Not Yet Yours

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Liam

Y esterday was amazing. Harriet loved the balloon ride and I have to admit I really enjoyed it too. After the ride, we went for a walk around some of the streets around the hotel and saw some of the local sights and then we returned to the hotel for dinner. I was really impressed with the food which is another tick in the hotel’s favor, and I am definitely putting in an offer for the hotel when I get back to work.

After dinner, Harriet and I had a few cocktails in the bar and then I ate her pussy until she came hard several times. This morning was pretty amazing too. Harriet and I shared a shower. We soaped each other up and fucked until we came together and then we rinsed each other back down and fucked again.

“Are you ok?” Harriet says, peering at me.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask.

“Because I’ve asked you three times if you’re ready to leave and you’ve just been staring into space,” Harriet says.

“Oh sorry,” I say with a laugh. “I was just remembering the way your skin felt when it was all soaped up.”

Harriet blushes slightly but she grins at the memory.

“I’m almost ready to leave,” I say. “But I have something for you first. Come over here and sit down.”

I pat the bed beside me, and Harriet comes and sits down beside me. I reach into the side pocket of my bag and pull out Harriet’s present. I hand it to her. It’s gift wrapped in white, glittery paper and it has a red ribbon around it, very kindly done for me by my personal assistant. I watch as Harriet opens the gift, and her mouth drops open as she sees what it is. It’s a first edition, signed copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

“Oh no Liam, I can’t accept this. It must have cost you an absolute fortune,” she says.

“It’s worth every cent to see you smile,” I tell her.

“But…” she starts.

“Nope. No buts,” I say, interrupting her before she can get started on all the reasons why she can’t accept the gift. “It’s yours, Harriet. Read it. Cherish it. Sell it. Whatever you want to do with it.”

“I would never sell it. And I don’t think I dare read it in case I somehow tear it or something. But I will definitely cherish it. Thank you, Liam. Really, you have no idea how much this means to me.”

I kiss her on the forehead.

“How did you know I love this book?” she asks me.

“You told me, remember? We were talking about our favorite childhood books, and you told me yours was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and that it’s still your favorite book as a grown-up,” I say.

“Oh wow of course. I forgot about that,” Harriet says. She looks up at me and kisses me. “You really do listen to me, don’t you.”

“Of course,” I say. “Now come on. Let’s go and get some breakfast before we have to leave.”

Harriet nods, and she grabs her bag and her purse, I gather my suitcase and my laptop bag, and we leave the room and head down to the dining room. We both order chilaquiles in red sauce and I order a Café de Olla and Harriet orders a cup of atole.

We talk about the hotel and my plans for further expansion until our food arrives and then we start to eat it. There is a comfortable silence between us that I’m sure I’m about to ruin, but I have to ask her, I have to know.

“Harriet, can I ask you a serious question?” I ask.

She nods and waits for me to go on. Now that the moment is here, I almost bottle it and just say it doesn’t matter, but it does matter. It is driving me crazy being so close to Harriet all the time and not being able to be with her completely.

“I know you said you don’t want a relationship, and I get that. I’m not asking you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. But I have to ask why you don’t want a relationship. You say you don’t have time because of your work and that you’re happy being single, but we spend plenty of time together and you have to admit it’s nicer than being alone all the time,” I say.

Harriet slowly chews the mouthful of food she has and then she swallows it and sighs.

“It’s a long story, Liam. One I don’t particularly want to get into, ok?” she replies. “You knew going into this thing that it could never be more than it is.”

“I know,” I say, holding my hands up in surrender. “And like I said, I get it. I just wondered why that’s all. But if you don’t want to talk about it then we won’t.”

“I don’t,” she confirms.

We finish our breakfast, and the silence is, as I predicted, no longer comfortable. I try several times to start a conversation, but it’s like Harriet has shut down. She gives me frosty, one-word answers to everything I say to her. By the time we’ve finished eating, I’ve given up trying to make conversation with her.

“I’m going to settle the bill,” I say. “Can you wait here with the bags?”

Harriet nods and I leave the table and exit the dining room. I pay our bill and then I check the time. We’ll be getting picked up in about five minutes. I go back to the dining room.

“Are you finished with your drink?” I ask. “Our car is due in the next few minutes.”

