Page 58 of The Beekeeper

“No, I mean, yes, it is,” she corrected enthusiastically, and then let out a soft sigh. “I’m sorry. I just get nervous to hope, you know.”

“I do,” I replied even though I sensed her question was rhetorical. My jaw fired, once—twice to stop myself from answering. And then, I even walked over to the table, thinking I’d have something else to say as soon as I grabbed my keys; ideally, a reason for goodbye. Instead, I left them resting in the little basket hanging from a hook on the wall and confessed, “Today went as well as it could, according to Wade.”

Her eyes rounded, but she blinked quickly and collected herself. “That’s good.”

“Nothing is good about this situation. Not when it drags on.” Not when it continued to jeopardize my daughter’s future. “Not when I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“There’s no way they’re going to take her from you, Blaze,” she said, and it made no fucking sense why her words comforted me. Like a damn thunder cake; it was made up. A figment of imagination with no footing in reality. And still it made me feel better.

I cleared the emotion from my throat. “Well, there’s no way that douchebag’s trolls are going to ruin your business.”

The smallest smile curled her lips. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I guess we both could do better to focus on what’s going right rather than worrying about what could go wrong.”

Her eyes snagged in mine, and I caught the change in her breathing. I waited for her to look away, but she didn’t. Ever since that night in the kitchen, there was almost a defiance in the way she looked at me instead of the deference that had been there before. Because she knew I wanted her back.

I’d removed the invisible barrier keeping her at arm’s length. Now all that was left standing were the flimsy, visible reasons wafting side to side like a house of cards. Fuck. I was a fool for telling her. For admitting to it.

“Sometimes, it’s good to worry. Safer,” I said as her head tipped higher.

One more step, and I could have her against me. One lift of my arm and I could have my hand wrapped around her throat, her mouth brought to mine.

“Is it?” she murmured, her hooded eyes dropping to my mouth. The air between us charged with hundreds of microcurrents of desire. Of hunger. Of ache.

I clamped my jaw shut, knowing the answer I had wasn’t the one I should give.

Slowly, she drew her gaze back to mine, lust swirling in the warm halos of her irises. And then she boldly took a step forward, making our chests touch. My heart crashed into my ribs, and it took all my strength to hold myself from reaching for her. From kissing her and then bending her over this damn table and showing her just what those tiny-ass shorts did to me. Though I was sure she had an idea now. My cock jutted hard into her stomach. Every one of her breaths the softest, most painful tease the way it rubbed the leaking crown.

“Harper…” I warned, but she wasn’t just unfazed; she was determined. Like a goddamn honeybee ready to war for what it wanted, even if it cost the bee its life.

“What could go wrong?” she murmured, and without asking, I knew she wasn’t talking about the lawsuit or her business, she was talking about this. About us.

Everything.

She was the kind of drug that was too easy to risk an overdose. Too easy to take too much because too much never felt like enough. Too easy to risk everything—everything I loved that was already hanging by a precarious thread.

“Stop.” My jaw popped against my cheek. “We can’t.”

Her breath caught, an invisible tug trying to pull me closer. And god, did I want to be closer. But I couldn’t.

Steeling my spine, I stepped back, watching her throat work. I waited for her rationale. For her placating kindness that always came next—always agreed with whatever I decided.

“What if we could?”

It took me a second to realize she’d asked a question—that she hadn’t backed down.

“Harper,” I growled, my head already shaking no.

“Just hear me out,” she pleaded and grabbed her phone from the table. A second later, she showed me her notes app, and my brows drew slowly together as I read the text. “It’s a contract,” she blurted out like I hadn’t seen thousands in my lifetime.

“I see that,” I grunted and scrolled.

“For sex.”

I stopped, my eyes hot when they searched for hers. “What did you just say?” I demanded, sure that my ears weren’t working and I couldn’t have heard her right. This innocent woman with her damn bee t-shirts and her thunderstorm baking sessions and her blanket forts⁠—

“It’s a contract for us to have…a fling,” she said, toning down her answer. “No strings. No guarantees. And an expiration date.”

I’d heard her right. It was just my brain that was completely on the fritz.