Chapter 18
When Abigail Lawson deepens the kiss and the sound of the room fades to their soft, shared breathing, Eleanor thinks she might lose her mind.
What began as hesitation, a slow dance between the two of them, is turning into fire — the same fire they've always had, but only ever let loose in dark corners with the minutes counting down.
Abigail trails a hand along Eleanor's smooth skin, starting at her cheek and grazing her neck with her fingertips.
Eleanor sighs, the breath catching in her throat.
What she's feeling can't be compared to anything — not even the first time she touched Abigail's body.
Kissing had always been off-limits for them; they never talked about it, they just kept their mouths busy with other parts of each other.
Right now, Eleanor understands exactly why: if she and Abigail had crossed that line years ago, everything between them would have been completely different.
"Stay still," Abigail hisses when the need takes over and her body presses Eleanor's into the mattress, making the former congresswoman roll her hips upward without meaning to.
Eleanor Montgomery's bed is king-sized. When she bought it, she didn't think twice, but over the years she came to understand she'd done it so there'd be enough space between her and Daniel to keep from touching more than necessary.
Now, though, she feels certain that with Abigail the size of the mattress doesn't matter — they'd always end up this close.
The heat they make together is different from what it's always been — none of the old urgency, none of the countdown of stolen moments.
Their hands roam freely, both of them, skimming arms and ribs, not yet going to the places they know by heart, as if they both understand without saying it that this time there's no rush, no one waiting downstairs, no door to slip through in exactly seven minutes.
"I need you," Eleanor whispers. "Right now, more than ever."
The voice that breaks the silence is heavy with need, though there's a warmth under it that both of them choose to ignore. They're so used to the coldness between them that they don't know how to handle this, and they'd rather let the moment carry them.
Eleanor doesn't look away from Abigail's eyes, and she can read in them exactly what she feels herself.
They're both afraid — in different ways, for different reasons — but it's there in the way their hands pause just before crossing certain points, in the way the kisses are deep but careful, as if neither one wants to break this before she understands what it is.
"God, Eleanor," Abigail moans when she feels those warm lips on her neck, and then a bite with just enough pressure to make her want to come on the spot.
Eleanor keeps kissing her, feeling the weight of that body she loves pressed against her own.
She lifts a hand to cup Abigail's cheek, then the tenderness slips out of the gesture as she traces the outline of the lawyer's lips, parts them slowly, and runs her tongue along them with a deliberateness that would raise every hair in the room, if a room could feel.
Wetness — there's too much wetness between Abigail's thighs, and even though this moment is completely unlike anything they've shared before, closer, more intimate, she can't stop being who she is when Eleanor's body is near.
She rolls her hips with purpose and Eleanor exhales hard through her nose.
They stop teasing and start undressing each other, lips carving a burning path — Eleanor's neck, Abigail's collarbone, a shoulder, a side, every inch of skin getting something it hadn't been given in years, because there was never time or intention to give it.
Abigail kisses the scar on Eleanor's left hip, the one she's had since she was sixteen and has never talked about.
"God," Eleanor breathes, biting her lip. The wild, desperate need to feel that tongue — the one that's been drenching her whole — is making her lose it.
Abigail drags her tongue along that mark and Eleanor closes her eyes, fingers threading into the lawyer's hair.
When it hits her that what she's doing is too close, too much, Eleanor pulls harder than she meant to, drawing Abigail up beside her so they can face each other.
Neither one looks away, and their mouths find each other again as the moans grow too loud for the quiet bedroom.
"Damn, Eleanor," Abigail breathes against her lips, then runs her tongue over them to check for blood after the bite.
"I want you to fuck me," Eleanor demands, because as much as she loves these kisses they've never let themselves have, her body is burning and she needs more.
"Don't give me orders," Abigail says — the same words she said that night in the backseat of the old Honda at the graduation party.
Eleanor raises an eyebrow, daring her, but she doesn't get the chance to do anything else, because two of Abigail's fingers push so deep inside her that she cries out with a pleasure that scrapes her throat raw.
She can barely move — her whole body is shaking — but Eleanor manages to mirror her, sliding into Abigail too, though with a little more patience, the way the lawyer has always liked it.
Everything happening right now is what they secretly dreamed about since they were barely teenagers.
Gasping into each other's mouths, bodies pressed tight, foreheads together when pleasure crests — all of it — and they both understand that what exists between them is something more powerful than love.
Abigail knows Eleanor is about to come and feels a fleeting urge to deny her, but she can't — God, she can't — because it feels so good to be inside her like this, to watch the flush rise across her face, her breathing come faster, her moans grow louder.
"I can't hold on," Eleanor says, voice wrecked, and when the heat pooling low in her belly spills over, she drives her tongue deep into Abigail's mouth.
When Abigail feels Eleanor tighten so hard around her fingers that it aches, and the sweet taste of her floods her mouth, she can't stop the orgasm that hits her without warning.
