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My breath hitches in my throat at his words; words that don’t divide us, but unite us. “I didn’t come for them. I swear to you, this isn’t for them. It’s for me and—”
He brushes his lips over mine. “Just be here with me right now. This is just us. I’m leaving them out of it. I wasn’t, but I am now. You leave them out of it, too.” He strokes the dampness from my lips. “Just me and you and years of regret, because Idoregret leaving.”
“You do?”
“You, not them.” His lips curve. “I should have picked up a box of condoms and then taken you someplace far away and used every damn one of them.”
I laugh and smile, too. “Yes. Yes, you should have.”
His mouth comes down on mine, and the energy shift between us is sharp and yet rich with passion and emotion. It’s gentler. It’s deeper. The press of tongue to tongue a caress, not a demand. The soft sway of his body against mine, seductive and slow. His kisses drink me in, seem to savor the taste of me as I do him, but at some point, I don’t know when we snap. His hand cups my backside and he pulls me hard against him, his fingers stroking my sex from behind even as he pumps into me. We need now. We need so much and yet the feeling is there—the sense that we can’t have more, yet we have to have it. We have to have each other. I have never felt anything like it. I have never wanted anything like this. I have never kissed anyone like I would die without the next lick of his tongue, but I do Eric.
We rock and grind and pump until that rise to pleasure is to the level of no return. I can’t stop the tumble into release and my sex clenches around him, his low, guttural groan my reward, the shudder of his body following. We ride the rush of release together and when we collapse, we hold onto each other, but as seconds tick by, reality seeps into the room, and I can almost feel it trying to pull us apart. He hates the Kingstons and he won’t help me. I know what’s coming. We both know what’s coming and that’s another goodbye, but it won’t come with any more closure than we had six years ago.
At least not for me.
He’s right. He owned me tonight. In some ways, he’s owned me for six years. I fear that he still will when I leave this city, no doubt now without him.
He strokes my hair, a gentle, regretful touch like he’s thinking the same thing as me, but he doesn’t speak.
He pulls out of me before rolling away and sitting up to toss the condom in a trashcan. I suddenly feel naked and exposed but it doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter how much I don’t want to push him to help me. Every reservation I just had about this being a bad idea matters. There are reasons it can’t matter. I have to push him. I start to roll away to get dressed and ready forbattle, but he’s already back, catching my arm and now we’re both naked on our knees on the bed, facing each other.
“Running away?” he challenges.
“I came here for you. Why would I run?”
“I won’t help them.”
“Helpme.”
“I’ll give you a job at double the pay you make there and there are no conditions. If we never fuck again, we don’t fuck again. I can place you in any state, or several countries, for that matter. I’ll get you a new start.”
“My mother—”
“Take her with you.”
“She won’t leave him,” I say. “She married my father at a very young age. They were in love. Losing him left her devastated. Your father took over her life and her money when she was vulnerable and not in a good way. I can’t leave her. Not in the way you suggest.”
“You said you were going to leave.”
“Before the recalls,” I remind him. “Before she could end up in trouble with the rest of them. Ihaveto go back. Go back with me.”
“If I go back there, I’ll finish them off. I won’t save them. Still want me to go with you?”
“Yes. I do. Because I don’t believe you’re the bastard you want everyone to believe you are or you would have already done it.”
“You’re wrong.” His jaw sets. “And there’s nothing more to say, at least not by me.” In other words, there’s more to say, and I’m the one who has to say it. And there is, but I’m not sure any of it changes anything. It might even make it worse.
He releases me, leaving me cold and aching for his touch. I don’t just want this man. Some part of me needs him beyond logic. Maybe it’s the connection to something we both want to call home that can never really be that for either of us. Maybe it’s more. I really don’t know or want to understand. It doesn’t matter. He’s no longer touching me and maybe he never will again.
He’s already dressing and somehow that feels like a slap. Me naked on the bed while he dresses certainly feels cold and done. He’s done. He’s made his decision to leave, probably before he ever arrived. He wanted to fuck me. He wanted to own me. It was all part of what he’s just declared. He wants to ruin his father and brother. I’m nothing more than an extension of them. God, I’m a fool butwhat did I expect? The minute I allowed myself to be naked with him, it must have seemed like I was fucking him to get a favor.
Embarrassed, I scramble off the bed and find my sweats, pulling them on. Once we’re both dressed, he walks to my room service tray and opens it. “Macaroni and cheese,” he says.
“My favorite food,” I reply and I have no idea why this feels almost as intimate of an admission as anything else between us tonight. I regret sharing this part of me with him, but then, why wouldn’t I? I’m just a revenge fuck to him.
He closes the space between us and I tell myself to back away. I tell myself to end this now, but I can’t stand the idea of never touching him again. I can’t resist the need to feel his hands on my body just one more time. I suck in air, waiting for it, wanting it, and when he slides his hand under my hair to my neck, I feel this man, who would be my enemy by his own definition, everywhere, inside and out.
“Just one of the many things,” he says, “that I would have liked to have known about you, Harper.” He kisses me, a light brush of lips over lips, and then he pulls back. “But that can’t happen. There’s something you haven’t told me. You haven’t been honest with me and that makes you one of them.” His hands fall away from me, rejection in the action, and then he’s walking away, the door his destination.
