by Katie Porter
Her feet are bare. She’s at home in my home. Casual. Relaxed. Her oversized sweater hangs to her thighs. She crosses one set of toes over the other, a meekness so unlike her. The room is dim. I comb fingers through her hair, helping it to lay smoothly over her shoulders. It seems more brown than gold today, the muted version of her.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
She looks into my eyes. Solemn. Still mourning and mournful. She glides the tips of her fingers over my chest, my neck. “Dad’s house has to be cleaned out and taken care of. I have my own apartment sitting empty. I can’t stay here forever.”
“You could.” I take her hand and kiss each fingertip, one by one. She trembles and tries to pull away. I don’t allow her to. “Harlow... I’ve wanted to wait because I know you’re hurting.”
“Then let it wait.” Her voice pitches higher. Her eyes widen. “If you don’t think I should hear it—”
“If you’re going to leave, I have to say it.”
I don’t like cutting anyone off, much less Harlow, but I don’t want to hear anything we’ll regret—much like she doesn’t want to hear it either, as ironic as that may be. I touch her chin and follow the line of her jaw, up to her delicate ear. She’s beautiful, but I like her stubbornly carved lines best.
“Harlow, I love you.”
Her eyes close. Her lashes are dark half circles over her cheeks. “Such simple words,” she whispers. “I wish I could believe them.”
“Do you think I’m lying?”
“Not to me. Maybe to yourself.”
I hold her face. She won’t open her eyes. “You think you can’t be loved because you’ve been treated badly.”
“Because I haven’t been loved.” Her eyes snap open, her glare fierce. “By the people who were supposed to. By the people who chose to bring me into this world. It leaves scars, you know.”
“You’re stronger than them.”
“I don’t feel very strong.”
“That’s why you amaze me.” I push her hair back from her forehead. It clings to my palm. There’s vitality in every bit of her. “It’s not courage if it comes from idiocy, or if you don’t know any better and just push onward. But you... You’ve been wounded and defeated, but you keep pushing on. Getting up again. Looking for the answers that matter to you.”
“And now it’s all closed off. Gone. It hurts, Alec. I ache.” Tears gather on the dense shield of her lashes. They quiver when she blinks.
“Let me help,” I whisper. I kiss her trembling mouth. She doesn’t return the caress. “Stay here.”
Her eyes are the moon, the sun, the galaxy—everything that threatens to overwhelm me with the smallness of my existence. If it meant her heartbreak would end, I would demolish the city. Ruin the country. Give her any prize she desired.
But her mouth stays downturned, even when she leans in to kiss me. I can taste her sadness. I try to pull away, to avoid taking advantage of her, but she stands between my legs. She twines around my shoulders.
“Harlow,” I say against her lips. “We shouldn’t.”
She gives me the ghost of a smile, at least. “Here we are again. It’s been a while since you’ve told me we shouldn’t.”
“You’re grieving.” I spread my hand across her narrow back. Her sweater is thick and cozy, warm with her body heat.
“I know,” she says quietly, with such reserve that I want to smash furniture. This is Harlow. Reserve isn’t a word to be applied to her. “It’s my grief though. I get to manage it the way I want to.”
I hate that she’s right. I can’t take it away from her, any of this. So when she kisses me again, I let her lead. I let her thrust her tongue deep. She’s rough velvet. Wet heat. What penalties we pay for the generations before us. What acres of crops are left for us to harvest.
I hold her hips loosely. Her muscles shift and tighten, giving her away. She’s not as relaxed as her smoldering kisses would have me believe. Tension thrums from her into me. I take every bit. Let her fears come. I’m stable enough to take them all.
Imagine that.
She kisses me as if she’s trying to get inside me. I haul her onto my lap. Her legs wrap around my waist. It’s all we can do to get closer and closer.
She hides her face against my neck. “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
She’s everyone I thought I wouldn’t find. I’d wasted my first bite of the cherry. That was supposed to mean I was now past the chance to find a partner. But here she is.
