CHAPTER 25 ELODIE #2
This is the second mention of babies from him.
The unexpected comment at the engagement party took me aback, and now again.
Both times he’s broached such an intimate subject with nonchalance.
I can’t decide if Russell’s so forward about this topic because he’s that open and comfortable with his son and me, or if it’s because he’s an inappropriate, creepy weirdo.
Or… is he testing me, seeing if I can handle the vulgarity because I’m vulgar myself, not at all a lady and therefore not suited for his son?
And then he’ll call off the wedding, and I can run off into the sunset alone.
I decide to test the theory. “Oh, yes. Caden and I cannot wait to jump into bed together.”
Caden chokes on his drink.
I ignore him and continue, Russell’s raised eyebrows and impressed look urging me on. “We can barely keep our hands off each other as it is.”
Caden wipes his chin. “Alright, princess, I don’t think my father wants to hear about this.”
Russell flicks his gaze to him before returning to me. “Is that so?”
He’s not uncomfortable, but he seems sceptical. Can he sense that we don’t really get along?
“Absolutely,” I push on, “if we weren’t so busy during the day, it’d be impossible to not rip each other’s clothes off.”
Caden shoots to his feet. “Elodie. A quick word.” He grabs me by the elbow and tugs me upright.
I keep my eyes on Russell as I step away, a devilish smile playing on my lips. He’s not giving much away, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say he doesn’t believe me. Well, good. If he knows his son isn’t treating me right, maybe he’d have a word with him.
Caden roughly pulls me through a door, and we’re in what looks like another private section.
He slams the door and pushes me up against the wall. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“What? He asked, I answered.”
“The sarcasm is literally oozing off you. Do you want him to know what this dynamic is really like?”
“So what if he did know? Maybe he can teach you some manners.” I fold my arms.
Caden’s lips pull back into a snarl. “You think he’s so charming, so perfect. You have no idea who that man is. He wouldn’t bother with any of that. He’d send you away.” His aggression mounts, and he stops himself, composure returning before he speaks again. “You want to be sent back to your dad?”
“No, I’d just leave.”
“He’d deliver you back there himself.”
“Why?”
“Because you would’ve wasted his time. He knows what life you had with your dad, and so he’d make sure you’d go back to it.
If he thinks you’re giving me any grief, any reason that I might not be in top form, he’ll get rid of you.
You think he needs your family? We’re doing this for you, to save your asses.
You get sent back to your dad, the business dies and you go back to being broke and on the streets by next week. ”
Right. How could I forget?
But being the stubborn girl I am, I say, “Let him then.”
He straightens his shoulders. “Is that what you want?”
I don’t answer. Of course it’s not what I want. But it’s a lose-lose situation. I have no place to call home. To have a good life. It’s hell with my dad, and it’s hell here with this monster.
“Tell me,” Caden urges, “do you want to go back to your dad?” There’s a serious edge to his voice.
“I want to win this stupid bet and be rid of both of you.”
“Well, you haven’t won yet, have you, princess?
So, until then, and according to him out there, you’re with me for the rest of your miserable life.
Which – also to him out there – isn’t fucking miserable.
We’re a happy couple who can’t wait to get married and give him goddamn grandchildren.
That’s it. You don’t need to lay it on so thick and give him a reason to doubt anything. ”
I tap my fingers on my arm. “I can’t play happy families with you in a natural way. It’s impossible.”
His nostrils flare. “You are so goddamn difficult. You can’t just be normal for a couple fucking hours?”
I shrug one shoulder. “He started the conversation, what was I supposed to say? No, Mr Blackwood, I won’t be hopping on your son’s dick because I can’t fucking stand him.”
Caden throws his hands up in the air and, looking to the ceiling, growls like he’s about fit to burst. “God, you are so… so…”
“So what?”
He drops his arms, lowers his eyes back to me. “There are many words to describe you, Elodie.”
I fix my eyes on him in a challenging glare. “So, pick one.”
He closes the small distance between us. Caden watches me, searching for the right words. The most painful vitriol to throw at me.
But then he says, much quieter than the yelling he’s done since we walked into this room, “Stupidly brave.”
His eyes dart all over me, making me want to shrivel up and melt through to the earth’s core.
“Yeah, well,” I say, voice thick, “I’ve seen the worst in people. There’s nothing left to be afraid of.”
