70. This is Duress
THIS IS DURESS
ELIAS
I knock on Brighton’s door. I know the risk. She could slam it in my face.
When it cracks open to squinty eyes, my first thought is that she’s pissed. It’s quickly evident that she’s been sleeping and hasn’t had the chance to get her defenses up. At least it’s one break I’m catching today.
“Elias?” She pulls the door open, her gaze dropping to the potted orchid in my hand.
I extend it as a peace offering.
“I wanted to bring you flowers, but I wanted something that would last.” My words drift off when I see the softness in her eyes.
“I don’t understand you.” She turns her back to me, walking deeper into the house, effectively shutting me out from the first look of tenderness I’ve seen from her.
Ever.
“When I’m inside you, you call me ‘Eli’.” I close the door behind me.
She stops dead when I say it. It’s like she’s frozen in her thoughts. She turns painfully slowly to face me, the orchid bloom blocking part of her face.
She opens her mouth, I assume to reply, but only manages to close it again, before shaking her head and trying again. Again, nothing.
“I like it when you call me Eli,” I press and move toward her.
She doesn’t retreat, but stands before me, sleepy, congenial, silent, with the flower a barrier between us. This Brighton isn’t the one who’s always in control. She’s tender, less brash, softer.
“You were asleep?” I push a hank of hair out of her face when she allows me close enough to touch her.
A nod.
“Did you have a good nap?” My finger trails from her temple, down her cheek to her neck, my eyes following its movement.
“Yeah. It was necessary after last night.”
My hand wraps around her neck, my thumb dances across her jaw, and I lean in, moving my lips to below her ear. “You are so fucking beautiful. So smart. So fucking sexy.” I feel the shiver run through her at my words.
She sucks in a huge breath, and I wait for her to tell me to get out.
“What are you doing here, Eli?” She leans closer to me, but her face tilts away, giving me greater access to her neck.
“I needed to see you. I needed… you.” I take the plant from her white-knuckled hands, and set it aside, before tilting her head in my hands. My lips hover over hers. I look between them and her eyes. “Need you.” The last comes out as a whisper as I take her mouth.
Her arms wrap around my neck, holding me to her. Her body melts into mine, fitting perfecting like a long-missing puzzle piece.
I pull her tighter, deepening the kiss. It’s desperation and desire. It’s longing and passion. It’s fire and fight. It’s vacation and it’s home.
I must say the last out loud because she pulls back and looks at me quizzically. “What?”
I hold her eyes and lay it out there. “You’re like coming home.” I move my lips to her neck, to below her ear, to her collarbone. “Home.”
I feel her head shake, her hair sliding back and forth against my fingers at her neck, soft as silk.
I pull back from my kiss, studiously avoiding moving my hands down her body. I want her. I always want her, but this is different. This is deeper.
I hold her eyes and wait.
Until it happens.
She closes hers, drops her forehead to my chest, and exhales. Her words elate me and confuse me. “I don’t know how to resist you, Eli.” In a choked whisper, she adds, “And I really need to resist you.”
I lean away and fight to find her eyes. “Baby?”
Her head whips up. “That’s what you call me when you’re inside me. I don’t want that.” She turns, as if something requires her immediate attention and she doesn’t know what. “I mean—”
I grab her, placing both my hands on her shoulders. “You mean what, Bright? You don’t want me to call you baby or you don’t want me to be inside you?”
She bites her bottom lip. Fuck me. She’s never this unsure, this tentative.
When her eyes flick up to mine, I see the vulnerability. I also see her resolve, and the two together are my undoing.
I lift her and wrap her legs around my waist and move to her sofa where I sit.
“Darlin’, you’ve said an awful lot without saying anything at all.”
Her sigh melts her further into my body. “I’m like coming home?”
“Every time I’m around you, my soul settles deeper.”
“You called me a cold bitch yesterday.”
I tilt her head so I can see her eyes. “I said you were pretending to be a cold bitch.”
Brighton
“You said...” I swallow past the sand in my throat. “You said I wasn’t worth the trouble.” My voice is tentative, and I begin to squirm, not okay with being on his lap and wrapped around him.
Wrapped up in him.
It’s too great a risk.
I fight to remove myself from the stupid situation I’ve gotten myself into, yet again, when his arms lock like a vise around me.
“Baby, I said you were home.”
“Don’t call me baby.”
“Why?” I feel the vibration of his anger as his word lashes out at me.
Without thinking, I say what I know I’ll come to regret, “Because I’m not just another one of your fucks.”
His inhale pulls me tighter to him, but his silence is my undoing. It’s pregnant with unsaid things, and you can’t unsay shit. We need to cut our losses before we voice things we can’t take back.
