“Me, too,” I chime in again, squeezing Eric’s hand, but he doesn’t look at me.
“We’ll talk, all right,” he replies, his tone steel as he eyes Savage. “What do we know about my father’s trip?”
The group of us spread out and form a circle to the side of the couches, and Savage and the man he’s been talking with—a tall, dark-haired man with long hair tied at his nape, join us. “This is Blake,” Savage says indicating the other man. “One of the Walker brothers. That means one of my bosses. He’s also a world-class hacker. I’m not. I’m still just brute force me.”
“The one who hacked me to freedom,” I assume.
Blake’s attention shifts to me. “If you mean I got rid of the bank account that was created in your name, yes.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I say.”
Blake gives me a nod and then focuses on Eric, getting right to business “We know your father had an argument with your brother at the warehouse before he booked his trip. When he left the warehouse, he called no one but his assistant, who booked his trip. He’s in the air now and hasn’t communicated with anyone in transit. At least not on a known device that we’re tracking. He could have burner phones or unregistered electronics.”
Eric eyes Savage and Blake. “Let’s step outside.” He doesn’t wait for their agreement. He starts walking, decisively, determined, as if he has a plan and he’s setting it in motion and that’s enough for me to decide this could be trouble. I can’t let this meeting happen before I talk to him. I don’t know Walker Security. I don’t know what they’ll do or agree to. I don’t know where Eric’s endgame lands him, or where his head is right now, but I know that I don’t want to find out the wrong way and too late to stop a disaster.
I dash forward and I place myself in front of Eric, planting my hands on his chest. “We need to talk before you say another word to anyone.”
His eyes narrow and glint hard. “Why?”
Because he blames his father for killing his mother and now for my attack. Because I think he’s secretly wanted to end that man for his entire life. He hates his father far too much for me to let him make any decisions tonight, when all those old wounds have been cut open to bleed anew.
But I can’t say those things and have him listen.
I need a reason to get him into another room alone and I make a fast decision that now is the time to put it all on the line. Now is the time for me to stop holding back and I act on that decision before I can back out. “Because I need to tell you something. I need to talk to you.”
He studies me for several long beats, his expression unreadable, before he takes my hands and starts walking across the room without speaking a word to any of the men in the room. His strides are long, calculated and rapid enough to have my short legs struggling to keep up. Once we’re on the stairs, he places me in front of him and I hurry forward, hyperaware of this man at my back. Hyperaware of the box I just shoved myself inside, and how easily a box can be cut open and destroyed.
We travel up a winding set of stairs and when we reach the top level it’s a few steps until we enter a pair of open double doors. I have about ten seconds to take in a massive black-framed bed on a pedestal before the doors shut behind me. Another ten seconds before Eric has placed me against the door and steps in front of me, his powerful thighs caging mine, his palms flattening on the door on either side of me. “I’m listening.”
He’s listening.
And now I need to talk.
Now I need to tell him what I brought him up here to tell him.
Officially, my time is up.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harper
I stand there against the wall with Eric’s big body framing mine and those intelligent, blue eyes fixed on my face, waiting for me to tell him what I declared he must know urgently. He’s beautiful. He’s gifted. He’s damaged in ways that I wasn’t equipped to understand six years ago. In ways that I can never fully understand, but I know drive his actions now, with the way this family has targeted us both. Because he’s also a fighter, a warrior, a Navy SEAL who has fought to the death. While I find this part of him brutally sexy, it’s also terrifying right here, right now, with his talk of ending his father.
“Talk to me, Harper,” he urges, his voice low, almost gentle, but tension radiates off of him, almost as if it pings off the walls and slams right back into him.
I press my hand to the solid wall of his chest and his heart thunders under my touch. Because of my touch? Because of what he’s about to do to end his father? “Whatever you were about to tell Walker Security to do down there, please don’t.”
He offers no denial. His hand comes down on mine, his piercing eyes capturing mine. “Why would you protect my father?”
There’s an accusation in that question that pisses me off. “Are you really serious right now? I’m not protecting your father,” I say. “I’m protecting you.”
“Me? How are you protecting me, Harper?”
“There are some things you can’t come back from.”
“What do you think I’m about to do?”
“Tell me. What are you about to do?”
“Whatever it fucking takes to get that man out of our lives once and for all.”
“Kill him?” I challenge. “Would you kill him?”
“Kill or be killed, sweetheart. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He is cold, hard, decisive. He’s made up his mind. He has a plan and it’s a plan I have to change.
“No,” I hiss, bunching his shirt in my free hand. “No, you will not.”
“You don’t want him to die.”
Again with his damn accusations. “I don’t want you to die. Do you really think you could live with killing your father?”
“Live with it? I’d sleep like a baby if that man was gone. What don’t I know again, Harper? What did you bring me up here to confess?”
“Confess?” My anger ignites all over again. “I have nothing to confess. You already know what I have to say. There is no secret. There is no again. I hate that you just said that to me. But I guess there is an again because I wanted you alone so that I could say something to you that I said on the phone. Something I thought you needed to hear again, live and in person.”
