His mouth comes down on mine, his lips firm, his tongue punishing, demanding. He wants it all. He wants it all and it pisses him off. He doesn’t like that he invited me here. He doesn’t like that he needs me, and he does. I taste that on his lips. I taste that in his kiss. I feel that need in the way he presses his hard body against mine. The way he drags his hand over my breast, down my waist, to cup my ass and pull me hard against his hard erection.
It angers me that he’s pissed off for wanting and needing me. I want him. I need him and that makes me want to push him away, but that’s the thing about wanting and needing. It’s impossible to just say no. And so, I do what he’s doing. I say everything I feel in our kiss. In the way I tug at his T-shirt. In the way I touch hi
m when he pulls it over his head and tosses it away. Like I might never know what each of those inked messages on his arms mean. Like I might not touch him again and I pray, I so pray, that isn’t the case.
Time and space face into this man and it’s a swift few moments before I’m shirtless and braless. Before his gaze is raking over my naked breasts with such hunger that my sex clenches, aching for him to be inside me.
This burn accelerates as his hand comes down my breast again, his fingers twisting my nipple roughly. Everything about him is sharp and rough tonight and I cry out with the ache that is both pain and pleasure. I cry out with how much I want to know this part of him, this dark, edgier Eric that I’ve glimpsed but have yet to fully see.
His eyes narrow on my face and he pinches my nipple again. I grab his hand with the pain but I’m wet, my sex throbbing. “Are you punishing me for being here?”
“I’m showing you who I really am,” he murmurs, and then he’s on his knees, yanking roughly at my pants, and it’s moments before they are at my ankles and he’s lifting me, freeing me from their restraint, but I’m not free at all. I will never be free of this man and what he does to me. Of the way he has taken over who I am as a woman since the moment I met him.
His hands, those big wonderful hands, grip my waist, and he looks up at me with those piercing intelligent blue eyes. “Who am I, Harper?”
“The brilliant man I love even when he acts like the asshole you did tonight.”
He runs his thumb over my clit. “Then maybe I haven’t shown you enough.”
“Because you want to get rid of me?” He licks my nub with that equally brilliant tongue of his and I suck in air. “If that’s supposed to be how you do it?” His finger slides alone my wet seam. “Because if it is, it’s not working.”
He turns me, and suddenly I’m facing the doorframe, catching my hands on the wooden centerpiece. I barely have time to grasp what just happened when his hand comes down on my backside, a hard smack that has me arching my back and panting. He’s standing now, behind me, his fingers in my sex, his hand on my breast. I’m pulled against him as he murmurs in my ear. “I told you I’d fuck you and scare you the hell away.”
“When? When are you going to do that, because this isn’t it? And then maybe, just maybe, you’ll let me go and stop fucking with my head.”
He lets out a low growl and presses me to the frame again, squeezing my breast roughly, even as he spanks me again. I cry out, and my sex clenches, damn heat gathering at my thighs. “Scare me away,” I beg. “Please. Then you win. Then you can decide that you’re not good enough for me or I’m not good enough for you or whatever it is that goes on in your head.”
He goes still, utterly, completely still, but one of his hands remain on my breast, the fingers of the other flexing on my backside. “I’m the asshole, remember?” he finally says at my ear.
“Right,” I whisper. “Spanking me again. I like it. I feel no fear with you, Eric. None.”
Torment rips across his features and he buries his face in my neck. “Liar,” he whispers, and he spanks me again.
“Who’s lying to who?” I demand, pressing my backside against his erection. “I’m the one naked and exposed. You’re hiding behind me. Behind them. You want me to leave.”
He turns me to face him. “No, I don’t want you to leave.”
“Liar.”
“I know you should. I know you will. I know—”
I wrap my arms around him and press my naked body to his, holding onto him. “I’m scared.” I look up at him. “I’m scared of them. I’m scared of getting hurt. I’m scared of trusting you and you breaking my heart. I’m scared of being vulnerable and you leaving. Of being without the man who feels like he’s a part of me now. And you’re scared too. Of being like them to the point that you’re going to make all of my fears come true and then they win and we lose.”
He stares down at me, a half-lidded stare, emotions radiating off of him that I want to read, that I want to understand. It pulses. It vibrates. He vibrates in that way he did on the plane and I know, I know, that I’ve pushed too hard. I press to my toes and my mouth finds his, and I hope and pray that he’ll get lost in me, not them, not the Kingston monsters that are too present in this room and our lives.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Harper
My lips linger on Eric’s, his hard body, every inch and part of it, aligned with mine, but at this moment he’s not touching me. Seconds tick by, and I feel as if my head is spinning, my heart breaking. He’s shut me out. He’s decided he’s the devil and I’m some sort of angel above him. The princess, the damn princess that he’s going to leave gutted and bleeding.
I push back and it’s as if I’ve ignited something inside him. He tangles his fingers in my hair and drags my mouth back to his. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t be out here on the ledge alone, Eric.”
“You’re not on the ledge alone. I’m right there with you. I’m not the one who’s going to leave. You are.”
“I’m not leaving. Why would I leave?”