The Love Trap by Nicole French

27

Eric’s heart beat like a drum as he unlocked the safe next to his side of the bed. It was new, purchased just a few weeks ago.

It took him two tries to even get his fingers correctly placed on the fingerprint reader, another to get the stupid door open. He had never been so nervous in his life. Not when he had asked either woman in his life to marry him. Not when he had taken the bar exam. Not when he had officially been voted chairman of the board of his family’s company.

Nothing compared to this moment.

He pulled out one of the several Moleskine journals and left the others inside, along with the rest of the safe’s contents: his passport and vital documents, the collection of evidence against John Carson, spare cash, and the pistol he had purchased from the Beretta Gallery on Seventy-First and Madison a few days ago. A few well-placed donations had sped up his license applications from three months to two weeks. He really wasn’t sure anything could overcome the surreal feeling of walking into a gun shop on the Upper East Side.

He closed the safe and turned around to face Jane, who sat on the bed with her knees pulled into her chest, her glasses back in place over her reddened nose.

“Do you remember when I found you, Skylar, and Brandon snooping in my place?” he asked.

Jane nodded wordlessly.

“Do you remember when I grabbed something out of the safe?” He quirked a brow at her. “The combination is eleven twenty-eight eighty-seven, by the way.”

Her full mouth fell. “My birthday?”

He allowed himself a small smile. He’d surprised her. That didn’t often happen. “I should probably change it now that we’re married. It’s too easy to guess.” He looked down at the journal, then held it out to her.

Tentatively, she took it. “In Boston, I assumed this had something to do with the society or my father. It looked like you were hiding something more in there.”

But Eric just shook his head. “No, gorgeous. It had to do with you. After Carson took me, I needed to remember us, Jane. What we meant.”

“But you were so awful to me,” she murmured. “You acted like you hated me.”

Guilt shot through him. “I was trying to protect you. And I think we both know how long that lasted.”

She blinked at him. His guilt grew.

Eric edged toward her and nodded at the journal. “Open it, pretty girl.”

After another moment, Jane opened the book. A lock of purple hair fell into her lap. She held it up. “Is this…is this my hair?”

Eric smiled bashfully. “It is. You gave it to me, remember?”

“Yes, but…oh my God, this is your number! You stalker. You actually kept these? Do you have a shoebox full of my nail clippings too?”

This time Eric smirked at the insults. Her face was still tear-streaked, but she was rebounding quickly. Another good sign.

“I told you,” he reminded her. “It’s a talisman. I wanted to keep your bravado with me.”

Jane hiccupped back a laugh, then continued to page through the book, stopping every so often to read the poems, entries, and anything Eric had recorded over the years.

“I wondered if you kept writing after I read that other journal,” she said.

“After Penny died, I didn’t write anything for a year. I just…didn’t care. I traveled, I ignored my friends, my family. I pretended to be anyone but Eric de Vries, family heir. But when I met you, it was like someone jerked me back to reality.”

Jane continued scanning the pages. “But you—Eric, I’m not being jealous here, but you dated so many women in Boston. How do I know that these are about—”

“Just turn the page, Jane.”

To his surprise, she did as he ordered. Out dropped a note written on a coaster, along with a napkin, creased and grayed a bit with time. Jane flattened it against her thigh, whispering the words Eric knew by heart.

“It’s our poem. From the bar.” She looked up. “You kept it too?”

“I kept everything. Keep reading.”

So she did. She lingered over a photo of their first-year study group at the library. Notes passed during Torts and Con-Law. Ticket stubs from that show at Great Scott for her birthday. The receipt from a book of love poems.

Every single remnant of their initial go at it, plus others from the next one, and the one after that.

He watched her page through the intervening years, filled with poetry he’d written, mostly about her. Watching from a distance as she pillaged half of Boston, a mirror image of his own attempts to forget her and move on.

Which, of course, he never could.

The book was separate from his typical journal, something that was dedicated only to her. Sometimes there were months between entries, sometimes a flurry of consecutive days. Eric watched with trepidation as Jane examined the parts that recorded his frustrations with her. The hopes they might get back together. The bitter jealousy. The anger. Disappointment, with her, but more with himself. After all, how many times had they gotten beers with friends in school, and he had chickened out on inviting her home with him? How many times had they seen each other in passing, either at his office when she was visiting Skylar or at the Crosby-Sterlings’ house on a few random holidays?

It was all in there. His desperate faith that the woman he was meant to be with would eventually come back to him. If he just had enough patience.

