THE BITTER WINTER cold made me shiver underneath my ill-dressed state for the weather, preventing me from keeping warm. Sitting on the trunk of Eric’s car in the parking garage of Strong, I waited for him, unable to go home. Despite thinking I was better, he pulled at the version of myself I tried to keep suppressed.
He arrived several minutes later, and he seemed a little surprised to see me. I examined the stitches on the back of his head and suddenly felt guilty.
I wanted to disbelieve what the signs told me. I wanted to believe our relationship was genuine and his connection to Victor was a coincidence. All I wanted was to bring him back to the man I fell for. In return, I was forced to repeatedly face down the monster I didn’t create, who brought out the worst in me. I wanted to hurt him and hug him all at once. I did the latter, holding him tightly in my arms.
“Hey,” he said into my hair and pulled it away from my ear. “I’m okay.” He enveloped me in his arms, holding me as if he’d been waiting forever to do so. “Can we get out of here?” He pulled back, cupping my face and gently ran his lips down the length of my nose.
Unable to connect my brain with my mouth properly, I nodded and remained silent. He slipped his hand into mine, leading me to the passenger side door of his car. He opened the door for me, waiting with expectancy.
During my attempt to get inside, he preempted me. Slipping in front of me, he held the back of my head and stepped forward.
“Fuck, baby.” He leaned into me, grazing his lips against mine. “I’ve been taking you for granted, giving you every reason to doubt that we’re okay. Letting a bastard who doesn’t want to see us together easily get into your head and get into mine. Things will getter better for us. Soon.” He pressed his lips against mine, his nose nuzzled the bridge of my nose.
My spine weakened in its posture. “H-how did you know he—”
“Because I know how he operates. What was it? Photographs? Video?”
“Photographs,” I said a little taken aback.
“And in any one of them was I touching her?”
“No, but—”
“Nikki,” he whispered in a way that made me shudder. Still holding on to the back of my head with one hand, he reached down, grabbing my hand and placed it over his heart. “Do you feel that?”
His violent heartbeat made my hand tremor with its rhythm. “Yes.”
“You have no idea what it’s doing to me. It’s very fucking hard to be the man you want me to be, but I don’t have the luxury of keeping the space between us anymore. Tired of punishing myself. I have to be with you completely. It can’t be any other way.”
Searching his eyes, I looked for a reason to stay as we were. Love was no longer enough. My need for him was no longer enough. I’d detoxed, and I didn’t miss the crash that directly followed the high. It was no longer about me, and I didn’t have the room for selfish needs. Eric would constantly bring danger to my doorstep. His ties with Victor Meíja solidified that fact. A sacrifice had to be made, even if that sacrifice would completely ruin me.
The realization of what I had to do, left me crestfallen. “Maybe we need time apart until the things surrounding you calm down…or go away.”
He cursed with a wavering breath as his head bowed so low all I could see was the top of his head. “You’re all I have,” he said, his voice soft with need and pleading for a reprieve from whatever pain he was feeling. “Don’t take that away. I don’t know who I’ll be without you.”
“Eric?” I asked with fragility, because I knew if I asked the question, I would get a lie. “Did you pursue me as some sort of mission from Victor?”
“What?” he asked, the state of disbelief swathed his tone. “Where the fuck would you get that from?”
“Victor was present in a situation with my father. A situation that was very disastrous. The way things went, I know they had to be good friends.”
His hold slipped just slightly, and his eyes held mine with interest.
“The way you constantly pressed me for information about what happened to my father?” I reminded him. “The odd way we met? My mother was highly intelligent, but she wasn’t tech savvy enough to find a site located in the dark space. I’m very careful about clearing my cache. Someone granted her access and pointed her to those sites. If it’s wasn’t you, who could it have been?” The look on his face read as complete impassivity; it brought me no comfort. “Knowing what I told you,” I continued, “can you see how it would be difficult for me to believe our meeting was innocent? Well, as innocent as my mother setting you up with me could be. Which, I’m beginning to think she had hidden a different agenda behind getting us together than she let on. Victor—”
“Nikki? Do I look like I know what the fuck you’re talking about?”
