“I never should have let her into my life,” Miles said of Sophie. Sophia. Whatever.

  “Yeah? And I should have never taken you over there and exposed you to Gloria.”

  He made a sour face. “Bullshit.”

  “It’s an open fact that Erin is in a polyamorous relationship. You can’t blame yourself because someone else used that for attention. You know now Sophia would have been sniffing around for every bit of information she could get. But you didn’t know that then. I don’t know your aunt very well, but I am pretty sure she’d agree with me. And you sure can’t take responsibility for getting someone like Gloria angry. This is Gloria’s drug. She wants to be mad. She seeks it out like an addict.” Harlow had become convinced of this. Gloria Martin was an anger junkie. Nothing made her happier than being mad at something or someone unless it was sitting back and watching everyone be miserable because of her anger.

  “How come you can believe that, but not that you need to block her from your life and move on?” Miles asked. “You’re right. Sophie didn’t find out about Erin through me. I never even introduced her to Erin. But then you don’t make that next logical step.” He put his hand on her chest, over her heart. “Protect this. Protect your big, beautiful compassionate heart and cut this woman from your life. She brings you nothing but heartache.”

  No, she hadn’t blocked Gloria’s number, but she would that very day. In the month and a half since Atlanta, Harlow had done some soul searching about her relationship or lack of one with her biological mother.

  She didn’t know why Gloria hated her so much. For a long time, she’d believed once she figured it out, it could be fixed somehow and she and Gloria might be able to have at least a civil, non-toxic connection. Harlow didn’t believe that anymore. Yes, she still wanted to know the reasons, but Gloria was Gloria and there would be no tearful apology and reconciliation.

  Harlow licked her lips. “I’m trying. It’s not second nature to cut off family but I know it’s the choice I need to make.”

  He took her hand. “I can help you. We can do this step by step. Who on that side of your family is salvageable for a relationship? Would your maternal grandparents cut you off?”

  “I’ve…I have no relationship with them. I’ve only met them twice. Gloria told me I looked too much like my dad and they couldn’t stand that.”

  What a mess. She was riding that line between anger and embarrassment at having this level of her disfunction revealed to anyone, much less Miles, who was just so kind and good to her.

  Miles wrestled his instincts back as much as he could. The words he wanted to say, castigating her fucked up mother and brothers and even her grandparents. God damn, he hated these people so much. Including Hector and Mindy, who only popped up when they could benefit from something.

  He could see how mortified Harlow was by sharing all these details and that made him even angrier. None of this was about her or anything she’d done and yet, she was ashamed of things these assholes did to her.

  “My maternal grandfather murdered someone,” he told her quietly. Her eyes widened with that information and then she took his hands in hers.

  “Oh my god. Miles, I’m sorry.”

  He waved it away. “I never met him. But my mother was manipulated and hurt repeatedly by that story. A reporter tried to break my parents up over it because she hadn’t told anyone about it, and it came out at the worst possible time. I’m only telling you this, so you understand you’re not alone in being related to monsters. And to underline it’s not about you. Like the people I’ve been with in the past aren’t about you,” he said, reminding her of that earlier part of the conversation. “Family isn’t about who you are. It’s not about DNA. Family is about what you do. They don’t deserve you. Any aunts or uncles or cousins?”

  “No. Gloria has three brothers. I’ve never heard anything from them. Ever. As for anyone else? I don’t know. I love my niece and nephews. I’ll continue to send them things as long as that’s okay with their parents. I still love my brothers even though I don’t know if I can have any sort of healthy relationship with them at all. Hector and Mindy both texted me today to warn me about Gloria. That gives me hope that one day in the future I might be able to be in their lives in a healthy way. Luis? Maybe never. They’re all a big question mark.”

  At the crack in her voice, Miles pulled her into a hug, stroking his palms up and down her back. “Each new thing I learn about them makes me sicker. Did your dad and she fight? Did he…hurt her?” Miles couldn’t understand why they would hate one kid so much but accept the other two just fine. Though everything he knew about her dad told him Richie wasn’t the type to put his hands on anyone weaker, it needed to be considered.

