The Princess (Filthy Trilogy 2)

“You just said it’s likely to kill me again and you get blamed for the murder.”

“And then I lose everything.” His hand comes down on my head, fingers closing around my hair. “I lose you. I’m locked away where I can’t get revenge. I just got smart enough to hold onto you, Harper. I’m not losing

you.”

I realize now, some part of me, until this moment, didn’t believe this man, this brilliant, talented, gorgeous man could feel as intensely about me as I do about him, but he does. I know that he does, and I have no wall with him. I have no way to protect myself, and I don’t care. I don’t care. “And I’m not losing you,” I vow.

“Then I need you to trust me, really trust me.”

“I do. Didn’t me coming to you about the message from my mother tell you that?”

“You tell me that. Tell me now.”

“I trust you, Eric.”

And then his mouth is closing down on mine, a hard slant, a possession that I feel through every part of me; a lick, a stroke, a command. Yes. It’s another command. I will not leave him, it says. He won’t let me, he says. And I’m already doing what I said I would not do, submission softening my resolve, weakening my knees, but it doesn’t shut down my mind. It doesn’t make me forget what I want, and that’s him. I pull back, tearing my mouth from his.

“I can’t lose you,” I repeat. “I won’t. Stop trying to make me bend.”

“I’m protecting you.”

“I’m protecting you,” I counter.

“I protect you,” he counters. “That’s just how it is.”

I laugh. “Really? Did you just take that caveman attitude with me? Because you dictating and controlling me doesn’t work for me. That’s not the kind of relationship I want to be in. If that’s the one you want, you’ve got the wrong girl. We protect each other or not at all. I’m the way we buy time. With time, you’ll figure out the message, just like you figured out your father this morning. You’ll take them down. You’ll do it right, so once again, I say: You need time that I can buy us.”

“I need to buy us time.”

I push against him, stepping away, my hands slashing through the air. “He gave me twenty-four hours to make contact, and nearly eight are gone. He’ll have a move planned when I don’t show up.”

“He probably has a move already in play and it won’t take twenty-four hours for us to find that out. You haven’t called him. You haven’t called your mother. That tells him that you’re talking to me, not them.”

“Then I need to call him now.”

“What you need to do is listen to me.”

“Okay. Then I’m listening. What are you going to do, right now, to distract him?”

“What he doesn’t expect. What I never give him.”

“Which is what?”

“Me. He wants me, Harper. I already told you that. I’m going to give him me. I’m going to have coffee with my father, up close and personal in his hotel room, in my Kingston Motors shirt. Like fathers and sons should do.”

“Not this father and son.”

“Today we do.”

He turns away and starts to walk.

I plant myself in front of him, hands flattening on the hard muscles of his chest. “So you can walk into a trap and end up dead? I forbid it. I told you. I’m not losing you. How many times do I have to say that?”

He drags me to him again, that spicy dominant scent of him teasing my nostrils and wrapping me in the almighty force that is this man. “Princess, you’re not getting rid of me today, or this easily. I told you that if you run, I’ll run after you.”

“You can’t do that if you’re dead. I forbid you to do this.”

“If you want to forbid me, do it while you’re naked. I’ll listen a whole lot better.”