The Empire Read online

  “Please don’t hate me for not telling you.”

  “I don’t. It’s clear you were protecting me.”

  “Say it again. Promise me you will not leave after I tell you, but more, tell me you’ll confirm the information, and take a step back, a week, days, to think before you act.”

  His eyes meet mine. “I promise.”

  “And I’m not saying this to protect your father. If this is true, he is worse than I ever dreamt he could be. He’s a monster. I’m saying this to protect you because you don’t deserve to end up behind bars because of him.”

  He rolls to his back and takes me with him, and now I’m draped over him, I’m the one in control, which is what he’s trying to tell me, even show me. I breathe out. “It was—about six months after my miscarriage and my mother called me. She was in a panic. She’d found something that freaked her out. I met her at their house, and she said she’d seen notes in your father’s files. She was looking for some property lease and—”

  “What did she find?”

  “Just keep in mind that she told me she was wrong. She read the document wrong.”

  “Baby, you’re killing me here.”

  “The document was about a cancer trial that your mother was trying to get into.”

  He doesn’t blink. “Why would my father have that document?”

  “Then you know about the program?” I ask.

  “Yes. I know about the program. It was her best hope. It was what we were hoping for, but she killed herself before she got in.”

  I swallow hard. “Yes, well when I heard your father had documents related to the trial, I thought that meant that your mother mattered to him. That she was more than we realized to him.”

  “But?”

  “My mother found proof of a payment to someone who worked at the facility. She thought he paid extra to get her into the program. But then she found a note from the man the check was written to that read: As requested, decline issued.”

  He goes stiff, his jaw so hard I think it might shatter. “Are you saying that my father paid off someone at the treatment facility to ensure my mother didn’t make it into that trial?”

  “Yes. Later my mother said she misunderstood the note. That she found another and it explained that money wasn’t a factor in acceptance into the study. It was first come, first serve. But today. Today she made it seem like—”

  “He paid to keep her out of the trial,” he repeats. “And she knew she’d been rejected the day she killed herself.”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I think so. Eric—”

  He flips me over and now he’s on top of me, his emotions cutting, jagging, and tunneling through the room. He’s trembling and I’m not even sure it’s from the numbers in his head. It’s pure, white-hot fury.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Harper

  Eric squeezes his eyes shut, but he doesn’t immediately move. He’s on top of me, his big body steel that seems to hum with his emotions. My hands close around his arms. “I hate them, too. I hate them and—”

  He moves then, his body suddenly lifting from mine, and I am ice, brittle to the bone with his withdrawal, terrified I’ve made the wrong decision by telling him right now. Now was horrible timing, but when would be the right time for something like this? The minute he’s standing, I’m sitting, holding myself up on my hands. Watching as he turns away, his shoulders bunching, his hands going to his waist, and I watch his body shift with the inhalation of a breath he holds, tension radiating off of him. Aware that the savant in him reacts to emotions, I’m afraid that anything I say or do might trigger a reaction he won’t have otherwise.

  Slowly, I scoot to the edge of the bed where I can be ready to do whatever he needs me to do. Ready to move if he moves, and stop him from leaving any way I can manage. It won’t be easy, but I have to win. There’s no other option. He steps forward and I stand up. He takes two steps and I take one, only to have him stop dead in his tracks. I stop just as abruptly, holding my breath, not sure what to expect. A full attack, as he described after his mother passed? Anger? Pain? A charge toward the door to leave? I just don’t know. I have no idea what to expect.

  Will he hate me for not telling him sooner?

  Will he hate me for staying with Kingstons after I found out? For justifying what I learned as my mother talking craziness?

  Will he hate me?

  That’s the bottom line.

  Have I lost him? God, I can’t lose him. I love him. I love him so much that it hurts to think about never touching him or kissing him again. It hurts to think about losing the chance to find out all we can be. I don’t even know how he likes to spend the upcoming holidays he once spent with his mother, now that he’s here in this life he created for himself. And as silly as it might seem, right now, that cuts terribly. I want to know everything about this man. I want to scream this at him. I want to kiss him. I want to rip the rest of his clothes off and make him stay in bed with me until the rest of the world forces us to leave. And yet, I do none of these things because they don’t feel right.

  Waiting feels right. Giving him space to decide what comes next feels right.

  Several beats pass and we just stand there, neither of us speaking, but I can feel his awareness of me just behind him. Just as I’m intensely aware of him, so very aware of him. I’ve been aware of him on some deep, soul-searching level since the day I met him. I’m a part of this man. He’s a part of me and he has to know that. He has to see that. I sway toward him and my fingers ball by my sides. I flash back to the day my mother told me what she’d found years ago now. I think of the moment I picked up the phone to try to track down Eric and then set the phone back down. And I did so for one reason: I didn’t have the facts. Technically, I didn’t this time either, but he had the right to know.

  I need to say or do something.

  Finally, when I think my knees might buckle from the intensity of the waves of adrenaline surging through me, Eric holds out a hand, a silent invitation to join him. My heart squeezes with this sign of unity. He’s not pushing me away. He’s not withdrawing. I step forward and press my hand in his and the minute my palm touches his palm, his fingers close around mine. I’d feel relief if it wasn’t for the way his body hums. He’s on edge. He’s barely holding it together, and yet, he’s holding my hand.