  “I’m sure they fought. How do you not? I did some searching to figure out what happened. I couldn’t find anything in their divorce papers or in the tabloids pointing to him being abusive. Or drugs or alcohol or side chicks. He led a fast life so I’m sure they suspected he was up to no good. People do bad things. Just because he was always gentle with me and everyone else he considered his to protect doesn’t mean he couldn’t have hurt her. But to be completely honest with you, Gloria would have said. If it were true, she’d have shouted from the rooftops that he’d hit her or fucked around. She complained a lot about being neglected when he was on tour, and that I can believe. Gloria has no issues talking shit and making people look bad. She said plenty about my dad as I grew up, but it was that he was lazy and stupid, not abusive.”

  Miles hurt for her. Hurt to hear she’d been treated so badly by her grandparents as well as her mother and brothers. He wished he could get her the answers she deserved. He wished to his toes that he’d never given Sophie a second glance. Embarrassment burned in his gut that Sophie had used details she’d learned from their involvement to mess with Harlow. And that she sensationalized his aunt Erin’s relationship to get clicks and sell sodas or whatever else was outside his control.

  Worst of all, Sophie could have damaged his relationship with Harlow, and that infuriated him more than it embarrassed him.

  “My uncle Ben runs a personal security company. If you ever wanted to do some deeper checking on a professional level, I’m happy to make that connection with you two. He’s really good and he knows others who are equally good at investigating,” Miles said

  “Investigate my mother?”

  “Not her finances or anything like that. But if she won’t tell you and if you won’t demand your father tell you everything he knows about their break up, find out what you can on your own. An investigator can find police reports if there are any. Talk to possible witnesses to anything between your parents or between your mother and her family. You deserve to know, Harlow. If for no other reason than to finally accept that none of this is your fault. Plus, with Ben, I’ll get the family discount. You may get answers. Or not. But what’s the harm in trying?”

  “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, I’m blocking her number.” She looked down at her phone as she said it, so he hoped she was doing it right then.

  “I’m going to read that interview. Is that okay with you?” he asked. “I want to see what Sophie said.” He needed to explain to Harlow what the end of that relationship had been like. What it had left behind. But there was enough on her plate right that moment, so he’d wait a day.

  “Hang on. I’ll text you the link,” Harlow told him moments before the info showed up on his screen.

  “I will read this and then you and I are going to put this away for the night. I have plans for you and none of them involve Gloria and her bullshit.”

  “I’m glad to hear all this hasn’t made you want to run for the hills.”

  He shook his head, pulling her close. He was glad for the same thing. “You and I are just fine. None of this is about you and me, Harlow.”

  After a kiss, he settled on the couch and opened the interview to see just what Sophie had said and why Gloria was so up in arms over it.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  As he finished the interview, she put music on in the background. Interpol, he recognized and smiled. She’d told him they’d been an influence on Above Me. They certainly had been on Earthquakes.

  He was about to frown, remembering the piece he’d just finished reading, but she came out from the bedroom wearing…nothing at all except for the shoes. She leaned against the doorjamb, one eyebrow raised, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  “Before dinner we had plans. You made some promises, Miles Brown. I’m here to collect.”

  Going hot all over, Miles tossed his phone to the side and stood, moving to her because what else was there on earth he wanted more than to touch her?

  “I love the shoes,” he told her before he kissed along her jawline. “You’re wearing my favorite outfit on you.”

  “Yeah?”

  He traced along the vines and lavender-toned blossoms of the clematis tattoo on her side. A symbol of mental strength and will, she’d told him. So very indicative of what she was, who she was. Strong, always climbing to reach her goals. Beautiful and unique.

  He took her breasts in his palms, loving the shape and weight of them. Loving that no one else had this privilege but him. Loving, especially, the way she arched into his touch.

