My protests didn’t matter. I was ready for him anyway. I’d been ready for the man for weeks, damn him.
“FUCK!” Eric roared as he shoved into me, both of us on our knees atop the lacquered wood, rutting like a damn National Geographic special. His voice, louder than I’d heard it in over a month, bounced off the soundproofed walls and back through my body.
He was big. Bigger, somehow, than I remembered him, as if time had either shrunken my parts or grown his. One hand kneaded ferociously at my backside, the other reaching around for a harsh handful of breast. He pounded away, moaning like an animal against my back while I flattened across the table, unable to do anything but take it. I was trapped beneath him. But it was the only place I wanted to be.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered, his breath hoarse against my neck.
“I—oh!” I cried out as he thrust again, much deeper than before. Lord, the man was really taking no prisoners.
Then Eric stopped, wound my hair around his fist, and yanked me up so my back was flush to his chest. My scalp screamed, but the rest of me throbbed right along with his cock inside me.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, pretty girl,” he said through gritted teeth, his voice harsh and unforgiving in my ear.
He seized the lobe between his teeth and bit. I squealed.
“Are you going to make me wait?” he asked before biting again.
“Noooooo,” I moaned, unable to speak clearly through my desire.
I set my fingers on the spot he wanted. Over my shoulder, Eric watched, the growl against my clavicle indicating he was pleased.
“Your nipple,” he said. “Pinch it.”
“But—”
There was another yank of my hair. “I’ve got my hands full, gorgeous. And we’ve got about ten minutes left. Pinch your nipple and your clit, because I’m not going to last much longer, and I need to feel you squeeze my dick while I come.”
I obeyed, because there was no way I couldn’t. My other hand found my nipple and twisted it just as he had before, creating that deliciously sharp pain to match the growing ache between my legs.
“Eric!” I shouted as once again, he pummeled forward. All the sensations in my body were starting to run together. His cock. My fingers. Every erogenous zone I had was porous as pleasure and pain seeped together into a nameless sensation that would be my undoing.
“Are you close?” Eric demanded. “Fucking tell me you’re close, pretty girl.”
I wasn’t close. I was done.
“ERIC!” I screamed as I fell forward. My hands dropped as I shook, overcome completely by the feel of him inside me, taking over everything.
Eric’s strong arms caught me, holding me tight as he chased my orgasm with his own. Behind me, his body clenched. Everything about him seemed to expand.
“Fucking hell, Jane,” he gritted out before taking my earlobe in his teeth and biting not-so-softly as he emptied himself completely. One, two, three more thrusts before we both sagged against each other, then fell to the table.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled into the lacquered wood.
“No kidding.” A sweet kiss landed on my shoulder, and for a second, Eric pressed his cheek on the spot.
We lay like that for a few more minutes, but before anyone could say another word, the sound of footsteps descending the stairs had us rolling off the table like secret agents, landing in a pile of limbs and laugher on the carpet.
“Ow!” I giggled. “Where did my glasses fall?”
“Forget your glasses, Lefferts. Where the fuck are my pants?”
The door opened.
“Sorry, I just left my cell phone—”
Brandon walked in and immediately stopped two feet inside. His sharp eyes scanned over the room, landing on the toppled furniture, the scattered clothes, and eventually finding us peeking over the other side of the table, hidden only by the chairs lined up in front of us.
“Jesus Christ, you gotta be kidding me.” He shielded his eyes like he was blocking the sun. “Don’t waste time, do you?”
“Nope!” I crowed, earning a pinch at the waist from Eric, though he didn’t look particularly mad at me.
Still blocking his vision, Brandon grabbed his cell phone off one of the work tables and felt around for the door. “There’s disinfectant under the other table,” he barked. “Use it.” Then he marched up the stairs, muttering “fuckin’ animals” under his breath.
The door closed behind him. Eric and I looked at each other and immediately burst into laughter.
