19. The Hidden Door #2
Eli stood. Slowly. Deliberately. He moved toward me, and I should have stepped back, should have maintained the distance, but I didn't. I stayed rooted to the floor while he crossed the space between us, his movements unhurried, his eyes never leaving my face.
"Serena," his voice was low, careful. "I'm going to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly."
"Okay."
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
The question hung in the air between us. Simple. Direct. Impossible.
Yes, my body screamed. God, yes.
No, said the voice that sounded like Marcus, the one that reminded me good women didn't want things like this. Good women didn't feel desire for one man while another's touch still lingered on their skin.
"I don't know," I whispered.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only honest one I have."
He was close now. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him, smell that intoxicating woodsy scent and old books, and like his brothers... something wild. Something that made me think of the preserve at night, the darkness between the trees, the howls that rose under the full moon.
"Then let me ask a different question," he said. "If nothing else existed... no complications, no history, no consequences, would you want me to kiss you?"
I looked at him. At his serious eyes, his careful hands, the mouth I'd been trying not to stare at for weeks.
"Yes," I whispered.
And then his lips were on mine.
It was gentle at first. Just a brush of his mouth against mine, tentative and questioning. I could have pulled away. Should have pulled away.
Instead, I made a sound: soft, needy, embarrassing, and his hand came up to cup my face, and then it wasn't gentle anymore.
He kissed like he did everything else: with precision, with attention, with a focus so complete it felt like being the center of the universe. His other hand found my waist, pulling me closer, and I went willingly, sinking into the warmth of him.
His hand slipped under the hem of my shirt, palm hot against my bare skin, and I made a sound that was embarrassingly close to a whimper. He laughed against my throat, a low, pleased rumble, and I felt it vibrate through my whole body.
"You're sensitive here," he murmured, teeth grazing my collarbone. "I'll remember that."
"You're taking notes?"
"I told you." His mouth found mine again, hot and demanding. "I’m observant."
The phrase echoed in my mind—I’m observant—and I remembered Callum saying the same thing about my coffee order. These fucking brothers. Three gorgeous sets of eyes giving me careful, focused attention.
Fuck.
I should be terrified. I should be running.
Instead, I pulled Eli closer and lost myself in the heat of him.
We backed up against the bookshelves. Something fell—a box of papers scattering across the floor—and neither of us cared.
Eli's body pressed against mine, lean and warm and stronger than I'd expected.
His hands explored with methodical precision: tracing the curve of my waist, the dip of my lower back, finding every place that made me shiver.
"Tell me to stop," he breathed against my lips, "and I will."
"Don't stop."
He groaned, a sound that went straight to my core, and kissed me harder.
His mouth trailed down my jaw, my neck, finding the sensitive spot below my ear that made me arch against him.
My hands found their way under his shirt, traced the smooth planes of his back, felt the muscles shift and flex beneath my palms.
He was all lean lines and controlled power. Where Jasper had been heat and urgency, Eli was slow fire building.
This is wrong, some distant part of my brain insisted. This is going to ruin everything.
I couldn't stop.
It was maddening, the way he catalogued my reactions. Like he was memorizing me for later study.
"Eli," I gasped when his fingers traced the line of my spine. "You're..."
"Too slow?" His mouth curved against my skin. "Or not slow enough?"
"I can't think."
"Good."
He pulled back just enough to look at me, and the sight of him nearly undid me. Hair disheveled, lips swollen, eyes dark and hungry. This was not the careful archivist who spoke in measured tones and adjusted his glasses when he was thinking. This was something else entirely.
Something that made heat coil low in my belly.
"You're beautiful," he said, and the words sounded almost reverent. "The way you flush when you're..."
"If you say 'aroused,' I'm walking out of this basement."
He laughed, a real laugh, warm and surprised, pulling me close again. "Flustered. I was going to say flustered."
"Sure you were."
"I was." He kissed me again, softer this time. Then harder. Then his hands found the hem of my shirt again, and this time I helped him pull it over my head.
