Harper

 

“What are you doing?” Levi asked, rolling over to face in my direction. He’d just woken up and was stretched out on his bed with the sheet barely covering his lower half.

“Just checking on some stuff.” I quickly finished writing an email and hit send before I glanced up to smile at him.

He was definitely a sight to smile at. His bare chest was incredible, with rippling muscles and smooth planes leading down to the rumpled sheet. His hair was sticking up on end, and he desperately needed to shave.

“What do you need to be checking on at five thirty in the morning?”

“I just thought of something and wanted to get it done while it was on my mind.” I’d actually just thought of someone else I wanted to talk to while I was in DC this weekend, so I’d hauled myself out of bed to write my friend a quick email to see if she could arrange it.

I hadn’t yet told Levi about the trip to DC. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy about it, and I didn’t want to deal with an argument, especially since things were going so well between us.

I experienced a stab of guilt at the thought of keeping the trip from him though.

Whatever was happening between me and Levi, it felt real to me. It might not be long-term, but it felt real. And keeping something like this from him didn’t feel right anymore.

“So you aren’t going to tell me what pressing duty dragged you out of bed at this ungodly hour?” He frowned at me and adjusted his leg, causing the sheet to slip dangerously low around his hips.

So call me shallow, but my gaze couldn’t help but linger on his lean waist and hips, at the dark trail of hair that led down beneath the sheet.

“Hey,” he said in an amused tone. “I’m talking to you.” He gestured toward his face. “Up here.”

I giggled helplessly and put down my tablet. “If you want me to look you in the eye, then you shouldn’t sprawl out naked in such a deliciously sexy way. What’s a girl to do?”

“A girl,” he said, a familiar heat igniting in his dark eyes, “can come back to bed and do something other than leer.”

“We just had sex a few hours ago. Just how insatiable are you?”

“You have no idea how insatiable I can be when it comes to you.”

I laughed again and picked up my tablet. “Let me send one more email while I’m thinking about it. Then you can indulge your insatiability to your heart’s content.”

He didn’t object, so I tapped out another quick email.

When I finished, he was watching me as I walked back to the bed, pulling down over my thighs the T-shirt of his I’d thrown on before going to sleep.

“So you really aren’t going to tell me what that was about?” he asked, his tone more serious as he lifted the sheet as an invitation to join him under the covers.

I climbed into bed and rolled on my side to face him. “Actually, I’m going to DC this weekend, and I’m trying to arrange things so I can talk to the people I need to talk to.”

His face was utterly sober now. “Do you really think that’s smart?”

A familiar defensiveness rose inside me, as it always did when someone was trying to hold me back or tell me I was wrong. “Why wouldn’t it be smart?”

“Because someone is trying to kill you.” He reached over to stroke my cheek briefly and then trailed his fingers—feather soft—down my shoulder and arm. “And believe it or not, I don’t think the world would be better without you in it. I think the world would be much, much worse.”

Despite my prickly response, I felt a melting in my chest at his words and his tender tone. “Women go to DC all the time without getting killed.”

“Yes, but they haven’t had attempts on their life already. And they don’t go to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

“I’m not going to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

“Yes, you are. That’s exactly why you’re going. You want to make sure your voice is heard—as loudly as possible—so you can get some answers.”

“So what’s wrong with that?” I was feeling strangely torn—as if he were making some degree of sense, as if I were doubting my own decisions.

It wasn’t a common feeling for me, and I didn’t like it.

He pulled me over so I was straddling his hips, and he reached up to cup my face in both hands. “Two things are wrong. One, I don’t think you’re ever going to get the answers you want, so you’re fighting a losing battle. And two, something is wrong with any plan that puts your life at risk.”

“I’m telling you—”

“You can’t tell me you aren’t at risk. Someone has tried it already. If you stir up a larger shit storm, then the likelihood is they’ll try it again, more purposefully this time. You know that. You know it.”

I was affected by his words—I couldn’t help but be—but it just wasn’t as easy as that. I slumped above him, falling down to rest against his chest.

