Page 32 of Beautiful Enemy

To prod at pieces of me she can’t possibly understand.

My attention drifts down her body exposed by the water. Her lips, full and parted. Her shoulders, dripping with the sea.

It’s all there on her face. The vulnerability I swore was in her, that she hides under sarcasm and barbs.

I want to scare her off.

Almost as much as I want to drag her closer, to see how far I can push this truce.

“On stage when you play, you’re generous,” I murmur. “Are you generous when you fuck?”

Rae’s eyes widen as she holds my gaze for a heartbeat. Two.

What I’m feeling is attraction, but it’s more than that. Something reckless. A need no amount of money can solve, a question no woman but this one can answer.

She backs slowly out of the water, and my gaze sticks to her body even as she reaches the shore.

“What are you doing?” I rasp.

Rae bends toward the sand, every curve hugged by her wet clothes. When she straightens, something glinting in her hand, her slow smile catches me off guard.

“I need your keys, King. Because you’re drunk and I’m driving.”

9

Rae

The car is built for speed, but I’m more aware of the man in the passenger seat than the roar of the engine. He’s still distractingly naked from the waist up, his arm resting on the windowsill.

“Turn right,” he says.

“I know.”

“You’re an insolent chauffeur.”

“I’d be more pleasant if you rode in the back.” I spare a glance for the impossibly cramped rear seat of the Ferrari.

My companion’s grin is quick and surprised, but my gaze falls to the scars on his chest once more. Evidence of something I never entertained…

Harrison King is human.

I don’t know what to do with that information, except wish I could forget it.

But I can’t.

His parents died, suddenly and horrifically, and took everything he knew of life with them. He started over from nothing with only a vision of what might have been to keep him company.

I know how lonely it is to rebuild your world once it’s shattered. I’ve felt the grief that comes with losing not only your security, but yourself.

We make it back to the house and park in front of the villa.

He reaches over me and hits a button on the car’s dash, opening the trunk. I shift out of the car as he retrieves his bottle of liquor from the trunk, then I follow him up the steps to the front door.

At night, the villa is breathtaking. This entire place feels like a magical escape.

Harrison turns to me on the landing and holds out a hand. I place the keys in his open palm, and he closes his fingers so fast I jump.

“What are you thinking?” he murmurs.

---