  He walks me toward him until I’m by his side, and I think—I really do think—he’s telling me something. He’s telling me that he’s not doing this without me. Seconds tick by when we would be shoulder to shoulder before he looks at me. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Why downstairs?” I ask, nervous about how near the door we’ll be there.

  “The view. The cubes. The space I need to be in right now with you.”

  “With me?”

  “Yes, Harper. With you.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good,” he says simply, and he starts walking.

  Together, we walk down the stairs and we say nothing. Together, we walk into the living room where we sit down again, where we’d been when this all started, where our food still sits. I close the lids and take it all to the kitchen where I store it. When I come back, Eric is standing at the window with a Rubik’s cube in his hand. I don’t close the space between us. I just know on some level that he needs me to be here, but that he needs space. Instead, I pick up one of the cubes and hold it in my hand, watching him. Time passes by, told in the darkening of the sky, the disappearance of stars, the shift of the city lights beyond the window where he stands, the window that frames this room on top of the world where we hide. Where he thinks. Where the man, who is like no one I have ever known, thinks through what comes next. Right now, the storm is at bay. Right now, every bullet I feared might fly remains locked and loaded in a weapon that is this man. Right now, he’s more savant than man, and it’s the man that will hold that weapon.

  I don’t know how much time passes, but sud
denly he goes from standing there to pressing his hands on the glass, his chin on his chest, and I have this sense he’s emerged from a tunnel. He’s here. He’s present. He’s made decisions and those decisions are where trouble could emerge. This is where the man takes control. This is where this woman, his woman, needs to be ready to take control.

  I set down the cube and stand up, hurrying across the room. Once I’m behind Eric, I wait, giving him time to face me, but I have this sense of him waiting on me, on him willing me to come to him. I slide between him and the bar running in front of the window, in almost the exact spot where he’d demanded I tell him everything. I don’t touch him. He doesn’t touch me. We just stand there, staring at each other, so close we could touch. So close that we are fire and there is no ice to be found. That’s how we operate. That’s how we ignite when we’re near.

  He reaches up and caresses my cheek, goosebumps lifting on my skin with that touch, tingling sensations sliding all through my body. “Princess,” he says softly, and that word is both silk and blade to me. Silk on his tone, and in that rough, sexy voice of his, but still it cuts. It cuts in so many ways.

  I want to tell him to stop calling me that damn name again, as I have before. I want to tell him to never call me that again. His hands are suddenly on my upper arms, his eyes holding mine. “That name is on my body forever. Your name. To me, it means Harper. It means my heart.”

  His heart. He’s my heart and I’m bleeding for him right now. “I didn’t tell you. I wanted to but—”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to tell you either.”

  “Would you have?”

  “I’d like to say yes. I’d like to say that you deserved to know, but I would have battled with that decision.”

  He’s okay. I can tell he’s okay. My hand settles on his chest and his heartbeat is steady. “How are you okay right now?”

  “I already knew they’d done something to trigger her decision.”

  “You thought Gigi had.” My fingers curl on his chest. “Your father—”

  “Is born of the same cloth. I knew that.”

  “Everyone wants to believe they have a parent that cares about them.”

  “I had that. I still do. My mother will always be with me. She’s always dictated many of my decisions. She’s always been my moral compass, not Grayson. She just spoke through him.” There is more to that statement. Something he hasn’t said. Something he doesn’t want to say.

  “Eric—”

  “They have to pay.” His voice is hard. His emotions controlled. This is not the man on the plane who’d just found out that his father was following us to New York. Whatever trigger that hit is gone now. Controlled. Dealt with. This is about control and Eric has it. “You have to know that,” he adds, and then repeats. “They have to pay, Harper.”

  I could fight him on this. I could bring up my mother. I could say so many things, but the truth is, my mother hid this from Eric. My mother hid this from law enforcement. I have to trust Eric right now. He needs to know that I’m with him, the way his father knows that my mother is with him. She’s made her choice. Now I have to make mine. And so, I ask simply, “How?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Harper

  “What do you want to do, Eric?” I ask, my hand on his bare chest, where I often lay it, over his heart, that is steady, still even. He remains calm.

  Suddenly he’s tangling fingers in my hair and pulling me to the edge of the couch, his body trapping mine against the arm. “Aren’t you going to tell me to save your mother?”

  “I think this family has told you enough. You don’t need that from me, too.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “I don’t even know who she is anymore, Eric. How can she know what he did and still protect him? I told you, I let myself believe it wasn’t true because if it was, you lost your father and I lost her. And so we did. So we have.”

  “Harper,” he whispers, his voice a raspy torment. “I want to protect you. I want to protect her to protect you, but damn it, she—”

  “Doesn’t deserve it. I know. But I want to. I do. And I want to protect you. Nobody protects you and that’s another reason I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to hold the blade that cut you deeper, and yet I did. I’m the one who told you.”

