by Naima Simone
She nodded against him, her tangled hair caressing his skin. He briefly closed his eyes, imprinting that silken sensation to memory. “Yes.” A pause. “Thank you.”
“For?” Unable to help himself, he tangled his fingers in her hair.
“For making me feel again.” Her sigh ghosted over his chest. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt alive,” she whispered.
He hated that—hated that someone as vibrant, as passionate as Harper had been existing instead of living. Hadn’t he let her go so she could have security, safety, a perfect life? She deserved to laugh loudly, dance wild and barefoot, fuck with abandon, without fear of condemnation or censorship. What had stifled her? What had stolen her joy?
Terrance. From her confession to him earlier, Terrance had definitely played a part in dousing some of that spirit. But he hadn’t been the only one…not the only reason…
He lowered his hand to her belly and traced the thin, pale lines etching her otherwise smooth skin. The marks were fine, silvery, and if he hadn’t been kissing her stomach, he wouldn’t have noticed the stretch marks. But he had. His heart had lurched. At the time, threads of jealousy had wormed through him, but only for several seconds. Harper had never mentioned a baby. She’d spoken of Terrance but not a child. Which relayed the truth. Because she was the kind of woman created to love, to nurture. And if she had a son or daughter, she would crow with pride. So that left one option…
“Was it a boy or girl?” he murmured.
She stiffened, and he paused, his fingertip resting on a mark just under her navel. The gentlemanly thing would be to let it go. But he’d never been accused of being a gentleman. And some instinct cautioned him that like a festering injury, this particular wound needed to be lanced.
So he waited.
“A girl,” she breathed, her body losing none of its tension. “Carlie.”
He didn’t press her, just let her fingernails dig into his skin as if she were anchoring herself, trying to find purchase in an emotional storm.
She drew a shuddering breath. “Three years ago, I became pregnant. I was overjoyed. I never knew I could be so happy. Terrance and I… Sex between us wasn’t often or passionate, but we created this life that I loved from the first moment I saw the plus sign on the test. And he was thrilled, too. The pregnancy actually brought us closer together, and it was a good one. I didn’t suffer from morning sickness; I was healthy. She was healthy. And, God, the sound of her heartbeat.” She chuckled, the soft burst of laughter leaden with sadness and joy. “A song. The most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. One I never tired of hearing.”
Sliding his fingers along her scalp, he cradled her head, held her to him, sensing the story was veering away from the happiness she described.
“At about seven and a half months, I went to my scheduled doctor’s appointment. Like every time, my doctor checked for her heartbeat…but she couldn’t find it,” Harper rasped. A hard shiver ripped through her, and Rion enclosed his arms around her, brushing his lips over the crown of her head. “I was admitted to the hospital, and they discovered a complication due to insufficient blood flow to the placenta. She…died. Inside me. How, as her mother, didn’t I know?” Her voice cracked on a harsh sob. “I still had to give birth to her, knowing I would never hear her first cry, see her draw breath. I cried and screamed through the labor. And when they placed her still, small body in my arms, I died. My lungs worked, my heart beat, but I was dead. I was her mother, but I couldn’t protect her from my own body.”
Heartbreaking sobs racked her. As if a plug had been pulled, the tears poured from her in a torrent so vicious, it scared him. He sat up, carrying her with him. Tugging the blanket free from the bed, he set her on his lap and wrapped them both in the comforter. Rocking her, he let her weep, let her cry out her pain, and he held her through the storm.
Once she quieted, he rubbed his chin over the crown of her head.
“When I met you, I was marking time,” he said. “I’d made it to my junior year only to spite my father because he kept hounding me about dropping out. See, by the time I’d met you, I already had a juvenile record for larceny and misdemeanor assault. Boosting cars and fights. But my father couldn’t have been more proud. To Darry Ward, my education should’ve been conducted on the streets of the South End, stealing and collecting debts for the gang, not in a classroom. I planned to make it through the first part of the year before quitting. Then you befriended me.”
“You mean you stood up for a freshman nerd who was tormented by jocks,” she objected with a snort.
