What You Leave Behind (11 page)

They are languid and falling, crashing back to Earth as they hit the mattress, and tangle against each other in the sheets of his bed. His legs intertwine with hers and their hands find backs and arms and other holds of which they don’t want to let go. Slowly, softly, those hands move and shift and grab, hold tighter and longer, and their mouths slide softly over all of their exposed skin at a worshiping speed.

Eventually, even their mouths still, their breaths level out, and Harper’s eyelashes begin to flutter against his chest. He glances down at her, his chin brushing against her hair as he does, and his heart feels entirely too full at the sight of the beauty sprawled across him. Fiery hair and porcelain skin blanket his usual view of the unsightly scars that crisscross his chest, and with her draped over him, he’s able to almost imagine they aren’t there. He kisses the top of her head and she stirs, moves to languidly kiss at his lips again, and he wraps her fully in his arms.

“I feel safe with you,” she murmurs against him.

“That’s all I want, Harp,” he says softly as she drags her lips down his neck and over his heart, over all of the scars and pain. He can feel the weight of her mouth and more bearing down on the core of him, and it beats quickly as he says, “Harper, I need you to promise me something.” She stills, her mouth parted against his skin, and the seconds drag on as he waits for an answer. He can feel the slight nod of her head as her hair brushes against his shoulder, encouraging him to go on. “I’m yours as long as you want me, however you want me,” he whispers, his throat contracting tightly around the words. “But when the time comes that you don’t want me anymore—”

“Austin—”

“Please don’t break me.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“You don’t know that.” Harper releases a heavy breath against him, but doesn’t refute his claim. “But I’d wreck myself for you, you know.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I’ve been doing it for years,” he laughs solemnly, the sound quickly tapering to a halt. “Just—there isn’t much heart in me and what’s left of it, I can’t—just please don’t break me.”

“Aussie,” Harper whispers his name right over his heart and what little remains intact within him constricts at the sound. “I have no intentions of breaking your heart.”

“Whether you intend to or not—”

“Don’t kill this before it starts.”

In the silence of the room, in the grip of the moment, Harper climbs onto him once more and palms his cheeks, his strong jaw tense beneath her hands. In the barest of moonlight cast through the window and over them, she looks into his eyes, and he looks back at her through tears he doesn’t bother to hide. Everything is raw and real and he’s got nothing left to keep from her—everything he has, all that he is, laid out for her taking.

“I’m just afraid,” Austin tells her, his eyes still locked with hers.

“I am, too.” Harper’s voice wavers at the admission, and Austin is right there, arms wrapping strongly around her back, his own fears pushed aside at the mention of hers. “I’m terrified. There’s so many variables, so many things that could go right or wrong, and that leaves me so on edge.”

“You have nothing to fear. I promise you. I’ll always—”

“Can you promise I didn’t spend ten years loving the wrong man? That I didn’t waste time that I should have spent with you? Can you promise this will last? Or that it won’t? Because that’s—Austin, this is—” She takes a staggering breath as she collects herself. “I promise, if you promise.”

“Always.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Beneath the caress of the morning sun, forgotten is the fear of the night prior, replaced by a crackling static, a current that courses between Harper and Austin and mounts as they come to. In the two brief hours they’ve managed to sleep, they’ve remained entwined—arms wrapped loosely about each other’s bodies, legs over and under and between—and they find a certain kind of safety enveloping them as they welcome the waking world as one. Austin’s hand finds itself across the small of Harper’s back, and from where she is nestled against his side, she lets out a small, contented sigh as his thumb rubs circles over her spine. The sigh transforms to a moan as he brazenly guides her on top of him with that same hand, and he matches the sound as she more than willingly slides up the length of his body until their noses touch. Harper hitches her leg up his hip, raising the stakes, and Austin bites back a groan, fights against himself, and his want to be inside of her—a want that feels more and more like a need with each passing second.

“Tell me we can stay in bed,” Harper murmurs against his jaw as she curls into him. At the balmy feel of her words against his skin, Austin rocks his hips gently, leaving Harper a bit mesmerized by the way his lips part just so—the way his teeth dig into his bottom lip as he tries not to do it again. She shifts her weight and meets him halfway, her gaze pinned raptly on his face as their hips meet, and when he opens his eyes, she sees a drowning man, anchored with the weight of wanting. “More,” she begs as she writhes against him encouragingly. “Please, more.”