“He’s just jealous,” Eric said with a grin. “Two kids under five? I bet he’s getting laid about once a month these days.”
I snorted. “I don’t know. The two of them still can’t keep their hands off each other.”
“Don’t remind me,” Eric replied. “Until May, I worked with Skylar every day for years.”
I tittered again, earning another kiss that quickly turned into something more intense. I sighed into Eric, relishing the taste of him. The feel of his body pressed to mine. I missed this. I missed him.
Eric’s features softened slightly as he traced my cheek with the back of his hand. The gold coin dangled between his perfectly sculpted pectoral muscles. I fingered it gently, wishing I could rip it off. It was heavy—probably because it was made with solid gold. Antique metals had a different kind of heft.
“I hate this,” I said, pulling lightly on the chain. “I hate them.”
Eric looked down at my hand, then slowly pushed it away, forcing me to release the coin.
“I’m working on it,” he murmured and got up to search for his clothes.
“Working on it how?” I stood too and started putting my bra and skirt back into place. “You promised that fucker that you wouldn’t touch me. We’re going to walk out of this room, and you’re going to treat me like a stranger again because you’re scared of the boogie man. I don’t know why you don’t just tell him to go to hell.”
Eric pulled his belt through the buckle with a little more vehemence than was strictly necessary. “People don’t say no to Carson.”
“People, sure. But you’re not people. You’re Eric fucking de Vries.” My cherry print shirt taunted me from under the tossed chair. I grabbed it and shoved an arm violently through one sleeve. “You know, sometimes I think I’m more aware of that than you are.”
Eric gave me an irritated look as he put on his own button-down. “Trust me, you’re not.”
“Then why put up with it? What’s the difference between the two of you anyway? You both basically own half the planet, right?”
“The difference is that he almost killed me, Jane.”
I stopped fussing with my clothes as all blood drained from my head. “What?”
Eric looked up. “Just…pretend I didn’t say that.”
“Are you kidding?” I yanked out my ponytail holder and starter finger-combing my waves. “You don’t just admit someone tried to commit murder and then pretend nothing was said. This was when you were gone, wasn’t it?”
The sudden lack of color in Eric’s face told me everything I needed to know. “Jane,” he said through his teeth. “Just drop it, all right?”
He started putting way too much attention into rolling up his shirtsleeves.
I strode up and smacked his hand away. “Hey, J. Crew!”
The scowl was back. “You don’t know what you’re asking. And even if you did, I can’t tell you about it. For your own safety.”
He made for the door without waiting for an answer.
“Uggh!” I cried. “You are so frustrating sometimes, you know that?”
Eric let the door close again and turned. “You’re mad? I’m just trying to keep you safe!”
“Yes, I’m mad at you!” I shouted. “I’m mad because you don’t have the guts to stand up to him with me. I’m mad because I feel like I’m the only one fighting for us!”
“I am fighting for us, Jane!” he roared back. “I’m fighting for you! I’m fighti
ng to protect you!”
“I DON’T NEED YOUR PROTECTION!” I shrieked. “I need your love. I need your trust, Eric. Was I the only one who felt like this was some kind of homecoming? Right here on Brandon’s ugly conference table?”
Eric swallowed. “You know you’re not. I needed that just as badly as you did.”
“Well, then what is the fucking point of this life if I can’t spend it with the one person who has ever made me feel…well…anything at all worth keeping?”
He stilled, like an animal caught in headlights. “Do you…do you really feel that way?”
I swallowed. Had I never said it? Had I never completely told him how I felt? He had shouted it to me over the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, and I had definitely said “I love you.” But maybe it was true—maybe I’d never really told him. Not like this.
Well. No time like the present.
“I’m not a poet like you,” I said, hovering a hand over his face. “I’ve always been better at speaking with actions.” I gestured to my clothes and thought of the apartment I’d so carefully curated for our life. I tried hard my own ways to let him know how I felt. “All my life, the world felt like a cage for someone like me. People and places telling me what I could be, how I should act. They wanted me to settle down. Speak softer. Dress better. Be nicer. Easier. Calmer. But you…when I’m with you, I just feel free.” I pulled at his collar. “You free me.”
