“You want to punish me for who I am,” I accuse, my fingers curling on his chest. “You want to own me because of who I am.”
“I want a lot of things where you’re concerned, Harper,” he says, tangling rough fingers in my hair. “Too many fucking things.”
“The bastard doesn’t get to fuck me. Whatever you do, you own. Whatever I do, it’s with you, Eric.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
His jaw sets hard, his eyes burning a mix of hot fire and anger, I think. He turns me to the bed and before I know his intent, I’m on my knees in front of him. It’s then that I realize just how deep his need to own me is. It’s not about sex. It’s about who I am and who he is. It really is about him owning me and them with me. It’s about this moment. It’s about now. No matter what I do, I can’t change this need in him. I’m not sure I want to change it. Let him own me. In some ways, he has for six long years. I want freedom. I want to know where this leads. I want to know that this man is more than an empty space I can never fill. I want him to occupy it, and me, or set me free.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Harper
I might not like where Eric’s head is right now, but I know until he owns me, until he feels like he has real control, we’ll never have a real conversation. I’ll never know where this is going. I’ll never know why I can’t move on from a night six years ago. And I need to know. I need a lot of things right now with this man.
His fingers slide into my sex and sensations rock my body. I arch into the touch, and his cock slides along the seam of my body, back and forth, back and forth, until—oh God—he’s pressing inside me. He’s stretching me, filling me in a long, slow slide until he’s buried deep. And then he pulls back and thrusts hard.
I gasp and his hands shackle my hips, he’s driving into me, pumping hard and fast, and I want more, so much more, that I forget what that even means—just more of this man, of this night, of everything where he’s concerned. Yes, everything. I forget everything but the pleasure of him inside me until suddenly he stops and leans into me, his face buried against my back, his cock still throbbing inside me. “Eric,” I breathe out, confused, and aching for more.
He shifts and pulls out of me, and before I can recover the shock to my body, we’re on the bed, and he’s pulling me to face him, lifting my leg and pressing back inside me; filling me again, and when he’s buried deep once more, he strokes my hair from my face and tilts my gaze to his. “I decided I wanted you to know who’s fucking you.”
“Because you want me to know the bastard son fucked me?”
“No, Harper. Because I want you to know, that I, Eric, came here for you, not them. Just you.”
My hand goes to his face. “I didn’t come for them. I swear to you, this isn?
?t for them. It’s for me and my father’s legacy. I need your help and—”
He brushes his lips over mine. “Just be here with me right now. This is just us. I’m leaving them out of it. I wasn’t, but I am now. You leave them out of it, too.” He strokes the dampness from my lips. “Just me and you and years of regret, because I do regret leaving.”
“You do?”
“You, not them.” His lips curve. “I should have gotten a box of condoms and then taken you someplace far away and used every damn one of them.”
I laugh and smile, too. “Yes. Yes, you should have.”
His mouth comes down on mine, and the energy shift between us is sharp and yet rich with passion and emotion. It’s gentler. It’s deeper. The press of tongue to tongue a caress, not a demand. The soft sway of his body against mine, seductive and slow. His kisses drink me in, seem to savor the taste of me as I do him, but at some point, I don’t know when we snap. His hand cups my backside and he pulls me hard against him, his fingers stroking my sex from behind even as he pumps into me. We need now. We need so much and yet the feeling is there—the sense that we can’t have more, yet we have to have it. We have to have each other. I have never felt anything like it. I have never wanted anything like this. I have never kissed anyone like I would die without the next lick of his tongue, but I do Eric.
We sway and grind and pump until that rise to pleasure is to the level of no return. I can’t stop the tumble into release and my sex clenches around him, his low, guttural groan my reward, the shudder of his body following. We ride the rush of release together and when we collapse, we hold onto each other, but as seconds tick by, reality seeps into the room, and I can almost feel it trying to pull us apart. He hates the Kingstons and he won’t help me. I know what’s coming. We both know what’s coming and that’s another goodbye, but it won’t come with any more closure than we had six years ago.
At least not for me.
He’s right. He owned me tonight. In some ways, he’s owned me for six years. I fear that he still will when I leave this city, no doubt now without him, but deep down, I know that’s for the best. There are things back in Denver that divide us. Things I forgot by coming here. If he goes back there, he will ruin them, or they’ll own him. That means this was never going to work. He strokes my hair, a gentle, regretful touch like he’s thinking the same thing as me, but he doesn’t speak.
He pulls out of me before rolling away and sitting up to toss the condom in a trashcan. I suddenly feel naked and exposed but it doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter how much I don’t want to push him. No thought I just had about this being a bad idea matters. There are reasons it can’t matter. I have to push him. I start to roll away to get dressed and ready for battle, but he’s already back, catching my arm and now we’re both naked on our knees on the bed, facing each other.
“Running away?” he challenges.
“No. Not at all. I need your help. I know how much you hate them. I know they deserve it, but I’m desperate and I didn’t sleep with you for help. I know it might seem that way, so you know, fucking the princess bitch seems just fine to you, but it’s not that to me.”
“That’s not what this was to me,” he says.
“It was. It was at first and you know it.”
“No. It’s me not wanting to get fucked by you as an extension of them.”