The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)

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.

“This is where you belong,” he whispers, his cheek pressed to mine, lips near my ear, one hand on my breasts. The other molding me close, my naked breasts to his naked chest. “You know that, right?”

He’s echoed what I was thinking and my answer is pure and simple. “Yes, I do now.”

He drags his face along mine, whiskers rasping on my delicate skin with delicious friction.

“Show me,” he demands, pinching my nipple and then tangling his fingers in my hair, a rough pull that echoes just how rough he was before we turned tender. Before I ended up on his lap, straddling him.

And then he’s kissing me again and we’re wild with need. I can’t drink him in fast enough. I can’t feel him deep enough. I’m grinding against him and he’s pumping into me and I don’t know where he begins and I end, but I know it has to be here and now.

We move like we’re one. We kiss like we’ll never kiss again, wicked, hot, and passionate, and then we slow, a savoring of every moment, every taste. And we touch like we need to feel each other everywhere. And when we finally give in to the pleasure in a frenzied rush of thrusts and sways, we collapse on the couch, side by side, facing each other.

For a long time, we say nothing. “I’m sorry,” I say when nothing else feels right.

“For what?” he says, stroking my hair from my eyes.

“For ever being a part of that family. For making you feel that I was.” I swallow hard. “We’ve had this conversation. I know you understand, but in too many ways I feel complicit. I knew what my mother told me had to be true. I knew. I just—I didn’t want to leave her behind. That’s when I got the most frightened for her safety. I felt as if she was being brainwashed. As if I didn’t even know who she was and it scared me. She was all I had.”

“And now?”

“I told you. She made her choices and now I’m making mine. You know now. You know what he did. Now what?”

“I told you once that death was too good for my father. I meant it. He needs to live so that I can make him wish he’d died.” He sits up and grabs his pants before standing and pulling them on.

He hands me his shirt, which I happily accept, his eyes lingering on mine a moment, the message in his actions clear. We’re together. We’re one.

“How?” I ask, staring up at him. “How will you make him pay?”

“You know how,” he says, and with that, he grabs a Rubik’s cube and walks to the window.

I quickly pull on the shirt and join him. I do as I did earlier. I slide in front of the window, between it and him. “By taking everything he owns.”

“Yes, but not in the way you might think. He’s buried in trouble.” He presses his hands to the glass on either side of me. “I’m going to help make sure he stays buried.”

“You want to partner with the mob?”

“You don’t partner with the mob. That’s dangerous. That doesn’t mean you don’t give them a gift they don’t know you gave them.” His hands come down my waist. “Your mother.”

“Chose him. Chose him and chose to look the other way.”

“Is she brainwashed or is she like them, Harper?”

“I don’t know. Can you be brainwashed into being a bad person?”

“I don’t know the answer to that question.”

“Or you do and you don’t want to say. You just wanted to see what I believed.”

He studies me a moment, his eyes seeming to pierce my soul, before he asks, “What do you believe? What do you really believe, Harper?”

What I believe, hurts. It really hurts. I duck under his arm and walk to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and grabbing one of those beers I’d passed on once before. Eric is there by the time the door shuts, opening it for me. I tip it back and gulp several swallows and offer it to him. “I believe it’s part of who she is. I believe she’s one of them.”

He considers me a moment and then sets the beer down. “Why?”

“She doesn’t even remember my father. I’m here fighting for him and she doesn’t even remember him. And you know why? Because my father was like Grayson. He had a moral compass. He would never look your father in the eyes and not see the devil. And yet that’s who my mother wakes up to every morning. That’s why she fits with your father. They’re evil.”

“I think you’re responding emotionally right now. I think you want to protect me and you think turning your back on her is the way to do that and it’s not. That’s not what I need from you.”