He wrapped both arms around me, and I felt safe, protected, cherished.

“I can only be me,” I said at last. “You can’t expect me to be anything else.”

“But can’t you be you and also safe? I can’t believe it’s not possible to be both.”

I thought about that. Thought about what was driving me to find answers. Thought about what it would mean to give up the search.

“I can’t,” I said at last. “I can’t not do this.”

I heard and felt him release a long sigh. My cheek was pressed against his chest. “Can I come with you then?”

I raised my head to look at his face. There was a question, almost a plea in his eyes.

Somehow—at some point—I’d learned to trust him. Maybe it had happened years ago, when he was my brother’s best friend. Or maybe it had happened in the past week. I didn’t really know.

But I did know one thing. He was asking me this now because he wanted the best for me.

I couldn’t throw that back in his face.

“Okay,” I said, nodding a little jerkily. “You can come with me.”

He gave a low groan and pulled me up higher on his body so he could reach my lips. “Thank you,” he murmured against my mouth.

It felt important. It felt like something had changed. Like something had been decided between us.

My heart fluttered wildly in fear, in confusion, in excitement… and in something even deeper.

His tongue slipped into my mouth, and his hand tangled in my hair. He held my head in place as he deepened the kiss, and I tried to squeeze my hands beneath his back so I could hold on to the warm, hard substance of his body.

“Levi,” I gasped, when his hands slid down to my bottom, pushing me gently against his groin.

“Hmm,” he murmured, his mouth too busy against mine to answer fully.

I turned my head as pleasure and feeling washed over my body, my heart. “Is this my thank-you for letting you come?”

“Baby,” he said hoarsely, grabbing the fabric of the T-shirt I wore and pulling it over my head. “I’ll give you any sort of thank-you you want.”

I rose up, straddling his hips and completely naked now, arching my back as his hands stroked up to my breasts.

I gasped with pleasure and let my head drop back, my hair spilling messily down my back. “Do you mean it?”

His breathing had accelerated, and I felt the tension of arousal in his muscles. His eyes devoured my naked body. “Do I mean what?”

He’d obviously lost the thread of the conversation—he was so far gone in lust.

So I explained, “Do you mean it that you’ll give me any sort of thank-you I want?”

“Of course. Just say the word.” He thumbed my nipples, making me gasp.

I lowered his hands and stretched them out on the bed beside him. “Do you trust me?”

He blinked. “Of course.”

“Do you really?”

He reached up to cup my face again. “Why wouldn’t I trust you, Harper?”

“Because, before, you were always trying to control me. That’s not a sign of trust.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Shh.” I covered his mouth with two fingers. “I’m not trying to get in an argument. You said I could have any sort of thank-you I wanted, and I want, as my thank-you, for you to show me that you trust me.”

I honestly had no idea what he would say. He was a powerful, dominant man, and he wasn’t used to giving up control.

It felt important though. It felt like the natural result of the unspoken thing that had just been decided between us.

“How can I show you?” he asked, his voice like gravel.

I pulled up again and ran my fingers down his chest to his belly. Then I scooted back slightly so I could take his erection in my hands.

He jerked slightly in response to my caress and reached up to pull me down into another kiss. “I thought this was your thank-you.”

“It is.” I resisted his hands and then wrapped my fingers around his wrists to place his hands back on the bed. “I’m doing this.”

Something changed in his eyes, and I knew he understood. “I see.”

“If you trust me, then you won’t always have to be in control.”

“Is this a test then?” he asked quietly.

“Not a test. A thank-you. If you don’t want to do it, then we don’t have to.” I hovered above him, meeting his eyes without looking away. “Seriously,” I added. “We don’t have to.”

He was very still for a few seconds. Then he nodded. “Do whatever you want.”

I took a shuddering breath and leaned down to kiss him. His lips met mine, and so did his tongue, but he didn’t take control of the kiss the way he normally did.

I deepened the kiss, taking my time, exploring his mouth until I could feel the tension in his body tightening to such an extent that he was rocking slightly beneath me.

