have thought I was underestimating him, but clearly I had. “Come upstairs.”
Blue eyes flash with triumph. “Lead the way.”
Lead the way, because this is under my control. It’s up to me whether Sutton comes upstairs to my room, whether I use the key card to let us both inside, whether he wakes beside me in the morning. How would his body look, sated and tangled in white rumpled sheets? His skin would be leather-rough everywhere, exposed to the elements from a young age.
Or would he still be velvet and smooth in some places?
We take a regular elevator up to my floor, both of us silent in front of an older couple returning after an early night. The only place we touch is his palm at the small of my back—such an innocent place, that. There shouldn’t be a fire burning, spreading outward, down to my ass and between my legs. His gentle pressure shouldn’t make me think of other ways he could hold me.
Even when the older couple steps out, we don’t move from our assigned spots. My feet have become part of the floor, too heavy to move. He’s immobile beside me.
The dial that tells us which floor we’re on is made of a brass arrow and roman numerals. Nothing so coarse as a digital screen could grace this elevator. A low bell signals that we’ve arrived. The doors slide open.
It’s someone else walking out of the elevator with a warm hand at her back, another body that manages to put one foot in front of the other in high heels.
A baroque mirror hanging on the wall shows a pretty woman beside a man twice her size, his face set in stern lines. They look well matched in an unexpected way, small against his strength, delicate where he’s broad. People underestimate you because you’re different. He’s right about one thing. We aren’t the same. We’re two different elements: water and stone.
At the end of the hallway we come to my room. It’s cowardice that turns my face down so I can fumble blindly through my small clutch. There are twenty million cards in here, none of them the hotel room key. I’m running out of breath even though I’m standing still.
A hand covers mine, and I freeze. How is he so calm at a moment like this? Has he been to a thousand hotel rooms with a thousand other desperate heiresses?
There are small white marks and raised lines. “Scars?” I whisper.
He knows what I mean. “Sometimes knives. Or barbed wire. A few wild animals have got their teeth in me over the years.”
“Is that a euphemism?” I still can’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
Especially when he laughs, low and rough. “Suppose so. You want to take a piece out of me, Harper St. Claire? I think you just might before you’re done.”
Then I do meet that blue gaze, because he has it wrong. “It’s the other way around. I don’t do… this. Whatever this is. I’m out of my depth here.”
It’s like ripping myself open, being so vulnerable with a man. I learned not to trust them early, from the men my mom married, from my father. Sutton could use this knowledge against me.
Those eyes turn dark with tenderness. And this, I realize, is what makes him different. This is the way that I underestimated him. Where he could have been cold and unfeeling, there’s this humanity to him instead. Humanity, but also pure male desire.
“We’ll start slow,” he says, and then his hand holds my face.
“Why me?” I’ve been pursued by men before, but never like this. “Is this some kind of competition thing? Because of my connection to Christopher?”
He gives a rough laugh. “Jesus Christ. You’re beautiful, smart, funny. Your connection to Christopher is the least interesting thing about you. I don’t give a damn who your stepbrother is.”
“I have to tell you something—” The words catch in my throat. “I think… what I mean to say is… I’m a little hung up on Christopher. I don’t want to be. I didn’t even think I was, but sitting there with you and Hugo and Bea, I realized it’s true.”
He’s laughing, the bastard, a silent, shaking kind of laugh. “Do you think that’s a surprise to me?”
I scrunch my nose. “It’s a surprise to me.”
“For your information I knew it as soon as you walked into the boardroom. It was clear from the way you talked about him, but it wasn’t going to stop me.