Page 159 of Fixation

I’m broken and torn. For a moment. Then I’m back in my body.

Back to my unhinged self.

I whirl her toward me, gripping both her hip and the nape of her neck.

Our foreheads press together. God, breathing her air turns me territorial, obsessive, dominant.

“I hate this.” Tears stain her beautiful cheeks.

I catch one of them with my lips, then put some distance between us so I can meet her tortured emerald gaze. “I love you.”

“Shut up.” Her eyes squeeze tight, her face crumpled. “Don’t you dare say that to me. Don’t you dare love me. Loving me. Ha.” She opens her eyes, glowering at me beneath thick, wet lashes. I cup her cheeks, and she grabs both my wrists, desperate to bound me to her. To keep me safe, even. “When you die in a year or a few months, what am I supposed to do with this love, then?”

“I won’t die so fast.” Harper hears me best when I lower my voice. She gets off on it. “In fact, you’ll hear me say that I love you for the rest of our lives.”

Her hands move to my neck, holding tight. Just another proof of how much she’s into me.

“You can’t know that.” The sting of having her nails digging into my neck is nothing. Nothing compared to the emotions barreling out of both of us. “Don’t leave me.”

“Not fucking happening.” I’m throbbing. The need to fuck the pain out of her suffocates me. “We were meant to be together. No one and nothing would ever get between us.”

“What do you do for them?” Desperation makes her nails dig deeper. “Is it safe?”

I move them to my shoulders, where she can break every inch of my skin.

Fucking appearances.

My cock has never hurt like this. Never needed inside of Harper this badly.

“Why was the head of the mafia hanging around here? Is he still out there?” she whispers, her tone begging me to ground her. I do just that by firming my hold on her. “Outside my home? In my neighborhood?”

“Ourneighborhood.” My grin has a whimper tearing out of her.

Quickly, her mouth snaps closed, her face settling into an almost impassive expression. She wants to be brave.

She is brave.

She’ll need to be even braver when she hears about my secret life.

“He’s watching me,” I admit.

“What. Do. You. Do. For. Them?” It’s cute that her voice is filled with anger while her body leans into mine. The way her full lips move. How they glisten. “Be honest. No omissions. No lies. No more of that.”

Her tears on her lips, I have to have them. To kiss them off her. She groans and bites me, and I’m dying to have more of her.

“You said you loved me,” she breathes.

I pull away, only an inch. “I did say that. I do love you, Harper.”

“Love means honesty.” Her chest expands, her breasts brushing against me. Electricity pulses through me at that. “Love means not hiding such fundamentally huge shit that has an impact on the other person’s life. That’s what love means. Even you have to realize that.”

“Is it the omission of the truth that bothers you? Or the fact that I’m involved with the mafia?”

“You still haven’t told me what you do for them.”

While I consider my answer, I slide my hands down her arms, helping her put them around my neck. I lift her legs around my thighs. Harper sags into me, her cheek pressed to my shoulder, her breath hot on my skin.

Her emotions pour out of her. Her love engulfs me in an electric field, a sphere. We’re alone here, in this home. In this universe.