“Of course, really. I’ll see if I can get us tickets.”
“Won’t that be a conflict of interest with your new football team?” I ask.
“Research,” he says. “I have to check out the competition from here on out and you’ll have to help me. Give me your expert opinions.”
I laugh. “That’s a tough job, but if it comes with stadium nachos I might be able to live with it.”
“I think we can arrange an order or two.”
He winks and my belly does this fluttery thing that only this man can stir in me. Everything with this man is exciting and wonderful. I mean, how amazing is a football game—a football game with Brady playing before he retires—and this man? This really, truly excites me but there is also a tiny piece of reality that stabs at me. I cover his hand with mine. “To celebrate when this is over. As much as I’m enjoying this time together, Eric, a part of me is aware of the hammer about to drop.”
“Okay, baby.” He brushes a finger down my cheek. “To celebrate when this is over.”
He doesn’t deny the hammer about to drop. He knows it’s real. We both know it’s ever-present. “Let’s end it,” I say, suddenly feeling urgent. “Let’s make this calm last forever. Let’s—”
He kisses me, his hand coming down on my head, his tongue licking into my mouth before he says, “We will. I will.” He rotates me and then the next thing I know, he’s on one knee between my legs, his hands on my knees, spreading me wide. “But right now,” he says, kissing my knee, his blue eyes meeting mine, heat smoldering in their depths, “you’re mine. Just mine.”
He lifts my leg to his shoulder and forces me to catch my weight on my hands. I barely have time to process him tugging lose the tie of my robe and kissing my belly before his lips are back on my knee, the space between—my sex—now aching and wet.
I officially decide the rest of the world can wait. We make the bad guys go away tomorrow, right after Eric becomes part owner of an NFL team or at least moves closer to that goal. I want to be there, by his side when it happens. I want so much with this man but right now, he’s kissing a path up my thigh, the fingers of one of his hands caressing a tingling path up the opposite thigh. I can’t think of anything but where I want his mouth, and how much I want him inside me. Okay, his mouth. I need his mouth on me and it’s almost as if he heard me say those words, or maybe I did. I don’t know, but his tongue licks my clit, sending sensations waving through me. And then his mouth closes down on me and I’m lost. He’s suckling me, licking me, his fingers sliding inside me. My hands and arms give out, and I fall back on the cushion.
Eric lifts one of my legs to his shoulder, and cups my backside, his tongue never leaving my body. It’s pretty much the end of me then, or perhaps the beginning of a new me, a thought I don’t have the ability to analyze at the moment. I shatter with another lick of his tongue and every part of me trembles with the pleasure that seeps into every pore of my body.
When my body calms, it’s with a new ache, an emptiness that only Eric can fill. Already he’s lifting me and carrying me to the bed. My robe doesn’t make it. It falls to the floor and in another few moments I’m lying on my back with Eric coming down on top of me. “This is where you belong,” he says. “Here, in this bed, in this life, with me. Say it.”
“This is where I belong, in this bed, in this life, with you.” It hits me then that this demand is about him, about the way he never belonged anywhere, so I quickly add, “And this is where you belong. In this bed, in this life, with me. Say it.”
“I belong with you, Harper, no matter who tries to say differently.”
I don’t know what that means. Who wants to keep us apart? But I don’t get to ask. His mouth closes down on mine, and the long lick of his tongue drugs me, seduces me, though I manage one coherent thought: the new me is the me that’s a part of him. And whoever it is he thinks wants to divide us, or doesn’t believe we belong together, will find out that I’m never stepping aside. I’m fighting as hard as I have to fight for this man and this new life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Harper
I don’t know how Eric and I manage to not only have an evening alone, but we manage to carry it over to morning light. I wake up to his big, strong arms around me, the earthy male scent of him teasing my nostrils, and it’s heaven. “Morning,” I murmur, lifting my head to stare into those piercing blue eyes of his.
“Morning, beautiful,” he says, brushing my hair from my eyes. “How’d you sleep?”
“Perfect.” I kiss his chest. “I’m here in bed with you. Is there any other way I could sleep?”
He rolls me to my back, his big body leaning over mine, a warmth in his eyes that isn’t about worry, torment, or the Kingston family. I’m not ready to go back to the reality that includes murder and mayhem. I want to cling to this little escape he insisted we live inside the past several hours. “I could wake up with you next to me every day for the rest of my life and die a happy man.”
This man is like sunshine in the never-ending storm that’s been my life since my father died. “I guess I’ll have to stay around and find out if that’s true.”
“I guess you will,” he approves. “The assassin. Blake got him on an airport camera. He left. They’re tracking him.”
“We’re free? We’re safe?”
“This doesn’t mean the coast is clear. He may have felt he’d been exposed and had to pull back. He could have been replaced, but it’s a positive sign that we’re not the targets. Most paid assassins, and he was, don’t pull back until the job is done.”
“But your dad is still alive, right?”
“He is. He’s stable.” He kisses my nose. “We have until two to get to the office. I need a workout. You said you wanted to workout, too. Want to workout together?”
“Yes. Perfect. I need a workout after the way we’ve been eating.”
A few minutes later, he’s updated me with news that’s been texted to him while we slept. His father is stable, which I already knew. My mother is sedated again. No word on the birth certificates yet. Blake will have updates on that soon, but he’s been saying that. It’s frustrating, but it’s also why we had our peace last night. There’s just no movement. And finally, Savage has a lead on the guy from the hospital he’s following up on now. By the time I have the news, if one can call that news, we’re in a private gym in his apartment, which is quite extensive and well equipped, and it feels good to do these normal things together. Like we’re starting a real life. I hit the treadmill beside Eric, and we’re both running a good twenty minutes when his cellphone buzzes with a text. He reads it and stops running, turning to face me. I immediately stop, too, and turn to face him. “Car accident,” he says.