Temptation [h.s.] ✔

Chapter 6.

I drink the wine and set the glass down.

Aaron catches my eye. "I think I'm missing something."

"You and me both, brother," I mutter under my breath. Like, normality.

Dayton purses her lips to hold in her laughter, and I know she caught it.

"Aaron, honey, don't you and Harry have business to deal with?"

"Nope," Harry answers. "All done at the office."

Dayton sets her jaw. "Are you sure you don't?" She gives them a look that would melt the Arctic.

"You know," Aaron replies, "I think I do have a contract for you to look over in the office."

He grabs Harry's arm and steers him in the direction of his home office, and I watch as they disappear. Damn, Harry has a nice butt.

I mean, what? No. Jesus, Liv.

Harry glances back at me and smirks when he sees me watching him. I take a deep breath and look into my best friend's eyes. I shake my head, and worry reflects in her eyes.

"Twice? And now this?"

"Yep."

"Are you gonna be okay?" She grabs my hand.

The problem with best friends is that they know everything about you. Dayton knows everything about me, about every last one of my rotting skeletons I keep locked away in a foolproof safe.

But as she and Aaron discovered, skeletons don't stay buried for long.

She's seen me in my deepest, darkest moments, and I'm seeing the fear of that in her eyes now.

"I'm fine, okay? I'll be okay." I take a deep breath. "It's normal to think about someone and be attracted to them, especially when they look like that." My eyes cut to the door and her lips twitch. "But being attracted to someone doesn't mean it's anything more. It doesn't mean I'm addicted. It's just the...desire to be. It's the temptation to give in to it. But I'm stronger now and I won't."

"I just don't want to see you get hurt again. I don't want you to hurt." Her eyes are clear and honest. "He's not the kind of person you need, Liv. Trust me. You need someone soft and stable and calm. Harry isn't that guy."

I know. I know that just from sex, and that's why he's dangerous. The problem is, I don't think someone soft and stable is what I need either.

What I need is wine, chocolate, and my vibrator.

But that isn't going to happen right now because the "contract" Aaron and Harry went to look over was apparently a very short one. Now, Harry's leaning against the counter in the corner of the kitchen, his arms folded across his chest. I don't want to look, but I do. I look at the way his T-shirt stretches over his shoulders and biceps and the way the material rises slightly where it should meet his jeans.

More than that, though... More than the way he looks and his alluring presence, it's the way he looks at me. Steadily. Certainly. Yet his gaze holds a spark of wanting I feel echoed in my own body.

I pull my eyes away from him at Aaron's cough. But Harry doesn't do the same. He keeps staring at me.

"Dayton, we should leave for dinner now." Aaron's voice cuts through the silence.

Unfortunately, he leaves the tension intact.

"Room for two more?" Harry questions.

I snap my eyes to him. "I have plans."

"So cancel them."

"No." I tuck my hair behind my ear and watch for his reaction.

"I'm going to get ready," Dayton mutters, dragging Aaron behind her.