Chapter 19
EVER
Ileft you plenty of underwear out there to keep you entertained. Have you already run out?” I ask Eli through the bathroom door, buying myself time. I wad the note up, poke it into the sink drain and return to the tub within seconds. One less thing to tug at my heart.
A quiet chuckle slips under the wood door. “I handed them out like bars, one for everyone, two for Sypher.”
I poke my toe at my underwear on the floor, holding in a laugh. If anyone’s still awake, they can hear every word. “You did not.”
“Well, none for your ex-cock.” The door creaks from his weight against it.
“Are you jealous?”
A slam and a bam later, the door flings open.
A bent metal plate, hinges and screws stick out, the frame gouged from the latch, the wood splintered.
The entire door hangs crooked. It’s easy to forget his strength—until moments like this one.
“What the fuck?” I close my thighs and cross my arms over my lower belly out of instinct. “Just knock.”
Eli cracks his knuckles simply by squeezing his fists and soaks up my almost naked body. “If I do that, it’ll be to knock down an entire wall to get to you.”
My heart jitters on the edge of wide open and armored shut. “Get in here and fix the door.”
I don’t miss his glance at the empty edge of the sink before he wedges the door back in place, further bending the hinges.
He stands over me. His presence is overwhelming, and I can’t quite find anywhere to look but at the outline of his length pressing against his pants.
I beg my eyes to return to those biceps that nearly ripped his black shirt when he shoved the door into the frame, but they refuse.
I close them instead, locking my walls into place.
“What do you want from me? You know we can’t touch, and you couldn’t care less what I’m feeling. ”
He steps closer and kicks my clothes across the tile floor. “I could care less, but I don’t. Actually, I thought I could. I did. But I couldn’t care less. Not at all. Damn. I’ve tried.”
“What?” I can’t spare the mental energy to decipher that madness.
“I fucking care, okay?” He drops to his knees before me, eyes wide and bright, lips twitching in the way only an unplanned confession makes them.
That’s not what he’s supposed to say. He can’t care.
It’s too late. And too tempting. I reach for his cheek, stopping short of brushing my fingers over his stubble, feeling the angles of his jaw.
Despite the pain I hold in my hands, he doesn’t shy away, doesn’t flinch or grimace at the possibility of my touch. He’s perfectly still.
“Okay,” I whisper, then drop my hand back into my lap, my walls crumbling. I look away, basking in the stilted silence. Until my shoulder falls off. At least that’s what it feels like. I scream and clap my hand over my new scar. Then spin around.
Eli smiles at me innocently, holding up a half-full vial of blue liquid, but I see past the curve of his lips and twinkling eyes.
This man knows no innocence. He’d collect up all my tears in a bottle and gulp them down with a smirk if so inclined.
“That should get you another day or so without much pain.” Drops of tincture glide down my back.
“Now tell me why your heart was beating like you were about to run.”
Shit. How could he tell from a heartbeat?
Panic threatens to give me away. “The stone,” I blurt, inventing a reason, and shove myself backward into the bathtub, bra still on.
Water gushes over the edge and soaks Eli’s thighs and knees.
I submerse myself up to my neck, because the longer he looks at me like that, like he wants to bend me every which way, tongue sliding over his parted mouth with the occasional bite of his lip, has me forgetting what’s stopping him from doing precisely that.
I tap the stone on my chest. “From my necklace. And the one from the Centress. They fused together, and someone talked to me.”
“Someone?”
“A god,” I say.
“Oh. The gods that don’t exist.” He cracks an infuriatingly stunning smirk.
“They don’t. And only one—Ametrine.”
“What did she say?”
I untie my bra and discard it outside the tub with a wet slap on the tile, then unstick the cork and coin and guitar pick from my breasts and drop them over the edge. They scatter across the floor. “She’s not real.”
“Do not make me get in that water and force it out of you.”
It’s impossible to hide my smile. “Why not?”
He might as well drown me now with the growl he sets loose. Then this giant man lifts his leg and steps inside the tub, boot and sock and pants submerged. Dirt loosens from the tread and floats to the surface, tiny brown specks clustering together.
“Have you completely lost it? You’re filthy,” I hiss, pulling my legs to my chest before his other foot goes under. “Get out!”
But no. That would be too much to ask. Fully clothed and pockets full, he sits, knees up, back against the tub. Water cascades over the edge again, flooding the floor and taking the floating dirt with it.
