Chapter 11
EVER
Yes, anything,” I assure him, positive I’m making a mistake.
“You’ll do what I say? You promise?” He leans on his elbow, propping his head up in his palm with a sneaky smile.
“What is with you and promises? And yes, what’s one more?”
He takes a profound breath, as if the memory of the last promise he demanded were a burden. “Lie back and close your eyes.”
“Why?” I position myself on the mattress, trying to calm the rhythm in my chest.
“Eyes,” he scolds, and I pinch them shut.
“I thought you liked them open,” I jest, not particularly thrilled with confinement in the dark of my mind.
His voice turns deep and quiet next to me.
“That’s why I need them closed—they’re distracting.
Now lie still. Back flat against the bed.
Arms at your sides. Legs…”—he pauses, and I swear I feel his gaze raking over my body, down my naked legs—“just like that. Take a breath for me and let all the messed-up thoughts go.”
That, I cannot do. My thoughts never leave, but I let my body melt into the bed. His words are foreign to my ears, strange, slithering off his tongue. He’s not one to comfort, not like this. “Now you’re a meditation guide too?”
“I’m anything you fucking need until the end of time, now shut your sweet mouth until I tell you what I want to hear.”
And maybe that’s why I push him. To hear things like that. They make me forget everything else. “Maybe I need—”
“To shut up and let me help you? Yes. You agreed to this.”
“I’m nervous,” I admit.
“I’m here,” he says, oblivious to how those two words hit me. “Look deep. Even if it hurts. Find that spark. It burns when you get too close. It leaves scars, but the heat feels too good to escape.”
“I don’t think that’s how most people feel about fire.” But I hunt for the white energy, the magic, rushing and rolling rampant through me with each touch. I’ll find it—and extinguish it.
“But you get it,” he says softly.
“I do.”
“Did you find the spark?”
“Maybe,” I lie. I can’t track it down, can’t separate it from the rest of me. Forget a spark. My whole mind is on fire.
His breath passes over my ear. “Now light it up.”
I pry one eye open. “I thought we were trying to put out the spark?”
He tugs on his ear and furrows his brow at me. “I don’t know what spark you want to snuff out, but I want you lit up all over the fucking place.”
Oh. I take a shallow breath. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing anymore.”
“I don’t think we ever were,” he says, so quietly that I shiver. “Eye.”
I clamp my eye shut.
“Can we continue?” he asks. “Because I’ve got plans for every inch of you.”
I roll onto my belly and scream into the mattress, emptying my lungs into the softness, then flip back. “I’m not too proud to fuck a man I’m mad at. It would probably make it better.”
He lets loose a breath. “I’m sure it would. And you’re not mad at me.”
I open my eyes again. “And you can’t touch me.”
Night shadows chase his jaw line, his eyes knotted with regret. “That won’t stop me from making you come so hard on your own hand that it bruises.”
I reach up and pull my hair to keep myself from screaming again then find my composure, barely. “That can’t happen.”
His scent strengthens, no different than the damp, crisp air of an endless black tunnel, and my eyelids shut without being told.
“Feel that? Your reaction to me. Next to you. Wanting you. Take that, light it up. Let every bit of you heat up for me.”
“But—”
“Your panties will be halfway down your throat if you finish that sentence,” he warns.
“I’d rather it be your cock.” I slap my hand over my mouth. The way I drop my guard around him is atrocious. I don’t even remember thinking it first, as if someone else pulled the words right out of me.
He groans and lowers his voice again. “I want my hands on the inside of your thighs, shoving those legs apart.”
I whimper. Why can’t this be real?
“And once I spread you open like that?” he prompts.
I struggle to control my breathing. “This is not what I agreed to.”
“What will you do? Are you going to tell me, or do I have to make you?”
“Fine. I moan or something.”
“You’re terrible at this,” he says, a smile evident in his tone.
“You’re supposed to be helping me control my magic so you can actually touch me.”
“You said you’d do anything.”
I groan. “Okay, what would you do with my legs wide open?”
“Slide my thumb down the front of those black panties that keep your pussy from me and push against the wetness I know is leaking out as I speak.”