“You made us a scrapbook,” she said after she fingered the last page. “You’re a midwestern housewife. And I say that as the daughter of a scrapbook-loving midwestern housewife.”

“Jane.”

She finally looked up, and it was clear that she needed another tissue. Her eyes were wet and reddened. A single tear slipped down her cheek. But her smile lit up the fucking room.

“I’m joking because I don’t know what to say,” she admitted. “I’m joking because just like always, you overwhelm the fuck out of me. You make me feel all these things, and I don’t know what to do with them.”

Eric pulled a tissue from the nightstand and gently wiped away the tear streak. She smiled, the curve of her mouth dimpling her full cheek. He kissed it. She hiccupped.

But when she tried to give him the book, he pressed it into her lap.

“It’s for you,” he said. “I don’t need it anymore. It’s for whenever you worry. Whenever you’re scared. I’m not—look, I know I’m not the best at showing how I feel about you on the outside. So when you’re unsure, I want you to read this. I want you to see everything you inspire in me. Because you’re fucking everything to me, Jane. You make this life worth living. And if you’re not in it…well, the truth is, I don’t want to be either.”

She stared at the book for a long time. No jokes. No comebacks. Just digesting his confession.

“When I met you,” she said finally, “I convinced myself that I was just your plaything. You were so put together, so poised. Everything I wasn’t. So I knew I could never be anything more than a lark. An escape. You scared me more than anyone I’d ever known. Sometimes you still do.”

She touched each artifact reverentially as she turned the pages again, hovering her hand over the crumpled scraps, the love notes, each tiny piece in the messy mosaic of their history. Then she closed them and cradled the book to her heart.

“When I met you,” Eric said. “You brought me back to the real world. For over a year, I’d been running away from who I was, what I wanted, everything real. Don’t you know why I asked you to marry me, Jane?”

She blinked, her teary eyes shining. “Because you loved me, you said. Don’t tell me it’s not true after all this.”

Eric smiled at the small joke. “Because I loved you, yes. But also because we’re real, Jane. More real than anything else. And the second I met you, I knew I’d take any day with you, easy or hard, over the best escape I could manage. You were all I wanted. All I could ever want.”

Because he couldn’t not, he kissed her, this time letting the tension of the moment feed the charge instead of holding it back. He slipped a hand around her neck so she couldn’t escape, fusing her mouth to his almost violently. And then, just as suddenly, he released her, though he kept his hand around her nape. Jane quivered under his touch.

“Do you feel that?” he asked as their breaths mingled. “The way your heart beats faster when I’m here? That sudden rush of blood? That’s us, gorgeous.”

“I feel it,” she whispered. “I’ve always felt it.”

“You want a knife, Jane? You’ve cut me open from day one. Just like I did you. Am I wrong?”

Before she could answer, Eric gently removed her glasses, then took the journal from her hands and set them both on the bedside table. Then he kissed her again, and this time her mouth bruised his right back. Her teeth bit into his lower lip; he thought he tasted blood, bright and metallic.

“Tell me,” he ordered, as he pulled her onto his lap. His hands yanked at her skirt, pushing it over her thighs to reveal the milky white of her skin. He attacked her mouth, punishing her, loving her—it was all the same tonight. “Tell me, Jane. Am I wrong?”

His hands wrapped around her sweet, round ass, fingers teasing the damp silk of her panties. The warm, dark place he had dreamed of for weeks. And before that, years. God, he could smell her, that sweet, musky nectar that drove him fucking crazy. A subtle combination of lust, anger, heat, desire. Home.

Jane stilled as his fingers breached the silk. They tickled, dipped, dying to enter. But he wouldn’t. Not until she said what he needed to hear.

“Am. I. Wrong?”

“No,” she whispered, even as her eyelids closed. “No, you’re not wrong. But, Eric…” She placed a hand on his chest like she was unsure whether she wanted to push him away or pull him closer. “It scared me so much. It…it still does.”

Eric wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her even closer, their chests pressed so tightly he couldn’t tell if he felt her heartbeat or his. He touched his forehead to hers. She inhaled tightly.

“Let me tell you something,” he said as his fingers continued their exploration. “You do not ever have to be afraid of me, Jane. Do you know why?”

He pushed in slightly. She arched and bit her lip.

“Why?” she asked, though she was now staring at his mouth.

“Because,” he said as he rewarded her with a light, chaste, almost teasing kiss. “You and me, Jane?” His finger dipped deeper, feeling her slippery welcome up to his second knuckle. “We’re not just for right now. We’re for life, pretty girl. For life.”

She squeezed around his hand. He almost came right there.

