Eric coiled around me, then shoved me against the arch’s stone wall so that his entire hard, wet body was flush against mine. My hips thrust against his, seeking contact, comfort, revenge. I wanted to punish him for his absence and welcome him back all at once. Never had I felt so confused.
“Why?” he breathed, sucking in air like he was drowning. “Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?”
“Because it’s you, that’s why!”
I yanked him back, eager to feel his tongue twisting and turning with mine. The world was cold, but his mouth heated my core. He seemed to be fighting the connection, as frustrated as I was that neither of us could quite get close enough.
“I told you to go,” he gasped in between harsh kisses. “It’s for your own good. Why don’t you ever fucking listen?”
“You ran away.” I kissed him again, this time with more bite than lip. “You left me at the altar. How was that for my own good?”
“I was saving you, not leaving you,” he growled and shoved his erection violently into my hip. Both of us moaned into each other’s mouths.
I yanked at the back of his hair, forcing him to look at me. “Saving me from what?”
Eric’s stare focused on my swollen lips, and his pupils dilated like an animal’s. A slip of tongue emerged, and he licked at a reddened spot at the corner of his mouth—apparently, I had drawn blood. It was clear that he wanted to do a lot more to me than just kiss; hell, I was ready to lift my skirt for the man right there, no matter who might be walking down the path.
But then, his head fell to my shoulder, and he inhaled like he hadn’t breathed in minutes. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”
“No,” I replied immediately. “No, I’m not.”
“Why?”
I pulled at his hair again, this time more gently, and when he lifted his head, I framed his sharp, chiseled face between my palms. His deep gray eyes were wells of sorrow and shame. He shuddered, but I didn’t think it was because of the cold.
“Because,” I said. “Because I love you, that’s why.”
The final admission was a punch to the gut—both of our guts, if his face was any indication. Because it was the truth: there was something about Eric, about us, that was special. It didn’t matter that I was still furious with him about Caitlyn. It didn’t matter that he had disappeared for almost two weeks. I couldn’t just walk away. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“You shouldn’t.”
“But I do.”
His forehead touched mine. “I know,” he said. “I love you too. Goddammit, I do.”
We stared at each other for what seemed like hours, gray eyes meeting hazel in a clash as intense as the storm around us. There was another smash of thunder, and the downpour intensified even more. Suddenly the fact that I was wrapped around Eric’s body like a vine didn’t mitigate the fact that it was forty-five degrees outside and pouring. A violent shiver traveled through me.
Eric stepped back and took my hand. “Come on,” he said in a voice that was more dejected than I was comfortable with.
“Where are we going?” I asked, though I followed him, barefoot, up the way we came.
He looked down at himself, then me. “Back.”
“To Celeste’s penthouse?” I cringed. The idea of leaving muddy footprints anywhere near the judgmental crowd we’d left behind made me want to live under this arch forever. I honestly thought Celeste might rise from the grave to snap about stains on her Oriental carpets.
Eric shook his head. “We’ll go home. And try to figure out how in the hell we’re going to survive Carson when he finds us.”
Ten
We caught the most expensive cab in the world across the park (it took several soaked hundred dollar bills out of Eric’s wallet to convince any driver to take us in our muddy condition) and to our apartment on West Seventy-Sixth Street. Eric hadn’t touched me during the entire ten-minute ride, though I caught him staring at my lips every time I looked at him. A muscle ticked at the bottom of his jaw, like the man was literally a time bomb held at bay only by the cab’s muted Russian music and the fact that the irate driver kept checking on us through the rearview mirror like we were wild animals about to rip up his stained vinyl.
Well…he wasn’t completely wrong.
I followed Eric up the steps of our brownstone and then the stairwell, staring at his perfectly formed ass with a mix of loathing and desire. Like two scoops of ice cream, that. It was irritating, really, the way his pants were stuck to it. The way the muscles moved back and forth, back and forth, right in front of my face. Taunting me.
And so, by the time the door locked behind us, I was a giant knot of desire and anger, ready to tear the man apart in more ways than one as I shoved on a spare pair of glasses sitting by the key bowl. Everything that had happened in the past few months—hell, the past five years—was roaring through my head at supersonic speed.
Caitlyn Calvert.
John Carson.
Red panties.
“Rock the Casbah.”
The bridal march.
Every single mind-bending orgasm the man had ever given me.
Eric peeled off his jacket, giving me a prime view of the way his shirt was pasted to the etched lines of his back and chest. The soaked white was closer to gray in this light and matched the stormy hue of his eyes.
When he caught sight of me standing there, he scanned my body, then immediately closed his eyes like he was in pain. “Christ, Jane,” he muttered. “For the love of God, go change your clothes.”
I looked down. My dress was black, so I wasn’t giving the wet-t-shirt show that Eric was. But the thin, gauzy fabric had been stretched in the mud and rain, and right now the neckline was pulled indecently low so that my cleavage—what little I had—was fully on display. My nipples puckered from the cold. Well, mostly from the cold.