When I meet his eyes, they’re soft and serious, but the curve of his mouth belies his satisfaction.
“You could never be those women.”
Well, fuck him.
I flail. And I fight.
I’m freaking strong too.
I can’t do my job as a weak woman. I can’t tame horses or barrel race or competitively shoot as someone who doesn’t have the strength to command her own body.
“Fuck you, Elias Finchley. Get out of my house. Get out of my life. I never—” My voice hitches as I wrestle with him, managing to wrangle my way onto the floor, him surrounding me. “I never want to see you again.” It’s a whisper. It’s defeat. It’s death and loss. “Ever.”
I fight to hold back traitorous tears. I won’t let him see me weak. I won’t let him see me cry. He doesn’t get to know how he slices me through.
I lie pinned to the floor, wedged between the sofa and the coffee table. I turn my face as far as I can away from his sight and clench my jaw.
I mentally assess an escape. Not that this one got me free. Hell, I’m in worse shape now than before I began.
“No.” Eli’s one-word growl is his only response.
I want to give some zinger of a retort, but I know how close I am to breaking and I can’t afford it. I can’t afford for him to know it too.
So I still.
“No,” he repeats. “No, you fucking don’t. You do not get to dismiss me again, Brighton. I’m not that man. I’m not a man you get to tease and fuck and dump.”
“What?!” My eyes are livid. But with my mouth open and my face turned to him, he kisses me. I resist.
I do.
For as long as I can.
Until I can’t.
And the moan that breaks free from me tells him he’s won.
He pulls back. “Darlin’, if you don’t want me to call you ‘baby,’ I won’t.”
“I—”
He stops me with a kiss. His thighs squeeze mine, pinning me, emphasizing his words. “But let me be plain, Bright. You will not dismiss me. I’m done skirting around my attraction for you, our chemistry, this … desire.
“I’m laying it out there, darlin’. I want you. I want this. But I can’t do soft, vulnerable Brighton followed by turbo-bitch Brighton and not know which personality I’m waking up to.”
My eyes slice to slits.
No, he didn’t.
I buck my hips, trying to get free, trying to get to a space where I can think. “You don’t get to dictate my mood.”
“Turbo-bitch Bright isn’t a mood, darlin’. It’s you shutting down and shutting me out. It’s you not trusting me. It’s you dismissing me.” His hard face studies mine for longer than I’m comfortable with. Too long in fact. “But that’s not what you want, is it, Bright?”
I see the light dawning.
“Oh, darlin’, I didn’t see it. But I’m getting the whole picture now.” He pulls back, his eyes roaming my features, puzzling out all he sees. He leans down ever so slowly, his eyes flitting between my eyes and my mouth. “Fuck me. Brighton Ranger is in love with me. And I missed it.”
He takes advantage of my gasp and takes my mouth, slow and languid, moving around my body. He no longer pins me. His hands skim my waist, my breasts, my inner thighs.
He wraps one of my legs around his waist, opening me to him, still clothed. He rocks.
I want to punch him and pull him closer.
I want to run away and hide in him.
I want to close my eyes and wake from this dream, all at the same time.
He pulls back and holds my eyes. “You missed it earlier, so I’ll say again.
I hope you hear me this time. Those women—they could never be you, Brighton.
There’s no comparison. You’re…” His gaze roams my face before he looks away, as if calculating his next move.
“You’re… You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of. ”
He kisses me lazily before pulling back, extending a hand to me. And here’s the moment of truth. Do I risk taking his hand and gamble on getting everything I’ve always wanted? Or do I guard my heart and protect myself with the surety that I’ll never be hurt like I will be if he ever leaves?
I lift my eyes to him, searching those pale greens, looking for answers, looking for promises.
“You’re so stubborn,” he says. Without giving me the chance to choose, he pulls me to my feet. He reclines against my sofa and raises his eyebrows as if to beckon me. Or dare me.
Now, it’s my choice. I can play it safe. Or I can dive headlong into every fantasy I’ve ever had.
I hold his eyes while pulling my hair from its ponytail. I keep his gaze while I drop my shorts and panties. I break eye contact only as I lift my tee over my head. My bra comes off last.
I step to him—to every hope and every dream I’ve ever had, to the only man I’ve ever loved, and who I’ve wanted since I was twelve. To the razor’s edge where hope and terror collide.
I straddle his hips, resting on my knees, and lean to his mouth, hovering above it.
His hands roam my hips. His thumbs brush under the swells of my breasts, and his fingertips dance over my belly. They skim down my spine, around my ass, and tease my thighs. But he doesn’t touch me where I want him—where I desperately need him.