by BETH KERY
“I’ve told you that I don’t want to talk about my past. I don’t want to focus on it. But you can’t seem to let it go, can you?”
His quietly uttered words seemed to strike her like bullets. She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. It was like there was a squeezing hand at her throat.
When it became clear she wasn’t going to answer him, he grabbed her wrist.
“Where are we going?” she asked him when he started toward the door and she had to jog to keep up with his long-legged stride.
“To get your head out of the past and into the present, where it belongs,” she heard him reply with steely determination.
Chapter Two
A moment later, he slammed the door of his bedroom suite shut behind them and fastened the lock.
“Jacob—”
She cut herself off when he dropped her hand and moved past her, his face rigid. She didn’t really know what to say, anyway. What could she do or say to reassure him, when she couldn’t reassure herself anymore?
What the hell is happening?
Her heart pounded out an excited, anxious tattoo in her ears. He crossed the suite and opened a door—a door that she’d seen him go into on several occasions in the past. When he walked out a moment later, her gaze dipped to what he held in one hand: several bundles of black rope.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said quietly, his eyes flashing as he walked toward her. “You know I’m not going to hurt you.” He paused in front of her, his hard mouth slanted. “Do you not want to do this?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“I’m trying to haul you back into the moment, Harper,” he bit out.
For a few seconds, her whole world was the vision of his stormy eyes and the throb of her heart in her ears. She wanted him so much . . .
I love him.
She found herself nodding, compelled by his eyes.
As always.
“Come over to the bed,” he said.
She followed him to the foot of his bed. He tossed down the bundles of rope and turned to her, immediately beginning to unfasten her blouse.
“Jacob, don’t be mad at me.”
His gaze shot up to her face.
“I’m not mad at you, Harper. Do you think I should be? Do you think I should be pissed at you for keeping secrets from me, just because you’re mad at me for not babbling on about my childhood?”
She blinked, startled by his slicing vehemence. She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off.
“I’m not going to make love to you right now because I’m mad.” He unfastened the last button and jerked her blouse open, pushing it down her arms. “I’m doing it exactly because of what I said before: to get your head into the moment.”
“Because you know I can’t think about anything else but the present when you tie me up and make me feel?” she accused.
He paused in the action of unfastening her skirt.
“Make you? Is that what you think? That I’m forcing you?”
“No,” she admitted, a little ashamed at how condemning she’d sounded because of her anxiety.
His expression hardened. He methodically stripped her, all except her black pumps.
“Leave them on,” he said, referring to her shoes. He turned to pick up the coils of rope. “Lie on your back in the center of the bed. I’m going to restrain your arms and legs to it.”
Her heart felt too big for her chest as she climbed onto the bed, but she was feeling something else besides trepidation. His seemingly dispassionate undressing of her and his instructions to lie on the bed so that he could tie her up had created a low burn of arousal at her sex. Who knew why she liked it so much, to be restrained by him? To give complete control to him? She only knew she did.
Both her anxiety and arousal elevated in tandem a moment later when he gave her terse instructions to take a spread-eagle position on the bed. She watched him, having trouble catching her breath, as he soberly and expertly began to restrain her. She realized that the four separate bundles of rope were pre-tied for this specific task. All he had to do was slip a thick coil around wrists and ankles, tighten it, and then fasten the free end of the rope to a corner of the bed.
When he finally straightened after tying off her last limb, he looked very forbidding. She studied his face as he walked around the bed, and then his body. His flinty expression wasn’t from anger. Her gaze stuck on the fullness of his crotch. No. She thought that determinedly aroused might describe his state better.
The spread-eagle position he’d told her to take left her feeling glaringly vulnerable and aroused . . . turned on and unable to hide it. She panted shallowly, her rising and falling breasts betraying her excitement as did her tight, prickling nipples. Cool air tickled at her spread sex, as well, informing her that she’d grown damp watching him methodically restraining her.
He began to undress. His averted gaze hurt her a little. Until he removed his pants and underwear anyway, and she confirmed how thoroughly excited he was, despite his dispassionate expression. He was hurting, somehow. Just like she was.
The recognition only added to her chaotic state.
He reached into the bedside drawer, grabbing something. He crawled onto the bed, coming down on his side next to her, his elbow on the mattress, his hand propping up his head. She swallowed thickly when he met her stare.
“Jacob, what is it? What’s wrong?” she whispered. Frustration simmered in her, because not only would he not help her clarify his turmoil, he wouldn’t even acknowledge it existed.
“Nothing is wrong, Harper,” he said evenly, opening his hand over her belly. He began to stroke her naked body, holding her stare. He brushed his fingertips over her ribs and her sensitive sides, making her nipples pull so tight that the ache in them swelled to sharp pain. She clamped her eyelids shut, unable to keep meeting his determined, blazing stare. “Why can’t you believe me when I say that everything is fine? That there’s no reason to go digging around for reasons to doubt me.” His fingertips brushed over her rock hard nipples. She gasped shakily. He leaned over her. “Do you want to doubt me, Harper?”
“No,” she said with shaky emphasis.
