Chapter 11 Elena #2
“The board is stupid and wrong.” I turn back to him, and for a moment, I forget to be angry — forget to maintain distance.
“This isn’t just beautiful, it’s meaningful.
You’re preserving all this land, keeping it wild instead of selling it off for development like most sane people would do. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
He watches me carefully, his fingers tightening around the railing. “This matters to you,” he says, as if it’s something that shouldn’t.
“Of course it matters. This is…” I gesture around us, at the forest, the camp, the stream, the life. “This is legacy. Real legacy, not just profit margins and market expansion, like my parents focus on. This is real. And it’s important.”
For a heartbeat, he just stares at me, both of us holding eye contact across the platform. I can feel that dangerous pull again, that stupid, magnetic force that seems to draw me to him too much.
Then his gaze flicks to my mouth and reality crashes back down like a tidal wave.
I take a step back. “Still fucking weird that you’ve got trail cameras monitoring everyone who sets foot on your property, though.”
The moment shatters, his jaw twitching. “The cameras are for security and safety.”
“Right, right, security and safety.” I cross my arms. “Tell me — how many cameras are there? Just the trails, or do you have the cottage under surveillance too?”
His eyes roll hard enough that all I see is a flash of white for a split second. “Elena—”
“You just seem to have a real talent for showing up when I’m in states of peril. Hiking alone in bear-infested woods, naked and about to bathe. Maybe you’ve been watching and waiting for the right time to strike.”
His nostrils flare. “That’s enough.”
“Is it?” I challenge, taking a step toward him. “Because I’m starting to wonder if your concern about bears is really about bears, or if you just wanted an excuse to walk alone in the woods with me. Is that gun even real—”
“You are still my son’s.” The words cut through my rambling like a blade, sharp and final and completely infuriating.
I glare at him. “Excuse me?”
His hands clench at his sides. “When George comes back—”
“When George comes back?” I laugh. “It’s been two weeks, Harry. Two weeks since Matthew went to drag him home, and what does he have to show for it? Has he found him? No. He’s avoiding me harder than you are.”
Harry’s teeth clench. “Matthew will find him.”
“Will he? Because it seems a lot like your son decided he’d rather party in Croatia than honor the commitment I had to force myself to be okay with for fourteen years.
” I take another step closer, irritation burning through me again.
“But sure, let’s keep pretending I’m his property while he’s off doing god knows what, fucking god knows who, wanting nothing to do with me. ”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” I’m close enough now to see the muscle jumping in his jaw, not hidden in the slightest. Close enough to count the flecks of gold in his green eyes, close enough to smell the faint scent of his cologne that clings to his skin even after a shower.
“Because I’m getting really tired of being treated like something that belongs to the Highcourt family instead of someone who gets to make her own choices, choices you claimed you cared about. ”
He opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, then closes it again, the silence stretching between us. He shakes his head, huffing out a breath through his nose. “We should head back. It’s going to rain.”
I glance up at the entirely clear sky through the canopy. “It’s not going to rain.”
“Elena.” His voice carries a warning I can’t quite interpret, his breathing picking up as he wraps a strong hand around my forearm. “We’re going back. Now, before you get mauled by a bear, before you say something else that pisses me off, before you—gods sake, fuck it.”
Before I can process what he means, he wrenches me toward him, his free hand grabbing the back of my neck, and crashes his mouth into mine.
My gasp gets swallowed whole by his kiss, his lips bruising against mine with enough force for my teeth to graze against his. It’s not careful, not polite — just pure heat and frustration and a little unhinged.
He kisses me like I’m his problem and his solution all at once.
His hand slides to the side of my neck, his thumb pressing in beneath my jaw as he angles me, demanding more access, more surrender. I give it to him without even thinking, my fingers fisting in the front of his stupid henley, clinging like I’m about to float right off the forest floor.
When he finally breaks the kiss, it’s only to get a good breath of air in and swear — “Fuck,” — like he’s the one caught off guard by this, like he’s not the one who grabbed me.
“I shouldn’t touch you like this,” he murmurs, his mouth hovering just above mine. His fingers twitch against my skin, like they’re tempted to do more, take more, but don’t. My pulse flutters in response.
“Then why kiss me at all?” I whisper.