The basement air was cool against my skin, but his hands were warm, tracing patterns across my stomach, my ribs, the lace edge of my bra.
"Is this okay?" he asked, mouth against my shoulder.
"Yes."
"And this?" His thumb brushed across the fabric, and I arched into his touch.
"Yes."
He made a sound, half groan, half something else, something rougher that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
For just a moment, his grip on my waist tightened with a strength that didn't match his lean frame, and I could have sworn his eyes caught the candlelight in a way that made them look almost golden.
Then he blinked, and the moment passed.
"Serena." His voice was rougher now, strained. "I should stop."
"Why?"
"Because if I don't stop now, I'm not going to be able to."
The honesty in his voice made something twist in my chest.
I thought about Jasper.
I pulled away, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the basement. I found my shirt on the floor and pulled it on, hyperaware of his eyes on me.
"I don't understand what's happening here," I said. "I feel like I'm going crazy."
"You're not crazy."
I looked at him. At this brilliant, careful man who had just kissed me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
He lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to my palm, the gesture so tender it made my chest ache.
We stood there in the dusty archive, surrounded by centuries of Thornwood secrets, and I felt a yearning in me that I didn't know was even possible.
Then guilt flooded back in, cold and familiar.
What kind of person does something like this with two different men? With brothers?
Brothers. Plural. The reminder of what I'd done, was doing, sent a fresh wave of guilt through me.
Jasper's hands on my skin, his laugh vibrating against my throat.
Eli's mouth on mine, his fingers tracing patterns I could still feel like phantom touches.
And the constant, unsettling awareness of Callum watching me from doorways, his golden eyes tracking my movements with an intensity I didn't understand.
What kind of person am I becoming?
The question gnawed at me as I straightened my clothes, ran fingers through my tangled hair. I'd never been this woman. Never been someone who fell into one man's arms while the taste of another still lingered. My whole life I'd been careful. Controlled. Safe.
And now I was standing in a hidden basement, aching for a man I barely knew, while my body hummed with the memory of his brother's touch.
Marcus would have called me a whore.
The thought rose unbidden, ugly and familiar. All those years of conditioning, of being told what kind of woman I was, what kind of woman I should be. Good women didn't feel desire for multiple men. Good women didn't let themselves be touched in dusty basements. Good women...
"I should go," I mumbled.
Eli's brow furrowed. "Are you alright?"
"Fine. Just... I need to think."
"Don't," Eli whispered.
I startled. "Don't what?"
"Whatever you're thinking right now—don't." He reached out, took my hand, and pressed another kiss to my palm. "You haven't done anything wrong, Serena. I promise."
"How can you possibly know what I'm thinking?"
"I can see it on your face." His thumb traced circles on my wrist, finding my pulse point again. "You can't hide it. The voice in your head telling you that wanting things makes you bad—tell it to fuck off."
I flinched. He wasn't wrong.
"That voice," he said, "doesn't belong to you. It belongs to someone who wanted to control you. His opinions don't get to live in your head rent-free anymore."
Something cracked in my chest. A tiny fissure in the wall I'd built.
Eli's grip on my hand tightened.
I didn't know what to say to that. So I didn't say anything.
But I knew this was wrong... or complicated. This was going to make everything so much harder.
Eli moved toward me slowly, giving me time to retreat if I wanted. I didn't.
"In my family," he said, as if he could read my thoughts, "we believe that connections aren't always... conventional. That sometimes, something bigger than individual choice is at work."
"Like what? Fate?"
I didn't wait for him to respond. I turned and climbed the stone stairs, leaving him alone among the archives, my lips swollen from his kisses, my body confused and alive.
Outside, somewhere in the distance, I heard it again.
That sound I'd been trying to explain away for weeks.
Howling. Rising and falling through the preserve, eerie, beautiful, and utterly inhuman.
I paused on the stairs, listening. The sound raised goosebumps on my arms, but not from fear. From something else. Recognition.
And when I reached the top of the stairs, my head swimming with Thornwood history and the particular intensity of Eli's attention, I found Jasper waiting at the top.