I scrutinized the look in his light brown eyes, finding nothing indicating he was hiding what he knew.
“Victor had nothing to do with us meeting,” he admitted. “Your mother did.”
“I wish it were true.” I tilted my head to the side, ready to tackle another subject. “With what you told me the night you shared pieces of yourself with me—the line is blurring, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he answered, sighing audibly. “All I’ve thought about since I fell so deep with you it’s blinded me, was my past. It’s like a ghost, haunting me every night. I remember, and I remember the man it makes me. It’s been taking me away from you because I don’t want to share it with you.”
I slipped back against the car because I felt the emotion bubbling in my throat.
His hold on me was unbelievably strong and never relenting. I couldn’t let him go. I was tired of him hurting me…but I couldn’t release the idea of us.
When he grabbed me back into his arms, I fell weakly against his chest. He clasped the back of my head and rested his chin on the top of my head.
“I’m so sick of being riddled with your disease,” I mumbled. “And you keep making me sicker, poisoning me with your words. You’re pretty words make me—make me whatever you want me to be. They make me sick all over again.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is virus.”
Through my watering eyes, I looked up at him. A small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“Your virus is going to kill me.” I shook my head. “Fuck you, and don’t threaten me about that. You deserve it. Why do I have this feeling you’ll fuck it up again?”
He arched a brow at me, his smile tempering. “Because you’re a saint?”
“I’m trying to get better. What are you doing? You keep pulling me back under. Why did you take me to Preston that night?”
“I had two reasons, but let me remind you my intention was always for you to watch, maybe cut off a finger or two; it was never to kill him. You made a liar out of me by killing him.”
“God!” I shrilled, pushing my hands into his hard chest. “What is wrong you?”
“I’m fucking crazy…and something else.”
“Which would be?”
“Anything you want me to be, Nikki.”
“Stop it,” I gasped.
“Nothing means anything to me without you.”
I swayed visibly as his words swarmed around my head, pushing down the resentment. “I wish your words went down like hot piss instead of sweet honey.”
He stifled a laugh. “Are you going to continue to wax-poetic or are you coming home with me? I have a sudden urge to fuck you with my cock and my words. Trust me, baby, you don’t want to wait for what I have planned.”
I shivered, barely able to say his name. “Eric—”
“I know I’ve done and said these things before, so this is the deal: I’m hooked and I can’t go without you for too long. Don’t shut me off cold turkey. Nik,”—he brought me in closer, his lips settling against my ear—“my cock is addicted to being inside of you. I’m addicted to tasting you. You think I’m using sex as a solution to our problems? I’m not. It takes the control you steal from me, every time you look at me, to keep myself from taking you down and fucking you senseless from the moment you enter the room. When it comes to what it feels like when I’m inside of you? You bring me to my goddamn knees.”
His words resembled icicles pressing against my spine. I shivered in his hold, barely able to speak.
His lips brushed against my forehead. His hand slipped between us and quickly undid the button of my jeans.
I grabbed his shoulders, my eyelids becoming heavy when his hand slipped underneath my panties. A finger slid between my slit and rocked in an upward and downward motion.
“Do you know anything that feels better than my cock inside of you, making you touch the fucking sky?”
My blinking slowed as my core began to burn in response to his tease.
“Do you?” His hand rotated in circles against my moistened clit.
I shook my head. Pain or Pleasure. It didn’t matter. He made my body sing. He made me feel alive. Everything Eric did to my body was an addiction I had tried to cure, only to fail repeatedly.
“Shit,” I hissed. “Fuck you, Eric.”
“Yes, I will be fucking you later. Is that a ‘yes, it’s all right…I forgive you, Eric’?”
“I want you,” I whispered with a palpable need.
Abruptly, he stepped forward, turned me around, forcing me to face away from him, and pulled down my jeans.
“You made me so goddamn hard, baby. I can’t wait to slide this cock inside your tight little cunt,” he whispered against my ear. “So I’m not.”
When his hardness found its way into my warmth, I no longer cared about where we were or who saw us. My mind was filled with a quiet storm.