Harriet picks her cup up and drinks the last of her atole.

“I am now,” she says.

We go outside to wait for our car and when it comes, the driver once more loads our luggage away in the trunk for us while we get into the car. We ride to the airport in silence, Harriet staring out of the window on her side of the car and me staring out of the window on my side of the car I’m glad it isn’t a long drive. We reach the airport, and the driver retrieves our things, and we head to my plane, where once more, I store our bags and we wait for the official to come and check our passports and run the scanner over us and our things.

Once that’s done, Marcus comes over and confirms our flight times and Shana closes the door and asks if we need anything. We both answer no and again, I tell Shana to feel free to stay in the staff area. This time, it’s simply because I don’t think it’s necessary for her to stand behind the bar for the full flight when we don’t need anything. If either of us wants a drink, we can grab one ourselves and we’ve already eaten.

I wish it were for the same reason I sent her back there flying out here, but I don’t think Harriet and I will be reacquainting ourselves with the mile-high club anytime soon after the morning we’ve had.

Shana checks our seatbelts and goes back to her area, and we take off. She sticks her head around the end of the cabin once we level out to tell us we are free to unfasten our seatbelts and move around. We both unfasten our seatbelts but neither of us makes any move away from our seats.

We’ve been in the air for about fifteen minutes when Harriet speaks up.

“I’m sorry,” she says. I look at her and see unshed tears shining in her eyes.

“Hey, come on, it’s ok,” I tell her.

She wipes angrily at her eyes.

“No. It’s not ok. You bought me two of the most amazing gifts I have ever received, and we had a lovely time together, and I ruined it by being a bitch,” she says.

“Honestly, you didn’t ruin it,” I say. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to talk about something you clearly don’t want to discuss.”

“Friends?” Harriet says with a tentative smile.

“With benefits. Don’t you go forgetting the end of that phrase,” I say with a grin and the iciness between us melts away, although there is still a little bit of distance between us.

I think that will just take time to go away because I don’t think it’s going anywhere until Harriet opens up to me about why she doesn’t want us to be anything more than we are. I can wait. It’s like a slow torture, but there are worse ways to be tortured than spending time with a beautiful woman and fucking her senseless on the regular.

By the time Shana reappears to check our seatbelts for landing, the awkwardness between us feels like a distant memory as Harriet sleeps with her head on my shoulder. It’s a shame to have to wake her up, but if I don’t wake her up now, I will have to wake her up when we land so I gently shake her. She smiles up at me, her face still puffy with sleep.

“Sorry, I must have drifted off there,” she says. “Are we landing?”

I nod and she fastens her seatbelt and we land. We wait for an official to come and do the checks once more and then we are up and heading for the door.

“Wait,” Harriet says. “Do I have time to go to the bathroom?”

I nod and sit back down, perching on the edge of the seat closest to me while I wait for Harriet to come back. I flick absently through Instagram because I know if I don’t, I will end up checking work emails and they can wait until tomorrow when I’m back in the office.

I smile when I see a picture of Harriet appear on my screen. A bathroom mirror selfie, which I am informed is an important part of any night out. I scroll on, seeing pictures from Cullen, a few from Carmen, and some from old friends and work colleagues. I see another one of Harriet, but this time, I don’t smile. She’s wrapped up in the arms of some man I have never seen before. They both look happy, big smiles on their faces. And as if that’s not bad enough, the date on the photo shows it was taken last Friday, a night I had asked Harriet to do something with me only to be told she was busy. Yes, it certainly looks like she was busy.

Anger swirls inside of me and I can feel my temperature rising. Who the fuck is that guy and what right does he have to put his hands on my girl like that? I lock my cell phone and put it in my pocket, after taking a screenshot of the offending picture and leaving it up on my screen. I need to confront Harriet about this, but not in front of Shana who is standing by the door waiting for us to leave. We will have this conversation in the limo on the way home with the screen up so that the driver can’t see or hear us.

Harriet comes back from the bathroom, and she frowns when she sees me.

“What happened? You look… I don’t know. Angry,” she says.

“Not here,” I snap, and I stand up and lead her off the plane, carrying her bag as well as my suitcase and laptop bag because I don’t want to interact with her enough to hand her bag over.