“I do.”
She skates her lips back and forth over the base of my throat. I can’t tell if she’s teasing me or herself. Her words are quiet as the grave. “I could love you. Maybe I do. Maybe that’s what this is.”
“Then stay.” Except I should know better than to command Harlow, my feral girl.
“I can’t. I won’t.” Her luminous eyes blaze. She pulls her sweater over her head, still balanced in my lap and trusting me to hold her safe. Reckless woman. Dangerous siren. A gift to my existence. “I haven’t ever lived for me. I can’t love you if I don’t love myself first.”
The lace and mesh bra she wears is more decoration than support. A teasing froth of creation. I cup her breast. “Do you think I’ll be so distracted that I don’t hear you saying farewell?”
“Of course not.” She trails her fingertips down my cheekbone, a ghosting touch. “I want the opposite. I want you to remember my goodbyes forever.”
I squeeze the soft mound in my hand. The tip is tight and pink. I want to pinch her. I want to make her hurt. One of my less than admirable impulses, this desire to punish her for the pain we both feel.
Subsuming the urge is my only choice. I lower my head and draw her nipple between my lips. I mouth it gently, with my tongue dancing circles across her prickling flesh. I write promises of the future we could have.
She spears her fingers through my hair. Her body rocks. My cock is throbbing. I want the incineration we can achieve together. I need the freedom to grind into her, to overrun her.
I pull us down to the floor. She splays beneath me, prone, her arms and legs wide. She arches in a provocative pose—a willing victim to any perversion I yearn for. She’s playing the coquette again, the intentional tease.
How disappointed she’ll be when she realizes all I want is her love.
Chapter Thirty
Harlow
EVEN ALEC’S EXPENSIVE carpet feels trashy against my bare back when he levers over me, body to body, his weight on his elbows. He’s nestled between my thighs, his cock thick and hard against the part of me that throbs with need.
I only wish he’d stop trying to look into my soul. His slate blue eyes are serious. His mouth is a straight line, barely parted. Air rushes from him to me and back again, even though we’re not kissing. Symbiosis or codependency. I’m not sure if it matters. I have to rip myself away.
I twist and push, and he lets me roll us over. I’m above him on my knees. I make quick work of the buttons marching down his shirt and spread both halves open. His chest is lean, with muscle enough to hold me when I splay my hands across his ribs and lean in. I’m not hurting him. I can’t grind him down.
I kiss him and my hair falls around us, blocking everything out. We’re making the world humid—a life force passed back and forth. If only this could be everything. If only the real world could drop away for good.
I scramble between us for his belt, only to realize he’s doing the same thing. We move at the same pace. Our hands fumble together at his zipper, then push his trousers and underwear down and off.
I stand up and start to take off my leggings. He comes up on his knees and grabs my waistband. He strips me and kisses and licks every revealed inch. I hold his head. This will be the last time I feel his silky hair.
I look up at the glass ceiling to clear my thoughts of cynicism. Stupid, stupid. I blink fast. The sky is dimming to that grey-yellow color
only found in city twilights. No night to hide myself in.
He’s not letting me anyway. He reaches up to take hold of my chin. He tugs so that I have to look at him. I barely have time to compose my expression.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“Where are you?”
“Right here.” I manufacture a little laugh as if I think that’s a silly question. Instead, he’s calling me out. I drag my nails down the back of his neck. I hope I leave marks that last until morning. “The more important question is why you stopped.”
I wish he’d give a glib answer. No, he studies me. His hands coast up my legs, tarrying in the sensitive hollows at the back of my knees. I shiver. He slips beneath the lace edges of my panties, only far enough to tease. He pulls us back down to the ground, me still on top.
I lift my arms and stretch my body. His gaze roams over my modest curves and his touches follow. I like it that way. I like when he stops searching me. My hips work slowly, grinding over him. I center myself where I need him. The silky material of my panties is soaked, so much that it becomes an extra layer of teasing sensation. We’re in a slow dance, filthier than anything that can happen on a dance floor or at a gig.
