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)
“We both know you fucked up,” I say. “Don’t do it again.” I don’t wait for a reply. I move on. “I need to know where my father is right now. I need to know who he talks to or who he sees. And somehow, get a bug in his room, even if that means using room service to do it. Just make it happen.”
“We’re resourceful,” Smith assures me. “We’ll get it done.” He turns and leaves.
I lock the door and stick my gun in a table off the entryway. I have another upstairs. I want this one ready to say hello to anyone at the door that shouldn’t be here. Once it’s sealed away, I exit the foyer, and walk the path to the stairs, starting the climb; blood rushing in my ears, pulsing through my body, just thinking about touching Harper, holding her again, after thinking I might have lost her. A feeling I never want to experience again.
Harper appears on the second level, at the top of the stairs, waiting on me, still dressed, and looking like she’s ready to launch ten questions at me that I don’t want to answer right now. I catch her by the waist and walk her backward until we’re in my room where I shut the door, and then plant her against it. “You scared the fuck out of me.” That swell of emotion is back, pounding at my chest, radiating through my voice. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Her fingers curl around my shirt. “You scared me. Don’t do it—”
I twine my fingers into her hair and drag her mouth to mine. “Don’t talk,” I order. “Not now. Not Yet.” And then I’m kissing her, and she is sweet, so damn sweet. The kind of sweet a Kingston destroys, but I’m not a Kingston. I’m just the bastard son.
Chapter sixty-five
Harper
We kiss each other as if every moment has a way of feeling like it will be our last. And I know he feels it, too. It feeds our emotions, defines us as a couple, and it drives our passion to an intensity that is as addictive as he is to me.
I really feared for him today and just knowing that he’s here, that he’s alive, undoes me, drives me. I don’t want to know what he did or didn’t do to his father right now. He didn’t kill him. He promised me he wouldn’t. What matters now is that he needs me and I need him and that need runs deep into my soul.
There’s a desperation between us, the intensity of the burn we share swelling into an inferno like I’ve never experienced, like nothing I believe this man lets anyone know he can feel, but he lets me. He claims me with every touch and lick, and yet, he denies me more.
He tears his lips from mine, placing an intolerable space between my mouth and his and I’m overwhelmed with the pulse of his emotions, the self-hate in him. The part of him that blames what happened to me in that warehouse on himself. “Eric, I don’t know what you think there is to hate in you, what you think will scare me away, but it won’t. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” At least until he shoves me away, I think, which I feel him doing now, even as he holds me close.
His eyes narrow, his scrutiny deep, as intense as the way he’d kissed me, and try as I might, his expression is impossible to read. I search, I probe, and I’m still trying to read him when suddenly he’s kissing me again, licking into my mouth, testing my words on his tongue. I sink into him, absorbing his hard body into mine, clinging to him, meeting him stroke for stroke, trying to answer him, trying to show him that I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. He can’t scare me away.
There’s a low, sexy rumble in his chest that I feel everywhere. It’s that moment of no return for him, that moment where he snaps, where he needs to claim and possess, rather than think. He wants me. He doesn’t want me to leave. He doesn’t want me to walk away. I feel that in him now, but I also feel his torment. He thinks I should leave and no matter what he claims, I think he’ll walk away for me. But even as I feel that niggle of uncertainty trying to work me over, he lifts me and distracts me.
In a few long strides, he carries me to the bed, a driven man with a purpose and I’m that purpose. But he doesn’t lay us down. He settles me on the edge of the mattress just long enough to remove my clothes. His own shirt follows, and his naked torso is sinewy muscle, his skin a brilliant inked canvas of male beauty. I’m still drinking him in, when he pulls me forward. My hands plant behind me, sinking into the mattress, catching my weight, even as he spreads my legs.