  “New jewelry?” he asked, bending to look at the opalescent bar with onyx beads. “Pretty.”

  She hummed her assent right before she raked her nails down his back through his shirt and circled her caress around his waist until she reached the button and fly of his trousers. “I like this too,” she told him as she pulled the zipper down and the edge of her blunt tipped nails dragged over his cock through the thin material of his shorts before she pulled him out carefully and then shoved his pants down, his cock still in her grasp.

  Already so hard his pulse seemed to boom through his dick, that touch brought a bead of semen that she ran her fingertip through, and he watched, rapt, as she brought that finger to her mouth and licked it off.

  That sound of desperate longing came from his gut and brought a sexy smile to her lips.

  Yep, she was going to kill him.

  And then she dropped to her knees, and he had to grab the doorjamb to keep his legs because the sight of Harlow there, naked except for heels, on her knees as she looked at his prick like it was the yummiest thing she’d ever seen, was a sensual punch to his gut.

  She leaned in, brushing her cheek against his thigh and across, over the head of his cock where she paused to lick through more precome. The molding around the door creaked slightly as he gripped it, so he made an effort to ease up.

  Harlow licked over his piercing and tugged slightly with her tongue, and he groaned. She looked up the line of his body, her lips already glossy and slightly plump. “If you lean back against the doorway that might help.”

  Miles wanted to laugh but instead, he turned slightly to do as she’d suggested. “Whatever makes this easier on you,” he managed to say around a tongue that felt four sizes too big for his mouth.

  She helped him out of his shoes and then slid his pants and shorts off his legs before she moved back.

  “Wait.” He managed to make his rubbery legs walk him over to the couch and grab a pillow from it that he handed to her. “So your knees won’t hurt.”

  Harlow had been in the bedroom as he’d read that damned interview, trying to figure out what the hell to do about everything when she’d realized all of that outside shit could wait. She had this brief time with him, and she’d be damned if she allowed Gloria or anyone connected to her to ruin that.

  He’d gotten her all sexed up and silly before they’d left for dinner, and she had every intention of making good on his promises. She had a few promises of her own to keep and as she’d been thinking about how powerful it made her feel when she sucked his cock, Harlow had gotten rid of all her clothes, put the shoes back on and decided to take Miles’s attention from anything in the universe but her.

  He was so hard the surface of his skin seemed to buzz just slightly, as if his sexual energy was a tangible thing. She wanted him to know just because some chick he nailed a while years before she came along didn’t have the power to lessen anything between them. Sophia might want to cash in on her knowledge of this piercing, she thought as she played along it in ways she knew drove him crazy, but Harlow loved the way she made him feel.

  This was none of anyone’s business but theirs.

  She cupped his balls and slowly sucked him into her mouth, careful not to snag on the metal but giving enough pressure she rocked the piercing from side to side.

  He snarled her name as she took him as deeply as she could and pulled back, swirling her tongue around the head before swallowing him again.

  Over and over, she took him deep and pulled nearly all the way free only to do it again and again and again. The muscles in his thighs began to tremble and his hips began to thrust as he lost his control bit by bit.

  “Stop,” he said in a harsh whisper as he tunneled his fingers through her hair, tugging.

  Without moving, she flicked her gaze up and locked to his. The connection of that moment clicked into place.

  “I want to fuck you,” he managed to say, though she heard his breathlessness.

  “Plenty of time for that,” she told him before she licked across the crown without breaking eye contact.

  He groaned, but she knew he’d lost motivation to make her stop. As if he didn’t have excellent recovery time? He’d be inside her soon enough. But she was in the middle of something she had no plans to stop until he came.

  What the fuck had he done to deserve her? On her knees, his cock in her mouth, greedy for him to the point she refused to let go.

  The naked carnality of the picture of this woman pouring all her sensuality into him rendered him slightly faint and certainly not in the sort of control he usually was when he wanted to sex her up.

