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“I have done nothing but love you and take care of you and so has this family. Treat us like it.”
“This family has done nothing for me. You are another story.Youare my family. I’m trying to protect you.”
“You’re trying to ruin my life. Your father—”
“Stop calling him that. Please.”
“Jeff,” she bites out. “He’s not pleased that it’s my daughter that brought this problem to his door.”
“He’s a solution, not a problem, and one day you’ll thank me for this. And I hope you’ll thank Eric as well.”
“Get rid of him. I beg of you. No. I order you. End this tonight.” She turns and opens the door and exits, slamming the door behind her.
I stand there and the room seems to weave around me. I’m trembling, I think. I don’t tremble, but my mother is my world. She’s all I have and she’s never talked to me like this, but Eric—he’s the one helping her and me. It’s then that I dare to admit that he matters; he’s the guy that could hurt me. He’s the one that I could trust and be burned alive because I did so. He’s that guy for me. He always has been.
His footsteps sound behind me and I turn to find him standing in the archway. We stare at each other, the air thick with an uneasy feeling between us that I don’t want to exist.
“Could you hear it all?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, his expression impenetrable but he closes the space between us, stopping a reach from touching me but he doesn’t. Hedoesn’ttouch me. “I could hear everything,” he says. “What do you want right now?”
My hand presses to his chest. “You. I want you.”
“You want to fuck me out of yoursystem?”
“I tried that. It didn’t work.”
“Do you think I’m here to hurt you?” he asks.
Tension crackles between us. My body aches everywhere he’s not touching me. “No, I don’t. And I hate that she acted that way. I hate the things she said to you. I know they hurt you. I know you could choose to hurt me because they hurt you but I can’t seem to care. I know we’re just fucking, but—”
He drags me to him, his fingers tangling in my hair. “Sweetheart, if we were just fucking, I wouldn’t be here.” His mouth closes down on mine, and then he’s tasting me, claiming me, his tongue licking deep, and I feel it everywhere. I feelhimeverywhere. But we can’t ignore what just happened. We can’t just kiss it away.
I press my hand to his chest. “Eric—”
“Forget what just happened. We’re here. We’re now. Be in the moment with me.”
We’re here. We’re now. Something about those words both pleases and taunts me in a strange combination that I never get the chance to understand. He’s kissing me again, drugging me with the taste of him, spicy, male, demanding, and suddenly he’s scooping me up and walking under the archway toward the living room.
The next thing I know, I’m on the couch on my back and he’s coming down on top of me, his legs aligned with mine, his hands at my face. “Ask me what I want, Harper.” His voice is this low, raspy seduction that is both silk and satin on my nerve endings.
“What do you want, Eric?”
“You,” he says, “from the day I met you. You. I’ve fucking wanted you, but you were the enemy.”
“And now?”
“And now this,” he says, and then his mouth is back on mine, warmth spreading through my body, consuming me the way only he can. He does. He consumes me. It’s terrifying. It’s addicting. He’s addicting.
What do I want?
More.
Him.
More of him.
And despite it perhaps being the definition of insanity, I know there will be a price to pay, but I don’t care what he costs me.