“Do you doubt, right here in the moment?”
“No.”
God, no. The only thing she did in that moment was hunger.
Then his mouth was on hers, feeding that hunger . . . mounting it. He massaged her breasts forcefully while he kissed her, pinching lightly at her hard nipples. It felt so good. She grew so desperate, she thought she might explode from the nipple stimulation alone. Then he was lifting his head and kissing her neck, whispering hotly in her ear.
“Just let go. You’re mine right now. Completely mine. No one is going to take you from me. Nothing is.”
She sobbed raggedly, sinking into the mattress, surrendering to the moment. And his mouth was on her breast, his hand caressing her naked thigh, and she felt herself falling deeper under his spell. His tongue lashed at her nipple, torturing the exquisitely sensitive flesh. He drew on her with electrical precision. She cried out, her eyes going wide. Could she climax with just his mouth on her breast?
She never found out, because suddenly his hand was between her legs, and he was pressing a vibrator to her clit. She seized in climax.
When she came back to herself, he was drawing on her other breast just as forcefully as he had the other. He’d lifted the vibrator from her clit, but his hand was still between her legs. As she panted, still in recovery from her climax, he set the bullet vibrator on her mons and thrust a finger into her sheath. She moaned his name, but he seemed impervious to her sweet agony as he continued to suck on the tip of her breast and finger-fuck her as deep as he could. Harper lay there, swimming in sensation, hating her helplessness . . .
Loving it, because she was in his hands.
A while later, he rel
eased her nipple and fastened on her mouth, instead. He thrust his tongue between her lips, kissing her demandingly, and lifted the vibrator from her mons. He slipped it between her labia, buzzing her until she burned in agony again.
When she ignited, she screamed into his marauding kiss.
“Jacob, please,” she muttered when he finally released her mouth after her shudders of bliss had waned. She didn’t know what she begged for, though: more torture or freedom from it? It didn’t matter. There was no escape from him. He kissed and licked her everywhere, his appetite shocking her. She grew dizzy at the sensation of him kissing her inner thigh. Then his lips brushed her labia and his head dipped. Harper stared blindly into space, held hostage by his hot, deep, demanding kiss on her sex.
He brought her to climax again with his firm, demanding tongue. Not until she lay panting on the bed, her muscles and nerves spent, completely wrung out by pleasure, did he crawl between her thighs, brace his upper body by pressing his fists into the mattress, and enter her.
She gave a sharp cry, her body tensing. It was the first time he’d been in her raw. He was steely hard and swollen. Because she couldn’t tilt her hips to better accommodate him in the taut, spread-eagle position, the pressure was intense at first . . . almost uncomfortable. He paused at her cry, but she saw the fire in his eyes. His patience wouldn’t last long.
“Are you all right?” he asked her thickly, waiting for her body to get used to his cock being buried inside her at this angle.
“Yes.”
He thrust, wincing in pleasure when his balls pressed tightly against her outer sex. He looked heartrendingly beautiful to her in that moment, his burnished hair mussed, his hard mouth still slick from her juices.
“God, you feel like heaven,” he rasped. Harper held her breath, awed by the emotion she heard in his voice.
He began to move, slaking his thirst on her, holding her stare the whole time. He took her hard, his hips and ass moving in a tense, erotic rhythm, his pelvis slapping briskly against her spread thighs with every downstroke. Pleasure finally melted away his impassive mask.
He thrust deep. A muscle in his cheek jumped from tension.
“Mine,” he growled. “Say it, Harper.”
She gasped, staring up at him incredulously. “I’m yours,” she said, shaking her head on the pillow. “And you’re mine, Jake.”
He started, his eyes flashing at her words. He began to shudder. He groaned gutturally and began to pour himself into her for the first time—all of his need, all of his longing and pain.
All of his shame.
She panted, held in a grip of shock, unable to believe her senses.
Maybe Jacob hadn’t meant to reveal the truth during their emotional lovemaking, but he had, anyway. Hadn’t he?
He’d stamped himself onto her soul just now. And in doing so, she’d spied a crack in his armor. He met her stare, still panting heavily from his orgasm. She peered disbelievingly into his eyes like they were a window to her past.
“Jake Tharp?” she whispered. “It is you, isn’t it?”
* * *
Twenty Years Ago
Harper and he burst through the front doors of the Barterton Police Station at around dusk, hand in hand and gasping for breath. From the alarmed look on the female receptionist’s face, Jake guessed they looked pretty bad after finishing the last leg of their journey fueled solely by adrenaline and fear.
The sheriff of Barterton, Adam Maddington—a thin, serious man in his late thirties—was notified of their arrival. He immediately informed the state police and the FBI via phone.
The small police station had been relatively sleepy when Jake and Harper stumbled into it, but it started to bustle with a sense of emergency and purpose with their arrival. From snatches of distant conversation between employees, Jake started to realize that Harper’s kidnapping and the hunt for her was a gigantic deal.
“Guess we know the reason for that helicopter we heard now,” Jake mumbled to Harper as they sat side by side, listening to Sheriff Maddington and two deputies talking tersely on separate phones.
