“Fine. Yes. Let’s get naked. Am I supposed to complain about getting naked with you?”
“No. You’re not.”
“Then let’s get naked.”
“Not now, sweetheart. When I get back.” He kisses me, his hand on my head, a deep, passionate kiss, a promise on his tongue that lands on mine. He’ll come back. He’s not leaving me. With those promises, he parts our lips, and for long moments, seems to just breathe me in before he releases me and turns away. He starts for the door, but no one can keep a promise like that. No one.
I can’t let him go.
I won’t.
Not without me.
I dart for the door and reach the foyer as he sticks a gun in the back of his pants, and then grabs a jacket from the coatrack. He exits the apartment and I run the rest of the way toward it, open it and jolt, finding Eric standing there, waiting for me. “What are you doing, Harper?”
“Saving you.”
His eyes burn with amber flecks, emotions radiating from their depths that I want to know and understand, that I believe one day he’ll allow me to understand, if he’s alive.
“Saving you,” I say again, earnestly.
He reaches up and brushes his fingers over my cheek, his touch shivering through me. “You already have, Harper. You just don’t know it yet.”
I suck in a breath at what is an unexpected confession of which I do not believe this man makes many. His hand falls away. “Walker is watching. They’ll stop you again. Don’t make them. Trust me.”
“Says the man who has my trust, but gives me none by having guards at the door. I’m not a captive.”
“Says the man who guards what matters to him and protects what’s his to protect.”
What’s his? Once again he speaks of me like I’m his, and I don’t fight those words. I revel in them. I want to crawl inside them and live and love and endure. I want to be his woman. I want to be his everything. I want so much with this man that I can’t just let him go.
“What if it’s a trap?”
“Traps are puzzles. I excel at puzzles. I need to go. I need to make my move before he makes his next.”
“He’s driving your moves, remember?”
“Not this one. Of that, I’m certain.”
I don’t know what that means. “Are you going to kill him?”
He cuts his stare, his expression all hard lines and shadows, his jaw hard before he casts me in an even harder stare that sends chills down my spine. “When my mother died, the very night she died, he told me to get over it. People die. I’ve hated him since that day. I hate myself for ever forgetting that. For ever hungering for his approval.”
His words crawl around in my chest, stirring anger at his father, at this family, and leaves me speechless, unable to press for my answer, but he gives it to me anyway. “Am I going to kill him?” he asks. “No. If I kill him, he can’t suffer.”
It’s exactly where Grayson said Eric would land, with a need to punish his father, not kill him.
He brushes a strand of hair from my eyes, tenderness in his touch, that defies the words he’s just spoken. “Stay here. We’ll go shopping when I get back, after you make good on all of those promises to get naked.” He turns and starts walking.
I ignore Smith standing quietly to my left and call after Eric. “I’ll be running around your house naked waiting on you, so hurry up. It’s cold in this apartment.”
He turns around and winks. “I’m officially motivated to hurry back.” And then he’s walking away again. He’s leaving. I shut the door and lock it. He’s gone and it feels bad. It feels like he’s not coming back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Eric
The past…