Harden My Hart (The Notorious Harts 3)

I smile without really meaning to and load up the keypad.

Really?

Yeah. I’m downstairs.

My heart races now. I shift a little, looking over my shoulder and, sure enough, there’s a black Range Rover parked just a few car spaces down. The windows are tinted jet black but as I watch he lowers the window by a crack.

I look around the apartment, my pulse throbbing. It’s been two days since I was last at his place. He’s not the only one with needs—mine are here too, threatening to engulf me.

I hesitate for the briefest moment and then:

Want to come in?

He doesn’t type a response, but I see the door open and a second later he steps out. My heart stops racing and just thuds to a halt in my chest. Holy mother of everything I hold dear, he looks...so good I could faint. I mean, seriously. This guy is...black jeans, black leather jacket, dark sunglasses, hair longer than when we first met and a bit messy, like he’s been running his hands through it. He doesn’t look up as he crosses the street, his stride long, and a second later he’s at the front door.

I move quickly, wrenching the door in and staring at him for all of two seconds before he sweeps in and pulls me into his arms, dragging my body against his. He takes like rum and cigarettes, so I pull back, look at him again. His eyes don’t meet mine but his mouth does, searching, seeking, kissing, possessing—a harsh kiss, a kiss born of need and some kind of desperation I can’t fathom.

But I don’t question it because I have needs too, remember, and I hear the ticking of a stopwatch all the time—he’s leaving soon. And he’s stirring everything up inside me so I can’t think straight, I don’t want to think straight. He lifts me, holding me against him—always making me feel like I weigh nothing when this is so not true—carrying me deeper into the apartment.

I push a hand behind us. ‘Bedroom.’

But he ignores me, stepping into the lounge and moving to the sofa. His hands are fumbling with his jeans, pushing them down before he’s lifting my skirt, finding my underpants and lowering them as he kisses me back into the sofa.

‘I need you.’ It’s a statement. A sexy, dark, gruff statement but I hear a question in it too and I nod because I need him as well. I need him but not, I think, in the way he needs me.

I push that thought away because it’s confusing and deep and not what I want to focus on. There’s only this. Him and me.

He pulls on a condom and a second later takes me with a guttural groan, pushing into me so I cry out, arching my back, welcoming him, the speed of this, the urgency. He thrusts hard and I dig my heels in at his back, and neither of us says anything else. There’s the sound of my breath rasping, the shift of the sofa against the floor and, finally, a moan from deep in my throat as pleasure bursts over me and I explode. He’s right behind me, his own release intense but silent. He drops his head, burying it in the curve of my neck, his breathing hot against my throat, spiced rum filling my senses. I run my hands along his back and now the thoughts that refused to be calmed before slice through me, so I wonder at this, at him, at why he’s here, why he’s been drinking in the middle of the day.

I wonder about everything.

He pulls away from me, straightening and turning his back on me, zipping his jeans up and moving into the kitchen. A second later he returns, presumably having disposed of the contraceptive.

And he stares at me, his eyes dark, his expression impossible to interpret and it’s then that I notice his cheek is marked. There’s a red line down it and a hint of bruising.

I frown, standing, easing my skirt down around my hips, ignoring the fact my underpants are somewhere under the sofa. ‘Holden? What’s happened? You’re hurt?’

He doesn’t say anything, just looks past me to the clock on the wall. My heart turns over in my chest. I have the strangest feeling that he’s going to cry. Except he’s not, of course, but there’s something within him that calls to me and I ache for him.

‘Holden?’ I lift a hand to his cheek. He pulls away. Concern perforates my gut. ‘Has something happened?’

He shakes his head, then reaches for my hand, squeezing it. ‘No. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.’

Sorry? My concern grows. ‘Tell me what’s going on. What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’ He drops my hand and steps backwards, looks around, then focuses back on me. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’

* * *

I don’t follow him. A part of me wants to, but somehow I know he wouldn’t welcome it. He needs space. From what? Has he been in a fight? At the casino? Or with someone he knows? And now a niggling concern stretches through me, growing so I can’t ignore it, and I don’t want to ignore it.

There is an intensity about him, and a darkness, that I’ve felt many times. I think back over the course of our relationship and try to picture him laughing, a carefree laugh, happiness, relaxation, and I can’t see it.

Worry trips through me. What’s going on?

It doesn’t matter that this is temporary, I’d be an automaton to not feel worry, to not feel concern for him.

The afternoon bleeds into night and my tummy continues to knot with tension.