His jaw spasms and he looks right, seeming to struggle before he fixes me in a turbulent stare. “You know you teased me with a secret to get me up here.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. Don’t throw out taunts about secrets with me, Harper. Not now. Not after what we went through tonight.”
“Me? Look who’s talking. Don’t you accuse me of keeping secrets and taunting you. I never taunted you and I never kept a secret that I wanted to keep. I promised you on the plane that I have no more secrets.”
“You know you used the promise of another one to get me up here.”
I ball his shirt as tight as possible in my hand and step into him. “I said I had something you needed to hear.”
“I’m still listening,” he says. “I’m still waiting.”
And here it is. That moment of truth I committed to when I brought him up here. “I have needed you since the moment we met and no amount of time or space would ever erase the impact you’ve had on me. You affect me. You scare me. You own me in ways I don’t want to be owned, and yet I do with you. If you do this, if you go at your father in the way I know you want to tonight, I’ll lose you again. And I don’t want to lose you again. I just found you.”
He doesn’t immediately reply.
He stares down at me, his eyes hooded, his expression inscrutable, seconds ticking by in which I start to fear I’ve said too much. I start to fear I’ve asked for too much. Time and his silence close in on me with such heaviness that I can’t breathe, but then he’s molding me to him, his fingers splayed on my lower back. “I’ve been obsessed with you since the moment I saw you across that pool, Harper. You affect me, too. You belong with me and I’m n
ot losing you again.” His mouth closes down on mine, brutal and punishing, hot and seductive, long strokes of his tongue caressing mine until I can barely breathe. When he finally relents, his hand moves roughly over my breast, and his lips linger above mine, his breath hot, and his voice a near growl. “You’re mine now, Harper. I own you. No one gets to take you from me. You understand? No one.”
His emotions pound on me, punishing me like his kiss, the way he wants to punish them. “Eric—”
“They tried to kill you tonight, Harper. I believe that. You aren’t the one who ends up dead.”
“If you kill your father or your brother, you could go to jail. Then I lose you again.”
“I’m way better than a common criminal, sweetheart. I won’t go to jail.”
Those words punish me yet again. He’s brutal. He’s a killer. And I love him. I do. I love him. “What if Walker screws up?”
“Walker won’t know. I handle my own dirty work. I’m going to handle this and then I’m going to come back up here and fuck you in my bed just like I promised. And the word ‘again’ applies because I’m going to fuck you, lick you, and kiss you, again and again.” His fingers tangle in my hair, rough and erotic. “You’re never going to want to leave my bed. That’s a promise.” And then he’s kissing me again, sealing that promise with a deep, demanding stroke of his tongue before he orders, “Stay here,” and he moves me, setting me away from the door.
I’m instantly cold, ice in my veins freezing every inch of me. He’s already reaching for the door, and I can’t let him leave. I dart forward and place myself between the door and him again. “You will not kill anyone. That’s an order.”
He tangles his fingers in my hair again. “You will not say those words again. You will not speak of murder. You will not speak of any of this. Understand?”
“No. No, I don’t understand. You will not—”
His turns me toward the door, pressing my hands on the hard surface, framing my body with his. “You will not repeat those words. Ever.”
“I’m not agreeing to that,” I pant out.
He shoves my hands over my head. “Damn it, Harper. You will listen to me.” He buries his face in my neck. “You will listen or I swear I’ll make you listen.”
There’s an erotic promise in those words that shouldn’t turn me on, not in the context he speaks them, but they do. They so do. “Make me then,” I challenge, welcoming whatever that means, my sex aching, wet. My nipples puckered and throbbing. I want whatever he’s offering. I want him here with me.
His hands slide over my waist, cupping my breasts, pinching my nipples through my shirt and bra. “I should,” he whispers. “I really fucking should, but I’m not going to. Not like this. Not when I’m like this. Fuck.” He pushes away from me, leaving my sex aching and wet, my body screaming for some unknown pleasure it’s been denied.
I rotate to find him standing with his back to me, his hand at the back of his neck. “Fuck,” he curses again, turning to me. “What the hell are you doing to me, woman?”
His eyes are dark, stormy, his body a hard line of edgy need. I want to understand that need. I want to understand this man. I want to satisfy the burn in him for revenge, and I know only one way to do that. To satisfy another need in him, to drive him over the edge, and then bring him down, and then maybe, just maybe, he’ll let go of his anger to see a solution that doesn’t include murder. Maybe I’ll save him and us. That means now, before he puts something in motion I can’t stop.
“You can’t leave this room yet,” I say. “I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me, Harper.”
He’s wrong. I can and I will.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Harper
I’m still against the door of Eric’s bedroom, my body all that’s stopping him from leaving this room and acting on his promise to end his father. My declaration that he’s not leaving the room between us. His declaration that I can’t stop him, right there with it. And he’s right, of course. I can’t stop him. Not if he really wants to leave. The man is six-foot-two or three at least, and a wall of solid, hot, hard muscle. He has that control. He is, in fact, one hundred percent in control of the physical equation. He’s in control of what happens next if he wants to be, and that’s a problem because I know, I know, that if I let him leave this room right now, I won’t be able to stop him from acting against his father. I don’t know the right move to make to deal with the hell we’re in, but I know with certainty that making any move right now, in his current state of mind, is not a decision made of the genius he was born with.