She presses her lips firmly against his, her sour morning breath restraining her from sliding her tongue against his as she craves. Instead, her mouth leads her away to places where she can taste him in some way, and she lets her teeth scrape against his neck as his hips move against her again. She can’t stop the cry that escapes her throat, and her teeth meet his skin once more, daring him to do it again. This time, when he moves, she does too, and moans tumble out of their mouths harmoniously as they meet in the middle.

Harper slides off of him slowly, dragging the friction out as long as she can before her back presses against the mattress, and the dig of her heel against the back of his thigh begs him to move atop her. Austin cannot find the strength to protest. He wants her entirely and he will give her anything she desires—particularly when her desires align so perfectly with his own. He holds himself up with a flattened palm against the mattress, his other hand gripping her hip, and cannot stop his body from quaking lustfully as he looks down at her—the part of her lips, the way her hair fans out in waves around her, the feminine ridge of her collarbones. Laid out beneath him, she is just as he pictured she would be, yet somehow even better, even more beautiful.

“So long,” Austin mumbles, his mouth near her neck. He breathes heavily against it as his hips begin to rock unapologetically, press and push with a focused rhythm. “Harper, so long.” She hears the words, but feels the meaning of them more in the way he moves against her.  He is taut with years of longing, eager to push himself against and into whatever parts of her she’ll give him—and she wants to give. She wants to give him everything so very badly, to reward him for all his wanting. Her fingers press into the slight dimples at the base of his spine and coax him forward as her own hips rise to meet his fervently. Austin grunts at the feel of it and moans her name against her neck before his hips rock faster, harder.

“Kiss me,” she pleads, the words a breathy whine. Her hand grips his jaw, aiming to drag him to her mouth, morning breath forgotten. He holds himself up on his forearms and presses his mouth to hers without pause, his lower lip surrendering easily to her teeth and tongue. She worships his mouth as the spark of a fire begins to burn within the pit of her stomach, and it spreads with each thrust, each lick and moan. She remembers that feeling and the way it’s always been attached to Liam, and digs her fingers roughly into Austin’s back and her teeth into his shoulder as she tries to forget that name. “Harder,” she begs, the word nearly lost beneath a gasp as he presses against her with more need. All thoughts of Liam slip away as pleasure trumps pain, and Austin grinds against her as she bucks up against him in kind. She kisses him hard enough to bruise as her eyes close to the beautiful burn, the crush of his body against hers.

“Harper, I’m not—I can’t—” She marvels as his face contorts with pleasure, eyes closed and mouth open, and pulls herself up to kiss at his jaw as he falls apart. He crashes against her one last time, finality and release in every part of the motion, before his arms quiver and he half falls onto her small frame. She touches all of him she can as he comes down, her hands stroking over his shoulders, back, and hips as she waits for his breathing to level out. When it does, he tilts his head to capture the corner of her lips, his mouth slow and lingering. “Harper, I don’t know what—I hope I didn’t—I don’t know what came over me,” he sighs, all of the words sounding too heavy and lacking the distinct bliss Harper thinks they should hold. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” She turns to kiss his lips full-on and takes his hand from where it rests tenderly against her cheek to drag it down her body. There is no reason for him to apologize and she shows him this by pushing herself against him as she unbuttons her jeans and drags down her zipper. “I wanted that, too.”

Austin’s lips part, and form a breathy, “Oh God,” as she guides him beneath the waistband of her jeans. Without hesitation, his long fingers slip urgently across her skin as her breathing picks up, her hand still lingering over his. Needing more, she presses against his knuckles and his fingers slide easily into her—one, then two—as she moves against his hand and moans his name.

“God,” he sighs at the sound, because a higher power is the only thing that makes him believe such a thing could be happening, and he twists his fingers inside of her, pushing them until they disappear fully into pink skin unseen. Her hips rise each time they’re removed, grinding against the heel of his hand and calling his fingers back to where she needs him most, and she sinks her teeth into his shoulder to stifle her cries as her need builds. “No,” Austin says, moving out of her mouth’s reach as he sits up to watch her. “I want to hear you.”