I make the mistake of shifting my focus from his chest hair and pale skin to his expression. He’s looking at me again, at my eyes. My heart thumps out of rhythm. My stomach swoops.
“Don’t.” But I don’t know what I mean.
Don’t love me? He doesn’t. He can’t. No one can.
His arrogant eyebrows quirk and still he doesn’t look away.
I put my hand across his eyes. I hide this portal into his soul. His skin is hot under my fingers, his temples damp with a sheen of sweat. He’s working hard to hold back his lust. His eyes are delicate. Tender. Vulnerable. But he wraps long, elegant fingers around my wrists and pulls himself free, only to display the vulnerability of emotions shining in those blue eyes.
“I want you with me,” he says.
“I want my heart to not break.”
I can’t pull my hands free. I’m honestly not sure I’m trying. I like being held tight. I’m burning up for more than one reason. Maybe I’m tugging only so he can prove how he’s holding onto me.
“Then don’t go.” His voice is dark with need. “Nothing needs to be broken.”
I kiss him to silence him. He’s on the bottom but he still takes over the kiss. He holds my head still so that he can plunder, using the angle he likes best. His mouth is my heaven. His body is my shelter. His heart is my war zone.
We’ve come so far. Gone through too much. There’s no coming back from this damage.
I reach between us, sliding my panties to the side and out of the way. I keep riding along his cock. The flared head bumps across my knot of nerves. I jolt every time. I’m so wet and plump. We slip together.
My hips angle. At least, I tell myself that. The next time Alec and I thrust together, he slides halfway into me. It’s an accident. A mistake. Something we can’t help. But we’re skin to skin, the most intimate I’ve ever been with any human being. The last thing I can give him.
The last thing I can take for myself.
His grip on my hip clenches but his eyes have gone hazy. “Harlow.”
Fuck, he feels good, even only halfway in. I can feel every vein and ridge. His skin is smoother than latex. My eyes drift shut as I lower myself a fraction. I’m pulsing with want. I feel it through every cell in my body. Christ, it’s like even my toes are turned on.
But he still has hold of my hips. He doesn’t let me take him all the way in. His expression is strained, his eyes closed. I shift. He tightens his grip, to the point that I think I might have bruises tomorrow.
Then he pushes me away.
It happens so suddenly. I fall to the floor on my ass, cold without his body to warm me. He scoots back and reaches for his pants.
I prop myself up on my elbows. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”
“Fucking bloody hell, Harlow.” He stands, turns away from me, pulls his pants up to cover his bare ass. “I have to hand it to you. You know what I want and what to use against me.”
My heart twists sickly. “I didn’t mean to use it against you. I’m not baby trapping you. I don’t know why I did that.”
He looks over his shoulder at me. The contempt in his gaze makes me flinch. “You know why. I said I love you, of course I’d want everything. I want all of you. You, however, are running scared.”
I sit up, curling into myself and trying to hide my nakedness. He tosses my sweater over. The casual gesture hurts with both its care and lack of care. I pull it on. My stomach is a cherry pit. I’m shaking. I don’t get up from the ground because I don’t trust my legs to hold me up.
He leans against the end of the couch, his arms crossed over his bare chest. He’s not looking at me anymore. I guess I should be careful what I wish for.
“If you want bareback, by all means. I want that too. Stay and we’ll get tested together.”
“Alec,” I start, but then I have to start again when my voice breaks. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to manipulate him. Again. “Alec, this is my point. This is why I have to go.”
The lines around his mouth are carved deep, the cheeks behind them hollowed. His nose seems sharp. “Oh?”
“Because I don’t know how to be loved. Everything I’ve ever done has been greedy and desperate.”
“You came across an ocean for your father. That’s not greedy.”