“You talked to me in Ms. Dennison’s English class. Refused to give up on me.”
He hadn’t meant to speak to her about his past—about the most joyous and painful part of his life, but she’d opened up to him, shared her soul with him. The least he could do was honor her trust and vulnerability with his. She deserved as much.
“Most girls like you—the ones from the good, safe neighborhoods with two-parent homes and no idea of poverty or crime—only wanted one thing from me. A secret, dirty screw in the backseat of my car or in their basement when their parents weren’t home. They damn sure didn’t walk down the hall with me or speak to me out in the open for all their friends to see. But you did. Even when I didn’t trust you at first and tried to scare you into leaving me alone, you wouldn’t. Your friendship…it meant everything to me. I still didn’t care about school, but your joy when I aced a test or seeing your face light up with a smile every morning… No one’s face, not even my own father’s, lit up just because they saw me.”
He didn’t need to close his eyes to picture the pleasure that had gleamed in her dark gaze when he walked into their classroom. As if she cared that he’d shown up. As if he mattered.
“If not for your gentle encouragement…” He snorted, and she huffed out a soft, wry bit of laughter because there’d been nothing “gentle” about how she’d browbeaten and nagged him about coming to school, studying, and not skipping. “I wouldn’t have graduated. I definitely wouldn’t have pursued photography, applied to community college, or even admitted I loved it. You convinced me that I was more than my fists. That I had talent… That it didn’t make me weak.”
Rion grasped her chin and tilted her head up. Her eyes, shadowed and glistening with her spent grief, met his. He rubbed his thumb over the plump curve of her bottom lip.
“I’m the man I am today because of you. If not for your friendship, I would be a soulless bastard fucking up lives for the sake of the mob, or caged in a prison, or dead.”
He’d remained active in the gang a year after Harper walked away from him, sinking deeper and deeper. Then Killian had gone to jail, and Sasha had been shot while on a job. He’d already lost Harper to Terrance; he couldn’t lose his best friends. He couldn’t lose himself. That had been four years ago. It’d taken another two years after he’d made his decision to finally get out of the mob, but he’d never looked back.
“You showed me I could be more, that I am more. Before you, I imagined another path for me, but I didn’t have the balls or will to pursue it. You lost your baby, and I can’t tell you how much your loss tears at me, just knowing you suffered. But, Harper, you didn’t fail. I’m living proof you didn’t.”
He lowered his head and brushed his mouth over hers.
This intimacy he hadn’t allowed himself tonight. Fingering her pussy, tonguing it, and burying himself inside her—he’d surrendered to those temptations, but pressing his lips to hers, breathing in her air, tasting her as they stared into each other’s eyes… He’d tried to avoid that closeness, that vulnerability. It reminded him too much of the one and only time she’d given this gift to him. And when he’d had to return it.
Not anymore. He submitted to this pleasure, parting her mouth with his lips, sliding deep, deep, searching, savoring…worshipping. Her delicate hands tunneled into his hair, gripping it. But there was nothing delicate about how she tangled with him, licking at the roof of his mouth, suck
ing on him as if as hungry for his taste as he was for hers. At first questing, tender, soft, the kiss grew into something wild, wet, fierce.
God, he’d fantasized about this for so long—years. And like a starving man with his first sampling of food after a famine, he lost control, feasting on her. Tongues dueled, vied for dominance. Teeth clicked. Their moans filled the room. Never enough. He would never get enough of this, of her.
Mouth still mated to hers, he lifted Harper and placed her back on the bed, immediately settling between her thighs and covering her. She rolled her hips, dragging her drenched pussy over his cock like an open-mouthed kiss. He grunted, thrusting against her so the base of his length pressed to her clit, and his balls to her swollen folds. Legs climbing to his waist, she circled his neck with her slim arms, clinging to him.
Abandoning her lips, he raked his teeth over her chin, down her throat and to the damp valley between her breasts. On a low, hungry groan, he coiled his tongue around a pale, hard nipple and drew hard on it, lashing it until she cried out, bucking beneath him. He pinched the other peak, tweaking it and tugging.
