Chapter 21 #2
“Fin...”
His brows are pulled tight, and he appears afraid, scrambling for what to say or do. This isn’t the Elijah I know. The boy who was bold and strong. Who was a man beyond his years when he stood up for me and protected me from my own brother. From scripture and punishment. From God.
“What is this? You and me. What are we? What’s happening to us?” The slew of questions takes him back, and when he tries to pull away, I hold on tighter.
I need an answer.
To know that I’m not clutching hopelessly on to him. Like I did to my grandma. I held on until there was nothing left to hold on to. Now all I have left of her are the memories of her decay. Pain.
Elijah lowers his gaze between us. “I don’t know, Fin… I…”
“You don’t know?” I swallow the burn at the back of my throat. “Then why did you go back for me?”
I’m grateful he did. I’ll always love him for it. Nonetheless, it bothers me that he did it out of a twisted sense of responsibility.
“Because you’re mine.” Black eyes pierce through me.
“Yours. Yours?”
“Yes,” he replies as matter of fact as his words are to my heart.
“But you don’t… you won’t touch me or… or…” What's wrong with me? I can’t bring myself to ask because the answer terrifies me.
“Fin… Finley… I’m trying.” My heart drops at his words, I can’t swallow back the tears that prickle my eyes.
Even though I desperately need to, I can’t force my hand to release him.
I don’t know much about relationships and sex. What I do know is that… “You shouldn’t have to try. Not if you want me.”
“I do. So fucking bad,” he grinds out between clenched teeth. His face is pulled tight. Golden brows furrowed over deep, dark wells boiling over with anger, fear… desperation. “It’s not you, Fin. It’s not. It’s... I…”
“What, Elijah?” I choke past the throbbing in my throat.
“Him.” He swallows, dropping his face to the floor. “It’s him. He’s always there. Always… always… fuck! I can’t. I’m sorry. So, so sorry…”
Him.
“Jayden…” Elijah’s stare flashes to mine. Narrowing with the hard-bitten pull of his lip between his teeth. “You want him more.”
“What?” He attempts to pull his arm back again. “No. I don’t. No...”
“No? I see the way you look at him… the way he looks at you. How you smile when he’s around, and you hang on his every word. You feel things when he touches you. The way I feel things when you touch me. I see it, and I think you’re afraid to acknowledge it.”
“No. I’m not. We’re not... it’s not like...”
“Like what?”
“Jayden’s my best friend. He’s my teammate, we’re partners and—”
“He is in love with you.” The hitch of his breath is visceral, sucking all the air from my lungs. “It’s so obvious that it hurts to watch him pine over you. I hurt for him. That’s how much Jayden loves you.”
“No, that’s not… he doesn’t want me like that.”
“He wants you like I want you. With everything. More than anything in the whole damn universe.”
“Finley.” Shaking his head, Elijah pulls back.
I force myself to loosen my grip on him, taking a step back into the closed door.
“You can deny it. Pretend that it’s not true.
But you know it is, and you can run as far as you want because it’s there inside you, and you can’t escape it.
You can’t… Elijah. You can’t stop your heart from feeling what it does. From wanting who it wants. Trust me…”
I feel sick as I pull away, my stomach is heavy and roiling, and my heart doesn’t know what to do with itself because it’s breaking while at the same time it pounds with the last rays of hope I have left when his hand grips mine.
“I want you, Finley-James.”
“Only me?”
In one sharp tug, he yanks me to him. My body collides into his at the same time as his other hand grasps my jaw roughly. The rush of my blood pulsing through me is deafening.
Even if he answered, I wouldn’t hear it. I don’t need to hear it for me to know it.
“Don’t fucking cry.” He bites out each word as though every syllable is excruciating. “Not for me. I’m not worth it.”
Garbage, I growl inwardly, shaking my head.
As I open my mouth to protest, his hand slips from my jaw to my throat while he pins me to my door and grinds my hand into the wood above my head with the force of his grip.
The way he’s touching me sends chills down my spine. The kind that steal my breath and close the air. The kind that stretch time and fade the world to insignificance.
When his mouth closes on mine, existence goes up in flames. His lips are harsh and demanding as they roll with mine. I forget the basic, elementary rules and protocol of keeping myself alive.
Elijah is the only need that pounds and aches through me as the hand at my side twists in the hem of his shirt, pulling it higher until his hot skin gives me another purchase to hold on to him, to hold more of him.
My fingers claw into him while his tongue spears into my mouth, and he blesses me with a guttural groan that vibrates through me, all the way to my core.
The only air in my lungs is his. The only sensation on my skin is his. The only pounding in my chest is his.
I am his.
And this. This is desperation. Wanting more. Needing more. With every lick that caresses my tongue. Every moan that he drinks from me.
Tightening his grip on my throat, Elijah sucks my lip into his mouth. As my legs are about to give, he dips his body to catch me before hitching me up against the door with his hips.
Sweet Jesus. Every rock-hard edge of him cuts into me when my groin presses to his. The hem of my dress rides higher with the friction of our bodies as we grind with the urgency to feel more even though there isn’t a part of him I don’t already feel.
His skin, his heartbeat, his need… all culminating in endless, unrelenting desperation.
With a luxuriating bite, he pulls at my lip until it pops from between his teeth. Wordlessly, he touches his forehead to mine while the hand at my throat caresses up to my jaw.
Our breaths are ragged and broken when he rakes his thumb across my gaping mouth. Releasing my hand, he holds my face in both of his while he peels himself from me.
His lips are red and swollen with a shy smile as he rasps, “Goodnight, Finley-James.”
One last, chaste kiss to my forehead and he’s backing away to his room. Taking in the frantic, breathless mess he’s created.