So I released his lips and pulled up, panting and flushed.

I smiled at him, and he smiled back. His arms were outstretched on the bed, and I could see he’d clenched his fingers in the covers.

Feeling excited, powerful, strangely emotional, I trailed kisses down his chest, exploring the contours of his pectoral muscles, his nipples, his abdomen, until I followed the line of hair down even lower.

He was breathing jerkily now, but he hadn’t moved his hands from where I’d placed them.

I stroked his erection gently and felt his hips give a little thrust into my hands.

I glanced up at his face, and his eyes were so hot and hungry I lost my breath. His jaw was tight though, and I could see he was visibly reining in his need to move, to thrust, to take control.

I lowered my head and took him in my mouth.

“Fuck,” he gasped, his hips jerking slightly. He tossed his head back and forth on the pillow a couple of times. “This feels more like a thank-you for me.”

I let him slip from my mouth. “Maybe it’s for both of us.”

I waited until he’d relaxed a little, and then I slid my lips around his erection again. I started to suck rhythmically, stroking his hip, his thigh, his balls with one of my hands.

After a minute, his hands flew over to my hair as he let out another groan. But even before I could raise my head, he’d dropped them again and clawed at the sheets instead, holding himself back from controlling the encounter in any way.

I was filled with something I’d never experienced before as I built him up to climax. This went against all his instincts, but he let me have control of it anyway.

He was doing this for me. For me.

He was muttering out raw, helpless words about how good it was, how incredible I was, how close he was to losing it. And then I dug my fingernails into the inside of his thigh as I sucked hard a few last times.

He came with a muffled roar, his body jerking helplessly with the power of his climax.

I kept sucking him until his body had softened, and then I let him slip out of my mouth.

He gasped helplessly as I crawled up his body.

“Can I hold you now?” he asked hoarsely, his eyes never leaving my face.

I nodded, strangely close to tears. “Yeah.”

He wrapped his arms around me and turned us over so we were both on our sides. I fit myself against him as he started to kiss me, gently, tenderly.

“I don’t really know if any man has trusted me before,” I admitted, nestling into his embrace. “It means so much that you do.”

I felt something tighten in his body briefly before it relaxed. He nuzzled my hair and didn’t say anything.

Feeling like I needed to say something else to acknowledge everything I felt, I met his eyes and whispered, “I trust you too.”

***

The next day I was packing for DC in the late afternoon when the doorbell rang.

My folks were out doing errands, so I ran to the window, stuck my head out, and yelled down to Levi, “It’s open. Come on in.”

For the past two days, I’d been brimming with giddy excitement and trying to talk myself down from hoping for too much so early.

After all, I’d only been with Levi for a week. I mean, really with him. I’d known him all my life, but a week-long sexual relationship didn’t really warrant all these happy, fuzzy, hopeful feelings.

I couldn’t seem to help it though, and I grinned at him over my shoulder when he came in the room.

“Why is the door unlocked?” he demanded with a frown.

Naturally, that made me frown too. “Because it’s always unlocked during the daytime. This isn’t a big city, you know. Almost everyone in this neighborhood leaves their doors unlocked.”

“And the fact that someone is trying to kill you doesn’t make your parents think it might be smart to lock the door?”

I stared at him in astonishment. “You think I told my parents about all this crap? Are you kidding?”

He made a frustrated sound in his throat and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Anyway,” I added before he could say anything else, “if someone really wants to kill me, a locked door is hardly going to stop them.”

“So you think we should make it easy for them?”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the closet. Evidently, his trusting me did not extend to not being an obnoxious ass in bossing me around about safety. I pulled out the one evening gown I had—a simple, long black sheath—and laid it out on the bed.

The fund-raiser I was attending tomorrow night was black-tie, and this was the only appropriate outfit I had for it.

I’d had to spend a lot of my savings to buy the ticket for it, but it would be worth it.

Levi was leaning against my desk and glowering disapprovingly.

“I thought we’d moved beyond this,” I said quietly, after a minute.