“You’re supposed to undress first!”
His eyebrows defy nature and twist in four rebellious directions at once with the devious face he makes. He leans forward and pulls off his shirt, leaving me staring—no, goggling—like a fool at his bare chest, at the scars and muscles, the beautiful brown bareness of it. My nipples turn to stone.
He smiles. “Better?”
“Worse.” I splash him.
A warm caress of air rides over my shoulders. His light aura. He pushes his palms through the water, sending a huge wave across the tub, so big that it drowns my face and soaks my hair. Half the contents of the tub now forms a shallow lake on the tile floor.
He stretches his arms out and rests them on the side edges. “Bathe.”
The simple command strikes low in my belly, his voice seductive and forceful at once. I can’t decide if I want to defy him and watch him fume… or wash between my legs and watch him drool.
Our eyes meet, mine teasing and questioning, his daring and threatening. And even if the walls fell all around us, I still don’t think I could look away. That keeps happening. His eyes are like magnets.
When I’m about to burst a blood vessel, he speaks. “How many times did you fuck him?”
“Two hundred fourteen,” I lilt, not pausing for an instant.
His entire body flexes, skin stretched tight over every knuckle, his nostrils flaring.
I grin. I have no idea how many times I was with Maverick J., but damn do I want him to beat that fake record. Starting now.
“Did he fuck you in this tub?”
My chest jumps in a silent laugh. “Does he look like he even got on top?” I lie. I was always under him. “He was the laziest fuck ever and spilled more tears than seed.” That part is true.
Eli tucks his legs under him and reaches for his pocket, eyes twitching with a determination sharper than the blade he draws from its sheath. “So he didn’t spread your legs open like this?” He pushes on the inside of my knees with the cold metal, leaving shallow slices behind as he parts my legs.
I inhale at the sting, but more so at the way it makes my core wind up in knots.
Blood dribbles down my inner thighs in jagged lines, hitting the water and turning it pink.
He presses the flat of the blade against the fresh cuts until my legs hit either side of the tub.
And I’m exposed, save for the blurry layer of liquid privacy.
“No, he didn’t.” Without my knees to block me, I cross my arms over my breasts.
Eli dips his knifeless hand underwater, gliding it along the bottom of the tub, closer and closer to me, to my bare skin.
“You can’t touch me,” I remind him, as if it’s not the only thing we’re capable of thinking about right now.
Barely a fingernail away, he stops. “Lift that little ass.”
I do. Mostly because I don’t know how to say no to that. And partly because I’m afraid what might happen with that knife in his other hand if he’s suddenly struck with pain. I hold onto the sides of the tub and raise my hips.
“That’s my good girl.”
I nearly drop back down onto his hand with the tidal wave of blood that surges between my legs at his deep voice, at those words. My legs shake as he slides his hand beneath me, reaching all the way back to the drain plug. He pops it out.
The water glugs and gurgles through its rapid departure. Eli pulls his hand out from under me, and I drop my ass back down sloppily, now feeling the tug of gravity as the water rushes out, the cold air on my wet skin.
The last slurp down the drain leaves me naked before him, unshielded. But I don’t close my legs. Instead, I gather a trickle of blood up near my knee and guide it down and down with my thumb. And down, spreading it to the crease of my upper thigh.
Eli’s breath falters. He swallows hard before he’s able to speak. “And did he lick your thighs clean from the blood he drew?”
“Not once.”
He stows his knife again and flips it around, holding the sheathed blade in his fist. “Did he ever tell you how sweet your pussy tastes?” I hold my breath as he drags the handle up my slit, collecting the slippery wetness already leaking at his words, then up my thigh through a fresh trail of blood.
He pops the handle into his mouth and sucks it clean.
“He wouldn’t know,” I admit in broken huffs.
“Mmm.”
That sound might kill me.
“Good,” he coos, so quietly I shiver. “I didn’t feel like pausing this to cut off his tongue.”
“No,” I agree, breathless.
It only encourages him. “And how many times did he tell you to turn around and get on your hands and knees?” He swirls his finger in a circle and looks at me expectantly, brows high and lips tight.
“I-I don’t recall.”
He rests the head of the knife at my entrance and stares me down, eyes blacker than the scars on his soul. I pant, losing the battle with my hips, pushing forward against the handle.
The tip pops inside me. Even that little bit has me moaning.
“How many?” he asks.
“Maybe twelve,” I choke out.