The Hate Vow by Nicole French

Eight

They say don’t stick your fingers in a socket because you’ll get a shock. Well, I shouldn’t have kissed Eric de Vries, because it was like being caught in a lightning storm. His taste, his touch, the currents of life that flowed through this man galloped through me in less than a second. Every cogent thought in my head disappeared except one:

Need. Him. Now.

Was I playing with fire? Sure. But my self-preservation, which had never been my strongest sense to begin with, had pretty much evaporated at that point. What did it matter anymore if Eric and I had another one-night stand? What did anything matter? Right now, the world was flat, down was up, right was left. I was living with my mother, mourning my father, and actually considering getting married for a price tag. Letting Eric work his voodoo on my confused, fucked-up brain seemed like the most correct thing in the world.

Besides, he started it with all that pretty girl crap. He started it the second he stalked me to a salon in Albany Park. As my brain moved into that sweet space where it stopped pushing so damn hard and just let things be, something in the air shifted. And then his lips—those full, suckable lips that always seemed halfway to growling no matter what—responded to mine, and my brain stopped working too.

He just…transformed. He stopped being calm, collected Eric de Vries. And turned into…him.

Gone was the placid face as his hands ran up and down my back, grasping my waist, my ass, my legs with purpose and intent, hard enough to make me moan. His mouth, stunned at first, turned ruthless, sucking and plundering with every brutal kiss. It was like both of us hadn’t just been starving for the evening, but for the last five years, and now we were making up for it. We weren’t a meeting of two like minds. This was a fucking thunderstorm.

He grabbed my ass and squeezed again, hard this time, and I moaned into his mouth. Two more minutes, and I wasn’t going to care if we were in the middle of Fenway Park. Eric would be able to tell me anything he wanted me to do…and I was going to do it. Sneak onto one of the boats bobbing in the harbor. Bang on the door of Marleigh’s to use that mirrored bar of theirs. Hell, I’d dart behind a dumpster in the mood I was in. I just wanted the man. Inside me. Yesterday.

But instead of jumping him like I wanted, I pulled away, gasping. Eric’s chest heaved, his tie hanging from it like a hangman’s noose, his mouth swollen and red, like it had just been bitten. He stared at me like he was going to lunge all over again. Like I had done to him. And he was definitely finding it hard to breathe too. Good.

My lower lip slipped between my teeth, and Eric winced. Other memories came flooding back. His hand on my ass whenever I did that. Bite it, he’d say. Bite it again, pretty girl. I would, of course, and he’d find flesh with a scintillating crack. Two, three, four. He’d make me count, shout them with him. You drive me crazy, he’d tell me at the end. So I’d do it once more.

I blinked at him and slowly let my lip free. Even in the night, I could see Eric’s eyes dilate.

“Come here,” he ordered, and yanked me back to his waiting mouth.

It was like the last five years hadn’t happened. Like Eric and I were just out of law school all over again, young and green and fucking unable to keep our hands off each other. His lips molded to mine frantically, and my hands traveled up and down his extremely hard body. This didn’t feel like the body of someone who sat behind a desk all day. What did he do, full-body planks while he read depositions? Narrate opening statements from a captain’s chair?

But I didn’t care as his hands cupped my face, my neck, my waist, playing over my small curves like they were all he needed in the world. Even part of me, down to my bones, seemed to cry for his touch. It didn’t matter that it was past two o’clock in the morning. It didn’t matter that we were making out like kids in the middle of Government Square, where all of Boston could stare at us. As our tongues twisted around each other again and again, all I could think, feel, sense was that I needed to fuck this man. I needed him inside me. Right fucking now.

Need.

What?

What?

I exploded back all over again, feeling like I’d been punched in the gut. I knew that feeling. That wasn’t just lust. Need went beyond getting your rocks off. Need was something much more visceral. It sank right to the heart of things, and what I truly needed was to stop that feeling immediately.

If only he didn’t taste so damn good…

“Jane—” Eric managed to croak as I held up a hand. Somehow, I managed a step back. “Jane, what are you doing?”

“We…need…to…stop,” I gasped.

He stared at me, incredulous, as if I’d just asked him to give me a kidney. “Are you kidding me right now?”

I shook my head, still gasping for breath. At least I wasn’t alone. With his normally neat blond hair a tousled mess and his chest heaving like he’d just crossed a champion finish line, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one who had just run a marathon with that kiss.

“Eric,” I said again. “Come on. We can’t.”

He groaned. “So we’re back to this.”

“Back to what?”

“This fucking push and pull. Will we, or won’t we?” He pushed his hands over his face and yanked at his hair. “Fucking fuck.”

“Be reasonable,” I said, more to myself than to him. “You just asked me to marry you. As an arrangement. We start sleeping together, and it’s going to complicate things so much more. You know I’m right, Counselor.”

Eric turned. “And if I hadn’t?”

My brows knitted together. “If you hadn’t what?”

“Asked you to marry me. If you were just here visiting for the weekend, going back to Chicago tomorrow? What would you do?”

I swallowed heavily. We both knew the answer to that. I’d yank his tie the rest of the way off and beg him to bind my wrists. I’d lift my skirt and yank down his pants and taste him right here just because I could.

I’d take one night. And then I’d be done. Because I’d know that was all he could give.

My answer must have shown clearly on my face, because Eric stepped toward me with clear intention.

“I’ll give you what you want, Jane,” he said, low and sure, like he was soothing a scared animal. “One night only, like you always said. I’m not trying to use you. We just both know that this”—he gestured between us—“isn’t going away unless we deal with it. So we might as well just get it over with and move on.”