He let out a long sigh. “What the hell am I supposed to do, Harper? I don’t want you to get hurt. I can’t stand the thought of you getting hurt.”

It was the strangest feeling—being torn between soft sentiment at his words and the familiar resistance to anyone doubting my power and competence. “I’m letting you come with me on this trip. Isn’t that something? I’m letting you help keep me safe.”

“Yeah, but you’re still taunting the crazies.”

“We’ve been over this. I’m not going to not be me. I’m not going to let them silence me.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not going to let you control me, just because we’re sleeping together.”

Something strange flickered over his face. “Is that what we’re doing?”

In a different context, it would have been an idiotic question since of course we were sleeping together. But I knew what he meant. Did “sleeping together” really capture whatever this thing was between us?

I didn’t think either of us really knew.

I let out a breath and turned back to my closet. “I really don’t know what we’re doing.”

He didn’t say anything while I found the pair of shoes I wanted from the back of my closet. Then I laid them on the floor beneath my evening dress. “What do you think?” I asked, gesturing to the outfit, wanting to move us into more normal conversation. “That will do for a black-tie fund-raiser, won’t it?”

His face twisted briefly, for no reason I could understand.

“Does it look bad or something?” I asked, confused and a little hurt.

“No. It’s fine. It’s just that I feel like I should tell you—”

My phone rang then, and I picked it up to see that it was Jack. “Sorry,” I told Levi. “I better get this.”

I talked to Jack for a few minutes about a new story he wanted me to write, and when I hung up, Levi was scrolling through texts or something on his phone.

“What were you saying before?” I asked him, trying to remember back to our previous conversation as I zipped up my bag.

“Just that you need to be careful.”

“One day I’m going to try to count up every time you’ve told me that and give myself a cupcake for each one.” I slanted him a provocative look. “I’d have to buy clothes twice as large.”

He chuckled and came over to wrap his arms around me from behind. “Even double your size from too many cupcakes, you’d still be irresistible to me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You are so full of crap.”

He leaned down to press a kiss against the side of my neck. “I speak nothing but the truth.”

I was feeling quite sappy again, despite my attempt to be reasonable. I was tempted to turn around and kiss him, but that would probably have led to something else, and I wanted to get to DC at a reasonable time this evening.

Plus I didn’t want my parents to come home and catch us going at it.

So I pulled out of his arms and gestured toward my overnight bag. “Would you mind taking that to the car? I need to check to make sure I haven’t forgotten something.”

He grabbed the bag, with only a little good-natured grumbling, and was on his way down when my phone rang again.

This time, when I picked it up, it was my friend from DC on the line.

The conversation was not good.

Not good at all.

When I hung up three minutes later, I was shaking with shock and outrage. It took me a full minute to even process it.

I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t believe it.

Levi wouldn’t have done something like that to me. Not behind my back. Not after telling me he trusted me.

Not after I’d trusted him.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, trembling, with my phone still in my hand when he returned to the room.

“I hope you got us a good hotel room,” he said, a fond note in his tone. “One with a very big bed.”

He was teasing. That sexy teasing that was so characteristic of him. Even the casual comment felt intimate, special.

And all of it was a lie.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, evidently seeing something in my face. He strode over and sat on the bed beside me, wrapping one arm around me. “Damn it, Harper. Tell me what’s wrong.”

I just sat there, staring down at my phone.

He took the phone from my hand and looked at the callers. “Did someone threaten you?” he asked. “What did they say?”

“Maxwell,” I managed to force out.

“What?”

“Maxwell,” I repeated. “That’s your buddy’s last name, isn’t it? Sebastian Maxwell.”

It was like something in his body got tense, although I didn’t see anything actually change in his stance or posture. “Yes,” he said slowly.

“Because someone with the last name of Maxwell took it on himself to get me uninvited to the fund-raiser.”

Levi didn’t say anything. He just sat stiffly, looking at me.

The shock was coalescing into a kind of betrayed anger I’d never experienced before. “Why would he do that? Why would someone with the last name of Maxwell do that to me?”