“Eric,” she whispered.

He pushed his fingers in all the way, seeking that spot he knew would undo her completely. When it came to Jane, to finding those dark, secret spaces, it was just instinctual.

“Is that all right?” he asked, though the tension quivering through her limbs seemed like something she was enjoying. He kissed her again, this time biting her lower lip for her. She moaned, and opened to receive his tongue, suckle it lightly in that way that made the rest of him practically die from desire.

“I need…” Her words were gasps as she rocked onto his hand. “Eric, please. I need more.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. How long had it been? Weeks? Over a month? Two weeks he had been stuck in that cell at Rikers dreaming of holding her just like this, then almost four more between Korea and doing everything he could think of to help her back from the dead.

But.

“Jane, is it okay?” he asked again, hoping she understood what he meant. If she was still healing, he didn’t want to mess that up.

She grabbed his t-shirt and wrenched it over his shoulders, then scraped her hands down his chest and abs hard enough that her nails, short as they were, still scraped. And the fuck if it didn’t make him that much harder.

“It’s fine,” she said directly. “I was cleared last week. Eric, please. Don’t make me beg. You say we’re real—I need to feel it. I need to feel something more than…” She drifted off as her gaze fell to the shallow cuts on her arms.

Her meaning was clear. She needed him to bring her back to earth? He was more than happy to do it.

“Take this off,” he ordered, pulling at her dress. She obeyed, stripped off the wet wool, the black boots, to reveal her simple black undergarments—unfussy, but still sexy as all hell. Had he ever told her what it did to him? That she never felt the need to wear underwear like a costume? She was overflowing with sex, with desire. Anything else would be a parody.

He stripped off his clothes with as much excitement, and when they both returned to the bed, he was too eager for her, pulling her back atop his lap, his cock twitching with anticipation. But before he could pull her down, feel the tight, warm wet of her envelop his needy dick, Jane flattened her hand over his chest.

“Wait,” she said, then leaned to the side table and pulled out a condom. Eric frowned at it, then at her.

“Really?” he asked. “I thought…” He couldn’t bring himself to say he wanted to try again. That he couldn’t eliminate the painful loss of their child, but if she wanted, he could maybe give her another. He could give them that future again.

“Not now,” she said, her quick glance darting to her maimed arms, to the thin cut that barely stung his collarbone. “Not yet.”

Ah. She was right, of course. They weren’t ready.

“But you’re…you’re ready for this?” he asked, carefully brushing back a loose wave of brown-black hair from her cheek. There was still that streak of red in the back, but it was faded, much like the rest of her. Jane’s eyes closed to his touch, but she didn’t move away.

“Oh, Eric,” she whispered. “I don’t think you understand. How much I need this. How much I need…you.”

When her eyes opened, they weren’t faded at all. Instead, they sparked. Eric couldn’t wait any longer. With quick, precise movements, he rolled on the condom, then pulled her close again.

“Day one, pretty girl,” he murmured as he took her beautiful face between his hands. “I’ve needed you like the fucking air I breathe since day one.”

She shuddered. “Then take me,” she said, shifting slightly to adjust to the size of him as he slid deep inside. “Because I really do belong to you.”

“No, gorgeous,” Eric corrected her. “We belong to each other.”

It didn’t take long. Not when it had been weeks since they had been together, when before they had rarely been able to go an entire day without joining their bodies. Eric inhaled her, finding any and all surfaces to suck, nip, fucking feast on—neck, breast, shoulder, ear. Mouth, oh God, that mouth. She opened to him like a flower, welcoming his eager, bruising touch, matching every thrust of his body from below with her own above.

And then, just as he was applying some new, delicious torment to that delicate spot above her pulse, she burst.

“I’m…oh, God, Eric, I’m here, I’m…coming!”

Her voice, always so brash and brazen, never rose above a whisper, as if her ecstasy threatened to swallow her whole.

“I’m with you,” she said, her voice as fluid as a river.

He pressed his forehead to hers, body and soul. “Always.”

The sign of her undoing was Eric’s own—he fell apart with a loud, hoarse cry, emptying himself completely, totally, into her. Body and soul.

All thoughts of what might have been rushed from his head.

All fears of what they might lose fled the room.

Everything he needed was right here.

And she was all his.

* * *

“Spanakopita,”Jane said sometime later.

Eric shifted lazily. “Have a sudden hankering for Greek food?”

She turned in his arms, and his fingertips brushed over the curve of her shoulder. “I thought of it at the diner, actually. They had a tray of it by the counter. But just now…” She traced a finger over his pectoral muscle. “Do you remember that morning at my apartment, during first year? I offered you spanakopita, and you freaked out. Started babbling about a failed relationship.”

