“My phone didn’t ring,” Smith replies.
“I asked to talk to him,” Harper interjects. “I was desperate to reach you. I was driving everyone crazy. Grayson went and got Smith because he was trying to confirm that Walker had eyes on you to make me feel better.”
“Fuck,” I grind out, scrubbing my jaw, and lowering my gun, still focused on Smith. “Get an extra man on the door,” I snap. I’m agitated, still feeling the effects of fear for what I’d find when I got here. Still feeling that rush of adrenaline.
By the time the gun is in the band at the back of my pants again, Harper is in front of me, wrapping her arms around me. “I was so worried about you,” she exclaims. “So incredibly worried.”
She doesn’t even begin to understand what worried means right now. I cup her head and close my mouth down on hers, and I don’t give a shit who’s watching. I kiss the fuck out of her, drink her in, drug myself all over with her, and it’s a high I can’t get enough of. “We need to have that talk I promised you.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “We do.”
“Sounds like our cue to go home,” Grayson says.
I shift Harper to my side, but don’t let her go. “Keep Walker with you.”
Grayson nods in understanding. “Call me.”
“I will,” I confirm as Mia rushes to Harper and gives her a hug to add, “Call me, too.”
Smith and I exchange a look and I lean down and kiss Harper. “I’ll be right back.” I press my lips to her ear. “Wait for me in the bedroom. Be naked when I get back.” I don’t wait for a reply. Smith and I fall into step behind Grayson and Mia and when they exit the apartment, we stay inside the foyer.
“We both know you fucked up,” I say. “Don’t do it again.” I don’t wait for a reply. I move on. “I need to know where my father is right now. I need to know who he talks to or who he sees. And somehow, get a bug in his room, even if that means using room service to do it. Just make it happen.”
“We’re resourceful,” Smith assures me. “We’ll get it done.” He turns and leaves.
I lock the door and stick my gun in a table off the entryway. I have another upstairs. I want this one ready to say hello to anyone at the door that shouldn’t be here. Once it’s sealed away, I exit the foyer, and walk the path to the stairs, starting the climb; blood rushing in my ears, pulsing through my body, just thinking about touching Harper, holding her again, after thinking I might have lost her. A feeling I never want to experience again.
Harper appears on the second level, at the top of the stairs, waiting on me, still dressed, and looking like she’s ready to launch ten questions at me that I don’t want to answer right now. I catch her by the waist and walk her backward until we’re in my room where I shut the door, and then plant her against it. “You scared the fuck out of me.” That swell of emotion is back, pounding at my chest, radiating through my voice. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Her fingers curl around my shirt. “You scared me. Don’t do it—”
I twine my fingers into her hair and drag her mouth to mine. “Don’t talk,” I order. “Not now. Not Yet.” And then I’m kissing her, and she is sweet, so damn sweet. The kind of sweet a Kingston destroys, but I’m not a Kingston. I’m just the bastard son.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Harper
Eric’s mouth comes down on mine, and I can taste his urgency, his hunger. His fear and his need, things I recognize in myself. Every moment that we’ve been together, has come with someone dividing us, trying to destroy us. Every moment feels like it could be our last. Just knowing that he’s here, that he’s alive, undoes me, drives me. I don’t want to know what he did or didn’t do to his father right now. He didn’t kill him. He just hates him. And I want to help the pain of that hate go away. He needs that from me and I need him. I need him in a way that I can’t even explain. In a way no one has ever made me need, and the honest to God truth is that I’ve needed him since the moment I met him. And he needs me. I taste it on his tongue. I feel it in the possessive way his hands caress my body and mold me closer. There’s a desperation between us, the intensity of the burn we share swelling into an inferno like I’ve never experienced, like nothing I believe this man lets anyone know he can feel but he lets me know. He takes me with every touch, claims me with every lick, and yet, he denies me more.
He leans back, putting intolerable space between my mouth and his. “I’m not walking away from you again. You know that, right?”
“Am I supposed to object right now?”
“You should object,” he declares. “You should walk away.”
He’s a contradiction in this moment, a man who wants me and tells me to leave. “Why would I walk away, Eric?”
“Because you were right. I’m a Kingston. I can’t deny that anymore.”
I grip his shirt, twisting it in my fingers. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m many things, Harper, that you won’t like, and you shouldn’t try to.”
I know then that his willingness to embrace his title of bastard is destructive in ways I hadn’t seen before. “Because you’re the bastard and I’m the princess?”
“Because I’m me, Harper. I always was, and always will be, me.”
“I don’t know what you think there is to hate in you, what you think will scare me away, but it won’t. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” At least until he shoves me away, which I feel him doing now, even as he holds me close.
His eyes narrow, his scrutiny deep, as intense as the way he’d kissed me, and try as I might, his expression is impossible to read. I search, I probe, and I’m still trying to read him when suddenly he’s kissing me again, licking into my mouth, testing my words on his tongue. I sink into him, absorbing his hard body into mine, clinging to him, meeting him stroke for stroke, trying to answer him, trying to show him that I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. He can’t scare me away.