It’s emotional.
It’s passionate.
It’s about pain, revenge, and anger.
It’s about the attempt on my life that I can’t think about right now. If I crumble, he’ll act out. He’ll lash out. He’ll protect me at all costs, and the costs could be too high. He’d do all this for me and that affects me on so many levels, in so many ways. No one but this man would do anything for me, and the fact that he would is a realization that warms me, but also comes with responsibility for how I affect his actions.
I’m suddenly ravenous to tear away Eric’s physical control, to find the man beneath all those emotions and all that powerful anger. Desperate to save him the way he saved me because I know no matter what his claim, he’d regret the actions he’s planned against his father. He might be a genius, but he’s still just a man, and a man I want the chance to know; all of him, all of the broken, damaged pieces beneath his perfect surface. I’m not letting him out of this room until I know what is really in his head or until he at least promises me to wait to make any decision that doesn’t involve us naked in his bed.
I go to him and I don’t give him time to react, my hands catching at his waist. “You say I belong with you.”
“You do belong with me.” His tone is absolute, his voice and eyes pure steel.
“That means you belong with me.”
“Yes, Harper. It does.” He says those words without hesitation, his voice low, a raspy hint to it, that says he’s affected and yet, he doesn’t touch me.
A charge hums from him, like a ball of anger spinning in the air, faster and faster until it combusts. Like years of anger and pain that have collided into this moment, this piece of time and I understand. He walked away. He made his own future and yet still they came for him—God, I came for him. They’ve pushed his limits and he needs to find them again.
I need to find them for him.
I drop to my knees and caress the thick ridge of his erection. He’s hard, thick, pulsing beneath the stretch of his zipper. He wants me. He needs me like he did on the plane and I believe now that he just needs a release. He needs to fuck or be fucked. No. He needs to take and I need to give.
“What are you doing, Harper?”
“Giving you a reason to stay in this room with me.” I reach for his belt and tug it free.
He catches my shoulders, finally touching me. God, I didn’t know how much I needed him to touch me, to prove to me that he’s here, he’s still in this room with me. “People are waiting on us,” he warns, staring down at me, his eyes hooded, heavy.
“They’ll wait,” I say, unzipping his pants, aware that he hasn’t pushed me away or pulled me to my feet. “We both know what you need right now.”
“What do I need, Harper?”
“To take a pause. To breathe again. To get out of your own head.”
I reach beneath his pants, my hand finding the hard, warm flesh of his erection as I ease him from his clothes. And the fact that he doesn’t stop me empowers me. As does the carnal look on his face as he watches me. I like that look, oh yes, I do. Just as I like how hot and hard he is in my palm, and the way liquid pools at the tip of his cock. Boldly, I catch his stare before I give him a long, sensual lick.
He shuts his eyes, his lashes low, his body tight, but he’s not touching me again. He’s trying to maintain control. He’s
trying to keep it as his own and that I don’t like. I lick his cock again, swirling my tongue all over him, around him, up and down, and when I suck hard and deep, a soft breath escapes his lips. A breath he tries to control but can’t. Encouraged now, I take just the tip of him in my mouth and suckle hard, but I don’t take more, I make him want and need, but he can’t have it, not yet. Not until I get what I want. Not until he’s one hundred percent in the moment.
I lick and swirl, thrusting my tongue down the underside of him, and finally, his fingers tangle in my hair. Finally, he’s all in. “Holy fuck, woman,” he growls. “You know you’re killing me. Take all of me.”
Take all of him.
Oh yes. I will.
Heat pools low in my belly and my nipples pucker and ache. I want and need just as he does. I want his control. I want his revenge. I want his anger. I want it all right here, right in this moment. I suck him deep and hard. I suck him and clutch him and move up and down him.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “Deeper, Harper.”
Harper.
I have no idea why him using my name right now has me on the verge of orgasm, but it does. I’ve never been this wet and hot from giving a blow job. My lips tighten around his shaft, and I slide all the way to my fingers where they grip him. He thrusts into my mouth and a salty-sweet taste touches my tongue. He’s close. He’s right there where I want him and I pump my hand against his next thrust, and repeat. Again. Again. And then again until the muscles of his thigh that are now under my palm lock up, even as his fingers tighten in my hair.
“Deeper,” he demands again. “More.”
More.
He wants more and more works for me. My breasts are heavy, my sex dripping, I’m so very wet.
I pump my hand again and stroke my tongue low and high. He pumps into my mouth and then he’s shuddering, the salty taste of his release exploding in my mouth, a low groan sliding from his lips. And incredulously, I come. I come with him and I didn’t know that was possible, but I do. And when it’s over, my forehead is on his stomach, my body weak. The next thing I know, I’m on my feet, Eric’s hands on my shoulders, his eyes locked with mine.
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