Harper boldly locks her heavy-lidded gaze on his and she cries out a moan loud enough for his liking as his fingers slam into her in response. Austin groans as he watches her crash against his hand, and that’s all it takes—that sound and one final thrust of his hand—to cause her body to arch toward him as ecstasy cuts through her. He waits until she’s done shaking, before he slowly removes his hand and licks his fingers, his eyes locked on hers as she watches him.

“Wow,” Harper sighs, her eyes closing as her head lolls to the side. A residual moan escapes her mouth, followed by another as a belated shiver of pleasure finds its way up her spine when Austin kisses her neck. “Good morning.”

He smiles against her skin and echoes, “Good morning,” while thinking he’s never heard a bigger understatement.

***

Despite his reputation with Dylan Rhodes, Austin is not a lumberjack of any sort—nor a lumberjackass—but as he hauls stacks of timber across the warehouse, he can see where the confusion comes from. Not many people know the term
wood technologist
, after all, and today he feels more like a logger than he ever has before. He removes his gloves and rakes a hand through his damp hair, wipes his sweaty brow along his sawdust and splinter-covered flannel sleeve, and leans back against a pile of cherry wood logs, proudly admiring the almost-ton of raw timber he’s amassed on the loading dock. Manual labor and lack of sleep are a tough combination at the lumberyard, no matter how the bliss of the early morning has enlivened him, and as he absentmindedly counts the logs in front of him, he thinks he’s earned the break.

“Hayward, phone call on line three,” Gemma’s normally meek voice thunders through the PA system, and Austin groans, exhaustion setting in. On this grueling Monday morning, even on a break, he can’t catch a break. Wiping his brow again in an effort to remove the sawdust that has caked across his forehead, Austin hauls himself inside and seeks out the nearest phone. He finds one in the break room on the second floor of the warehouse. As a light flashes next to the button for line three, Austin grabs a bottle of water from the common refrigerator and sits down on the cracked and beaten leather sofa. For a moment, he just lets himself exist in limbo.  The mechanized sounds of the warehouse fall away and he closes his eyes to the fluorescent lights of the break room. Then, with a heaving sigh, he returns to reality and lifts the receiver.

“This is Hayward,” he says in a clipped tone, all business. He’s learned that the companies the lumberyard usually has dealings with prefer a curt man’s man, and though it reminds him of his father to be so blunt, he’s adapted to it over time. “Talk to me.”

“Austin, don’t hang up.”

The room lurches as Liam’s voice rushes into Austin’s ears.

“What the fuck do you want?” Austin asks him sharply, months of anger and hurt spilling out of him in the words. The line falls silent and Austin’s fury grows and morphs with each wordless moment. It shows in the way he gets to his feet, nearly pulling the base of the phone off the wall as he does, as his free hand clenches into a useless fist at his side. Soon, there’s too much fury to contain and Austin explodes—the shrapnel of his rage flies violently over the line. “You don’t get to fucking call me, Liam. You’re shit. You’re complete fucking shit. How dare you do that to her. How fucking dare you, you son of a bitch.”

“I had my reasons for—”

“Not good enough, guy. Not fucking good enough.” The silence encroaches again and Austin is pleased with it this time, feeling as if he has put Liam in his place and defended Harper, though he’d rather do so with his fists. At the thought, his futilely clenched hand tightens reflexively at his side. Shaking with anger, he begins again, his tone unnaturally calm as he repeats slowly, “What. Do. You. Want.”

“I’m in Arizona. Was right in your hometown, actually. I just—it reminded me of you. I miss you, man.”

“I’m glad it takes a whole fucking state for you to remember me, Liam.” There’s a certain saccharine element that weaves through Austin’s words and if there was ever any doubt that it was wholly false, Austin ensures Liam knows this when he says, “Go fuck yourself.”

“Austin, please—”

“Please what, Liam? What the fuck do you think I have to say to you at this point? And really, what the fuck do you think I want to hear you say?”