“You mean . . .”
He nodded. “Yeah. They were searching for you.”
Sheriff Maddington also called for some EMTs to come check their injuries. Afterward, he settled in to patiently listen to their story.
“You mean your uncle, Emmitt Tharp, is still back there in the woods somewhere?” he interrupted Jake’s description.
Jake glanced over at a dirt-smudged, bloodied, bruised Harper uneasily and nodded. It made him sick, to think of how he’d plunged that knife into human flesh . . . how Harper had watched him. He’d felt like he didn’t have any choice. If he didn’t disable Emmitt, his uncle would catch up to them for sure.
Is that what Harper’s memory of him would be? Is that how she’d remember him, as a killer?
State troopers and two FBI agents arrived at the station during the sheriff’s questioning. They joined in the interrogation. Occasionally the adults talked tensely with each other in a muted tone Jake couldn’t make out. The overhead lights in the police station felt very harsh on his dry, burning eyes. He and Harper just sat there on two straight-backed chairs, gripping each other’s hands tightly.
There was talk of organizing a search party to find Emmitt. Jake volunteered to go with them to the location where he’d stabbed his uncle. The two agents wouldn’t agree to that plan, however. Instead, they got a map and Jake pointed out their path on it as best he could. One of the deputies who was familiar with the area told him that his descriptions of the landscape were top-notch and extremely detailed.
“Jake’s an expert in the woods,” Harper told the group of men. “He saved my life more than once.”
“You were lucky Jake was there. We all were,” one of the agents agreed, patting Jake on the shoulder before he walked away with the map in his hand. Jake flushed in mixed embarrassment and pride at that, ducking his head to hide it. Harper just held his hand even tighter.
The EMTs arrived. After examining them both, they proclaimed them essentially healthy. They told Sheriff Maddington that the worst of their combined injuries was the knife cut at the corner of Harper’s mouth. She required stitches.
Harper squeezed his hand so tight it brought tears to his eyes while the female EMT put four stitches in the wound. He knew she suffered far worse, though, so he didn’t say a word.
“Mr. Maddington, has someone called my parents?” Harper asked after the EMT had finished. Jake noticed she was visibly trembling.
“Do you think she could lie down somewhere, Sheriff?” Jake asked before Maddington could reply to Harper.
Maddington looked over at Jake, and then at Harper, and nodded. “That’s a good idea, young man.” He called out a request for some cots to his deputy. “And your mom and dad have been contacted, Harper. It was one of the first calls I made. I understand they’ve been staying at a hotel over in Poplar Gorge ever since you went missing. They’re coming here to the station, and should be here soon. Those are going to be two relieved parents.” Maddington transferred his gaze to Jake. “I put in a call to your grandma too, Jake. I need to check the number you gave me, though. It said that line was out of service.”
“It’s the right number,” he said, embarrassed. “She hasn’t had the money to pay her phone bill for a while,”
Maddingon nodded. “I’ll send up one of my deputies to her place whenever we get a free moment here.”
The deputy brought over the cots and set them up in the midst of the large common-area office of the police station.
“Lie down too, Jake,” Harper whispered to him when the deputy walked away to get some blankets. He started to lie down on the cot next to her. “No. Here,” she whispered, scooting over on her cot to make room for him.
He hadn’t realized how numb he was until he lay down next to Harper and
she put her arms around him. Her body felt warm and good next to his. It thawed his shock. They huddled together, chasing each other’s shivers away. After the deputy came over and covered them with a blanket, Harper whispered to him.
“You did it, Jake. You saved my life.”
She pressed her lips to his cheek softly, the bandage at the corner of his mouth tickling his skin. It was the first kiss he’d ever gotten from a girl.
It was the sweetest caress he’d ever received in his life.
“They’re going to split us apart soon,” he said through a swollen throat. He knew that by some unspoken agreement, they didn’t speak of the invisible bond between them, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself at that moment.
“No they’re not,” Harper whispered fiercely, pulling him closer against her. He felt so raw, so turned inside out. “I’m going to talk to my parents about you. It’s going to be okay. You’ll see. Jake?” she asked softly when he remained stiff and frozen, trying to hold in so much feeling, straining like crazy to do it while holding her in his arms. He felt her warm lips brush against his temple, and he shuddered.
“I’m yours,” she whispered. “And you’re mine. Not in the ugly way, like your uncle thought he owned the dogs. In a beautiful way, like Mrs. Roundabout was yours, and you were hers, because something tied you to each other. And you just feel the bond, and you know it’s true. No one can change that, Jake.”
He couldn’t believe she was saying his thoughts out loud. It was too incredible to believe. He lifted his head slightly, needing to see her face. Without really telling himself to do it—if he’d thought about it, he would have chickened out—he leaned down and touched his lips to hers.
“Go to sleep,” he said quietly. In those moments, her insides were his. He knew how exhausted she was.
Her heavy eyelids drooped, but then she fought it, opening them again.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I ain’t got nowhere to go. “Get some rest, Harper.”