We thank Shana on the way past her and halfway down the stairs from the plane, Harriet calls my name.

“Liam, wait,” she says. “What’s happened? Why are you angry?”

“We’ll talk about it in the car,” I say quietly. “I am not about to have an argument with you in public,”

“What? You’re angry with me?” she says.

I don’t answer, which I think is answer enough. We walk across the tarmac and out to the waiting limo. My driver greets us, loads the bags into the trunk, and we get into the car. I confirm with my driver to go to Harriet’s place first. I had been planning on asking her to come back to mine for a while, but I don’t bother now. I put the partition up and make sure the microphone is muted and then I pull my cell phone out and unlock the screen and show Harriet the photo.

“This is from Friday night. I asked you to have dinner with me and you told me you were busy,” I say.

“Yes. I was busy. I had a night out with my friend planned,” she says, barely glancing at my cell phone.

“Your friend. Right. And is he a friend with benefits as well?” I ask.

“Excuse me,” Harriet snaps.

“You heard me,” I say. “Answer the question, Harriet. Who the fuck is he?”

“For the record, he’s not the friend I went out with. That was Sam who I believe you’ve met. He’s just someone we got to talking to in the club,” she says. “But who he is and what did or didn’t happen between us is none of your damned business. We’re not a couple. I can see and do whoever I want to, whenever I want to.”

“Do whoever you want to?” I clarify and Harriet nods, looking at me defiantly as she does so. “No. I can cope with us not being a couple, but while you’re fucking me, you fuck only me. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Harriet says. “So, I guess I won’t be fucking you anymore then.”

That hurts and I’ll be honest; it wasn’t what I was expecting her to say at all. Hopefully she just lashed out in anger, and she’ll come around, but can I cope with the idea of sharing her? The idea of us not being a real couple is hard enough to swallow, but I really don’t think I can do the friends with benefits thing if I’m not the only friend of hers with those kinds of benefits.

I don’t want to lose Harriet though and I search my mind desperately for something to say to make this right, or at least to get us talking again, but there’s nothing that isn’t going to come out as angry or as an ultimatum and I’m not ready to give her one of those because right now, I don’t think I’d like her choice. Her last answer shocked me, and I don’t want to be caught out like that again.

We reach Harriet’s place and neither of us have said a word to each other. My driver gets out of the car to get Harriet’s bag and she goes to open her door, but I grab her hand.

“Wait,” I say. She turns to me. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for a nice night. See you around,” she says, completely ignoring my apology and letting me know that as far as she’s concerned, this thing with us is still done.

I open my mouth to beg her not to get out of the car, to just talk to me, but it’s too late. The door is open and she’s out of the car. The door closes again, and I slam my fist off the seat. How the fuck has this gone so wrong?

I don’t even know where to start tackling that one. I sit back, rest my head against the headrest and close my eyes until we reach my apartment building. My driver gets my things from the trunk. I thank him and go to my apartment. I leave my stuff in the hallway and go and lay down on my bed.

All I can see when I close my eyes is Harriet. I try opening them, but I can still see her there, turning her back on me. I can’t let things end between us like this. I just can’t. I have to win her back, but I don’t know how to. I don’t know what to say to make her see that we’re meant to be together, that I love her.

It all keeps on coming back to Harriet’s insistence that she doesn’t want a relationship. If she followed through on that, I would back off, but everything she says and does when we’re together screams the opposite of that. I might not be the world’s leading relationship expert, but I know when a woman is into me and I know Harriet has feelings for me, I just don’t know how to convince her to let those feelings in and embrace them.

That feels like too big of an ask right now though. Right now, the most important thing is me working out how I’m going to get her to forgive me for accusing her of sleeping around and then laying a claim to her that I have no right to try to claim outside of my deepest fantasies.

I lay down and try to come up with something, anything, but nothing is coming to mind. I have to think of something though. If I can only ever have the watered-down version of a relationship with Harriet, I will take it over no relationship with her. I know she’s going to end up breaking my heart, but as long as she’s around to do that, I will be ok. I just need to come up with a way to make her hear me out and forgive me. God it’s hard to know what to say when the one thing I want to say is the one thing that will send her running for the hills. I just want to be able to take her in my arms and tell her that I’m in love with her.