Page 70 of The Painter and His Poet

“You’ve done nothing wrong.Nothing.”

“I totally understand why you wouldn’t want to take me as your plus one. I haven’t even been invited to the engagement party or the wedding. Which is fine, of course,” I add quickly, trying to sidestep him.

Sterling’s hand grasps my hip, holding me in place. “Look at me, Harlow,” he commands gently.

“Sterling, let me go,” I whisper.

“Not until you look at me.”

I raise my head, slowly meeting his gaze. “I told you, you don’t need to explain yourself to me. It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” he replies, shaking his head. “It’s not fine that you’ve been made to feel unwanted. It’s not fine that your mother called you to tell you about this engagement party and the wedding in the middle of the damn night, and it’s definitelynot okay that she made a point of telling you that you haven’t been invited.”

“It’s okay–” I try to protest, but he shakes his head.

“But more than that it’s not okay that you think I’ve been avoiding you, because I haven’t.”

“But you said–”

“I said that I’ve been keeping my distance, not that I’ve been avoiding you. Those are two very different statements, Harlow,” he replies, his free hand grazing up my arm, before settling on my cheek. “And me telling Dalton that I don’t think it’s a good idea taking you as my plus one to his engagement party isn’t because I don’t want you there, it’s because if you’re by my side, I won’t be able to keep my damn hands off you.”

“Oh…” My voice trails off as he brushes his thumb against my bottom lip, and my heart hiccups inside my chest.

“You know how I feel about you, Harlow. I’ve kept my distance because I thought you needed space. But when I tell you that nothing’s changed, that I want you, I need you to believe me. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” I reply, the word slipping out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Good, because if I had my way we wouldn’t have spent a second apart these past couple of weeks,” he grinds out, his thumb pushing past the boundary of my lips as I gasp. “If I had my way I’d be spending every second of every damn day buried inside of you because that’s the only place I’ve ever felt at home.”

I groan then, my eyes fluttering shut as I suck his thumb deeper into my mouth and he presses his hips against mine, his cock hard against my stomach.

“And for the record, Harlow. If I had my way, you’d attend this engagement party, and the damn wedding, not just as my guest, but asmine.”

With that, he pulls his thumb from between my lips and slams his mouth against mine, swallowing up any frail attempt I might have had to stop him.

NINETEEN

STERLING

That kiss.

Fuck, that kiss was like a shot of heroin straight into my heart, and I’ve thought about nothing else since. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve thought about what I would’ve done if we hadn’t been so rudely interrupted by my arsehole friend, Dalton, and that is, strip Harlow bare, lift her onto the kitchen counter and bury my face in her delectable pussy.

Of course, Dalton’s call had the same effect as chucking a bucket of cold water over us both. Harlow had insisted I answer, and with every second that Dalton complained about Daisy making his life difficult, Harlow had stepped further and further away from me until she’d slipped out of the kitchen and disappeared back to her room. Now, here I am sitting opposite Dalton and Ben in Bandits Bar whilst he asks our advice on how to handle his soon-to-be wife.

“Don’t you think you should’ve thought about this before you signed the contract agreeing to marry Daisy?” Ben asks, straight to the point. “I mean, we all know she’s a force of nature.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Dalton snaps back, grabbing his glass of bourbon and chucking back a mouthful,before slamming it back onto the table. “I came here for some advice, not a lecture.”

“So let me get this straight, she kneed you in the bollocks, and now you’ve got a bruised ego. Is that about the sum of it?” I ask, my lip twitching with a smile. I’d like to have seen that.

“The only part of my body that was bruised were my balls, which have thankfully recovered,” he counters with a glare, but there’s no denying the slight flush of pink to his cheeks from embarrassment.

I’m surprised he even told us to be honest, because I know for a fact that Ben won’t let that juicy tidbit of information go. He’ll take great pleasure in reminding Dalton for months about how Princetown’s charming playboy finally got his comeuppance.

“Not sure how you’re going to come back from that to be honest. She clearly hates you,” Ben smirks.

“Again, not fucking helpful. I’m well aware of how Daisy feels about me, and Drix will chop my bollocks off if he finds out I upset her. I need to fix this as best I can, and it’s not as if I can ask his advice right now given he hates me too. So here I am with you two arseholes,” he says, glaring at us both, “I’m hoping that between the three of us we come up with a plan.”

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