26. Harper
HARPER
It’s been about a week since Maddox left and I’ve learned two things about myself in his absence.
The first is that I miss him in a very specific, inconvenient way that is distinct from missing a friend and I’ve been just competent enough at ignoring it to get through the days without doing anything embarrassing.
The second is that the three of us, meaning me and Killian and Asher, have apparently been orbiting each other for long enough that we’ve settled into a gravitational pull nobody decided to establish.
Tonight we’ve all ended up in Killian’s sitting room again, the same way we end up here three or four evenings a week now, nobody planning it, just all arriving in the same place around the same time like it’s a habit we’ve been practicing without noticing.
Asher’s on the other couch with a book. Killian has the scotch and his phone and is doing the particular variety of not-working where you look at your phone frequently without actually responding to anything.
I’m on the floor with my back against the couch and my event files spread around me and my second glass of the estate’s Bordeaux blanc.
It’s eleven at night.
It’s comfortable in a way I’ve stopped analyzing.
My phone lights up on the floor beside me.
Maddox: You three up?
I look up at Asher, who has already checked his phone. He looks at me. Killian’s phone has buzzed too.
“Apparently,” Killian says.
I open the video call.
Maddox is in what looks like his hotel room, the expensive kind where the lighting is amber and considered and everything is designed to make you feel like someone interesting.
He’s got a glass of something dark in his hand and he’s leaning back in his chair and he has that smirk that means trouble on his unfairly handsome face.
I know this expression. I’ve catalogued it. It precedes nothing good and everything entertaining.
“Good, you’re all awake,” he says.
“It’s eleven,” Asher says. “Where are you?”
“My suite. Very good Barolo, by the way, Killian, I’ll send you the vineyard details.” He takes a sip and looks at the three of us on his screen with the satisfaction of a man who has found his people from six time zones away. “I have a proposal.”
“No,” Killian says.
Maddox looks at him. “I haven’t said it yet.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“You have the look you had in Monaco in 2019 before you suggested the thing with the boat.”
“The boat thing turned out fine.”
“Maddox.”
He smiles. “Strip poker.”
There is a brief, resonant silence.
“Absolutely not,” Killian says.
“I’m not twenty-one,” Asher says, which is such a specific and personal objection that it makes me want to ask a follow-up question immediately.
I look at the screen. “Harper. You’re the tiebreaker.”
“I’m not a tiebreaker, I’m a person.” I pause. “Also how does this work over video? You’re in Milan.”
The expression on his face sharpens into something and I already know what he’s thinking.
“Glad you asked,” he says.
Maddox explains the logistics with the focused enthusiasm of a man who has clearly been thinking about this for longer than the last five minutes.
There’s a card app. Honor system on the hands.
He can see us, we can see him. When someone loses a hand they take something off.
He is also, he clarifies, subject to the same rules and will be taking things off on his end.
The hotel room, not the bar. He’ll relocate.
“This is insane,” Asher says.
“You said that about the Milan deal in 2021 and that one made us forty-two million dollars.”
“That’s a completely different category of situation.”
“Is it though?” Maddox looks at me through the screen. “Sweetheart. Thoughts.”
I look at Killian, who is watching me with the expression of a man who has already decided what he’s going to do and is waiting to see what I do first. I look at Asher, who has his book closed now and is looking at the phone with the particular expression of a man whose objections are becoming less structural and more reflexive.
“What are the starting items?” I ask.
Maddox’s smile does the thing it does. “That’s my girl.”
Killian picks up his scotch. “Deal the cards.”
Here is the thing about Maddox St. James that I perhaps should have understood before agreeing to play cards with him: he has been doing this for money since he was nineteen years old.
Not strip poker specifically. Cards. High-stakes, real-money, read-the-room-or-lose-everything cards.
He grew up in a house where there was never enough of anything and he learned early that the fastest way to change that was to be better at the table than everyone else in the room, and he has had twenty-nine years since then to refine the skill.
The man does not have tells. Or if he does he’s buried them somewhere I don’t have the experience to locate.
He wins the first hand inside of four minutes.
He wins it cleanly, watching the three of us through his screen with the easy attention of a man who is doing the most natural thing in the world, and when the hand is over he leans back and takes a sip of his wine and says, “Socks count,” with the specific satisfaction of someone who planned for this possibility.
“This is rigged,” I say.
“Every game is rigged in favor of the person who’s best at it,” Maddox says. “That’s not rigging, that’s skill.”
“That’s a very convenient philosophy.”
“I have a lot of those.”
Killian loses the second hand and says nothing, which is somehow more unsettling than if he’d said something.
He sets his scotch down and removes his watch with the careful, unhurried motion of a man who is treating this like a perfectly normal Tuesday evening, and the watch goes on the side table and he picks his scotch back up.
Maddox looks extremely satisfied with himself.
Asher wins the third hand, which he receives with a composure that suggests he is not as far from twenty-one as he claims.
I lose the fourth.
Maddox doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me on the screen and waits, and there is something in the quality of his attention that makes the room feel warmer than it was a moment ago. Killian and Asher are also watching and trying to look like they aren’t, which they are both very bad at.
I reach up and pull the hair tie from my wrist.
“That counts,” I say, putting it on the floor beside me.
There is a moment.
“Hair tie,” Maddox says. “Good. Very creative.”
“Thank you.”
“You have approximately two hands before creative options run out.”
“That’s very presumptuous.”
“Isn’t it,” he says, and deals the next hand.
It happens somewhere around hand seven, which is when Maddox has won four of the previous six and the room has become considerably warmer and I’ve moved from the floor to the couch and Killian’s arm is around me and Asher has abandoned his book to be closer and the whole thing has shifted from a card game into something more honest.
It doesn’t happen loudly.