He studies me for another moment, the weight of his gaze crushing me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“No one’s ever given me so much attitude before you. No one’s spoken to my dad with such confidence, without so much as a tremor of fear. I could almost say I’m impressed.”
I give him a sly smile. “Well, thank you.”
“I said almost. I’m not. I’m irritated. You’re irritating as hell. Now, we’re going to go back out there and you’re not going to talk about how much you want to fuck me. Which, I know, deep down, is a secret truth of yours.”
I scoff. “As if.”
Caden leans forward, hands on the wall either side of my head, blocking the light above us and casting me in his shadow. “I can tell, Elodie, you have little tells.”
“Oh, yeah?” I will my voice to stay steady. “Like what, detective?”
His eyes drop down. “These lips, for one instance.” His hand comes up, fingers hooking under my chin, his thumb coming up to graze along my bottom lip.
A feathery touch that tickles my nerves.
“They give so much away. When you walk into a room I’m in, they part.
Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.” His voice lowers, almost to a whisper that crawls under my skin.
“As if the breath in your lungs gets whipped away at the sight of me, and I can almost imagine, from across the room, the little gasp that escapes as this bottom lip falls open and the bottom of your throat hollows just a tad.” He swallows, eyes coming back up to mine and holding me there.
“As if every time you leave me, you work so hard on forgetting I exist, and then each time we collide again, it shocks you just as much as the last. I don’t know what I prefer yet.
When these lips move to spit venom at me, the screams that come out from between them, or when they only part just the slightest when your heart flutters around me. ”
His words paralyse me. Such intimate details, such bold assumptions.
Such sensuality lacing his voice. I get a glimpse of a different Caden.
Just the tiniest bit as his features soften and his jaw unclenches.
As he allows himself a second to melt into whatever this is.
There’s no malice, no threat, no pain. His brain is taking him elsewhere and letting his mask drop. It freezes the blood in my veins.
“When your eyes drift down my body…” His hand lowers, fingers brushing down my neck.
Then down the middle of my breasts – just the tips of two fingers, slowly stroking down – filling me with heat and making my heart flutter beneath his touch.
“And I can almost see your imagination whir to life, spin out of control with the visions of me on top of you. Behind you. Beneath you.”
My voice is barely a whisper when I say, “You’re deluded.”
“And you’re wet.” His hand continues down, voice still low and raspy and awakening something dangerously hot inside me.
“Aren’t you, little princess? I can see it in that brief moment, when your eyes fall on me for that first second, the dazed look as you allow yourself the smallest fragment of time to imagine what this would be like… if you let yourself go.”
His hand travels farther down my stomach, and I’m completely paralysed to do anything about it. “It’s not just me, you hate me too.”
“Indeed, I do,” he whispers, “which would make fucking you even more fun. Because I wouldn’t care about what I was doing. If I was too rough, fucking you too hard, digging my fingers into your flesh too deep and bruising you. Or making you bleed too much.”
My breath snags as my knees threaten to give out. “You’re crazy.”
“Perhaps. But you are too. Which makes a part of me believe that you’d love every fucked-up second of me ruining you.” His hand reaches the very bottom of my stomach, fingertips so close to grazing my pussy.
My hand comes up to his chest to push him away, but the racing speed of his heart beneath my palm stalls me.
“I couldn’t love anything to do with you,” I say with zero conviction.
Caden’s eyes glimmer. His breath hot on my face, heartbeat thundering against my hand. It’s too hot, there’s no air in here. No air between us, no air in the entire world.
“I should lay you on one of these tables and prove just how much you’d love it.
How much you fucking want me. Make your eyes roll and your toes curl, and I could put money on having to cover your mouth to stop your screams of pleasure reaching the entire restaurant. I should prove just how wrong you are.”
My entire body catches fire. So hot I feel my skin melting into him as he dips his face and his lips brush against my neck.
“You wouldn’t. You can’t come.”
He lifts his head again, relieving me of the tickle of his mouth against my throat that was making the ache between my legs so much worse. “I don’t have to come to prove that point. It would only take a few seconds to have you crumbling beneath me.”
I wobble and he pushes his body against mine to hold me up. “See? You’re practically falling apart just at the mere image of it.”
“Falling apart with disgust,” I whisper, voice trembling, bones shaking.
