Chapter 13 - Harper #2
“Stop me now, Harper,” he says, but the warning isn’t sharp or threatening.
It’s quiet, threaded with a tension so carefully contained that it feels more like a confession than a line drawn.
The sound of his voice vibrates through me, low enough that it settles in my bones, and the breath I drag in stumbles when his position shifts beneath me.
I can feel the strength of his thighs where my knees bracket him, the subtle tightening of muscles as he anchors himself into the ledge, the unspoken restraint in every controlled movement he makes.
My heart pounds against my sternum, a frantic counterpoint to the steady way his hands move.
He drags them back to my hips, slow and deliberate, guiding my body in a subtle adjustment that has nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with testing whether I’ll pull away.
When I don’t, the air between us thickens, warming, heavy enough that my next breath trembles on its way out.
The sound betrays more than I’d ever willingly offer, and his eyes immediately sharpen in response.
He feels it, the unraveling, the way my body reacts despite every warning screaming inside my mind.
Heat rushes to my cheeks, humiliation and something darker braiding together in a way that sends a shiver down my spine.
My fingers, which had flattened against his chest for balance, curl into the fabric of his shirt almost involuntarily.
I can feel his heartbeat under my palm, steady at first, then quickening just slightly as the moment sinks deeper into whatever this charged thing between us is becoming.
I try to look away, to find something, anything, stable in the room, but his face tilts up, drawing my attention back with a care that feels almost dangerous.
Straddling him like this makes every shift of his body magnified.
Every exhale brushes heat against my collarbone.
Every subtle movement pulls me into the shape of him.
My entire awareness collapses into the points where we touch, and even though he leaves space for me to retreat, the space feels impossibly small. Too small.
He studies me like I’m the one who could break him, not the other way around.
Something unspoken flickers across his expression, a complex mixture of restraint, longing, and frustration, and it lodges deep in my chest in a way that steals my breath entirely.
When he finally says my name, it sounds like a question he’s afraid to finish.
"Harper..."
He says my name like it’s sacred. It vibrates through me, low and dangerous, spoken like a warning... or maybe a promise. His hands stay firm on my hips, grounding me in the moment while the rest of me feels like it might come apart.
The room is quiet except for the storm tapping against the glass, the occasional groan of wind shifting through the trees outside.
But here, in this moment, I can’t hear anything except the sound of my heartbeat, loud, frantic, thudding through me with a rhythm that matches the way his fingers begin to tighten.
Not pulling. Not demanding. Just... coaxing. Suggesting.
I breathe, sharp and shallow, when he tilts his hips beneath me, just enough to make me feel him. All of him.
My thighs clench instinctively, body reacting before thought has the chance to intervene.
The firm pressure of him beneath me drags a breathy gasp from my throat, one I try and fail to muffle.
I’m still holding his shirt in my fists, knuckles white from how tightly I’m wound, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
His hands are patient, slow, as he begins to guide my body into motion.
He shifts me over him, just a subtle roll, friction catching in a way that lights a fuse deep in my core. My breath stutters. My lashes flutter. And still, I don’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him.
His gaze never leaves mine, his lips parted slightly as if he’s savoring every inch of restraint it’s taking not to flip me onto my back and ruin me right here.
But instead, he moves with control. Precision.
Every small rock of my hips guided by his hands, pressing me down, dragging me forward, letting me feel the length of him beneath the thin barrier between us.
My hips roll again, this time on my own, chasing that flicker of heat. And when I do, he lets out the softest groan, the sound of it rippling straight through me.
“I-” I try to say something, anything, but the words melt on my tongue when he shifts beneath me again, matching my motion, deepening it. The pressure is almost too much, not enough, everything, and suddenly my body’s pulsing with need.
He leans in, forehead resting against mine, his breath catching like mine, strained and thick with want.
“You feel that?” he whispers, voice fraying at the edges, jaw tight like he’s holding himself back. “That’s what happens when you don’t tell me to stop.”
And I still don’t.
Instead, I sink into him, my body aching, desperate, alive.
He lifts his hips to meet mine, his grip tightening just slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to claim.
The rhythm we build is slow, heated, full of friction and breathless sounds, and there’s no pretending anymore that this is innocent. That we can come back from this.
My chest brushes his with each shift, every inch of us tangled, caught in a storm of our own making. The storm outside might rage, but the real one is here, between our bodies, our mouths inches apart, breaths stealing from each other like we’re already kissing without touching.
When his hands trail up from my hips, fingertips grazing under my shirt, I arch into him like I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. My head falls back, exposing my neck, my chest pressed to his as heat licks down my spine.
“Say it,” he murmurs. “Say stop.”
But I can’t. I won’t.
My hips keep moving, grinding against him, his hardness teasing me with what I know we both want.
