Page 99 of Tides That Bind

“What?” I’m so close to her neck I can hear her swallow.

“Can you…can you just hold me for a minute?” Harper runs her fingers along my arm. She sighs. “It just feels so good.”

“You know what will feel even better?” I whisper.

I can hear her swallow.

“What?”

I pull my hands free and put safe distance between us before she gets an idea of what my body’s idea of good feels like. “A hot shower, a glass of water, and bed.”

Harper spins around. “Riley—”

“If you change your mind and want to talk in the morning, I’m happy to listen.” I pull out my keys from my pocket. “I think you just need a good night’s sleep.”

Harper nods. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” She backs up toward the house. “I’ll…see you in the morning.”

I wait, watching as she picks up the whiskey and glass and heads into the house. And then I wait another minute for the kitchen light to go off.

“Christ,” I mutter as I practically race up the stairs to my apartment. I drop my keys and strip down in just the few steps ittakes to get to my bathroom where I turn on the shower, getting in before it’s even warm.

But even the cold water doesn’t melt away the feel of Harper pressed and cradled against me.

I fling my head into the stream of rushing water. I want to scream it out, all the ways she’s infiltrated my brain and made my body betray me. But damn, I’m holding on like hell to all the ways I’m picturing her.

On that damn hoop, legs high and spread, hanging just high enough that all I have to do is dip my head to get a taste of her…

The way her hair pillows around her head when I lay her back on the bed…

I slam my palm into the slick shower wall. But that? I imagine what Harper’s body might sound like as I slam her into it over and over again.

I’m so hard I’maching. I’m fucking feral to slide into her and it’s torturous because there’s still something about this—even solo—that feels like it’s crossing a line.

But fuck it.

I hiss as soon as I grip my length and begin stroking, every second of every vision making my hand move faster.

But whether it’s my face between her spread legs, or pinning her against the shower wall, or the feel of her toes flexing against my calves as I slide deeper inside her, one thing is the same.

Harper is mine in every single scenario.

Mine for the taking.

Stroke.

Mine for the kissing.

Stroke.

Mine for the fucking.

I’ve got the firmest grip on my dick I can handle, and yet I know it won’t even rival the way she’ll suck me in. I tense, rounding my back as I use everything inside of me to pull out my release.

After I burst all over the shower wall, I’m still wanting her inall the same ways, but in a different way too. I want her closeness, her warmth around me as all the tiniest aftershocks erupt across my body. I want to stuff my face into her neck and paint the skin with my heaving exhales and the sweetest kisses. I want her for theafter.

The thought makes my heart tighten, and I wonder, maybe, if, in another place and another time, Harper might also be mine for the loving.

I pull out my phone, opening my message thread with Harper, seeing her last voice note. I’m tempted to play it for the fortieth time since I first opened it this morning. But what difference would it make? I have it memorized.

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