“There are times that I feel like you know more about me than you’re letting on.”
His words sounded harsh, cutting through the billowing silence of the dim, hushed limo. He recognized that a portion of his volatility stemmed from her aloofness at that moment . . . her untouchable quality. Because despite all his ambiguity and uncertainty toward her, the need to touch, to assure himself of her reciprocated need, never once waned. If anything, his hunger seemed to be growing exponentially in the face of his doubts.
She turned to him. He saw incredulity written large on her face.
“Why in the world would I know more about you than I’m telling you?” she demanded. He saw understanding slowly dawn on her face. “Do you think I’m putting on a show? To get a story about you? Did you talk to Cyril? Did he tell you I was asking questions about your background this afternoon?”
Cyril hadn’t told him anything, but Jacob’s expression didn’t shift. His heartbeat began to thrum in his hears. “Cyril and I have been friends for years,” he replied neutrally. “We don’t keep a lot from each other.”
She exhaled, shaking her head, the motion causing her long, lush hair to slide across her pale shoulders and arms. Desire and confusion clashed inside him, making his muscles tense hard.
“I told him I wasn’t asking questions about you to get fuel for a story, or to use the information in any way that was harmful to you. I told him I was just trying to understand you better. Then he ran to tell you everything, apparently. You have him trained well,” she stated bitterly, staring again out the window, her jaw tense. She suddenly made a desperate, disgusted sound and whipped her head around. “Why are you so convinced I want to hurt you?”
“Because you can.”
She started. He, too, felt a little taken aback by his honest answer. He’d just admitted point-blank that he cared enough for her that she had the power to hurt him. After a stretched moment, she inhaled slowly.
“Because I have access to your homes? To your world? To you? Don’t kid yourself. You haven’t given that much away, Jacob. Besides, you’ve asked me to take risks for you,” she breathed out coldly. “Maybe you’re going to have to decide once and for all if you’re willing to do the same for me. Oh . . . and once you make your choice, stop getting pissed off at me every time I remind you of someone else, or make you feel in the tiniest bit vulnerable. That’s just the way being . . . with someone else works.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes. He sensed her disgust at him, but also at herself. “I almost said ‘being in a relationship.’ Imagine me, saying that to Jacob Latimer.”
“Harper—”
He cut himself off when the limo came to a halt. He realized in mounting frustration that he wasn’t sure what he would have said to her, anyway. What he could say. He felt blocked at every turn.
They didn’t speak as they approached the Sea Cliff house, and he keyed in a security code. She walked ahead of him when they entered, and headed directly for the stairs. He followed, his agitation swelling at the vision of her elegant, stiff back and shoulders. She was pissed, and good. But he wasn’t exactly pleased at learning she’d been trying to pull answers from Cyril about him, either. They entered his suite and he slammed the door after him. His frothing frustration spilled over when, without pause, she walked briskly toward the guest bathroom.
He lunged toward her, grabbing her upper arm and spinning her to face him.
“You’ve got me twisted in every direction, Harper.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “But I’m not responsible for your pissy moods.”
He gripped her upper arm tight. “I haven’t spoken to Cyril since I saw him with you this afternoon. I wasn’t saying that you could hurt me because you have access to my life. I was saying it because I care about you. Too fucking much.”
He saw her eyes widen slightly before he swooped down and kissed her. She stiffened at first, but he was so far gone, he didn’t care. He required her taste, her scent, the sensation of her soft, firm lips moving against his. He bit at her lower lip, demanding she join him in this boiling lust. Instead, she bared her teeth, pressed closer to his body, and nipped him back. He saw red. Her hands clutched hard at his shoulders, and her fingers delved into his hair. The feeling of her nails scraping his scalp made savage arousal tear through him. He opened his hands along her sides, encompassing her slender torso, and plunged his tongue into her mouth.
Need assaulted him. He lifted her several inches off the floor and walked with her pressed tight against him. He set her on the edge of his bed, still feeding hungrily from her hot, responsive mouth. Everything seemed to be striking him in sharp, bullet-like flashes of awareness, like his brain was overloading with sensation. Her hands moved anxiously along his shoulders and neck, pulling him to her, urging him onto the bed. Before he came, however, he reached around her neck and unbuttoned the collar of her dress. He broke from their kiss, snarling at the deprivation of her mouth.
He jerked her dress down, baring her breasts. They felt so soft in his hands, so firm and sweet, the tight, coral-colored nipples killing him. They were his to touch—for now—and that knowledge unleashed a desperate excitement in him. He heard Harper’s whimper through the blood pounding in his ears. The next thing he knew, he was pushing her back on his bed and coming down over her, clutching a condom in his hand.
Everything was cast in a haze as he fed again from her mouth, and her supple body writhed beneath him, fueling his lust.
Another flash of clarity came to him. He held his throbbing cock in his hand and was shoving her dress roughly up to her waist. There was a ripping sound of cloth, and he stared at the heaven of her pale, parted thighs and pink sex. He dipped a finger into her, growling at the sensation of her tight, lubricated sheath.
His groan ripped at his throat as he entered her a moment later. He thrust, his eyes rolling back in his head at the slicing pleasure of being submerged to the hilt. The haze cleared as he stared down at her tense, flushed face, reddened lips, and eyes that were shiny with lust. She was stunning. So gorgeous.
Harper.
Supporting himself on the mattress, he used his free hand to reach for her wrists. He pressed both her hands to the mattress above her head, his gaze fixed on her bare, vulnerable breasts rising and falling as she panted. He kept his hand there, restraining her and bracing his weight at once.
There was so much feeling inside him, he thought he’d explode from it. He wanted to feast on her breasts and her mouth. He wanted to taste every square inch of her skin. His hands itched to grab fistfuls of her lush, sexy hair. But he needed to take her now . . . to be buried deep inside her surrender.
“You make me so crazy,” he grated out before he started to move.
His bed shook. She did. He knew he took her hard, and that he was ruthless. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself. It was like something else drove him, some savage force that insisted he drown in her submission. He felt only a single-minded goal to possess her utterly.
At some point, he heard her cry out. He’d paused with his cock sunk deep and pressed his testicles and pelvis against her outer sex, circling his hips subtly, demanding that she burn for him. He registered her flushed face, saw it tighten even as her sex convulsed around him. She cried out his name. Heat rushed around his cock, and he was pounding into her again, fucking the core of her unfurling pleasure, slaking himself like a satyr on it.
Then he was kneeling over her, panting, shucking the condom off his pulsing, rigid cock. He jerked viciously. The sweet pain in him swelled and broke, and he was coming on her pale thigh as wave after wave of pleasure shook him.