“Rion.” She gasped, grinding that sweet pussy against his dick, bathing him in more of her heat. “Please. Inside me.”
“Nothing I want more than to fuck you, baby. Pound myself so deep you feel me tomorrow. And the day after that.” He reached over and grabbed one of the condoms off the bedside dresser that he’d thrown there earlier. Quickly, he ripped the packet open and sheathed himself, then returned to her breasts. He pressed the two mounds together, flicked and sucked both tips, making her twist and writhe. Beg. “Put me in. You want this cock, put me inside.”
He arched, granting her space between their bodies, his tongue continuing to whip and polish her nipples. She whimpered, wrapping her hand around him and guiding it to her entrance. He hissed as wet flesh kissed the swollen, throbbing head. Then, with a flex of his hips, he was gripped in the tightest, hottest, most perfect pussy.
“Damn, baby. Nothing like it. Nothing.” He withdrew, plunged back inside. Gritted his teeth as her sex rippled around him. So goddamn slick, plush. Swearing, he reared back, gripped her ass and held her up for his dick. Served her up to it. “Look at you, taking me, spreading for me, swallowing me like a good girl,” he growled. Mesmerized, he watched as he slid between her folds, disappearing inside her pussy, his flesh appearing dark and brutish against her feminine lips. “Fucking heaven, Harper. That’s what you are. Heaven.”
Falling forward, he curled his fingers over the top of the headboard and slammed into her with hard, teeth-jarring thrusts. From base to tip, she squeezed him, coaxing his cum from him with every quiver and squeeze on his flesh. She cried out, her head thrown back, hips crashing with his, silently pleading for what only he could give. He rode her, pistoning into her again and again, bottoming out in a body created for him. No matter what happened after tonight, it wouldn’t change the fact that she was his.
Harper stiffened beneath him, a scream tearing from her lungs and shattering in the air. Her pussy clamped down on him like a vise, and he grunted at the strength of it. Goddamn, she was beautiful in orgasm. Lust tautened her smooth skin across her cheekbones, her features strained with passion. Her lush mouth parted, her dark eyes glazed with passion. Clenching his jaw, he pounded into her, riding her through the release, pushing past her milking muscles even as electric pulses sizzled up from his balls, surged up his spine, and back down to his cock. Once the shudders eased, he let go. He rocketed into her. One. Two. Three strokes. Dropping his hands down to the mattress on either side of her head, he covered her mouth with his, kissing her, needing the taste of her in him.
He erupted, cum shooting from him with breath-stealing power and pouring into the condom. It seemed to go on forever…and an instant. He convulsed, a deep, low growl rumbling from him as he gave her everything in him—his seed, his heart. His soul.
…
“This place is huge,” Harper whispered. Yes, she was babbling, but the nerves tap-dancing under her skin, and the fist slowly tightening around her throat incited babbling.
Right now, she faced two options. Jabber or beg him to let her stay, to not end their night together.
So. Babble it was.
Rion nodded, but didn’t speak. With a hand pressed to the small of her back, he continued to guide her down the hall and into a large open area dotted with couches, tables, and a tall cross-like structure. The hell? But he didn’t grant her time to ask. Pausing before a door that blended into the bare brick wall, he punched in a code on a discreet key pad and twisted the knob.
Ambient lighting flickered on as they moved out onto an iron landing. Shifting his hold to her waist, Rion remained close behind her as they descended three flights of stairs to a large vestibule. Dark blue panels lined the walls along with mounted sconces identical to the ones in The Loft. A beautiful, black chaise lounge rested against one wall, another of Rion’s framed photographs hanging above it. An image of the Old North Church enshrouded in shadows. The white of the steeple spearing toward the sky shone like a beacon in the gray, moonless sky. It was lonely, stark, yet gorgeous. A perfect description of the man standing beside her.
“My driver is going to take you home,” Rion said, his first words since they’d left the room with the green door. He leaned over and removed a Mary Poppins-esque umbrella from a tall, elaborate stand. God. She shook her head. Every sense had been so focused on him, she hadn’t noticed the drum of rain outside. “Are you ready?”