And still, I don’t tell him to stop.
Because I want him to finish what he’s started.
And I want to lose myself right here, on him, under him, with him, until nothing else exists but this heat...this hunger.
“Keep grinding on me like that,” he growls into my skin, voice hot and dark, “and I swear I’ll take you right here. With your panties soaked and your thighs spread, while you whimper my name so sweet I’ll never hear it the same again.”
His words slam into me, igniting something raw and desperate between my legs.
I should pull away, but my body’s already answering him, hips rocking down over the thick, straining length beneath his pants.
The pressure sends a pulse of need straight through my core, making my breath catch.
I’m soaking through the lace, the fabric clinging to me, drenched with want.
His grip on my hips tightens like he’s fighting himself, guiding my motion with firm, possessive hands.
Each roll of my body drags us deeper into the heat, slow, torturous friction that presses my clit just right.
My head falls forward as the ache builds with every grind, a wicked rhythm that has my legs trembling and my chest flushed.
“You think you scare me?” he rasps, voice a razor wrapped in velvet as his mouth brushes my throat. “You don’t.”
His lips graze my jaw, soft and devastating. “You melt under my hands, Harper. You come alive when I touch you. You crave it, you crave me, even if you’re too proud to say it.”
The words drag across my skin like silk, catching on every nerve. I bite my lip, but a moan still slips out, strangled and breathless. He hears it. Feels it. Smirks against my pulse as he drags me forward again, grinding me against the thick ridge of his cock until I nearly lose control.
“I see it,” he breathes. “The way your hips roll like they belong to me. The way your thighs clench like you’re trying to trap me inside you.”
His hand slips beneath the hem of my shirt, fingers skating up my bare spine, and I arch into him like he’s the only thing keeping me grounded. His other hand finds its way between us, pressing down over my soaked panties, and the whimper that escapes me is shameless.
“You’re a challenge,” he whispers, voice laced with reverence and heat. “A challenge only for me.”
I can barely breathe. My hands fist his shirt like it’ll anchor me, but nothing can. My body pulses, desperate and soaked, aching for more.
“Tell me your secrets, Harper,” he murmurs against my ear, his breath so warm, so intimate, it nearly breaks me. “Tell me who you really are.”
His words hit something deep and dangerous inside me, something that cracks open under the weight of his touch. My lips part, voice barely a whisper.
“Why?”
He doesn't hesitate.
“Just one of my secrets,” he says, and there’s a kind of darkness in his tone that doesn’t scare me… it tempts me. Makes me want to lean in and fall headfirst into the fire we’ve lit between us.
But before I can say another word, before I can grind again or beg or lose what little is left of my self-control, a voice slices through the haze.
“Harper, are you in here?”
Liam.
Inside the library.
Reality slams into me.
I jolt like I’ve been shocked, yanking myself off Sebastian’s lap so fast my body whiplashes from the loss of contact. The cold air rushes in, a cruel contrast to the heat still pulsing between my thighs. My legs shake as I stumble backward, breath hitched, chest rising too fast, too shallow.
Sebastian doesn’t move.
He stays on the alcove, wide-eyed and silent, hands clenched, jaw tight. But his pants tell the truth neither of us speaks.
The thick, visible bulge strains against the front of his pants. The fabric is darkened where my arousal soaked through, a wet stain spreading across the fabric...mine. The sight makes my stomach twist, my face burn, my heart collapse in on itself.
We let that happen. I let that happen.
And now it’s sitting between us like a loaded gun.
Sebastian’s gaze finally lifts to mine. Whatever cocky fire was in his eyes before is gone. Now there’s only disbelief. And something dangerously close to regret.
My hand covers my mouth, trying to hold in the mess of shame and want and confusion clawing its way up my throat. My skin is flushed, my thighs are still damp, and the part of me that wanted him, so badly, is still throbbing, aching for a high I didn’t let myself reach.
He opens his mouth, but no sound comes. No smirk. No witty remark. No rescue. Just silence.
And it kills me.
I force myself to speak, voice trembling, bitter in my own ears.
“No one knows.”
It’s a warning. A plea. A lie I need to make true.
I turn to leave, hand gripping the shelves, legs still weak.
But then I pause, twisting back just enough to glance at him once more.
His shirt is wrinkled where I clutched it. His lips are parted like he still doesn’t know how to speak. The tent in his pants still painfully obvious.
And I say it. The truth I hate. The wound I twist into my own chest.
“Just another body for your roster, right?”
His eyes flash, shock, maybe guilt, but I don’t stay long enough to hear what he has to say.
Because if he answers…
If he confirms it...
I’ll never come back from it.
So I walk away, soaked in heat and regret, knowing full well that I left a piece of myself on that alcove with him. And he’ll never forget what I gave him. Even if I pretend it never happened.