I move my head from his shoulder, looking up at him. In the faint light, I can see the freckles on the bridge of his nose. There’s the tiniest scar right above his brow, his black hair mussed and sexy.
Sleep laces his thick eyelashes, but those deep green eyes are as awake as ever. I can see my reflection in them. His otherhand lifts slowly, coming to cup my face as he brushes the fattest part of my cheek.
“Harper,” he rasps throatily. It sounds like a confession, a prayer, a call for war at the same time.
“Harper,” he breathes, as if my name is what brought him out of his sleep and what lets him close his eyes at night peacefully.
I feel possessed, a deeper emotion coming alive deep in my chest. I move to his lap, and his other hand wraps around my waist, scooching me closer to him.
“Damian…” I croak, tracing his plush lips with my finger. He kisses the tip of my finger, and tilts his chin up. I press my lips to his, soft and passionate. His tongue seeks entrance and I allow it.
We kiss and kiss and kiss, everything forgotten, lost in our own world. I don’t know when our clothes disappear, when he lays me back on our makeshift, dingy bed; when his mouth kisses his way down my thighs and licks up my wetness like it’s an elixir.
In this hazy and warm state, I feel like I finally see him. When he raises my leg, slowly sliding inside me as he massages my thigh, kissing the arch of my foot, I throw back my head.
The stretch is as delicious as always, his member throbbing inside me. The pace is slow but deep, each thrust knocking a moan out of me. He links his fingers with mine, his abs contracting as he moves inside me.
His eyes are stuck on me, drinking me in like a thirsty man would a mirage of water. Beads of sweat drift down his chest, disappearing past his Adonis belt.
A man as sexy as him, and he’s all mine.
The thought is enough to rip my climax out of me. I moan out his name as he speeds up, chasing his pleasure.
“You’re mine,” he says deliriously, bending over me to press his lips to mine. “Mine.”
“Yours.”
Chapter 17 - Damian
The fire has thinned to embers when Harper leaves the bed, but the warmth lingering on my skin isn’t from the flames.
The room still smells faintly of her. She comes out, casts me a small smile as she munches away on an apple. She finds her seat at the workbench with her knees drawn up under her, eyes narrowed at the receiver as if she can force it to speak more clearly.
“Repeat that,” she says into the crackling static, her voice steady but sharpened.
Kiro’s answer breaks through like strained breath.
“Courier… caught in St. Petersburg… access key built from your code… someone inside the mainframe still looping your signature.”
The words hit like cold air against bare skin.
Harper stiffens, and I feel the shift in her before she even looks at me. The fragile peace we carved in the dark hours cracks. I cross the room, stand behind her, rest a hand on the back of her chair. Her fingers tremble once before she steadies them.
“Damian… someone is still using me.”
“No,” I correct quietly. “They’re using what they stole from you.”
A subtle difference, but she hears it. Her shoulders fall.
The wooden beams groan like old bones, snow pressing against the windows in pale waves. It feels as if the world outside is trying to erase us or bury us under silence and frost and the convenience of disappearance.
But Harper is a flame that refuses to gutter.
“We’re going back,” I say.
I move to gather gear in minutes, and so does she. Maps, forged IDs, cold-weather packs, the encrypted tablet where Harper keeps the last pieces of our lifeline, all of it shoved inside a torn duffel bag.
She moves with a precision I’ve only ever seen in combat surgeons, every motion small, efficient, contained. When she reaches for her coat, our eyes meet. I can read her much easier now than I have ever before. The knowledge spreads a glow through me that I try to conceal.
