Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
His hands slide over my waist, cupping my breasts, pinching my nipples through my shirt and bra. “I should,” he whispers. “I really fucking should, but I’m not going to. Not like this. Not when I’m like I am right now. Fuck.” He pushes away from me, leaving my sex aching and drenched, my body screaming for some unknown pleasure it’s been denied.
I rotate to find him standing with his back to me, his hand pressed to his neck. “Fuck,” he curses again, turning to me. “What the hell are you doing to me, woman?”
His eyes are dark, tormented, his body a hard line of edgy need. I want to understand that need. I want to understand this man. I want to satisfy the burn in him for revenge, and I know only one way to do that. To satisfy another need in him, to drive him over the edge, and then bring him down, and then maybe, just maybe, he’ll let go of his anger to see a solution that doesn’t include murder. Maybe I’ll save him and us. That means now, before he puts something in motion I can’t stop.
“You can’t leave this room yet,” I say. “I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me, Harper.”
He’s wrong. I can and I will.
Chapter fifty-eight
Harper
I’m still against the door of Eric’s bedroom, my body all that’s stopping him from leaving this room and acting on his promise to end his father. My declaration that he’s not leaving the room between us. His declaration that I can’t stop him, right there with it. And he’s right, of course. I can’t stop him. Not if he really wants to leave. The man is six-foot-two or three at least, and a wall of solid, hot, hard muscle. He has that control. He is, in fact, one hundred percent in control of the physical equation. He’s in control of what happens next if he wants to be, and that’s a problem because I know, I know, that if I let him leave this room right now, I won’t be able to stop him from acting against his father. I don’t know the right move to make to deal with the hell we’re in, but I know with certainty that making any move right now, in his current state of mind, is not a decision made of the genius he was born with.
It’s emotional.
It’s passionate.
It’s about pain, revenge, and anger.
It’s about the attempt on my life that I can’t think about right now. If I crumble, he’ll act out. He’ll lash out. He’ll protect me at all costs, and the costs could be too high. He’d do all this for me and that affects me on so many levels, in so many ways. No one but this man would do anything for me, and the fact that he would is a realization that warms me, but also comes with responsibility for how I affect his actions.
I’m suddenly ravenous to tear away Eric’s physical control, to find the man beneath all those emotions and all that powerful anger. Desperate to save him the way he saved me because I know no matter what his claim, he’d regret the actions he’s planned against his father. He might be a genius, but he’s still just a man, and a man I want the chance to know; all of him, all of the broken, damaged pieces beneath his perfect surface. I’m not letting him out of this room until I know what is really in his head or until he at least promises me to wait to make any decision that doesn’t involve us naked in his bed.
I go to him and I don’t give him time to react, my hands catching at his waist. “You say I belong with you.”
“You do belong with me.” His tone is absolute, his voice and eyes pure steel.
“That means you belong with me.”
“Yes, Harper. It does.” He says those words without hesitation, his voice low, a raspy hint to it, that says he’s affected and yet, he doesn’t touch me.
A charge hums from him, like a ball of anger spinning in the air, faster and faster until it combusts. Like years of anger and pain that have collided into this moment, this piece of time and I understand. He walked away. He made his own future and yet still they came for him—God, I came for him. They’ve pushed his limits and he needs to find them again.
I need to find them for him.
I drop to my knees and caress the thick ridge of his erection. He’s hard, thick, pulsing beneath the stretch of his zipper. He wants me. He needs me like he did on the plane and I believe now that he just needs a release. He needs to fuck or be fucked. No. He needs to take and I need to give.