Desperation clawed at her throat, a cry nipping at its heels as she studied his stoic, unsmiling face.
Am I ready? You’ve changed me so I don’t feel like I occupy this body by myself anymore. Like you’re now a permanent part of me. So hell no. I’m not ready.
“Yes.”
Nodding, he pushed the heavy steel door open and stepped out, popping up the umbrella. Rain sluiced off the sides of the material, framing him in cascades of water. He extended a hand toward her…and she stepped back, farther into the building, shaking her head.
Frowning, Rion lowered his arm and reentered the lobby. “What’s wrong, Harper?”
Her heart thudded against her rib cage, and no amount of swallowing brought moisture to her mouth.
“Harper,” he pressed, setting the dripping umbrella on the floor and grasping her upper arms in a gentle, but implacable grip.
“I-I don’t want just one night,” she breathed. Even as the words exited her lips, part of her longed to drag them back kicking and screaming. But the other part sighed in relief. Because maybe…just maybe…
The concern disappeared from his face, and from one moment to the next, he became closed off to her. A wall slammed down over his features, shutting her out.
“What do you want?” he murmured. “One more? Two?”
Unease slithered through her, twisting in her belly. “I don’t know,” she lied.
One, two, three nights—she wanted them and more. So much more. Because she loved him. Initially, she’d wrapped up coming to him as lust. But letting him touch her in a roomful of strangers, trusting him to guide her into a ménage à trois…opening her heart to talk to him about Carlie… That had required more than arousal and need. Maybe she’d never stopped loving him. Maybe her feelings had prevented her from giving Terrance all of herself. Maybe…
She couldn’t say for certain, because the only thing she was absolutely, 100 percent sure about was this huge emotion pressing against her sternum scared the hell out of her.
Love meant exposing herself to the pain of loss and powerlessness and hopelessness. She’d sworn never to be that vulnerable again. But here she stood, her chest wide open and her heart bare and unprotected. Loving him with everything in her.
God, why didn’t he show some emotion? What was he thinking?
“I just… I don’t want this to end,” she added, silently begging him to hear what she couldn’t say. Again, fear bridled her tongue. Fear of rejection.
F
ucking heaven, Harper. That’s what you are. Heaven.
He’d whispered those words while deep inside her after he’d confessed how she’d changed his life. But never had he mentioned wanting more with her.
Loving her.
Rion stared at her, his gray eyes black in the low lighting and as shuttered as his expression. “For how long?” His eyes narrowed, though his tone remained low, soft. “A week. A month. A year? In that time, am I your dirty little secret? Do you lie to your friends and family about where you spend your nights, about who and what I am? Because God knows I don’t fit into your proper, white-washed world. So if this ends—when this ends—do we just enforce the stipulation of walking away and not seeing each other again then?”
She shook her head, but the reply lodged in her throat. What was she missing here? Why did he sound angry? No. Not angry. Hurt. Somehow, she’d hurt him. When had she ever given him the impression that she was…ashamed of him?
“Rion, I—” She stretched out a hand toward him, needing to touch him, comfort him.
“I can’t do—” He bit off the rest of the sentence and turned away from her. A muscle ticked along the rock hard line of his jaw. After several moments, he looked at her again, and once more, his gaze seemed carefully blanked. “Listen, you’ve had an intense night, and I can understand why that would lead you to believe you feel more than you do. But we should stick to our bargain.”
Shock slapped at her, and she flinched. “Are you—” She huffed out a brief burst of laughter that didn’t possess an ounce of humor. “Are you telling me that because of sex I don’t know my own mind?” He parted his lips, but she slammed up a hand. “Never mind. I’ve had enough of people instructing me on what I mean, what I’m thinking, and what I need. If you don’t want me, that’s one thing. But please don’t patronize me.”
Pain and humiliation scored her. She pushed past Rion and shoved open the door, not bothering with the umbrella. In seconds, the rain plastered her hair and clothes to her body, but she didn’t feel the wet or the chill.