Chapter 18
HARPER
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After Mabel left, I did some preemptive digging on the owner of One Night Stan’s. While I found plenty of info about Stan’s time in the limelight with his band, there was next to nothing on his life here in Starlight Cove, bar a few mentions and a couple photos of his family—his beautiful wife and their four sons, all of whom were well into their thirties by now. In fact, all information seemed to stop completely a few years back. And there was nothing I loved more than a mystery to solve.
I’d been so sidetracked with this new path, it was almost seven by the time I headed up to the apartment. Except for the night of the thunderstorm, I usually got home around six every evening and didn’t hear Levi come in until well after I’d retreated to my room. I could only hope tonight would be no different.
I wasn’t ready to see him yet after what had happened earlier in the week. When we’d melted into each other on the couch. His hand had been cupped protectively, possessively, around my bare thigh, and though the touch hadn’t been indecent, it had felt more intimate than anything I’d experienced in a long damn time.
What shook my foundation more than anything, though, was that it had happened with Levi. And that I’d allowed it to.
Tentatively, I stepped into the apartment and closed the door softly behind me. At first, nothing was out of the ordinary. It felt still and silent in the space as I locked the door and set down my laptop bag.
At least until that first moan hit my ears.
It was soft. Feminine. And I’d deny until my last dying breath what the thought of Levi here with another woman did to me. All without my awareness or permission. Because cognitively, I didn’t care what—or who—he did. We weren’t together and hadn’t been for what felt like a lifetime. We weren’t even friends. Whom he chose to spend his time with—in or out of the bedroom—was of no consequence to me.
So then, why the hell was my stomach seizing, my heart leaping into my throat before bottoming out straight to my feet? Worse was the fact that the moans were too loud to be coming from his bedroom. Which meant he was fucking some random woman in our shared space. And I had no choice but to walk straight past him and his not-so-quiet friend.
Well, fuck him. I wasn’t going to scurry away, escape out the front door and come back hours later when he was done. For the next month, this was my home, too, and I wasn’t going to let him run me out of it. No matter what the thought of him with someone else did to my insides.
Rolling my shoulders back and straightening my spine, I took a couple deep breaths, steeling myself for what I’d find. And then I strolled into the living room with the sole focus of making it to my bedroom without catching a glimpse of the live porno that was happening in the apartment.
That was until an overexaggerated moan drew my attention as I passed through the living room. It took a moment for my brain to register what I was seeing since it was so incongruent from what my imagination had previously conjured.
Instead of being met with a random woman bent over the couch, head tossed back in pleasure as Levi fucked her from behind, I found him sitting there. Alone. His sweatpants were pushed down in the front, and his hand was wrapped around his cock. All while porn played on the TV.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight of him stroking himself. I couldn’t stop myself from taking in every inch of him. The hair falling carelessly over his heavy-lidded eyes, lips parted with his labored breaths. The tattoos scattered over the carved muscles of his arms, chest, and abdomen, just begging for my touch.
What drew my eye the most, though, was his straining erection as he gripped it in his fist. His cock was thick, long, hard, and so fucking intimidating. Especially with the piercings—yes, plural—through the head.
But what shocked me more than anything wasn’t how much bigger he seemed than what I remembered or how different it looked with the new accessory. It was the very unmistakable pair of hot-pink panties clenched in his fist as he stroked up and down the length of his cock. My hot-pink panties. I must have dropped them that morning when I’d brought my laundry back to my bedroom.
I’d spent years of my life hating this man. Hating what he’d done to me. And though I still held on to that with a tenuous grip, I couldn’t deny my body’s reaction to seeing him like this. Knowing he was using some part of me to get off.
I also couldn’t deny how much I seemed to like having that power over him, when it had always felt like he’d been the one in control.
My nipples tightened, and a flush worked its way through my body as I studied each rise and fall of his chest. Each measured stroke of his fist. Each swipe of his thumb over the head of his cock and his answering groans. Then there was the pure hunger written all over his face as he watched me, his gaze never once straying to the porno playing on the TV.
He didn’t take his eyes off me, and there was no mistaking the ravenous glint in his gaze as he regarded me. As if he’d been edging himself for an hour, maybe more. As if he’d just been waiting for me to arrive.
It took a moment, but the pieces finally started clicking into place… Him sitting out here in our shared space, watching porn on the TV instead of on his phone, locked away in his room like any self-respecting adult. The panties clutched in his fist. The intense way he was staring at me.
That little fucker. He wanted me to find him like this. I just didn’t know why.
I crossed my arms, as much to give off an air of indifference as to hide my body’s reaction to him. “So this is what we’re doing now?”
He shuddered out a breath as he swiped his thumb wrapped in my silk panties over the head of his cock. “I’m not sure what you’re doing. I’m just trying to get off.”
“With my panties,” I said flatly. “In the middle of the living room.”
“Looks like. It’s my apartment. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
There it was. This whole thing was nothing more than a ruse. Just a game of chicken, one in which a win meant pushing me out of this space. But I had no intention of losing, and I was absolutely not leaving.
His gaze traveled over me from head to toe, and I felt it along every single one of those inches. It was just a ghost of a caress, but my body lit up as if it felt his touch. Finally, when he met my eyes again, his were full of so much heat, I had to force my body not to outwardly react. Not when this was obviously just a joke to him.
“Or you can come join me.” His voice was low and rough, threaded with a need I would’ve bet money had been real had I not known what was behind this whole act.
Oh, he was good. Really fucking good. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he was, no doubt, counting on it working.
Except Levi was playing by an old set of rules.
The Harper he’d known back then didn’t exist anymore. The one who was naive, sheltered, and subservient. The one who’d back down without question and leave without a fuss, not wanting to make waves. The one who’d only begun to explore her sexuality and the power of it.
But I wasn’t her anymore, and I hadn’t been in a long time. He underestimated me. And he underestimated exactly how much I wanted to stay. Not here with him, obviously, but in Starlight Cove.
I wanted that promotion, that permanence I hadn’t ever had in my life. And no way was I allowing Levi to push that out of my grasp. No way I was going to allow him to scare me away.
“Fine.” Without another word, I turned on my heel and strode to my bedroom, leaving the door partially open.
I rummaged through my things, making as much noise as possible. Only partly because I wasn’t exactly sure where the item I was looking for was located. But mostly because I wanted him to think I was in here packing in a rush. Because that was what he’d hoped. I could see it in the taunting glimmer in his eyes. In that stubborn set of his chin. He expected me to cave.
But it would be much more satisfying to bring Levi to his knees—literally or figuratively—instead.