Chapter 66
JAYDEN
My knuckles pull apart as I clench my fists at my sides. I’m exhausted, my body desperate to hit the mattress while I trudge to my suite, where Eli is waiting for me.
There hasn’t been a moment for us to talk since hell broke loose. Even though we’ve communicated through our bracelets, it’s not the same as speaking. Not the same as looking him in the eyes and apologizing for screwing up again.
I fucked up, and it could cost us everything. The way I’m mad at myself as I open the suite door to find him pacing the gold-and-turquoise-patterned carpet with his phone to his ear makes it impossible to form the words to iterate my apology.
“Go to sleep, Angel.” Eli pauses in front of me. “JJ’s here. He’s okay. Everything is okay.”
I can’t hear what our girl says, but the corners of his mouth tick up faintly. The scrunch of his brow eases a tad.
His stare holds mine when he ends the call with an earnest, “I love you.”
Then his phone disappears into the pocket of his slacks. I’m standing in the open doorway; Eli’s frozen to the spot, eyes raking over me.
My mouth opens. It closes.
Before I can draw in a breath, he’s rushing me—big hands gripping either side of my jaw while he studies my face. My busted lip and stitched brow. The rough pad of his thumb softly trails my grazed cheekbone as he exhales.
“Fuck, Jayden… Baby…”
I hiss at the sharp sting when I lick my throbbing lip. “Yeah, well, you should see the other guy,” is the stupid joke I make to ease the tension.
Except none of this is a joke, and the tension doesn’t budge.
The emotions roiling through me are at a constant high. Eli’s worry is ripe in his shallow breaths. I can smell the minty zing to it with every short exhale that brushes my skin.
When I open my mouth again, his crushes to mine before I make a sound. Hard lips take mine in a gentle caress. It’s fucking magnificent. Everything I need. A balm that seeps to the marrow of my bones, soothing the wretched torment.
“That’s from our girl,” he murmurs along the gaping line of my lips. Then, canting his face, he touches his mouth to mine again. “And this, Sunshine… this is from me.”
With his hands clasped around my face, Eli licks into my mouth.
The leisurely stroke of his tongue over mine sends a frisson of heat through me as he guides me deeper into the room.
My body presses to his while my hands anchor on his hips.
Holding him where I need him. With me. On me. Any way I can get him.
The taste of him invades my senses. Peppermint tinged with the metallic tang of blood from my lip as our kiss goes from tender to desperate. Calloused fingers dig into my nape with the same urgency that our bodies grind together.
Eli’s groin rocks into mine when my back hits the wall. Rough hands roam my neck, pushing beneath the lapel of my suit jacket, then guide it off my shoulders. He tosses it on the armchair and moves to unbutton my shirt.
Dark eyes peruse the bruised lines on my torso where Presley’s hits hammered my pads into my chest. When they lift to mine, he lowers his lips to the bruise circling the base of my neck, tracing the sore line with open-mouthed kisses while he discards my shirt.
Then his hands are on my skin, and I can’t catch my breath to moan how incredible it feels—Eli’s touch, the reverence twinned with barely controlled yearning.
“You had me going out of my mind,” he breathes, dragging his mouth to the left side of my chest.
With a quick nip, Eli pulls back. He straightens to his full height and makes quick work of unbuttoning his shirt, shucking off his slacks, and trailing backward to the bed. He sits on the edge.
My pulse thrums to a new beat, a needy rhythm that languishes at his missing touch.
Following him, I toe off my shoes and loosen my belt. I don’t strip my pants because I’m naked underneath, and as much as my dick is aching to lose myself in Eli, now isn’t the time for it.
I want to touch him, kiss him, love on him. I always do. Nevertheless, before any of that, I need to talk to him.
“Gerry’s called a meeting tomorrow morning.”
The lump in my throat swells. I swear it was gone a moment ago; now it’s back, cutting off oxygen to my brain.
Eli doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to—I hear the sharp intake of his breath, then an audible swallow.
“We don’t know it’s a worst-case-scenario kind of meeting,” he finally says. “We don’t know what he’s going to say or what—”
“Eli, I have a two-game suspension and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. We know what the franchise is going to do.” My heart sprints until my lungs burn. “I fucked up.”
“No,” Eli growls, draping his arm around my shoulder before he shuffles back on the bed and takes me with him. “No, you didn’t… You didn’t.”
He turns on his side, resting the edge of his face on his forearm, tracing the bruises on my chest with his soft gaze.
