Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
My lashes lower, numbers exploding in my mind that become all about her again. And I end up replaying exactly ten different moments with Harper in my arms, with me inside her, the scent of her on my skin, the taste of her on my lips. What the hell is it about her that makes me need another taste? That makes me remember how she tastes? What is it about her that drives me fucking insane? It should be over. I finally had her. I fucked her, so what if I want to do it about another twenty times? It’s over. That’s how it has to be.
I need help, she’d said in her message.
My lashes lift and I shove off the window. I do not help the Kingston family.
The end.
The princess is part of their clan now, and six years deep, at that. Helping her is helping them, and she wasn’t even honest with me. There was something she wasn’t telling me. She didn’t even deny that as truth. I sit back down on the couch and refill my glass. I don’t like unknowns and where the Kingstons are concerned, that gets personal. Especially after they sought me out through Harper.
What don’t I know and what consequences are there to not knowing?
Chapter thirteen
Harper
Smart girls know their strengths and one of them is wearing high heels , my father once told me. They’re weapons. You can seduce us men with them or you can beat our asses with the end of one of those heels. I’d laughed at the insanity of that idea, but now, I wish fighting was that simple.
It’s my first day back in Denver after Eric’s rejection, and while my body still hums with his touch, I’ve accepted I must find another way to save my father’s legacy. I’m not someone to tuck tail and run. nor do I allow myself to wallow in failure for long. I take my blows, feel them hard and fast, and then dust myself off. I’m already there, already ready to fight again.
I waste no time dressing and hurrying to work, and by eight in the morning, I’m in my office at the Kingston corporate offices. Today my dark hair is tied neatly at my nape, rather than loose the way I like it, a style I see as no-nonsense and all business. I’ve dressed in a black suit, with a pale pink shell beneath it, because I like to remind the world that I’m not one of the guys any more than I’m one of the Kingstons. I need that distinction today, and I hate that part of it is to spite Eric.
No matter what he wants to believe of me, I’m not one of them. I am not a Kingston and will never be. I’m my father’s daughter, and that means I fight for what I believe in and for others. Right now, I just have to protect our customers, my mother, and even Gigi, who hasn’t always deserved being saved. Maybe she doesn’t now. I understand why Eric despises her. When I entered this family, she was horrible to me, too, but seeing someone almost die and then beg for forgiveness has a way of getting to you.
I sit down at my desk and pull out my MacBook as well as the pad of paper where I wrote the different companies I want to call for aid, but I can’t help myself. I power up my computer and I hate that I have enough hope left in me that I check one last time for a reply from Eric. I actually hold my breath waiting for my email to load, only to find nothing from him in my inbox. I said I was letting go and moving on, but the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And Isaac and my stepfather have always been enemies, even when I was too naive to heed the warning Eric had given me about being used with no endgame for me but defeat.
I stand up with the intent of shutting my door, only to have Isaac appear in the doorway, and in his ridiculously expensive suit, there’s no way I can avoid a comparison between him and Eric. “I see you’re back to work,” he says, his voice rich with accusation. He’s a good-looking man, his hair perfect, his jawline sharp, clean. He’s refined, and some would say perfectly male, and yet unbidden, that memory of the rasp of Eric’s whiskers on my belly reminds me that Eric is so much more than his brother. And I realize now that the two men do not resemble each other at all. Isaac’s features are sharper, and his presence is all about demand and arrogance. Eric is more rugged male, a force of nature, effortless dominance in his very existence and Issac overcompensates in all the wrong ways to merely stand in his shadow.