Page 116 of One Wrong Move

She chuckles into her hands. “That must make you the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Her words are sweet. But they sting, the way everything does that reminds me of the differences in our goals. How differently we view one another.

“Harper,” I mutter, pulling gently on her wrist. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

Her hands slip down her face. There’s a tiny smudge of black mascara under her left eye, and her skin is flushed and sweaty.

“Was I terribly loud?”

“You were amazing.”

She shakes her head in tiny movements, eyes still pleasure-drunk and soft. “I know I can get loud. Oh my God. The driver!”

“He didn’t hear a thing,” I say. “That partition is soundproof.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. It’s a privacy feature, so people can take calls back here.”

She relaxes against me. “Oh, thank God.”

“And you were not too loud. You were perfect,” I say. “And this weekend, when you came, in bed, you didn’t make a sound.”

“I tried very hard not to,” she admits, a soft smile on her lips.

But I’m frowning. “Why?”

Her eyes dip down to my lapels, and she reaches out to play with the satin of my bowtie. Looks at that instead of meeting my eyes. “I don’t know if I should tell you,” she admits.

An unsettling feeling unfurls inside me. “Does this have to do with the box?”

She nods.

I try hard not to show any reaction. “Tell me anyway. If you want.”

“He would say,” Harper murmurs, smiling ruefully at my bowtie, “that I was too loud. So I tried not to be.”

I freeze like a goddamn statue. Forcing myself not to scowl, not to hiss, not to protest. But I can’t help it. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Fucking Dean. Was that why you were quiet this weekend?”

She nods, and there’s a shy look on her face that is so at odds with what we’ve just done, with my hand on her bare thigh, with her body against mine. “Yeah.”

“Don’t,” I say. “Not with me. I want to hear you. Fuck, Harp, it turns me on.”

“It does?”

“Of course it does, as it should any normal red-blooded man.” I shake my head, trying to clear the image of Dean from in front of my eyes. The idea that he’d said that to her, that he’d ever implied… that he had been allowed to do this to her—to taste her, to feast between her legs—and had the audacity to tell her to be quiet when she came. “I thought Dean was a better man than that.”

She chuckles. “Sorry. I don’t want to ruin your impression?—”

“Fuck that,” I say. “Not your responsibility. Besides, if he lost you, then he must have done something wrong.”

Her eyes are on mine, and I can’t look away from those green depths. From the softness in them and the hesitant emotions swirling within. My fingers stroke along the satiny skin of her outer thigh. She’s warm.

“I think everyone believes it’s my fault,” she says quietly. “Not his.”

“Well, I’m guessing everyone doesn’t know the full story, do they?” I ask. “They shouldn’t blame you for things they don’t know shit about.”

Her lips tip into a smile. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

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