I pinch her nipple and she covers my hand on her breasts, kissing me even as we move. Everything. I want everything and more, I roll with her, pressing her back to the couch again and then I’m driving into her, pumping with a need that comes from somewhere deep, to the point that it’s clawing. “Eric,” she pants, and I kiss her, rolling to my side, and pulling her leg to my hip, thrusting as I do.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders and she pants my name again, and I thrust again. She buries her face in my chest and I can feel her quake before her body is spasming around me. God. I feel every moment of her orgasm, and it pulls me in, drags my release from me the way she pulls me to her and doesn’t let go. My balls tighten, a knot of tension low in my groin, and then I’m shuddering into release with such intensity that I damn near black out.
When I come back to the world, I’m holding Harper, and she’s holding me, our bodies molded intimately together, and I don’t want to get up. I want to hold her, but there’s a condom to consider. I pull back to l
ook at her, and the minute our eyes connect, the pull between us is just as strong as before we fucked, and I know I’m here to stay. This isn’t going to end like the other two times we were together. Because I’m not leaving. Not tonight. Not without her.
She’s mine now. She’s been mine since that night six years ago. It just wasn’t our time yet, but now, now is our time and I’m not walking away. Not from the mess, the family dragged her into and not without her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Eric
Still lying on the couch, still inside her, and still wearing the condom, I stroke a lock of hair from Harper’s face. “I should get up.”
“I know,” she whispers and there’s regret in her voice that stretches beyond this moment.
I cup her face and tilt her stare to mine. “I don’t want to get up. I’m not leaving, Harper.”
Her eyes soften, warm. “Good,” she says. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Good,” I echo and kiss her. “But,” I say seriously, “if I’m staying, you have to feed me. I’m wasting away here.”
She laughs and it’s a sexy, sweet laugh that I could easily find addictive. “We can’t have that, now can we?” She shoves on my chest. “Get up and we’ll eat.”
I pull out of her and we both groan, with more laughter following. I help her to sit up and pull her to her feet. “I could hunt for the bathroom, naked but for a condom, or you could direct me to the right spot.”
“I could enjoy the naked and wandering around my house option but since you’re starving, there’s one by the front door.” She pushes to her toes and kisses me, the spontaneous act somehow as sexy as everything she just did when she was fucking me.
I pull her close and kiss her this time. “I’ll be right back.”
I scoop up my pants from the slate gray wood flooring, a color that matches the L-shaped couches that frame a stone fireplace, while the high back chairs by the window are a lighter gray. The décor is almost masculine until you add in the fluffy cream colored throws and flower-shaped light bulbs dangling from above. This space is Harper. This is her space and I want to know her space. I want to know her.
I cross the room and the foyer to enter the bathroom, which is also all gray with white accents. Once I toss the condom into the trashcan, I pull my pants on commando style and lean on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, and when I see my father in the image I look away; a thought I haven’t had for years. A symptom of being here, I despise this place but I can’t leave. I won’t leave, not without Harper and I’m in this with eyes wide open and it doesn’t seem to matter.
She’s dangerous in ways she doesn’t mean to be. She opens the door to this family, to the hate, on both sides. I’ve put her in the middle of that hate and she’s put me in the middle of that hate. But it has to be this way because she needs out. I’m her way out.
I exit the bathroom and glance up the stairs where her bedroom must be located, where I plan to spend the night. Seeking her out, to tell her just that, I enter the living room to find her missing. “Harper?”
“I’m right here,” she calls out, walking down the stairs, in a pair of black sweats and a pink T-shirt, her nipples that were just in my hands, puckering against the thin cloth. “I just couldn’t put those work clothes back on.”
I step to the bottom of the stairwell and when she reaches the last step, I wrap my arm around her and pull her to me. “I like you like this.”
“Grunge princess?” she teases.
“Natural,” I say. “I like you natural. Casual”
“Like you in your jeans and T-shirt at the office? That was a ‘fuck you’ to your father and brother, right?”
“I have no need to impress them,” I say, “but you are another story.”
“You impress me most naked,” she teases.
“Is that right?”
“Yes. Definitely right.” She takes my hand and starts walking backward. “I’m going to feed you now, but I have a condition.”
“Another orgasm?”