  “They cut me. Not you. You—you make me whole again.” His mouth closes down on mine, wicked and hot, and I’m drowning in his anguish and pain. It’s not controlling him, but it’s there, it’s living inside him, tunneling straight to his soul and I have this sudden sense that if I don’t rip it out from inside him, it might just end him, not his father.

  I lean into him, press my body to his body, trying to get closer, trying to be there with all that pain, absorbing it, taking it from him. He tears his mouth from mine and stares down at me, his eyes glinting with some unnamed emotion, some judgment I don’t understand.

  He turns me to face the couch, forces me to catch myself on my hands. His hips frame mine, his thick erection pressed to my backside. His lips are at my ear as he challenges, “Do you really think you can handle who I am?”

  “I know I can.”

  “If you can’t, go now, because if you say you can, and then you can’t, you’ll cut me. Then I’ll bleed out. Because I don’t let anyone inside my world. Not one but—”

  “Me,” I whisper and I know now why he turned me. I don’t know how I know, but I know. He didn’t want to admit that to me while he looked at me. He didn’t want me to see weakness in him. He didn’t want to see my face when he gave me that kind of control over him. But he has that same control over me. I want to tell him this. I want to show him this, but I can’t. He’s tugging my shirt over my head, all but tearing off my bra and then I’m folded against him, his body anchoring mine, his hands cupping my breasts, pinching my nipples and not gently. Almost as if he wants to punish me for making him admit what he just admitted, yet that punishment is pleasure. The pinch of pain followed by the bliss of erotic sensations and when I can take no more, he tugs my nipple even harder. I cry out. I moan.

  “Does that hurt?” he demands.

  “No,” I reply definitely. “No, it doesn’t hurt.”

  He pinches and tugs. I cry out again, my sex clenching so tightly I can barely stand how empty it is, how much I need him inside me. “Eric,” I breathe out.

  “Can you handle who I really am, Harper?”

  “Is this who you really are?”

  “Yes.” He pulls my pants down, lifts me and gets rid of every stitch of everything I have on, every barrier I have left. His hands plant on my hips. His palm slides to one of my butt cheeks and he squeezes. “I will push you and push you until you know no limit.”

  “You mean push me and push me until you leave, but I won’t, so do what you’re going to do. Fuck me however you want to fuck me so we can get past you thinking I’ll leave.”

  “You sure you want that?”

  “Yes!” I lower my voice. “Damn it, yes.”

  He smacks my backside, a sting that radiates up my spine but only borders on pain. I don’t cry out. “More,” I say. “Because if that’s all you have, I think you talk a big game and can’t deliver.”

  He doesn’t immediately reply. His cheek is at my cheek and I can hear his inhalation of breath, feel his struggle for control. “Stop trying to control what you feel. You need an outlet. You need a way to deal with what’s going on in your head that doesn’t bring you to your knees, so bring me to my knees. I can handle it. I want to handle it.”

  “Don’t move.”

  He backs away and I can feel the rustle of clothing and I know he’s naked. I listen for a condom for him to place that barrier between us, to shield us from the monster that is inside him, that he is certain would be his curse, passed to his children. But it doesn’t come.

  Instead, he grabs me and turns me to face him, molding me to him and then while he’s staring at me, he spanks me again, his palm on my backside. I suck in a breath,
an erotic thrill shooting through me. I’ve never imagined being spanked. I’ve never wanted to be spanked, but I want more, and that’s what I say. “More. I want more. I want everything.”

  His jaw clenches, his eyes sharpen, his fingers flex on my backside but he doesn’t give me more. He maneuvers us and suddenly I’m facing the couch cushion again. The next second, I’m on my knees, my hands catching on the back of the couch. He’s spreading me wide, sliding his fingers along the seam of my body, and oh God, exploring me front to back, every intimate part of me, and I have no idea what comes next. But I think that’s the point. I don’t know what comes next. He wants me to feel fear. No. That’s not what he wants. He wants me to tell him to stop. He wants me to tell him that I don’t trust him.

  “More,” I whisper. “You, Eric. All of you.”

  He caresses my backside. He slides fingers inside me. He pats my sex and then smacks my backside and I say the same thing I said before. “More. I want more.”

  And this time, I get the more I want. He sits down next to me and drags me across his lap until I’m straddling him and he’s tangling his fingers into my hair. “More,” he whispers, and then he’s pressing inside me, filling me, and I’m sliding down the length of him until I have all of him.

  All of him.

  Not just his body.

  Now, he lets me look into his eyes and he says what he said just minutes ago. “If you leave, you’ll cut me and I’ll bleed out.”

  “If you leave, you’ll cut me, and I’ll bleed out.”

  And then we’re kissing and one thing is clear: more is not enough. It will never be enough and no matter who comes at us, we will fight and we will fight together.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Harper

  I’ve never felt as close to any human being as I do to Eric right now. The intimacy of me on top of him, and him buried deep inside me could be simply sex, but it’s not. We have never been just sex, even that first night together. Especially not now. In six years, we’ve spent so few of those days together and yet, we always belonged here, we were always going to end here.