My lips part on those words that I don’t fully understand and once again, just like six years before, he turns me to the wall and forces me to catch it with my hands. It’s a power thing, I know, and it should perhaps bother me. He wants to control me, he needs control. It’s about him ruling over the royalty, and to him, I’m that royalty and there’s nothing I can do about it. He feels like I’m the girl on the throne who’s fucking beneath herself.
He yanks my pants down and in seconds they’re over my bare feet and I’m completely naked. His hands are all over me, and when he leans in, his lips at my ear, his hands on my breasts, my breath hitches in my throat. “You’re mine now, princess. All mine. You get that, right? There’s no turning back now.”
“I don’t want to turn back.”
“But will you regret this and me?”
“I regret you leaving. That was a bastard move.”
I feel him stiffen, and I don’t care. It was a bastard move. “Is that right?” He pinches my nipples as if punishing me for the truth, and I try to move my hands, but I’m trapped between that wall and his big body, the thick ridge of his erection at my backside.
He folds himself around me, one hand on my hip, the other on my breast. “You have me now, but you might regret it, because this bastard is going to own you before tonight is over, Harper.?
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CHAPTER TEN
Harper
This bastard is going to own you before tonight is over, Harper.
Those words, Eric’s words, are in the air between us, the implications of me against the wall and him at my back leaving no room to question his intent. He wants control. He has control. His hands go to my shoulders. “How do you feel about being owned?” he demands, and it’s clear we’re talking about a whole lot more than us, naked, tonight.
“They don’t own me,” I say. “They’ve never owned me.”
“You seem pretty damn owned to me, princess,” he says, squeezing my backside and then giving it a hard smack. I yelp at the unexpected sting that he squeezes away even as he steps to my side, caging my legs and cupping my sex. “But right now, you’re mine.”
“Because it turns you on to be the bastard that owns me?” I challenge, hating the way my hands are stuck to this wall, wanting to touch him, wanting to hit him and kiss him and ten more things I haven’t even considered yet.
“I do believe it does,” he says. “Does it turn you on?” He slides fingers against the wet, slick heat of my body. “I do believe it does.” His lips go to my ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll make it hurt really good. But don’t worry, I’ll only punish you if you ignore my orders.”
“Punish me?” I demand. “What does that even mean?” His finger slides inside me and I bite back a moan as he pulls back that finger.
“I can give,” he says, “and I can take away.”
My gaze meets his. “Two can play at that game, you do know that, right?”
He laughs, this low, sexy laugh that I feel in the clenching of my sex and the empty ache he’s created there. “We’ll see.” He rotates to stand behind me again. “Don’t move,” he orders, “or the next time I put my tongue on you, I won’t finish you.” With that threat, he steps away from me and I can feel the heat of his stare on my naked body, and the ache between my thighs has me clenching them together. There’s a shuffle of clothing and the tear of the condom wrapper, and that’s it. I can’t take it. I’m all for playing a sexy game with this man, but his reasons for all of this get to me. They really do.
I turn around and my mouth goes dry as I find him naked, rippling, long, lean muscle from head to toe, his cock jutted forward, and the condom is in place. He drags me to him, his erection pressing to my hip. “I told you not to move.”
“I’ve already had your mouth,” I say, not even sure where this daring in me is coming from, but it’s alive and well with this man.
His eyes spark with amber flecks but there is something more in his gaze, a knife of emotion that I feel like a cut. “Is that right?” he asks, his voice low, raspy.
“Yes,” I say, and I feel myself shifting with that shift in him, with that emotion he’s bottling up, with something unspoken that I may never understand. Now my voice softens and I react not to the vulnerability I feel with this man, but what I feel, what I need and what I think he needs: every word of truth I can speak. “I hate that you left that night. I’m glad you’re here now.”
His lashes lower and I have this sense that he doesn’t want me to read some emotion in his eyes before he looks at me again and says, “Me too, princess. Me too.”
Those words, a few small words, hold so much implication and they expand between us, stealing my breath. We stare at each other and what passes between us is almost too much, it confuses me. It calls to me. He calls to me and I want to know him. I want to understand him. In some ways, I already do and I believe he knows this. Which is exactly why my hand settles on top of the stunningly created jaguar on his arm, and I don’t miss the very Kingston-like blue eyes, or the fact that his animal is a symbol of the competing car brand. “Is it a fuck you to Kingston Motors?”
“I’m pretty sure my father considers me a fuck you to the Kingston name.” He leans in to kiss me, his mouth lingering just above mine. “I’d have already fucked them if Grayson hadn’t held me back. You need to know that.”
“I know you don’t believe me, but that you could, and you haven’t—I like that about you.”
He doesn’t reply, but seconds tick by before his mouth is on my mouth, and this time, there’s no holding back. He’s not about control this time. He’s about consuming me. He’s about drinking me in and touching me and I don’t hold back. I have wanted him for so very long. I’ve compared everyone to him for no justifiable reason except he was a fantasy bigger than life. A man with a common bond and more of an understanding of who and what I am than he ever knew. We are both wild, burning alive, touching each other, but suddenly, he pulls back, staring down at me, searching my face for something, I don’t know what.
My fingers find his face, the rasp of stubble on my skin as I trace the strong line of his jaw. His hand covers mine and suddenly he kisses me again, a hard, punishing kiss, as if he’s angry. I taste it. I feel it as he smacks my backside again. I yelp and I have no idea why I’m so incredibly aroused by him doing this, but everything with this man is well, everything. And that’s it. That’s why I’m so damn aroused. This is him. He’s more exposed than not. His anger—and he is angry—is a piece of him.