The fucked-up thing? My heart skipped and fell at the same time. Because I did want him. More than anything. I was so tired of trying to figure everything else out in my life, and I knew that in Eric’s bed, I wouldn’t have any space to think at all.

But for one night only, right? And the next morning, he’d go back to being as aloof as possible. And I’d have to remind myself that to him, I was only ever going to be a good time. A means to an end. A way to retain his fortune and have a little fun while he was at it.

Well. I hadn’t said yes. And two could play at this game.

“You promise?” I said as I took a step forward too.

Eric’s hands dropped to his sides. “Don’t play with me right now, Jane.”

I took another step closer but remained just out of reach. “I mean it. A good time, right? And one night only? That’s where it ends?”

One more step. I bit my lip again. This time on purpose.

Eric’s eyes grew darker. “Is that what you want?”

“What I want…” I entered his space, slipped a hand up his chest and around his neck. Our foreheads touched, and his scent swept over me, a crazy, intoxicating combination of soap, cologne, and a hint of vodka.

I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was want.

“Be careful, Jane—” Eric whispered as his dark eyes traveled over my face.

“Be careful with what?” I whispered back, suddenly entranced by the small divot in his chin. Should I? No, I shouldn’t.

But I did anyway. I licked it. Eric hissed.

“Once upon a time,” I said as I slowly drifted my mouth around the edges of his lips, “you used to know how to quiet this crazy mind of mine. You knew how to own it. Did you forget?”

Eric was a statue, but his eyes were stars. “Absolutely not.”

I closed my closed, almost like I was meditating. When I opened them, Eric’s lips grazed mine.

“Then do it,” I murmured against his mouth. “For one night…make me your pretty girl again…Mr. de Vries.”

Gone. My self-control was gone. It was nearly depleted when I kissed him the first time, but the second his name slipped out of me like that, I knew I’d given up the ghost. For the next few hours, at least, I was his.

Oh, the relief.

Eric slipped a hand around the nape of my neck and then stared at my mouth for a good five seconds. My lips throbbed with want, but he didn’t move. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the delayed gratification—either his, or more likely, mine.

“What do you say?” he said, his husky voice barely above a whisper.

He didn’t want me to ask. He wanted me to beg.

I blinked, a slow sweep of lashes behind flickering lenses. “Please.”

Eric swallowed heavily and pulled at his collar, though it was already unbuttoned. “Come with me.”

* * *

It took aboutfive minutes for him to drag me back to Hanover, hand firmly around my neck. I didn’t care that my boots were scraping on the sidewalk—if I couldn’t walk, I had no doubt that Eric would have carried me at that point. Picked me up and slung me over his shoulder, without a care for my squawks or other pedestrians’ gasps. Hmm, that was a thought.

We tore down the street, past Marleigh’s, which was now completely closed, and two more blocks down to a large brick building, where a door was immediately held open by a portly man in a green suit with brass buttons. God, Eric was such a snob. Of course he’d live in a building like this now, with a fucking doorman. He probably didn’t even know his name.

“This is Jane, Paul,” Eric said as we swept inside. “She’s with me.”

Okay, so I was wrong about that one.

His touch dropped from my neck, and he took my hand instead. And sure, maybe I sent him a sideways glance before smiling brightly at Paul, who waved politely, but said nothing. And sure, maybe I puffed out my chest a little when Eric said it like that: she’s with me. I didn’t want to think about how good it felt to be with him like that again. To be claimed like that again.

We rode the elevator in silence up to the seventh floor, and I followed him down a long hall, my hand tightly in his grip. Eric stopped outside the door at the far corner, keys dangling from his fingers. I waited without a word. But instead of opening the door, Eric turned.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

I quirked a brow. Eric almost looked like he might smile. But instead of fighting back with yet another snarky reply—the kind that would have earned me a quick slap on the ass five years ago—I just blinked.

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to look like. I don’t know what I’m going to say about all the…questions…I still have to answer. But, Eric?”

I paused. Sometimes you don’t know you want something until it actually happens. Like a name. Like the look on his face when, instead of calling him Richie Rich or VD or Petri dish, his given name came out of my mouth. The hunger on his face was threaded with something else that resembled an emotion both of us had once felt, but only one of us had said. And as I saw it, I realized then how badly I missed it. How badly…how badly I had missed him.

Something in me broke.

“What is it, Jane?”

Before I could continue, Eric reached out and gently pulled off my glasses. My vision wasn’t the worst. I was nearsighted, so I could actually see him pretty clearly up close. He knew that. He used to say, once upon a time, that he didn’t want anything between us. After he had made me lose all my senses, he would lie on his side and stare at my eyes. Memorizing, he said, their strange mix of greens and blacks and browns and yellows. Memorizing their beautiful chaos. Just like me.

Oh, fuck. There went my heart all over again.

Eric folded the frames and tucked them into my purse.

“Tonight, I don’t…I don’t want to think,” I said. “Is that all right?”

I didn’t know what was going on. This wasn’t the confident, no-fucks-to-give Jane I worked so hard to be. Gone was the almost Napoleonic bravado. I couldn’t have made a joke if I wanted.

Most of the time, I wrapped myself in humor like it was some kind of armor—it took a lot to break through that. But just like he had always done, Eric managed to pierce my careful defenses with little more than a few guarded words and some patience.

He examined me for a few moments, then pulled me closer. Our bodies met, from chest to knees, and I closed my eyes at the sudden sensation of this tall column of muscle pressed against me. Wondered if I’d be able to handle it when there was nothing at all between us.

“You got it.”

Eric’s deep voice slid over my aching skin. Then he reached around my trembling body and unlocked the door.