night. Yes, she faked the sadness. But she wants more than one night. She wants to break every rule he swears he lives by, touch the untouchable boy. She wants to be the one Andrew Harding falls for.
Elle leans in, presses her mouth near his ear.
“Call it whatever you want. You still came,” she says, pushing her silk shorts down slowly, letting them fall. One sway to the left, and they pool at her feet. She steps out and rises again, hands resting on his shoulders to balance herself.
Then his head dips without warning. One breath, and his nose drags up the inside of her thigh, landing right at the center, inhaling her scent like he was craving it all along.
She gasps, her thighs twitching as his fingers lift, two of them parting her open. She buckles the second they touch her lips, then slide through her slit. From her opening to her clit, he drags a line, collecting the taste of her. Then he feeds it to himself, eyes hooded, sucking her right off.
Elle stares, stunned stupid.
His fingers are damp when they slide up the skin of her thigh. “You’re a mess. Been sittin’ here fuckin’ achey since sunset?”
She sways on her feet, still haunted by the trail of his fingers, still feeling the drag of them.
Heat unfurls between her thighs, and she pushes against his chest, hard enough to send him flat on his back.
His head hits the pillow, and she crawls up the length of him, hips grazing, until her forehead presses to his.
Andrew turns his head away from her fast. “Nah. Not a chance. Turn around,” he mutters. “Face the other way.”
Elle stays exactly where she is.
If he won’t look at her, she’ll make him feel her.
She sinks, hips tipping forward until her pussy grinds over the length of him, her clit scraping his jeans, hoping his dick will speak for him instead.
But Andrew has her off him before her next breath.
“Nah—I don’t fuck. Don’t start pushin’ lines just ‘cause I’m givin’ in. C’mon. Turn the fuck around, put your ass in my face before I change my mind.”
She doesn’t want to lose him in one night, so she reels it back and does what he says, turns the other way, straddles his chest, backside facing him, and plays it by his rules—for now.
Relief cuts through him in one breath as he grabs her by the hips and leans back, dragging her pussy to his mouth, keeping her ass high, her thighs spread wide, pussy tipped up and dripping in his face, and Elle can’t fucking breathe.
All oxygen traps in her chest as she freezes on all fours, eyes wide and on full display.
Andrew palms both cheeks.
“Don’t get cute down there. You touch me, we’re done. I mean it.”
Turns out the gossip was true. And the way he said it wasn’t panic, it was policy. It wasn’t fear, but routine. Andrew’s got reins on his veins, the kind of control that’s supernatural. A control that makes you want to break it, just to see what happens when he loses it.
The breeze hits her wet, chills it down her leg.
Then his breath spreads warm up the center of her, his hands following, gripping her cheeks. Both thumbs sink into her ass and spread her open, exposing everything. Each inhale’s deeper than the last, like he’s getting high off her scent, needing it in his lungs.
She clenches on instinct, and her legs tremble from his breath alone.