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“I’m not paying you to fuck me,” he states, as if he can hear my thoughts. “There’s your conversation, and now it’s over.”
“Conversation requires more than one person giving orders and getting their way.”
“That’s compromise,” he scoffs, taking off as soon as the lights flash amber. “If that’s what you want, I’m not the man for it.”
Breathing out a heavy sigh, I bite all my arguments back. Instead, I settle for suggesting a remedy to the situation.
“When Percival offered me the job, he said I’d be playing at the club.”
Henry gives me another cocked-brow side glance. “Which you are.”
“I’m playing in your suite. For you.”
“My suite is in the club, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I thought I’d be playing in a less private setting…like maybe the bar or—”
“I don’t want you near the members,” he snaps suddenly, his hand slapping hard enough on the steering wheel that I flinch. Letting out a measured breath, he pauses in front of tall wooden gates as they open slowly for him. “They have enough to admire, Eve.”
“Henry…”
“I won’t have it.” The statement is final as he drives into a parking spot ahead of the gates beside a large yellow brick warehouse and gets out with a hard slam of his car door.
I watch him round the front of the vehicle, grumbling to himself. If ever there was a cantankerous soul, his is it. But it makes me wonder how much of it is him as opposed to the military man that’s seen and done some seriously rough shit. Joe went from happy-go-lucky joker to a shut-off stranger. My brother didn’t really exist anymore when he returned home. My heart squeezes with grief, a sadness I haven’t felt in a while. But as I continue watching Henry, a spark of hope flickers inside me. He exists. In fact, he doesn’t just exist; he walks this world like he is existence itself.
“Where are we?” I ask when he opens the door, trying not to sound like I’m not angry or even just a little bit upset over the way he’s reacting.
“I need to get showered and dressed,” he replies, looking down himself with a grimace. “There are a few calls I have to make before tonight’s gala.”
“This is your place? You live in a warehouse? Here?” I glance through the driver’s window, down the path that appears to lead to a wraparound garden overlooking the river. Obviously, this place isn’t a shithole, but it’s not where I imagined him living. “Thought you’d live in a palace or something.”
“Come on,” Henry coaxes me out of the car with a low chuckle, giving me his hand so I can jump down. He makes no move to direct me anywhere other than into him. Stroking his hands over my exposed shoulders, he tucks me into his chest in a surprising hug. “I don’t want every interaction we have to turn into a fight.”
The earnest remark tugs at my heart. When I glance up at him, he’s got a torn expression on his face as if he doesn’t know where to go from here. I’ve never seen this side to Henry—awkward and unsure aren’t something that I would usually associate with him.
“The remedy to that is quite simple, Your Grace,” I murmur over his jaw while holding on to his waist so I can roll right onto the tips of my toes. “We should do a lot less talking.”
A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth as he tries to remain serious in spite of my big grin and wandering hands. Stroking them around his sides, I bunch his top in my grasp, lifting the hem at the back so I can feel his smooth skin. I really like this Henry. Rumpled and out of his comfort zone. He looks so boyish with his thick hair all messy, but his overgrown stubble is there to remind me that he’s all man.
The only man that’s been inside me. As sore as I am from last night, I’m aching to feel him touch me with his calloused hands, desperate for him to take me again.
“You’re a nightmare,” he groans, lowering to press his lips to my forehead.
“I am?” I sigh into his neck.
“My darling,” Henry grumbles lightly, trailing his lips down the bridge of my nose. When they reach my lips, he combs his fingers through my hair with a gentle tug, then tilts my face completely to the heavens, and he shadows it with his unmoving stare.
My heart can’t take it. The ridiculously handsome sight of his face nor the need reflecting back at me from his dark depths. It’s so much more than the one thing we share in common. It’s a feeling that flows between us, a desire for something just ours, outside of this world.
“You’re a nuisance,” he says, licking over my bottom lip before his tongue dips into my mouth, stroking over my tongue with the bitter taste of coffee and tobacco.
God, it’s so fucking good. My stomach twists around the butterflies fluttering wildly inside me as Henry kisses me deeper. My hands flatten to his strong back with my nails clawing into the hard muscles to relieve some of the need scorching me from the inside. The heat of his hand roving down my spine causes me to shiver deeper into him at the same time as his other hand coils tighter in my hair.
“You’re a plague,” he growls, licking out of my mouth and up to my ear as his arms wrap around me in such a way that he’s twisted around with a hand kneading my arse and the other fisted in my hair.
We’re an upright tangle of limbs that he’s holding together with all his strength. “My fucking plague,” he echoes ferociously into my ear before sucking the tender flesh below my ear into his mouth with a deep groan.
I don’t care if it’s a good or a bad thing, so long as I’m his. Plague, nuisance, nightmare…I’ll be whatever he wants me to be. Anything to own every one of his kisses like this.