It doesn’t announce itself with any fanfare at all. I’m looking at my cards and I’m aware of Killian’s arm around me and the warmth of Asher’s shoulder against mine and Maddox on the screen saying something that makes Killian almost smile, and the thing that happens is simply this: I know.
I’m in love with all three of them.
Not the warm, complicated, this-is-more-than-I-expected feeling I’ve been carrying since the opening event.
Not the attachment that’s been building in the quiet spaces of the last few weeks.
This is the other thing, the clear, settled, completely terrifying thing that you know when you know it and cannot un-know once you do.
I’m in love with Killian, who carried me through a hall like it was obvious and is currently radiating body heat through my shoulder and said you don’t have to do it alone anymore like it cost him nothing when it cost him everything.
I’m in love with Asher, who has been making sure I eat since the moment he met me and cried about it not at all and who calls me mon coeur like it’s just a word and we both know it isn’t.
I’m in love with Maddox, who is six time zones away in a hotel suite having talked his way into a strip poker game over video call and is currently winning it with the focused efficiency of someone who never does anything halfway.
I look at my cards.
I don’t say any of this out loud.
I file it somewhere quiet and deep and let it settle there and turn back to the game.
“Your cards, sweetheart,” Maddox says from the screen. His eyes are on mine and there’s something in them that makes me wonder, briefly, if he can see it. If he already knows.
I lay my hand down.
He looks at it. Looks at his own. Looks at me.
He wins.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he agrees.
On the screen his expression does the thing it does when he’s stopped performing casual, and it’s the warmest and the most dangerous version of him, and Killian’s arm tightens slightly around me and Asher shifts closer and the card game has become something else entirely.
“Your turn, Harper,” Maddox says.
I’m down to just my bra and cotton shorts.
Dammit.
My fingers hesitate at the clasp of my bra.
The air in Killian’s sitting room is thick with the scent of scotch and Bordeaux, the warmth of their bodies pressing in on either side of me making my skin hum.
Maddox watches through the screen, his hazel eyes dark, lips parted just enough to show the edge of his teeth.
“Problem, sweetheart?”
I exhale, shaky. “No.”
The clasp gives. The straps slide down my arms. Killian’s breath hitches beside me, his grip tightening on my waist. Asher doesn’t even pretend to look at his cards anymore.
Maddox leans forward, elbows on his knees, gaze dragging over me like hands. “Good girl.”
The next hand is a blur. My pulse thrums in my throat, my thighs pressing together under the table. Maddox lays down his cards with a smirk.
“Shorts.”
I bite my lip, hook my thumbs into the waistband, and shimmy them down my hips. The cotton pools at my ankles. I kick them aside.
Completely naked now.
Maddox groans, low and rough. “Fuck. Killian, Asher—give us a minute.”
They don’t argue. Killian presses a kiss to my temple, Asher’s fingers lingering on my shoulder before they disappear into the hall. The door clicks shut behind them.
“Move the camera,” Maddox orders, voice thick. “I want to see all of you.”
I adjust the phone, angling it down my body as I lean back against the couch cushions. The leather is cool against my overheated skin.
“Touch yourself.”
My breath stutters. “Maddox—”
“Now, Harper.”
I’ve never done this for anyone. Never let someone watch. My cheeks burn as my fingers trail down my stomach, skimming over my thighs.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, “are you blushing for me?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks. “I’ve never done this before.”
A sharp inhale. His hand fists in his own lap, stroking himself through his jeans. “Fuck, you’re making me even harder.”
His groan sends a bolt of heat straight between my legs. I spread my thighs wider, let my fingers dip between them.
“Pinch your nipples first,” he rasps. “Hard.”
I do, gasping at the sting, the pleasure that follows. His eyes lock onto mine as I roll them between my fingers, arching into my own touch.
“Now your clit. Slow circles.”
I whimper, dragging my fingertips through slick heat. My hips jerk.
“Pretend it’s me,” he growls. “My fingers, my mouth.”
The image burns through me—Maddox between my legs, his stubble scraping my thighs, his tongue—
“Fuck!” My back bows off the couch as I plunge two fingers inside, curling them just right.
“That’s it,” he grits out, his free hand undoing his belt now, shoving his jeans down. “Come for me.”
I watch him stroke himself, thick and flushed, and it’s too much—the sight, the sound of his ragged breathing, the way he’s looking at me like I’m everything.
“Maddox—”
“Say my name when you come.”
I spiral fast, my fingers frantic, my other hand pinching a nipple. “Maddox—!”
His groan tears from his throat as I shatter, screaming his name, thighs trembling. He follows with a curse, his release streaking his stomach as he growls mine.
Panting, spent, I slump against the cushions. He’s still watching me, chest heaving.
“I wish you were here,” I whisper. “Wish you could rub your come all over me like last time.”
He barks a laugh, rough and breathless. “Fuck, Harper. You’re going to kill me talking like that.”
I smile, limp and sated. His gaze softens, something deeper than lust passing between us—something that makes my chest ache.
“Goodnight,” he murmurs. “I’ll be back soon.”
I blow him a kiss before the screen goes dark.
Alone now, I pull my shorts and bra back on, scooping my top from the floor. The kitchen light spills into the hallway.
Killian turns the second I step in, his arms opening before I reach him. He pulls me flush against his chest, his lips warm and possessive against mine. When he breaks away, Asher is there, kissing me slow, sweet, his hands framing my face.
Killian scoops me up suddenly, making me laugh as my feet leave the ground. Asher trails behind, grinning, a bowl of strawberries in hand.
“Bed,” Killian declares.
Asher pops a berry into my mouth as we head down the hall. The juice bursts tart and sweet on my tongue.
Missing Maddox aches, but like this—wrapped in them, loved by them—the absence doesn’t feel so bad.