He closed his hand over hers, keeping it there, where she could feel the sudden jump of his heartbeat.

“It was because of Penny, wasn’t it?” Jane didn’t wait for an answer, likely knowing she was right. “The food. It reminded you of her.”

“It reminded me of what I’d lost,” Eric corrected her gently. He pulled a hand through her hair, wishing for a moment it was bright purple again. Wishing it was that morning after her birthday. When, if he had just taken a second to think before he’d acted, their entire history might have been different. He’d broken down Jane’s walls, finally attained her trust, and proceeded to smash it all completely. One shitty morning had cost them, what, eight years together?

He shook his head. Idiot.

And yet, how could he have told her that the last and only other girl he’d loved had died…because of him? Particularly when, at the time, he still thought she had killed herself over his family. Over his very essence?

He had run because at the time, he couldn’t handle the risk. He couldn’t handle the idea that the magnetic creature that was Jane Lee Lefferts might ever become a shadow of herself because of him.

Eric sighed. It seemed he hadn’t been able to avoid that either. Jane had been smashed again, through the complexities he brought into her life.

And yet, as he continued to play with her hair, the streak of defiant red peeked from the back again. She was so much stronger than Penny, than him, than anyone he’d ever known. She brought him back to life countless times over the last almost ten years. He would do it for her if he died trying.

A thought occurred to him as he caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. A few of the cuts on her arm had already started scabbing over. Their bodies would always heal faster than their hearts.

“You have to promise me something,” he said as he held her arm still and floated his fingers over the wounds. “That you will never hurt yourself like this again.”

“I—” Jane cut herself off for a moment as she buried her face into his shoulder. “Okay, yes. I promise.”

“Good. Besides, if it’s just marks you want…”

He stared at the row of hickeys he’d left on her neck and offered what he hoped was a lascivious smile. Jane just shoved him in the shoulder and made a face.

“Stop that. Normally, devious looks pretty good on you, Petri dish, but right now you look like a Disney caricature.”

Eric burst out laughing, hard enough that his belly shook and he had a hard time breathing.

“What?” Jane demanded. “What are you laughing at? It wasn’t that good of a burn, you idiot.”

“Fucking hell,” he wheezed, though like a maniac, he couldn’t stop. “Oh, sweet fucking hell, you beautiful thing, you.”

“What?!” she shrieked. “Stop laughing at me!”

Her cries, unfortunately, only made him laugh that much harder, until tears were streaming down his face this time, and Jane was red with the effort of swatting him with her pillow.

“Uncle!” he cried finally, swallowing back more peals of laughter with everything he had. Chuckles still erupted from his belly like a train tooting its horn. “I give up!”

“Why are you laughing?” Jane demanded, clearly furious. “What the hell was so damn funny?”

“Oh, God,” he said as he wiped his eyes. “I just…fuck…I never thought I’d see the day when you could call me that god-awful name again. But it just felt so good…and it hit me in the gut…oh, fuck, here it comes…”

He broke down laughing all over again, feeling giddy like a child. Jane’s lips quivered, and all of a sudden, she was laughing too, whispering “Petri dish” and “preppy” and “you goon” over and over until they collapsed into each other, shaking with mirth.

It felt good to be happy again, if just for a moment. Neither of them was in a hurry to let it go.

“I have one more request,” Eric said once they had both finally quieted. “I want us both to see a therapist. Starting immediately.”

He could feel her scowl against his chest this time, and he hid a smile himself. He knew exactly how much Jane disliked talking about her feelings. It was another thing they had in common. Probably not the best thing, either.

So, yeah, he wasn’t going to budge on this one.

“Come on, Lefferts,” he said gently. “After all we’ve been through. It’s what your dad would have wanted, don’t you think?”

“That’s a cheap shot.”

“It’s not a shot at all. He was a VA psychologist who made his entire career out of helping PTSD victims. So it’s the truth, isn’t it?”

She finally revealed her face again, which was, predictably, twisted into a scowl. “You say that like I haven’t had his voice in my head for the last three weeks telling me exactly that.”

Eric shrugged. “Who are we to argue with the dead?” But he still wasn’t ready to let it go. “Seriously, though, Jane. You and me, both. We can’t keep things bottled up forever. Bad things happen.” He hovered his fingers again over her cuts. “Promise me.”

She was still for a long minute, and then deflated.

“Okay,” she relented, though she pulled him back to her for one more kiss. “I promise.”