“Then you rip off my underwear?”
“You’re even impatient in your imagination.” His laugh reverberates through me. “I work my fingers under the edge of your panties and spread that wetness up and down your slit.” He shifts next to me. The bed creaks and squeaks beneath us. “Can you feel me?”
I don’t feel fingers, but I sure feel something creeping all over me, touching everywhere he describes. I suck in a shaky breath and wait for more. Because with this man, there’s always more.
“Answer me.”
“Eli,” I say, remembering to hold my eyes shut. “You’re making this harder.”
“So hard,” he murmurs. “Now answer me.”
“I’m trying to stay mad at you.”
“I know. But, can you feel me?”
“Fuck, yes, I feel you—or I feel something.”
“Good, because I can’t wait anymore. I want my hands all over you,” he says. “Running up your sides, your skin under my palms, over your hips, and shit—I want to tear off your bra and grab your tits.”
I laugh. “Romantic.”
“You know what I want next?”
I take a slow breath. “No.”
“I want to slip my hands around your neck.”
“Oh?”
“And tell you, ‘Don’t you dare bring romance into this. You keep your promise or nothing happens. Understand?’” His voice is rough, his breathing ragged like mine.
I nod, and a destroyed little noise comes out of me.
“Your hands are my hands,” he rasps. “Lift your shirt for me.”
I obey his breathy words and raise my shirt up to my collarbones.
“Untie your bra.”
I hesitate. “What if the others show up?”
“They can fucking wait.”
“Outside the broken window?” Watching?
“Would you rather them come inside?”
“No. I—”
“Your bra,” he interrupts.
“I have to do all the work?” I tease.
“You’ll do everything I say.”
I arch my back and bend my arms behind me to fiddle with the strings until they come undone. He releases a restrained moan as I drop back down.
“Show me.”
“Before or after?” I ask, holding my bra in place and convincing my eyes to stay closed.
“Before or after what?”
“His balls. Did you cut them off before or after you killed him?”
“Before, of course.”
I moan, rolling my head to the side, unwell with longing.
“Then I shoved his face into the puddle of blood and held it there until he drowned, exactly what I told you I would do if someone makes you bleed.”
And that rush of forbidden feelings tries to penetrate my heart again, but I must be a master at stuffing emotions, because I don’t let any past my walls. This man kills for me, spills blood to avenge my own, but I can’t let him in?
It’s fine. He doesn’t want me to anyway.
With trembling fingers, I flip the cups upward over my chest. My bra treasures were all lost from my pocket at the Ring, but I managed to slip the cork of a vial from Milo’s room into my bra.
One bit of security. It tumbles down my side as though eager to escape and leave me vulnerable.
Goosebumps climb over me, and that familiar throbbing between my thighs can’t be ignored.
With a sound like he’s about to enjoy a good meal—something much better than a bar—he goes on. “And those lips you’re licking, I want—”
“To kiss me,” I finish for him.
His lips collide with mine, pressing our faces close. The contact zips down to my toes in a current of pleasure. He groans and shudders with pain, finally peeling himself away and panting at my side.
“Tell me you kiss me, you crazy fuck, not actually kiss me!” I settle the storm in my chest and close my eyes again.
“I can’t keep my lips off you. I kiss down your neck, across your chest… over your heart, matching its beat,” he says, out of breath.
My breasts tighten under his imaginary touch, his words sparking life into the sensations.
“And when you hold my head against you, I bite your nipple.”
I laugh through my nose. “How hard?”
“Enough to make you cry out but still want more.”
My heartbeat claims my whole body, arousal commanding and demanding control over me, everything from the whimper I hold back to the pelvic muscles I squeeze, the swelling and warmth, the sting of desire. How could it take me so completely? He’s not even touching me.
“Pinch them.”
My eyes flash open. “What?”
His jaw is tight, his eyes an abyss swallowing me up, but I’m stuck on the way his hand pumps inside his pants. So damn gorgeous.
“Thumbs and pointers on your nipples.” He stares intently at the tiny buds. “And pinch. Hard.”