Page 81 of Beautiful Enemy

Maybe he’s right.

Before I fall asleep, I send up a wish.

19

Harrison

“You were a difficult man to contact this weekend,” Christian says from the end of the dinner table.

“I spent a few days on a yacht.”

There are hints a man is mortal if you know where to look.

Tonight, thesirviais overcooked.

When I bite into the fish, I know there’s a crack in Christian Geroux’s facade.

This weekend, I felt the cracks in myself with Rae. Spending time with her and her friends, I found myself caring less about my need to conquer and claim every property Mischa has so much as glanced at and more about her.

“I didn’t realize you were a seaman.” Mischa, opposite me, digs into his fish as if it’s still alive and he wishes it was.

Like me, he’s in a suit, his a gray so dark it’s nearly black. His pocket square is red. A signature. I heard a tailor once tried to influence his style. The man died of a heart attack the next week.

“He hates being on the water,” my ex weighs in from next to Mischa.

It’s the world’s most fucked-up dinner. Mischa, my ex, Christian, his wife, and their youngest daughter Sylvie.

We’re here to talk business, ostensibly to finalize plans for La Mer. But Christian’s not ready to divest or divulge anything until after dinner and drinks.

“So, what made you do it?” Christian muses. “I thought Harrison King did only what he wished.”

I reach for myvino blanco, but someone else answers first.

“A woman.”

We turn toward Sylvie.

“It’s the only reason other than business that a man does what he does not want to do,” she goes on. “Even business is in service of his ultimate pleasure.”

Perhaps she’s not as naïve as I figured.

“Pursuing a woman is in service of a man’s ultimate pleasure too.” Mischa grins at my ex, who allows it, but she cuts a look at me the moment he drops her eyes.

I couldn’t care less about them tonight. For the past two days, I’ve let myself live in an alternate world. Seasickness aside, it was enthralling. Spending time with Rae’s group—most of them successful, all of them hardworking and earnest.

Rae was at the heart of it all.

Those dark eyes loaded with willfulness. Her soft curves making my hands burn to touch her.

That night on the deck, her jealousy over Sylvie was laughable.

It also made me hard as steel.

When Rae settled between my thighs, I couldn’t help myself. My hands trailed down between her legs, needing to know if she felt the scorching intensity I did.

The damp heaven I found there was the sweetest fucking temptation. The way she let me touch her, then rubbed against me for more.

It’s not only the promise of sex that captures me. It’s the way she challenges me. I can show her things, but she’s no wallflower. Every time I push her, she shoves back harder.

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