“Harper,” he says, squeezing me.
“I know,” I say, threading my fingers through his thick hair.
We lie there a long while before he rolls off me and pulls up his jeans. I lie there in a puddle of cum and bliss, not even attempting to move. He chuckles and pulls my jeans up, buttoning and zipping them. “Do I need to carry you to the front seat?” he asks, smirking down at me.
“Maybe,” I say.
He quirks a brow.
I reach up and link my hands behind his neck, smiling up at him. “Yes, please.”
He scoops me up and carries me to the front seat and buckles me in. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“You should take it as a compliment,” I say, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him in for a kiss.
“You better stop, or I’ll have to fuck you again.”
I tighten my grip on his shirt and kiss him harder.
“You’re really asking for it today,” he says, smiling through our kiss. “You sure you can take it three times in one day?”
I pull back and smile up at him through my lashes. “Maybe… You could put it somewhere else this time?”
He groans and runs his hand up the back of my head, burying his hand in my hair and pressing my face to his chest. “What’s gotten into you? You never ask for anal.”
“I’m just happy,” I say, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing him against me. “And I’m happy that I could make you happy, too.”
By the time we leave the river, evening has fallen. My ass, throat, and cervix all took a beating, but it’s a good kind of sore. Royal turns on the headlights and drives across the bridge, the Rover lumbering along the wooden slats until we reach the far side, where he can turn around.
“You think you’ll keep coming here?” I ask when we’re back on the road. “I mean, this is where you came because of her, and now that she’s home…”
“Now it’s where I come with you,” he says, reaching over and laying a possessive hand on my thigh. “It’s not her place. It’sourplace.”
“Are you mad at her?” I ask carefully.
He glances at me and then back to the road. “Of course I’m fucking mad,” he says. “She was alive all that time. She let us believe she was dead for three fucking years.”
“But you’re not pissed at me for finding her?”
“I told you I wasn’t,” he says, squeezing my knee. “I’m glad she’s back, even if I’m pissed. We’re… Working through it. She’s still my sister, even if I’m pissed at her. I don’t hate her.”
“That makes sense.”
“How’d you find her, anyway?” he asks. “If Baron couldn’t, I don’t know how anyone could.”
“It was shockingly easy,” I say. “Considering Preston knew where Devlin worked. If you’d even stopped feuding with the Darlings, they probably would have told you.”
He gives me a withering look, and I cringe.
“Sorry, that was bitchy. But basically, Dolly Beckett told him a while back, like a year or two. But since you were a dick to both of them, he convinced her not to tell y’all because he wanted y’all to leave them alone to live their best lives or something along those lines.”
“I can’t really blame her,” Royal mutters.
“Dolly?”
“My sister,” he says. “For wanting to leave this shit behind. I fucking hate her for it, but I respect it, too. She’s brave. Not many people have the courage to say fuck everyone else, leave their whole whole life and everyone in it, and do whatever the fuck they want. I didn’t.”
“You were protecting your brothers,” I say, reaching over and sliding my hand behind his neck, massaging it with my thumb while he drives. “You did the right thing. You’re right to be pissed at her. I’m pissed at her, and I don’t even know her. What they did might be brave, but it’s also selfish.”