Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 117510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
“Well, I know that now. But I didn’t then.”
“Would you even have told me about it if Tanner hadn’t already done so?”
“Of course I would have told you—I had nothing to hide.” Putting her jeans aside, Harper crossed her legs and folded her arms. “I also have nothing to prove or justify, so you can stop looking at me like I somehow betrayed you.”
But that was exactly what Knox felt: betrayed. “I told you that I didn’t want you near him. I made that very clear. And what did you do? You had a private conversation with him in your old bedroom. I swear, Harper, if I ever hear that you’re alone with him again—”
“Don’t threaten me,” she hissed. Bristling, her inner demon unfurled and pushed against Harper’s skin, ready to jump in and defend her.
“I’m not threatening you,” he said, voice low. “I’m making the situation abundantly clear, since it seems that you haven’t listened to a single word I fucking said on this. I didn’t kill Clarke just now for the simple reason that I don’t want him on your mind or to impact your life. But I only have so much restraint in me. If he tries to get you alone again, I will kill him.”
“You don’t think you’re overreacting just a little?”
“Overreacting?” Knox’s hands curled. “He wants to take you from me.”
“Just like Alethea and plenty of other women wanted to take you from me.”
“If you’d wanted to kill them for it, you would have had every right. An ‘overreaction’ is the very last thing I would have called it. You chose to deal with it in a different way—I respected that decision, even though I hated what their actions did to you.”
“But you didn’t order them to stay away from you, did you?” Raising her chin in challenge, Harper rose from the sofa. “You expect me to stay clear of Drew, but I’m sure there were times when Isla or Alethea or other women that wanted to get in your pants went to see you at one of your offices. I’ll bet you didn’t tell them to fuck off and keep their distance. Am I right?” He didn’t respond, but she knew she was right. “Thought so. You certainly never called out to me, so why the fuck would you expect me to call out to you? It’s not like Drew’s a physical threat to me.”
“Those situations were different.”
Her inner demon curled its upper lip in disgust. “Really? How? You knew the women wanted you; you knew they wanted me out of the picture, but you didn’t call out to me or send them on their way immediately. No, you knew you could deal with those situations alone, so you did. How is that any different from what I did?”
“For one thing, I didn’t have them in my old fucking bedroom.”
“Like them being in your office makes much of a difference. You fucked me in there not long ago so, yeah, you don’t get to use that one.”
He advanced on her, closing the distance between them, and pushed into her personal space. “How many times did you imagine those women touching me or vice versa, Harper? Hurt, didn’t it? You didn’t want those pictures in your head, but your imagination went wild on you. What if those pictures hadn’t simply been your imagination at work? What if they had been actual memories that belonged to those women and you knew exactly what I did to them and what they did to me? How well would you have dealt with that?”
Not well at all. Harper would have hated having that shit in her head, but she’d like to think that she wouldn’t have made Knox suffer for it. “Look, I’m sorry you have Drew’s memories—”
“They’re no longer his memories.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I erased them. He no longer remembers what you taste like, how your pussy feels around his fingers, how your breasts felt in his hands, or what you look and sound like when you come.” Knox had thoroughly enjoyed snipping each thread of memory. Drew also had no memory of his reservations about Asher. As long as the hellcat didn’t come into contact with Asher again, Drew never would. “That drunken encounter no longer has a place in his mind.”
It kind of scared Harper that he could completely erase an event from a person’s mind. It made her extremely grateful that she had tough psychic shields that he couldn’t penetrate without shredding his own psyche.
“If Jolene has any sense, she’ll put him on a plane tomorrow and he’ll be gone. But maybe you’re not relieved by that. Maybe you like the attention he gives you. Maybe you even want him.”
Her head jerked back. For a moment, words failed Harper. “Repeat that.” It was a dare. Although he didn’t repeat it, he gave her a look that said he meant every fucking word. An angry flush heated her cheeks. “You son of a bitch.”