Eric’s thick gaze didn’t waver. “That’s pretty fucking poetic, Jane,” he whispered.
I closed my eyes as emotion vibrated through me. When I opened them, the world seemed off-kilter. He was the only part of it that felt straight and solid.
“Please,” I begged. “Please don’t put me back in that cage.”
He shook his head. I understood the conundrum. Common sense said that relationships, monogamy, marriage—every metaphor in the world spoke to how suffocating they were supposed to be. For years, I had assumed it was the case. And yet, here I was, admitting the oxymoronic truth—that it was only when I was tied to a person—this person, to be exact—that I was truly free to soar.
“You don’t think this entire life is a cage?” he wondered. “Sometimes I regret inviting you into it at all. It was selfish.”
I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t.”
“But, Jane—”
“Don’t you understand?” I asked. “My only cage is the one without you.”
Eric watched me for a long time, his eyes traveling up and down my person, almost like he was trying to memorize every fold of clothing, every strand of hair. I pushed my hair aside angrily, but didn’t otherwise move.
“If you only knew,” he said at last, so low his voice was almost swallowed there, between the thick, impenetrable walls.
But instead of reaching out to me, instead of assuring me that things would change—instead of telling me as I so needed to hear that we would face Carson and figure out how to be together—he just turned back to the door and opened it, standing aside like the gentleman he had been groomed to be.
“Ladies first,” he said, unwilling to meet my eye. “Come on, Jane. We’ll be late for dinner.”
Eighteen
We trudged back to the main house in silence, no longer touching, not even looking at each other. If those crazed minutes in Brandon’s lab had let out something important, Eric had shoved it back in and locked it up with ten more padlocks.
His head hung as he walked, like a despondent Charlie Brown.
My hands clenched and unclenched, more like a caged animal than ever.
When we entered the kitchen, Skylar took one look at my disheveled appearance, made excuses to her grandmother, and dragged me upstairs to change. All Eric had to do was pat his hair in a few places to look like a catalog model again, but apparently, I resembled Courtney Love after a serious bender.
“I’m not even going to ask,” she said as we entered the giant walk-in closet she and Brandon shared.
I shrugged. I was pissed at Eric all over again, and all sorts of confused, but I felt absolutely no shame about getting my rocks off. I did need to fix myself up, though.
“Your hem is torn,” Skylar remarked wryly, pointing to the wide rent in my skirt. “And your shirt is missing some buttons.”
“That asshole,” I said as I fingered the frayed edge of the limp fabric. Apparently, he really had ripped the clothes from my body. The bias cut on this shirt had taken me weeks to get right. I scowled. I wanted to march downstairs and ram the ruined silk down Eric’s stupid, stubborn throat.
Skylar shook her head. She clearly thought Eric and I were no better than a couple of bonobo chimps.
“Just grab a dress,” she said, gesturing at her side of the closet. “You’re too tall for any of my pants anyway. Or else there are leggings in the bureau on the right if you want to borrow some.”
“This is basically the wardrobe department of The Good Wife,” I remarked as I leafed through the single rack of clothes that didn’t include suits. She had a taste for pencil skirts—the woman must have had at least twenty—but they were definitely not my cup of tea. “Do you own anything without shoulder pads, Mrs. Florrick?”
“Very funny,” Skylar called out from the bed, where she was taking a much-needed load off. “It’s just work clothes. You know how dress code works in court.”
I popped my head out. “Seriously, though. You’re a zillionaire. Where are all the good duds?”
Skylar shrugged. “I like my sweaters and jeans when I’m at home. Brandon and I aren’t like you and Eric. All the furniture in this house doubles as a jungle gym, we prefer upholstery that can hide stains, and no one dresses up unless we absolutely have to.”