There’s a low, sexy rumble in his chest that I feel everywhere. It’s that moment of no return for him, that moment where he snaps, where he needs to claim and possess, rather than think. He wants me. He doesn’t want me to leave. He doesn’t want me to walk away. I feel that in him now, but I also feel his torment. He thinks I should leave and no matter what he claims, I think he’ll walk away for me. But even as I feel that thought try to build a wall, he lifts me and distracts me.
In a few long strides, he carries me to the bed, a driven man with a purpose and I’m that purpose. But he doesn’t lay us down. He settles me on the edge of the mattress just long enough to remove my clothes and then his own shirt, rippling muscles and all that beautiful ink, splashed before my eyes. I’m still drinking in the pure, raw sight of him, before he shackles my legs, and pulls me forward, spreading my legs.
He says nothing.
He speaks with actions.
He drops to his knees and before I even process what he intends, his mouth closes on my sex and then he’s suckling, stroking his tongue over me. I pant and try to reach for him, but another lick and I fall backward, letting the soft cushion of the mattress absorb my body, while his fingers slide inside me. I arch into the feel of him stretching me, pumping into me, my fingers closing around the blanket beneath me, and oh God, he’s good at this. So very good, his tongue’s erotic play tantalizing in all the right ways, too right.
I’m embarrassingly already on edge, already right there in that sweet spot of no return. I tumble over the proverbial ledge, right into a shattering quaking release that says this man owns my pleasure, and while he doesn’t know it yet, all of me. He owns all of me. It’s a reality that is daunting in this moment of complete vulnerability. He could hurt me. He has that power. And yet he tells me to walk away. Yes. He could hurt me.
He could hurt me in ways that no man in that warehouse could ever hurt me.
If I let myself really love and trust Eric, I’m at his mercy.
No matter where it ends.
I forget everything but him. How can I not? He owns me. That was my fear, but I don’t feel fear now. No fear at all. But there are other emotions, a swell of unnamed emotions overwhelming me. We’re in his territory, his home, the danger and darkness of this night, driving confessions and intimacy to a whole new level. “I’m not just going to fuck you, Harper,” Eric promises. “I’m going to make love to you.”
Love.
I spoke that word to him, so hearing it on his lips shouldn’t send shockwaves through me, but somehow it does. It shouldn’t make my chest expand with fear that I didn’t feel moments before, but it does. I both want him to love me and fear the moment he does. With love comes real pain when he tells me to walk away and gives me a shove when he doesn’t really follow, because he decides the bastard and the princess can’t survive.
My walls erect. I need to protect myself. “What happened to fucking the princess and leaving her behind?”
“We just had this conversation. I’m not leaving you again.”
“And yet you told me to leave.”
“I did,” he says. “But I’m a bastard, remember? And not just any bastard. I’m the one who wants you too damn much now to do what’s right. You run. I’ll run faster. I’ll come for you.”
Heat rushes up my neck. “Fucking me is safe,” I whisper. “Fucking me is—”
“Fucking you is perfect,” he says. “And I will fuck you, Harper. Every way I can think of and every day, but right now, I’m going to show you more than the bastard. I’m going to make love to you.” His lips part mine, his tongue stroking deep, stroking long, exploring, and the demand I’d felt in him when he’d snapped is nowhere to be found. There is just this sultry, sexy, caress of his tongue that seduces me and tears down my walls.
I am his to do with as he pleases. I am his to please or otherwise. I think he really will break my heart. I think he knows it, too, but it’s too late to turn back. We’re on a path together that must be traveled, no matter where it leads.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Harper
He will hurt me.
But I can’t seem to care.
That Eric has literally taken a hammer to every wall I’ve erected is an indisputable fact. I can’t stop him from stealing my heart. He did that years ago, and when he spreads me wide, his hips settling between my thighs, his cock thick and pulsing, about to enter me, I have only a moment of sanity. “We need a condom.”
“No,” he says. “No, we don’t.”
“If I get pregnant—”
“Then we’ll be pregnant,” he says. “Unless that’s a problem for you.”
It’s not.
I won’t.
I probably can’t.
And if I do—
He slides his cock along my sex, a promise he will soon be inside me where I want him so damn badly, and I’m done with willpower. I don’t want to think about what we lost, and fears of what might never be again. I don’t want to worry about his father or this family. I just want to be with him. I wrap my arms around his neck. He kisses me and I taste the understanding on his tongue, the passion he feels for me and for us, as he gives me what I want. He presses inside me. My hands go to his shoulders, my hips lifting, asking for more, urging him to drive deeper. I want more, so much more from him, but ultimately it is him who demands more. Him who is taking me to a place of no return. He who already did and I can’t deny that truth.
He presses deeper, stretches me and it’s sweet bliss, burying his thick shaft inside me, and when he’s there, all the way there, he doesn’t move. He savors me and us, his forehead finds mine, our breath mingling, emotions expanding between us. Our connection seems to magnify and consume. He consumes me, and in this moment, I have never felt so a part of another person. It’s terrifying how much I need this man. I don’t know how to feel this intensely a part of someone and still protect myself. I don’t know where I begin and he ends anymore.