Silence hangs between us like a bomb waiting to go off.
His other hand lifts slowly, brushing the curve of my cheek with the backs of his fingers, his eyes flicking across my features like he’s trying to memorize each freckle.
“Because I’m an idiot,” he murmurs. “And because I keep forgetting that I shouldn’t want you.”
The way he says it makes it feel like a blade in my chest — not guilt-ridden, not with shame, but with an almost reverent frustration, as if he hates how deeply the want goes.
My breath shudders as I rest my hands on either side of his abdomen, mostly rigid flesh pulsing heat beneath them. They wander, down, down, down to the waistband of his jeans. “Then let me touch you.”
He stiffens. “Elena.”
“If you don’t want this, if I’m some obligation you’re just shouldering like a fucking martyr, if you’re not attracted to me, then tell me to stop.” My fingers hook behind the button, my thumb popping it open with one quick flick. The zipper slides down. “But if you want me…”
Just as my fingers brush against the base of the swollen length of him, he grabs my wrist instead—hard—and pulls my hand away.
His grip is firm, just shy of painful, and enough to stop my breath in my throat. “Do not ever,” he says, words sharp as a knife as he lowers his mouth to my ear, “compare me to my son.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.” He pulls back again, glaring down the ridge of his nose at me, his fingers flexing against my wrist. “You know damn well that I’m attracted to you. Too much for my own good, it seems.”
Moving my tongue feels like lifting a lead weight. “Then stop spouting bullshit about how I’m his.”
He walks me backward, slowly, one step at a time, until my back hits the hard line of a tree. He tips my head back enough to rest against the bark, his gaze boring into me, dark green irises nearly entirely swallowed by his dilated pupils.
“He didn’t show up,” I rasp. I pull my wrist from his grasp, his fingers releasing the second I actually try, and grip the front of his shirt instead, my nails dragging across his stomach.
“You did. Even if he comes back, even if you and my father force me to marry him instead, I’m not sleeping with him.
I’m not being with him. Stop beating yourself up over a fallout that won’t happen. ”
“Elena,” he warns again, but there’s something wavering in his voice. His resistance is paper-thin — I can hear it in the way his breath catches as I push my hand back down, pulling his shirt with me before it snaps back into place, my fingers dragging along the edge of his boxers.
I don’t give him time to stop me.
But I don’t push my luck either.
I wrap my hand around him over the cotton barrier, and the breath punches from my lungs. Christ. Christ, Christ, Christ, he’s huge—
His forehead drops to mine with a groan unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him. He’s so close to breaking. “This is a horrible idea,” he rasps, but his mouth stays open, another groan slipping out as I push my hand down. He’s rock hard, long, and god, I just want to see.
“Please,” I whisper, holding his gaze while my thumb drags across the damp cotton at the tip of his cock.
That does it.
His mouth meets mine again with a ragged exhale, hurried and hungry, and I accept every bit of it.
The warmth of his hand leaves my face, and before I can even work out where they’ve gone, fingers curl in the waistband of my leggings and underwear, pulling, no, tugging them down to my knees.
Cool air kisses my bare skin, but his palm is scorching as it skates up the back of my thigh.
Fingertips and nails dig into the flesh of my rear, forcing me to gasp, and he takes that as his chance to devour my mouth entirely.
His fingers brush my clit, just once, just barely, and my entire body ignites. My hand pushes against his boxers, forcing them down, impatience clawing at me to set him free. The moment I manage it, my fingers wrap back around him, my mouth tearing from his just to look, just to see—
Dear fucking god.
The noise that slips from me sounds like one from a wounded animal.
“Holy shit,” I croak. My thumb and middle finger barely, if at all, touch. I don’t miss the way his lips tip up ever so slightly at the corner.
“You’re sure?” he asks, his fingers pushing through my slit to my entrance, hesitating.
I arch into his touch. “Yes.”
My hand works him slowly as his digits slip inside of me, two at once, curling in that devastating way he’d done before. My knees buckle, and he takes my weight, pinning me harder against the tree as his mouth finds my neck, hot breath and teeth scraping my skin.
“You’re soaked,” he murmurs. His thumb circles my clit, just enough pressure to make my head spin. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
My cheeks flame. “Haven’t—fuck—haven’t stopped. Since the wedding.”