“If they sack me—”
“Gerry isn’t going to sack you over a fight, Jayden. It’s unheard of.” A long finger touches my throat, trailing along Presley’s fingerprints on my jugular. “You didn’t go at him any harder than he went at you.”
“Yeah, but I went for him—”
“After he pinned me to the boards.” The harsh timber in his voice lifts my stare to his glossy eyes. “Any of the other guys would’ve done the same.”
“Any of the other guys wouldn’t be your boyfriend… his sister’s boyfriend…”
His hand trails to my jaw. He leans closer; the tip of his nose brushes my cheek before his lips nuzzle the corner of my mouth. “JJ, it’s going to be okay, Baby. You’re too integral to the team for them to void your contract over a fight, and you’re too important to me to let you go without one.”
His thumb sweeps my other cheek, canting my face as he peppers kisses across my pressed pout. He deepens the kiss, hooks his leg across mine, and rolls me onto my side, facing him. Then his thigh hitches over my hip.
Our hard edges line up, friction burning deliciously between us. I can’t stop my hands from roaming his velvet skin and pushing into his hair. I can’t stop myself from wanting him. From needing him.
Eli rolls onto his back, taking me with him. As I brace myself over him, his mouth chases mine. Kissing, sucking, nipping at my lips, tongue, and jaw. Trembling hands rove from my face to my chest, splaying over the bruises.
“Eli…” I shudder at the frisson of pain his touch sparks.
The rush of my blood pushes south with a heavy throb. My hands are shaking when he trails lower. One slow inch at a time.
“Sweetheart,” I groan when he cups the bulge in my pants.
His other hand works my fly open with a hard pull on the hook and bar fastening. While he pushes my slacks down my ass, he palms my erection.
All the while, his mouth is on my neck, latched tight to my pulse point, right where Presley left his fingerprints.
God, my aching body threatens to fold in on itself when Eli’s teeth sink into my flesh. A brutal zing courses through me with an unforgiving shiver.
“Fuck,” I choke out as he pulls off me with a pop, teeth pinching my skin while he drags his mouth lower, to the raw circle at the base of my neck. “Eli… Babe…”
He answers by gripping my dick firmer while his other hand rakes up my back to my nape. He holds me to him and flips us.
My back barely sinks into the mattress before he bites and sucks a trail over my chest. He straddles my thighs, pumping my shaft in slow, teasing strokes with one hand while the other holds my face. One thumb strokes over my mouth while the next runs along my weeping slit.
I can’t take my eyes off his straining muscles as he lowers down my chest. Slick lips peppering relentless kisses to my nipple. Drawing wet circles with his tongue, Eli blows a cool breath over my hardened nub.
Fuck me.
My back bows off the bed, pressing up into him as he rolls his lips over the turgid peak. The hard clench of his fist around my cock has me sucking his thumb into my mouth.
Every part of me is on fire. Yearning for more. I’m maddened with need when Eli kneels over me again, chest heaving, muscles corded tight.
My hands go to his thick thighs, bracketing mine, squeezing tighter, mirroring his grip on my erection.
I can’t get over how gorgeous he is with his body flushed and his cheeks glowing with his need. When he shuffles back, down my legs, he takes my slacks with him. Throwing them on the floor before he peels off his underwear.
Goddamn, his cock is beautiful. Like every other part of him. It’s hard cut and corded. Every line and divot is perfectly sculpted. And mine. He’s mine. Every part of him belongs to me.
I watch him traipse to the bathroom. Perusing the flex of his tight ass and strong thighs with every step he takes. And when he returns, I trace every line of his torso with my heart beating wildly and my mouth watering for a taste of his thick cock bobbing between his thighs.
With a bottle of lube clutched in his hand, he kneels on the edge of the mattress, between my feet.
“I want to try something,” he speaks softly down at his lap, with the slightest hitch to his breath.
He doesn’t have to say what it is because I can feel the trepidation rolling off him as I sit up and shuffle closer to him.
Tilting my face back, I find his eyes. Dark and blown.
I can’t make out his pupils from his irises.
They’re just two endless, oily swirls that suck me in deep with every second we stare at each other.
Putting the lube in my hand, he tells me, “I want you inside me, Jayden.”
My heart stutters at his words. For a few beats, it forgets its purpose until I press my lips to his chest, and the frantic rhythm of his pulse echoes through me.
“Kiss me.”
Eli doesn’t hesitate. He offers me his mouth with a languid lick across his bottom lip.
Making it slick so that when I take his perfectly chiseled pout, our lips glide together.
Tender and rough, all at once, as his hands press to the middle of my chest and I lift each of his knees in turn, so that he’s straddling me.