“Eric?” I whisper and it’s a question that I don’t even understand myself.
He shifts then, pulling back, the thick line of his cock stroking a path backward, further and further until I arch forward, trying to stop his retreat, desperate in fact, to feel him deep inside me again. He doesn’t deny me. He thrusts hard and long. I pant and moan, catching his legs with mine, arching again, and when he cups my ass and angles me, the result is another long, perfect thrust. He begins to pump, and pump, and we are trembling together, kissing, touching, swaying in a seductive dance that consumes me all over again. We consume each other. There is nothing else, and I don’t want it to end, but we’re both trembling on the edge and I don’t want to tumble over. I want this to last and I feel as if he does, too, but there’s no stopping this. There’s no holding back.
He kisses me and pinches my nipple at the same time and I’m done. My sex clamps down on his cock, and I swear my entire body locks up and then quakes with so much pleasure I can no longer breathe. Eric groans with the intensity of my release and pumps harder, squeezing my ass to pull me against him, and then he’s coming, too. I can feel the warm wet heat of his release spill inside me, while the muscles in his back under my hand bunch and pull. And then it’s done, we’re done, and in the aftermath of a perfect moment, his big body is still holding mine. The implications of “making love” and no condom are in the air between us, while all those emotions I’ve refused to name ball in my belly and my chest.
Eric shifts us, rolling us to our sides, facing each other, and the wet rush between my legs does nothing to separate us. We lay there, holding each other, words spoken without them ever leaving our mouths. But finally, we both know this can’t last, there are people and problems waiting for us. He cups my head, kissing me hard and fast before he says, “There is so much I want to say to you about us, but right now, we need to talk about other things.”
His cellphone rings and he grimaces. “Back to the real world, princess.” He strokes my cheek and rolls away, and then he’s naked and walking around the bed to grab his phone.
I sit up and watch him talking on the phone and my eyes aren’t on his incredible body, but rather his face, the hard lines of his jaw, the thin pull of his perfect mouth. He doesn’t like what’s being said. He’s not pleased. “Right,” he says. “We’ll be down in a few minutes.” He disconnects and tosses his phone on the bed. “Let’s talk.”
“Did something just happen?”
“No,” he says, pulling his pants on. “Nothing just happened.” But he cuts his stare and the turbulence radiating off of him damn near shakes the walls.
Nothing just happened.
But something happened.
I scoot off the bed and when I hunt for my clothes, Eric’s there, fully dressed already except for his shoes, handing them to me, his eyes meeting mine, but there are no answers there for me to find. Just shadows and pain, I think. He’s hurting. “Your father—?”
“Supposedly hasn’t called anyone or communicated with anyone since arriving to his hotel room.” That’s as much of that “talk” he keeps promising I get before he shuts me down. “Get dressed,” he says, and when he would turn away, I grab his arm.
“Eric—”
“He’s alive, Harper,” he states flatly. “That’s what you want to know, right? I didn’t kill him.” He untangles himself from my grip and steps away, his anger palpable, as i
s his intent to put space between us.
He’s angry and he’s angry with me. It’s then that I realize that maybe, just maybe, I’ve hurt him. I’ve thought him capable of hurting his father when he needed me to have faith in him and his decisions. I do need to get dressed and talk to him, really talk to him. I need to make this right.
I quickly dress, and by the time I’m slipping into my heels, he’s put his shoes on, too. We come together in the middle of the room and just stand there, staring at each other, seconds ticking by before he drags me to him, his forehead finding mine. “We have to use a condom from now on.”
It’s not at all what I expect to hear. “What?” I blanch and look up at him, feeling an invisible knife stab my heart. I was right. He’s going to hurt me. “I mean—okay.”
“Not for the reasons you think.” His hands come down on my arms. “I was in the moment with you. I want to live in the moment with you but as I stand here right now, I know that no child should inherit my hell.”
“You mean your family?”
“They’re only part of my so-called ‘gifts,’ but yes. My family.” His voice vibrates with the same anger I see in his eyes.
“The savant—”
“Is like a monster inside me, Harper. You haven’t seen just what it is yet.” His hands come down on my shoulders. “It pulls at me. It makes my decisions but I need you to know that while I may do things you won’t approve of, I won’t do anything I don’t think is necessary.”
“What does that mean?” I press again. “Your father—”
“Sent someone to meet me in a dark alley tonight.”
“What does that mean?” I ask again. “Sent someone—” I can barely ask the question. “To hurt you?”
“Yes. To hurt me.”
“No. No. Tell me he didn’t do that.”
His lips flatten into a hard line. “I wish I could.”
“Oh god.” My hand settles on my belly, the depth of evil that is this family, almost too much to comprehend. “Thank God you’re okay.” I grab his shirt then flatten my hands on my his chest, just needing to feel him, to feel him right here, and whole. “What happened? Tell me everything.”
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