“Harper,” he began in a mollifying tone. “Don’t—”

“Don’t what?” I spit out, jumping to my feet to get away from him, to keep him from touching me. “Don’t overreact? Is that what you think I’m doing? This happened before yesterday. How did you even know about it before yesterday?”

He made a face and glanced away.

“How did you know?” I repeated in a clipped tone.

“Jack told me what you were planning.”

“Jack? Jack? So you’ve been spying on me through my boss.” I was almost choking on shocked indignation. “And you think I’m overacting? When you’ve been going behind my back all this time and betraying me?”

“I didn’t betray you.” He stood up too, and he looked cool now and in control. “There’s no reason to take it like that.”

“No reason—” I gaped at him, wondering who this man even was. Who had I been in bed with for the past week?

Definitely not the man I’d thought he was.

“I need to keep you safe,” he said, stepping over and holding me by my upper arms. “Keeping you safe is the most important thing, and you refuse to see reason about it. I’m just doing what I have to do.”

It all felt so horrible, so bewildering that my whole history with Levi took on the same dark pall. I gasped again as something else came to my mind. “Is that why you started fucking me in the first place? So you could have an excuse to be around me more often and keep me safe?” I yanked myself out of his grip. “That’s it, isn’t it? It was all part of this stupid, noble crusade you’re on that you say is for my protection but is really about giving yourself some sort of heroic purpose to make you feel better about your wreck of a life.”

The angry words must have hit home. I saw a reaction on his face.

We were both breathing heavily, staring at each other in the silence of the room.

Then I said, “Get out.”

“Harper,” he began, taking another step toward me and reaching out again. “If you’d just let me explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain here. Nothing you say is going to make what you did all right. You lied to my face.”

“I did not lie—”

“You did! Or just the same as lying. You were working behind my back all along, and you still had the gall to pretend you trusted me. There’s no way in hell I’m going to fuck a man who does that to me. Get out.”

He was angry now too. It was clear from the fire in his eyes, from the tightness of his jaw. “So that’s it? You won’t listen to anything I say? You just make assumptions about me and my motives and decide that they must be true? You can berate me all you want about not trusting you, but you’re guilty of exactly the same thing. You say you trusted me, but you really didn’t. You are so obsessed with making sure that no one ever belittles you or controls you or silences you that you can never actually hear what someone else is trying to tell you. You’ve never trusted anyone but yourself.”

“I can’t believe you’re standing there saying that to me. You. You’re the one who betrayed my trust. Don’t you dare blame this on me. Now get out!”

He turned to walk to the door but paused before he stepped out. “You can have the last word, like you always do. I don’t give a damn about that. But I am going to say this. There’s no reason for you to go DC now since you can’t attend the fund-raiser, but I’m still going to make sure you’re safe, even here in town since someone is still trying to kill you.” He let out a bitter huff of amusement. “I owe that to Gavin at least.”

“Get out!” I practically screamed at him. I couldn’t stand to even look at him anymore.

He left after that. I heard him walk down the stairs and then out the front door. I watched from the window as he took my overnight bag out of his car and returned it to the house.

I was sure he locked the front door before he closed it again.

Then he drove away.

I sat shaking, panting, too crushed to even cry.

But it didn’t matter. I told myself it didn’t matter. Levi had never been that important to me. Whatever I’d felt for him was obviously based in absolutely nothing and, as such, it wouldn’t last.

No doubt, Levi thought he’d won. He’d kept me from going to the fund-raiser, to DC, everything. Exactly as he’d always wanted.

He was treating me like a child, like a little girl. He was patting my head and sending me to bed.

Exactly like he’d always done.

Nothing had changed.

But that didn’t mean I was going to put up with it.

So I was uninvited to the fund-raiser. I’d figure something else out. I wasn’t going to back down just because Levi wanted me to.

I grabbed my phone and my purse and hurried downstairs, picking up my overnight bag on the way out.

I threw everything in my car and started to drive out of town, heading for the interstate.

Levi thought he’d won, but he hadn’t.

There was no way in hell I’d let that happen.