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)
She’s mine now. She’s been mine since that night six years ago. It just wasn’t our time yet, but now, now is our time and I’m not walking away. Not from the mess, the family dragged her into and not without her.
Chapter twenty-seven
Eric
Still lying on the couch, still inside her, and still wearing the condom, I stroke a lock of hair from Harper’s face. “I should get up.”
“I know,” she whispers and there’s regret in her voice that stretches beyond this moment.
I catch her chin and tilt her stare to mine. “I don’t want to get up. I’m not leaving, Harper.”
Her eyes soften, warm. “Good,” she says. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Good,” I echo and kiss her. “But,” I say really quite seriously, “if I’m staying, you have to feed me. I’m wasting away here.”
She laughs and it’s a sexy, sweet laugh that I could easily find addictive. “We can’t have that, now can we?” She shoves on my chest. “Get up and I’ll order food. I have an idea.”
“Which is what?” I ask.
“I’ll surprise you. And as a bonus, this place I have in mind is one block down. Delivery is fast.”
I pull out of her and we both groan, with more laughter following. I help her to sit up and pull her to her feet. “I could hunt for the bathroom, naked but for a condom, or you could direct me to the right spot.”
“I would enjoy the naked and wandering around my house option but since you’re starving, there’s one by the front door.” She pushes to her toes and kisses me, the spontaneous act somehow as sexy as everything she just did when she was fucking me.
I wrap my arm around her waist, folding her close, and I kiss her this time. “I’ll be right back. Consider the food on the way.”
I scoop up my pants from the slate gray wood flooring, a color that matches the L-shaped couches that frame a stone fireplace. There are two high-back chairs by the window, both a lighter gray. The décor is almost masculine, a bit like my own. That is until you add in the fluffy cream-colored throws and flower-shaped light bulbs dangling from above. This space is Harper, a little piece of her, and somehow a little is not enough. I really don’t know what to do with that information but I have to figure this shit out.
I cross the room and the foyer to enter the bathroom. Once I toss the condom into the trashcan, I pull my pants on commando style and lean on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, and when I see my father in the image I look away, I grimace; it’s a comparison I haven’t made in years and I don’t like that I do so now. A symptom of being here, I decide, in this city, in the midst of this screwed up family.
And yet, I’m going nowhere, I already know that, not without Harper, which is not good news for the Kingston family.
In fact, I think it’s safe to say, they’re fucked.
I exit the bathroom just as the doorbell rings. I grab the takeout order that turns out to be Chinese food, my stomach downright bitching me out at this point, I’m so fucking hungry. With the food in hand, I walk to the end of the stairs and glance up to the second floor, where I assume Harper’s bedroom must be located, therefore where I plan to spend the night. “Harper?!”
“I’m right here,” she calls out, hurrying down the steps I was just eyeing, and doing so in a pair of black sweats and a pink T-shirt, her nipples puckering against the thin cloth. “I just couldn’t put those work clothes back on.”
I’m waiting on her when she reaches the last step. “Oh good,” she says, “the food came. And I just realized that we forgot our pasta back at the restaurant.”
I wiggle my brows at her. “We had other things on our minds.”
“You had other things on your mind,” she laughs and her hand settles easily, comfortably on my waist.
“I like you like this,” I say, only partially talking about her nipples, under the T-shirt.
She smiles, and she has a smile that can light its way through a thunderstorm. The smile of a princess. She motions up and down her body. “This is what I call grunge princess,” she jokes. “I’m so glad you approve.”
“I like you natural. Casual. Relaxed for once.”
A hint of pink colors her cheeks. “Yeah, well you make that easy,” she says softly, a bit shyly. “It means a lot to me that you’re here.” She follows that with a grin. “And as for casual,” she pokes my chest playfully, “I love the jeans and T-shirt you had going on at the office. And aside from you looking just as good in denim as you do a suit, you know why I liked it?”