Claws are in my throat, or maybe glass. It hurts to swallow. I owe it to him to try though. “I didn’t do it for him. I did it for me. I’d have done anything to learn even a fraction more about him, about his past and it didn’t even work.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Harlow
“THANK YOU FOR FLYING with us,” says the flight attendant. Her navy-blue slacks are perfectly pressed and tidy. She wears a colorful scarf around her neck. She’s very bubbly considering we’re about to embark on an eleven-hour flight. And my heart is breaking. “Can I provide you with complimentary champagne?”
“Can you leave the bottle?”
“Rough day?” she asks, her voice oozing sympathy. Her eyes are kind.
“Rough four days.”
Four days ago, Alec left me sitting on the floor. Three days ago, I finished packing all my shit. Two days ago, I spent twenty-four hours in bed at the Carlisle Hotel. I waited for the soonest possible ticket I could book without emptying my entire checking account.
Well, I briefly dallied with the idea of renting a private plane in order to get out of England as soon as humanly possible, but that was outside my price range.
I settled for bullying my way to the front of the line on the flight. Normally I’m fairly chill. My assigned seat will still be there waiting for me. Not today. I couldn’t stand the noise of the airport for a moment longer. I am a precious dilettante, apparently, but if you can’t use privilege when you feel like a shit sandwich, when can you?
“Love, family, or work?” Her accent is softer than Alec’s, though still very English. Maybe she’s from out in the country or somewhere that draws out her vowels.
I don’t know the differences well enough to do anything other than regret that she’s not Alec.
“Love and family.” My dad being dead most certainly counts as family trouble.
“I’ll get you that drink right away.”
She doesn’t say if she’ll bring the bottle like I asked, but other people are filing into their seats around us. I’d be pushing things if I call after and remind her. I turn to look out the window. Lines of planes are stacked alongside us. Below, baggage trucks trundle to and fro. Men in coveralls load suitcases onto a ramp that funnels them out of my line of sight, into the plane.
The distinctive bright red hard-shell of my suitcase goes by. It’s possible someone else owns the same set, but then I also glimpse a blue leather luggage tag. I’m pretty sure that’s mine.
The biggest one goes
first, followed right behind by the matched pair. The three of them carry everything I’ve worn for the last three months. Most of my world is in there. The sweater I wore when I first let myself into Alec’s dressing room. The lipstick I wore on when I first kissed him. The blouse I wore when he first kissed me.
When I thought that if I tried hard enough, life would eventually make sense. The way I was raised would make sense.
Fuck, who am I fooling? There’s too much to sort through. I’ve always been a fucking mess. I’m starting to suspect I always will be.
I press my hand flat against the plastic window. It cools my palm. I’m sweaty. I can’t breathe and suddenly I can’t see. There are tears in my eyes again.
“Here you go, love,” says the flight attendant.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
She blinks a few times, her chin turtling back in obvious startle. The champagne is balanced between her fingers. “A girlfriend. But, ah, we don’t—erh, that is, we’re not encouraged to date passengers—”
“No!” Only this much embarrassment could cut through my tears. My face burns. My eyes are so wide. “I’m not being a creep. Not hitting on you. I’m sorry. I don’t like you.”
“Well, you needn’t sound quite so adamant.” She sounds able to tease now that I’ve cleared the air.
“Your girlfriend. How long have you been together?”
“Near on two years.” Her expression is beatific. “She’s a pilot for this airline. I’m awfully proud of her.”
“That’s lovely.” I manage to smile. She looks so happy. I hate her a little bit. “How did you know she was the one for you? I mean—is she?”
“Aye, she is.” A soft ding sounds and she turns briefly. A man tries to fit a suitcase into an overhead bin, handle first. She gives a nearly inaudible sigh before returning her attention to me. “She’s my girl. Always will be. That’s how I know she’s the one for me, because even if the worst happens, she’ll always have a place in my heart. She’s changed me in the best of ways. Made me more of myself.”