“Crap,” I said, yanking up the collar, but unable to get it to stay. It was just too misshapen. Finally I let it drop. “You know what, fuck it. It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”
“Jane, come on—”
“Grow up, Eric,” I snapped, though I folded my arms over my chest. “Stop acting like you haven’t seen about a million women exactly like this or worse.”
Eric sucked in a long, tortured breath. “A million women,” he said through his teeth, “aren’t you.”
We stared at each other for what seemed like hours. His torso rose and fell with each exceedingly difficult breath. Eric’s own chest, abs, biceps were on display too—every sinewy muscle on the man was taunting me through the translucent white fabric. Not to mention the way his pants weren’t leaving much to the imagination as his desire became obvious, pressing against his zipper. And he wanted me to cover up? Please. The man looked like a Playgirl shoot.
“You have to go,” Eric said like my X-rated thoughts weren’t playing through my mind.
I snapped my head up. “Are you kidding me? I have to go? You said we were coming back here to figure things out.” Call me crazy, but I was sort of looking forward to continuing what we started. We had some catharsis to get to, followed by a hot shower.
“I did figure them out. Jane, get changed, and then you need to leave New York. Brandon and Skylar are still here, right? You can go back to Boston with them. Brandon and I can hire extra security for you, and—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I interrupted. “And you are more of an idiot than ever if you thought I was. I literally just chased you down through the mud, Petri dish, donating two very expensive shoes and my favorite glasses to Central Park while I was at it. I look like a wet rat that just got flushed through the entire New York City sewer system. So if you think I’m going to just walk away without getting some goddamn answers, you must be more out of your mind than I thought.”
His eyes narrowed at the nickname I knew he loathed. “Jane—”
“No!” I shouted. “We tackle each other in the park, and then you kiss me like you can’t possi
bly do anything else. And now we’re here, and you’re right back to acting like a scared rabbit. I demand the truth, Eric. Where in the fuck have you been?”
“I can’t tell you that!” he burst out.
“Can’t tell me what? That you were kidnapped by my long-lost ‘father’? That he’s the head of some uber secret society that can’t decide whether it wants to use Greek or Roman code names? That they ‘tap’ the unsuspecting shoulders of New England’s elite college grads and proceed to scare the shit out of them until they are nice and compliant?”
Eric jerked his head up with alarm. “What in the fuck. You are not supposed to know any of that.”
I shrugged and tossed up my hands. “Well, too late now. The medieval cat is out of the bag, my love, so you might as well just spill the rest.”
“Who told you?” he demanded, starting to pace, the water in his shoes squelching comically as he did. “Calvin was never officially inducted—all he knows is that Jude and I are part of something he wasn’t in college. He’s been trying to get in ever since.”
“I don’t know who Jude is,” I said. “But Brandon wasn’t fully inducted either, so he says. Sounds like he came to his senses before it got to that, but he knew a bit to share. And I didn’t have to chase him like a lunatic for the information either.”
“Idiot,” Eric muttered.
“What was that?”
“I said he’s an idiot,” Eric enunciated clearly. “If he thinks he’s going to get away with talking about Janus, he’s really, really fucking stupid.”
“How would anyone find out?” I asked. “Are you high? Your paranoia is off the charts.”
“He’ll find out,” Eric said darkly. “Carson always finds out.”
I sat back onto a barstool while Eric continued to pace the living room, completely oblivious to the muddy tracks his shoes were leaving all over the expensive alpaca rug. Joke’s on him, I thought as I watched. It was his dumb black Amex that paid for it anyway.
He stopped in front of the big fireplace and turned to me with sudden determination.
“Look,” he said. “I’m asking you to leave for your own good. I don’t want you anywhere near Janus or Carson. You have no idea what they are capable of.” His face turned visibly whiter on the last few words, and he grabbed the mantle, needing to steady himself.
“Why?” I demanded. “What is it, exactly, that you think they’re going to do? What happened to you?”
“He…” Eric shuddered. “No. I’m not going there. Not now.”
I scowled. “You know, the more I hear about it, ‘Janus’ sounds less like some illustrious secret and more like MS-13 dressed up in coats and tails. We shouldn’t be running, Eric—we should be calling the police.”
Eric laughed, a sad, slow cackle that lodged a pang of dread in my belly. “If you think the police would do anything other than exactly what Carson wants, you’re more of a fool than he thinks.”
“Please,” I said. “John Carson doesn’t know me from Adam. Where has he been for the last thirty years, huh?”
“Your father,” Eric spat, “has absolutely forbidden me to be with you. He’s made it very clear.”
I screwed my face up in confusion. “What? Who the hell is he to say—”
“John Carson is the most powerful man in a brotherhood of the most powerful men in this country, Jane. He’s someone every world leader listens to. He’s someone who is absolutely fucking not to be trifled with.” He glanced toward the window in the general direction of the park. “Which, unfortunately, is what we’re doing by not showing up at the park, as it happens. Jane, you need to go.”
I snorted. “You make him sound like Zeus on the mountaintop. Tell me, does he have a lightning bolt too?”
Eric didn’t even crack a smile. “In a manner of speaking. Only his looks like a nuclear warhead.”
“What?!”