I smiled at the idea that there was actually some similarity between Eric and me. I had always considered us such opposites, but we both did like clothes. And our apartment filled with art and fine furnishings. We both liked beauty for beauty’s sake. Always had.
As quickly as it had buoyed me, the idea immediately brought me back down. Because, as Eric had so emphatically said through his actions, there was no future there. No matter how slyly compatible we were.
Fuck him.
“Hey, can you decide already? I feel bad abandoning Bubbe in the kitchen, and I don’t want to be MIA when Zola gets here too. He should arrive any minute.”
I popped back out of a row of blouses. “Zola’s coming?”
“He sometimes does,” Skylar said absently. “You know that.”
I knew that Zola was a good guy and had remained a friend of the family. I also knew that sometimes, yes, he had shown up at random holiday events. We’d even flirted a few times—hey, you would too if a handsome Italian was sitting across the sweet potatoes from you. But nothing ever happened. What’s the saying? Don’t shit where you eat turkey?
And more importantly, why hadn’t he mentioned it when we met this week?
“It was a last-minute thing,” Skylar answered my unspoken question. “Actually, he was wondering if you would be here.” She gave me a pointed look. “I almost thought he still had a thing for you. Remember when you met back in the day?”
I wrinkled my nose, choosing not to mention that Zola was probably taking the opportunity to call my bluff about Eric’s and my behavior.
Or maybe, I considered as I remembered Eric's reaction to the man, that was exactly what I needed.
I turned back to the dresses and chose a slinky red knit number—one I happened to know Skylar almost never wore because she thought it was too revealing for a mother of two. I, however, had no such qualms. It would look hot with the boots I was wearing and just might drive a certain blond shipping heir crazy.
“Red,” I said as I pulled the dress out. “Red is the order of the day.”
* * *
We returned downstairs to a familiar, warm scene: Sarah and Susan bustling dishes out of the kitchen to the spacious dining room; Luis and Jenny running around underfoot with telltale bits of sweet potato and cranberry sauce
peeking from the sides of their mouths; and Ray, Eric, Brandon, and Matthew Zola making their way to the table from where they had been watching football. Almost everyone had a drink in hand and was eagerly eyeing the big table full of food. It was idyllic and warm, exactly the way Thanksgiving should be. Full of family, friends, and loved ones.
A pang lodged in my gut as my mother’s face flashed through my mind. Multiple expressions, actually.
That’s because you know she should be here, Jane Brain.
There was my dad—my real dad—twisting my insides even more. I could be mad at her. But, I realized, keeping us apart was exactly what a man like Carson wanted.
“I just need to make a call,” I said to Skylar, ignoring Eric’s concerned look as I ducked out.
I found my coat and purse in the kitchen and pulled out my new phone, dialing as I went outside. She answered on the second ring.
“Jane?”
I took a deep breath, but before I could even get out “Hi, Eomma,” I burst into tears—loud, noisy tears that truly ached with every breath.
“Jane?” she asked again, her voice rising. “Jane, is that you? What is the matter?”
“E-e-omma,” I stuttered. “I j-just wanted to say Happy Thanksg-giving.”
I could barely manage the words. Less than two years ago, I had been sitting at the table with her, my dad, some of his buddies from the VA, plus a bunch of other cousins and aunties in Chicago. The table was covered with a diverse mix. There was the more traditional American Thanksgiving foods—Dad loved a roasted turkey and usually made the fixings to go with it. His coworkers (and sometimes patients) could be counted on to bring a grocery store pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce in a can. Meanwhile, my mother and her family would fill in the gaps with a bunch of Korean food: japchae noodles, maybe a potato dish or dumplings. Three types of homemade kimchi, and probably at least two different desserts. It was eclectic and weird, but it was ours.
“I miss you,” I blurted out, only just understanding how true the words were. “Eomma, everything is a mess. Eric, the wedding, we—”
The Kiss Plot: Book Two of the Quicksilver Trilogy Page 19