A complacent laugh heats my face. I’m sure he’ll see steam rising from my head soon if he doesn’t back up. It’s like he’s thrown me into a furnace. I have no idea why my body’s reacting to him this way.
“I’m not sure about that,” he whispers back, taunting and spine-tingling. “I know you disgust me, but it sure would be a spectacle to watch you quiver and cry from what I’d do to you.”
“You’re not as repulsed by me as you like to make out, either, Caden,” I say, feeling a boldness blossom in my chest. I reach between us and find exactly what I’m expecting.
He stiffens, eyes growing wide as I brush my fingers across his rock-hard erection.
His tongue pokes into his cheek, debating his next move.
It’s not something I’m prepared for.
His hand glides up beneath the hem of my skirt. “You want to play Chicken, Elodie? I’m telling you, you’ll tap out first.”
His fingers trail across to the inside of my thigh, all the way up. I squeeze my legs together. “Stop.”
He chuckles against my cheek. Then he shoves a knee between my thighs and wrenches one to the side, spreading me. “No.”
Before I can do anything about it, before I can thaw from this frozen state and shove him away, his fingers dip beneath my underwear.
The touch feels like an electric shock from my core to my brain.
I yelp and shove him away, snapped from my hypnosis.
He falls away, grinning. He lifts his fingers up.
“Would you look at that glisten?” His lips part once more, and he pokes his two wet fingertips into his mouth and sucks.
“Hmm,” he growls menacingly, “that’s the sweet taste of your betrayal, Elodie.
Hate me all you want. Your pussy certainly doesn’t. Poor thing’s crying for me right now.”
“Fuck you!” I spit, once again repulsed by this bastard, all previous ambivalence obliterated. “I’ll never sleep with you.”
“It’s a good thing I’ll never want to, then.” He lowers his hand, shoves it in his pocket, a glazed look in his eyes. He’s as breathless as I am.
I throw a haphazard gesture at his crotch. “Seems like you want to do something.”
His upper lip curls slightly. “It’ll never happen, Elodie. Just the sight of you makes me sick.”
I swallow hard, wanting to wipe the sweat off my upper lip. “Yeah, well, ditto, Caden. I’ll go the rest of my life without sex and be the happiest girl alive, knowing my only other option would be you. It’s a no brainer.”
He scoffs, walking towards the door. “Whatever you say, princess.” He opens the door for me. I go straight out, but he grabs my arm. “Not. Another. Word.”
I scowl at him and yank my arm out of his grasp. “I think if I say another word about sleeping with you, my lunch will make a reappearance.”
He harrumphs and allows me to walk ahead of him.
Absolute asshole.
The waft of fish once again hitting me has me abruptly turning around. “How did you know I don’t like fish?”
Caden gets a smug look on his face. “What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t know what my wife likes?”
“I’m not your wife. And that’s not an answer.”
He purses his lips, hands sliding into his pockets. “You will be soon. And it is an answer. I told you I would find out everything about you.”
He is so frustrating. “You asked Dad? You got my medical records? A psychic? Tell me.”
Caden rolls his eyes. “I got Higgins to get your medical records, yes.”
My eyes pop wider.
He sees my astonishment. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you got violently sick from fish, bad enough to be hospitalised, you probably wouldn’t eat it again.” He jerks his head forward, urging me to keep walking.
I stare at him another moment, then turn around again.
So the guy hates me but wants to know everything about me? Why would he go to the lengths of accessing things like my medical records? Know thy enemy, I guess. Creepy stalker vibes, for sure.
Sexy creepy stalker, the darkness whispers, that was the hottest thing we’ve ever felt.
“No, it wasn’t,” I mutter under my breath as we head back to the table, mind drifting back to the VIP room.
I couldn’t think of anything worse than fucking that man, no matter what my body tells him. He’s vulgar and evil.
But you liked it.
It doesn’t matter if Caden makes me feel things I’ve never felt. It doesn’t matter that when I felt his cock, it sent a surge of hunger through my body. It doesn’t matter that he’s the most enticing man I’ve ever met. He’s infuriating and impossible to get along with.
“I hated it,” I hiss in a whisper.
Caden’s hand smacks my ass, making me jump. “Keep telling yourself that, princess.”
It takes great effort not to whirl around and slap him across his stupid face.
I will never touch this man again.