She'd been completely wound up, but she'd wrongly believed she could hold out a little longer.
Nothing has changed in all these years — Eleanor still drives her out of her mind, and Abigail still surrenders to her.
Now they lie very still, together, not pulling apart, completely lost and unable to figure out what comes next — because at any other time they would have straightened their clothes, Abigail would have stopped Eleanor to fix her necklace or her collar, and they both would have walked out onto the patio of the family house in Pittsburgh without looking each other in the eye again.
Abigail has a brief, sharp impulse to get up and go to the guest room.
Eleanor doesn't look at her — her eyes are fixed on the ceiling while her breathing slowly settles.
She knows Eleanor well, knows how she gets when she feels cornered, and this bewildering moment could easily push her there.
Just as Abigail starts to turn and climb out of bed, Eleanor's voice stops her.
"I'm scared," she admits — and it's the first time she's said it out loud since all of this started. "Not of the FBI. I can handle that. I'm scared that when this is all over, there won't be anything left. That fifteen years of work will be remembered for this instead of for what I did before."
Abigail says nothing, just listens, because she knows that if she interrupts, Eleanor will stop talking.
"Daniel hurt me more than I'd like to admit.
Not because I love him — I stopped feeling anything for him a long time ago.
But because I always kept up appearances.
" She swallows, runs her tongue over her lips.
"I was with you all these years and I never looked at anyone else.
I asked him for one thing — discretion — and he couldn't even give me that. "
There's no need to explain that, from the very first moment between them, Eleanor Montgomery had eyes only for Abigail.
Steve — her boyfriend after that — had been nothing but a test, proof that trying to get the taste of Abigail's lips off her own was going to be very, very hard.
So, years later, she'd married Daniel, a handsome man who seemed to worship her, who didn't bother her much and faded into the background most of the time.
The perfect cover for trying to fool her own heart.
"I know," is all Abigail can say.
"The most ironic part is that I was already with you when I met him. But I never would have done what he did. I never would have humiliated him publicly."
Eleanor shifts, turning her head to look straight into Abigail's eyes. These past few days have been nothing but talk of the case — the FBI, the party, everything circling around her. Eleanor doesn't think that's entirely fair.
"What happened with the firm?" she asks, no softening around it.
Abigail seems to weigh it and doesn't answer right away.
"Abigail…"
"I left." The lawyer drops it plainly, eyes steady on Eleanor's.
The former congresswoman goes still.
"I went to talk to Mercer to ask for two weeks to put together your defense.
He told me not to even think about getting involved in your case — that the firm didn't handle that kind of scandal.
" Abigail's voice is calm, though she trembles inside just remembering it.
"He made me choose between staying and dropping the whole thing, or walking out.
" She lifts a hand and touches Eleanor's face. "I didn't even have to think about it."
"How could you make that call?" Eleanor draws a slow breath. "Your whole life is there."
Abigail shakes her head but doesn't answer the question directly.
"The partner track went with it." She pauses. "And Marcus."
Eleanor tenses.
"What happened with Marcus?"
"He was in Mercer's office when I went back to tell him I was going to represent you.
He followed me to my office — he didn't raise his voice, but his eyes, Eleanor…
" Abigail's face twists with disgust. "I'd never seen him like that.
Threatening, out of control. Enough to call you corrupt and me a crazy whore. "
Eleanor sits up.
"He called you what?"
"It doesn't matter anymore," Abigail says, because Marcus's outbursts genuinely don't touch her.
"It does matter." Eleanor's voice is so cold it raises the hair on Abigail's arms. "It matters a lot."
"We hadn't been a real marriage in years," she says, shrugging.
"It worked because it was convenient for both of us, but the second he hinted you might be involved, I knew we'd dragged it out too long.
What really gets to me is that I spent years at that firm winning cases, working until midnight, doing everything without complaint and without asking for a thing.
" Abigail's voice turns raw. "The one time I needed something, they showed me the door.
I don't want to belong to a place like that. "
"You walked away from your whole life," Eleanor repeats, anguish in her voice.
"I walked away from things that weren't mine anymore," Abigail says. "There's a difference."
Eleanor holds Abigail's gaze in the dim room. She'd always found her beautiful — at fifteen, her light could fill an entire room — but now, with her hair loose and tangled, her face relaxed, her lips swollen from Eleanor's kisses, Abigail Lawson is the most beautiful woman on earth.
"We never had dinner," Eleanor says after a few minutes of silence, shifting to something else entirely, because enough has been said for one night.
"I'm not hungry," the lawyer answers, curling into Eleanor's body.
"Neither am I."
A strange silence settles between them and they let it hang in the air. This is too new for both of them — the kisses, the conversation — and they don't quite know how to move inside it.
"It's so late," Abigail says, just to say something.
Eleanor moves her hand slowly across the bed until she finds Abigail's. She laces their fingers together.
"Stay with me tonight," Eleanor whispers.
Abigail squeezes her hand, and they both close their eyes.