“Chariot Industries just overtook Lockheed last year in arms development. They supply weapons to most major buyers on the planet.”
I rubbed at my forehead, now recalling that Brandon had said something similar. But still. This was ridiculous. Just because the man made weapons didn’t mean he was going to use them on us. “So…what, he’s going to shoot you with a missile if we stay together? Why does he care so much anyway?”
Eric shook his head. “I don’t know, Jane. I wish I did.”
He sank to the hearth and stared hopelessly at his hands. I slipped off my stool, then padded around the furniture and joined him. We sat there for some time, shivering as the cold set in. No one bothered to light a fire. I wasn’t sure there was a point.
“You put your ring back on,” I remarked when the platinum on his fourth digit caught in the twilight sun peeking through the storm clouds. “In the park. You put it on.”
Eric flexed his hand. There were other remnants of bruising on his knuckles. For the millionth time, I wanted to know what had happened to him while he was gone.
“I—it was always in my pocket.” He started to pull the ring off, but when it didn’t move easily, he left it on, stroking it gently with his thumb. “I never wanted to take it off, Jane. But when I saw you’d removed yours, it seemed like the right thing again. But now the will…” His head fell again, and that same forlorn posture overcame him once more. “God, this is such a clusterfuck.”
I couldn’t help myself. I still didn’t completely understand what was going on, but I had to do something. I tapped him on the shoulder. His eyes met mine, wide and scared.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re not alone in this. That’s what these things mean, right?” I pulled out the chain under my dress and dangled my rings in front of him. “Say the word. And I’ll put them back on.”
Eric watched the rings for a long time. “I wish I could,” he said. “I wish—fucking hell, Jane, I wish we could just leave all of this shit behind us and run away.”
“Why can’t we?” I wondered. It was an honest question. That didn’t sound too terrible right about now.
But Eric just expelled a long, low breath. “Because we can’t.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer you’ll get.”
“Why?” I pushed. “Because I’m too simple to understand it?”
“No, because you’re too fucking special!” Eric fell forward, caging his head between his hands. “Don’t you get it? I left because I love you, you stupid, stubborn girl. How many times do I have to tell you that I left to keep you safe!”
For a few minutes, I watched him wrestle with his torment.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” I said finally.
His voice was a croak. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”
I raised a brow. “That’s not your choice to make.”
Eric stared at me.
I stared at him.
I stared at the way his muscles taunted me through his wet shirt.
I stared at the drop of rain dangling off an errant lock of blond hair.
“Jane.” Eric’s deep voice seemed very far away. “You need to stop looking at me like that.”
I blinked. “Why?”
“Because,” Eric said. “This isn’t supposed to happen anymore.” Like a magnet, however, he just leaned closer.
I stared at the plump lines of his mouth. “I think it already did.”
“You know what I mean.”
I raised a brow. “Do I?”
His mouth inched forward. His entire body shook with want.
“Eric,” I whispered.
He closed the gap.
His kiss was now soft, tentative, closed-mouthed. It feathered over the bottom, then the top of each of my lips. So unlike his usual style, where he took what he wanted without apology. Eric was nonchalant to the point of immovable so much of the time, but when he kissed me before, I always knew he meant it.
Something in him was broken. And it broke my heart too.
I slipped a hand around his neck and pull
ed him closer, urging him on.
“I can’t,” he whispered, though he opened to me more. “But goddammit, Jane, I can’t stop either.”
“Can’t stop what?” I murmured, enjoying the way his tongue dove around mine.
His lips drifted down my throat, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “Wanting you. Needing you. Fuck.”
I cupped his face between my hands so he had to look at me again. “Then don’t.”
He groaned, a guttural, animal sound that vibrated through his lips and into my soul. Slowly, we stood up together, practically traveling as one, pawing at each other’s wet clothes. I didn’t care that we still had so many secrets lying between us. I only ached to be close. Ten days. Two weeks. Whatever it was, it felt like a lifetime.
Eric kissed me again. And this time, he fucking meant it.
His hands were everywhere. They traveled around my waist, my arms, around my neck, and over my sternum. Then he pulled away, and his hands dropped to the neckline of the dress that lay loosely over my décolletage. He took a firm hold of the fabric and ripped the dress in half.
“Hey!” I yelped, though I was being nearly as rough with his jacket and shirt.
Eric smirked as he yanked the cloth from my shoulders, tearing the zipper along its seam the rest of the way down my back. “I’ll buy you a new one.” The dress fell to the floor with a splat.
I eyed the heap of wet wool and leather somewhat ruefully, even as I pulled at his pants. “But I made it.”
“You’ll make another.” My chin was yanked around, and he kissed me again, hard and fierce. “Tell me the truth, pretty girl. What matters now?”
We toppled into the bedroom, cold limbs warming as we sought each other through the last bits of clothes. My underwear was tossed to the wall; his boxers landed on a lamp.
“Us,” I murmured as his mouth found my nipple and sucked. Hard. “Oh, fuck, Eric! Just us.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered in between kiss after kiss across my chest. “So fucking sorry. For Caitlyn—”
The Kiss Plot: Book Two of the Quicksilver Trilogy Page 10