The Bastard (Filthy Trilogy 1)

It’s everything I want and yet it’s terrifying. I’m going down the rabbit hole where there will be no return, to a place where my secrets matter, to a place where his might as well. “I don’t want anyone else but—”

“No buts about this,” he says. “I’m not sharing you.” His voice is low, guttural in a way that says he means what he’s saying. In a way that says he’s one hundred percent invested in me. And with that, with his intensity, he undoes me. “I want things from you that I shouldn’t want.”

“Why?” I ask and I forget my secrets, my elbow softening with the need to keep him close when he seems to be trying to convince himself he should push me away. “Why shouldn’t you want them? The princess thing again?”

“You mistake the meaning behind that name. You don’t understand what it means to me.” He doesn’t give me time to ask, to demand an explanation to something I feel has been almost a weapon between us. His mouth is on my mouth, his tongue thrusting past my lips, and then doing a deep slide that has me moaning into his mouth, and digging my fingers into his shoulders.

He responds to my response, deepening the kiss, and running his hands up and down my back, his touch electric, a charge that dances along my nerve endings and heats every part of me. Everything but this man and the sensations he creates in me fades away. There is just us moving, us swaying, us kissing and every touch is one part erotic, and one part tender—a pinch of my nipple, the caress of his lips. The hard drive of his cock, the gentle stroke of his tongue. The smack of my backside and then his cheek to my cheek, followed by a squeeze as he whispers, “I should be walking away, but I can’t. You won’t let me.”

“What does that mean? I won’t let you? Do you want me to let you go?”

He rotates me as he had earlier and presses my back to the couch. “No,” he shocks me by saying. “I don’t. I’m in this now. I’m not walking away. It’s you who will walk away.”

“Are you telling me you’re going to make me hate you, Eric? Are you telling me there’s something I don’t know?”

“I’m telling you that you won’t like all that you’ll find out about me. You should walk away because I won’t. You should, but don’t.” His mouth slants over mine and then he’s kissing me, driving into me, and I can feel him trying to hold onto control, but there is an edge to him, a need that radiates through me and with every thrust and grind. I arch into him, I meet his need and I know the moment he loses that control. The moment he tastes and feels nearly desperate

and it feeds that in me. I am desperate, for more of him, all of him, even that part of him he doesn’t want me to see or know. I don’t know in this space and time where I end and he begins. I only know need and passion and then finally the intense wave that comes over my body and blooms into the quake of my body, into release. Eric follows with a guttural groan and a shuddering of his body.

When our bodies calm, and he’s rolling us to our sides again, I become aware of his cellphone ringing. “Your phone,” I murmur, a remote memory coming to me. “I think it was buzzing the entire time we were busy.”

“Busy?” he laughs. “Yes, we were busy.”

My cheeks flush and he pulls us both to a sitting position before brushing his lips over mine. “Let’s get out of here. Until I can get you in my bed, I want to be in yours.”

His bed?

I’m not sure what to do with that, considering his bed is in New York City, and yes I can visit him, but then what?

“I won’t leave my mom behind. You need to know that.”

He walks to a trashcan, sheds the condom and then reaches for his pants, pulling his phone out from inside, reading a message before he pulls on his pants. “We’ll talk about it.”

“No,” I say standing up, that comment reading like another play for control. “We won’t.” I grab my tee and pull it on and as I reach for my pants he pulls me around to face him.

“We’ll make sure your mother’s safe,” he says. “We’ll protect her. I promise you.” He cups my face. “I promise. Don’t close the door on us.”

I open my mouth to respond when the word safe takes me off guard. “Safe,” I say. “Not—we’ll protect her from legal issues, but safe. What does that mean? Is she in danger?”

His jaw sets hard. “Let’s get dressed and talk.”

My heart starts to race. “Eric, damn it, is she in danger?”

“Put on your clothes, Harper.”

He releases me and grabs my pants. “Get dressed.” He turns away and grabs his T-shirt, pulling it over his head. I decide I need to be dressed, too, just like he said. Dressed equals control and right now, I feel like I have none. We sit down side by side to lace our shoes and his phone buzzes with another message that he replies to, his jaw setting hard before he sticks his cell in his pocket. I stand up and face him, my arms folding in front of me.

“Talk.”

He stands, towering over me, as his hands come down on my shoulders. “I’m working with a top-notch security company to find answers. Walker Security sports a staff that includes ex-special forces, CIA, and FBI, and the list of skills and backgrounds are long. Their skills along with mine will uncover what’s happening with Kingston Motors.”

“That’s not what you want to say right now,” I say, aware he hasn’t told me everything. I sense it. I can almost taste it in the air.

“I had Blake, my contact at Walker, get someone from his team in place at your house.”

His push for locked doors comes back to me hard and fast. “Why? Just say it.”

“Someone’s watching your house, which most likely is nothing more than my brother’s paranoia over my presence and a private eye that he’s hired to keep an eye on me or us.”