  He was at her mercy. And what mercy it was as each lick and suck, each nibble and tug combined to absolutely devastate him. His climax began to tingle in the balls of his feet as a flush seemed to flow from his scalp to his cock while he clenched his jaw, attempting to hold back. Wanting to draw out every single second of this absolute pleasure until there was nothing else to do but let go as he came so hard his teeth tingled.

  He thrust his hips, meeting her mouth in long strokes as he came.

  She continued until he finally pulled back and turned to the side. The sensation rolling through him in wave after wave of hypersensitive pleasure, ebbing just slightly until he had the presence of mind to bend, grab her upper arms and haul her up to her feet so he could kiss her.

  “My turn,” he said between kisses as he maneuvered them both to the couch. “Going to eat your pussy right now and while you’re still juicy and fluttering from climax, I’m going to bend you over the couch like I’ve been wanting to.”

  “Shirt off,” she mumbled as he pushed her to sit.

  Not bothering with finesse, he pulled halves apart, sending buttons flying. She protested but once he fell to his knees in front of where she sat, she quieted, her pupils so large they nearly swallowed all the color.

  Her skin was velvet soft as he kissed his way up from her very pretty shoes, pausing to lick behind her knee before continuing to her pussy. Miles breathed over that sensitive skin but didn’t quite touch, instead starting at the other ankle and kissing up that leg.

  Then he spread her labia, exposing all that sweet, slick flesh, dark pink with her desire. “Look at you. So pretty and so, so wet.”

  Her hands fisted, grabbing the edge of the couch cushion as he took a slow, leisurely lick, circling her clit with the tip of his tongue until she gasped and then growled, tipping her hips slightly to get more friction.

  “Patience. We’ll get there, I promise. Let me love you,” he murmured, his mouth against her.

  He kissed up her belly, up to her breasts. So fucking sexy. Her nipples hard, drawn tight, called to him. “Can’t forget these,” he said before he sucked hard, flicking his tongue back and forth until she squirmed, her hands on his shoulders as she slid her fingers up his neck and then into his hair.

  The scent of her rose between them and he wanted to rub all over her to cover himself in it.

  Sex with Harlow was never boring. She never gave anything but everything. Their connection seared through him as he realized it had changed his perspective in ways he’d probably still be discovering years from then.

  That she demanded her pleasure was one of the hottest things he’d ever experienced. He kissed her mouth, drowning in her taste, hissing when she nipped his bottom lip hard enough to sting.

  Her grip on his hair changed as he continued to kiss her until she went soft and a little dreamy. Soon enough though, she placed her palms on his shoulders and pushed.

  Chuckling, he obeyed her command to get back to eating her pussy. Fucking into her with his tongue, groaning himself when she put one of her legs up on his shoulder and arched, stroking herself against his mouth.

  He grabbed a healthy bit of her ass and held her to him to get the angle he knew would drive her higher. Harlow was greedy for her pleasure. Impatient to come as she kept a handful of his hair in her fist, holding his face to her.

  She wasn’t quiet when it came to sex. Soft moans, snarls, a squeak from time to time and lots of orders to go faster or slower. Damn it, nothing else could compare to this.

  Kneeling between her thighs, his mouth on her pussy as he held her in place, he was surrounded by everything Harlow. Her scent, her taste, the softness of her inner thighs against his ears and the side of his face.

  He’d leave beard burn on that extra sensitive skin and instead of guilt, he’d remember at different points all day long. Smile as he thought about Harlow moving or having her clothes brush against that tender flesh and recalling just how he gave it to her.

  Her clit was swollen and firm, and when he licked it she shivered over and over until her legs began to shake. He slid two fingers inside her and she fluttered all around him. His cock had already come back to life after his last climax just at her taste and the sounds she made. When he sealed his mouth around her clit and sucked over and over, she cried out and wrapped her legs around his head as she came on his mouth. He heard nothing but the rush of blood in his head and the pounding of his pulse until she went limp, and her legs slid open.