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 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. He doesn’t touch 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 your system?”
“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 feel him everywhere. 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.
Chapter twenty-six
Eric
There is something about this woman that burns through me like sunshine on a winter’s day, warming even the cold of this city, this family. She is why I’m here. Hell, she’s always been in my fucking head, burning me with memories of touching her, with wanting her. I mold her close, my lips brushing her mouth, the scent of her—a sweet, floral spice—wrapping me in the spell that is this woman. She cast a damn spell on me at the pool the night we met, a spell that time and space didn’t erase.
“Not a princess,” I murmur against her mouth. “A witch.”
Her fingers curl on my jaw. “Not a princess. A witch. What does that even mean?”
“It means,” I go to my knees and pull her upright with me, yanking her jacket down her shoulders to hold her arms captive, “you cast a damn spell on me or I wouldn’t be here.”
“No, I—”
I kiss her, my tongue stroking away her objection before I say, “You did or I wouldn’t have thought about you for six long years.”
“You thought of me?”
“Yes, Harper, I did and I resented you for it. For that power over me.”
“I thought of you, too. Let go of my arms. Please, I want to touch you.”
There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to let that happen. That doesn’t want the crazy way she affects me to steal my damn control, because she does. No one else can, but she absolutely does. There is something in her voice, in her eyes, a vulnerability, a need I haven’t sensed until tonight. A vulnerability I know comes not just from my ability to affect her situation. It’s about her mother. It’s about how painful I know that conversation she just had with her was, and I get it. My mother and I had so many fights driven by the family. I lost her and though Harper’s mother doesn’t have cancer to drive a suicide like mine did, Harper is still worried about her safety.
I kiss her again, the taste of her, the feel of her, is sweet honey on my tongue that I’ve craved every day since I left it behind. “You, woman,” I say when I tear my mouth from hers, and just barely touching my lips to her lips.