58. Eli
FIFTY-EIGHT
ELI
“Five minutes. Go,” I say, leaning against the door with my arms crossed. If I get any closer to her, I won’t be able to think.
“Sit down, Eli.” She crosses the room and takes a seat on the chaise lounge on the raised platform.
“You do know what people do on that chaise, right?”
She rolls her eyes. “Lower your walls for a second. I just want to talk.”
I don’t sit. But I move off the door and take two steps into the room, which is as much ground as I’m willing to concede.
“Talk,” I say.
“I need you to know that you were wrong.”
“About what?”
“About yourself. About what you are. About what being with me—with us—would cost you.” She’s looking at me with those gray eyes and I hate how steady she is, how certain, when everything inside me is shrapnel and static.
“You told me teaching is the only thing that keeps you human. That’s not true. ”
“You don’t know—”
“I know that the man who held me on that beach while I was covered in someone else’s blood is the same man who reads stories to five-year-olds and who teaches adults basic sentence structure so they can get a better education.
I know those aren’t different people fighting for control.
That’s one man. Whole. And you don’t get to carve yourself into slices because you’d rather punish yourself than admit you can be a hangman, a teacher, and mine. ”
The words hit somewhere deep and unprotected, and my jaw locks. “It’s not about punishment. It’s about risk. If any part of this gets back to the school—”
“Does the school know you come here?” She gestures around the room. “Do they know you hang serial rapists?”
I stiffen. “No. And that’s exactly the point. They don’t know about this place. They don’t know who I am after hours, and that’s the only reason I get to keep doing both.”
“Then how will they find out about me? Why am I the thread that unravels it all?”
I breathe through my nose and try to keep my hands from shaking. She’s blitzing my weak points on purpose—aiming for the places I can’t armor up. Smart. Unforgiving. A little ruthless. I like that about her, and it terrifies me.
“Because you matter,” I say before I can stop myself. “Because you aren’t something I want to hide. Fuck, Sage. I want more than that.”
“So you’d rather spend the rest of your life alone? Punishing yourself for wanting something you can absolutely have?”
“Yes.” My hands ball at my sides. “Because you don’t know what happens to men like me when we lose our edge.
When our focus shifts to something other than the mission.
You don’t know what happens when that boundary loosens, when I let myself want something I can’t afford to lose, when I let myself want you. ”
“Is that what you think happened to the others? They’ve lost their edge because of me?”
She stands and I refuse to look away.
“Yes.”
“Bullshit. Bullshit, Eli. That’s the biggest load of bullshit anyone has ever tried to sell me.” She stalks toward me, stopping toe to toe. “From where I’m standing, the only person losing any sort of edge is you. You can’t even think straight you’re shaking so bad.”
I keep my arms folded because if I unfold them I’ll reach out and pull her into my arms.
“Go back to Holden, Sage. Go to Milo. To Micah. Or Knox. You don’t need me too.”
It’s the ugliest truth I have left. Not noble distance. Not protection. Just the belief that whatever I am would be excess at best and poison at worst.
“You’re wrong.”
“Your five minutes are up.”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
I stare at her. She stares right back, a dare in the quirk of her mouth, defiant and soft at the same time. She’s so small compared to me—if I wanted to, I could crush her into the velvet of that chaise. Pin her down and make her listen. But I’m afraid if I touch her, I’ll never let her go.
“You’re relentless,” I grind out.
“You’re an idiot,” she fires back.
That, I can’t argue. I know what I am. A man who’s lost his limits.
Who can only keep his mask on through sheer force of will.
But she’s not done. She leans in, body tilted up, face close enough I can see the pulse jumping in her throat.
I want to bite it. I want to bend and tear and claim every inch of her and I can’t, I fucking can’t.
“I can’t do this. I keep telling you, I can’t do this.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
My jaw locks. My hands flex once at my sides before I force them still.
“I don’t know, Sage. Pick the one you prefer.”
“What I prefer?” She reaches for the hem of her shirt. “I’d prefer that you fuck me.”
I blink. “What?”
“Get it out of your system.” She pulls the shirt over her head and drops it on the floor.
Simple bra underneath, black cotton, nothing designed to seduce, and it’s the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.
“You want me so much it’s making you sick, right?
Your words, Eli. So take what you want. Right here.
Get it out of your head so you can think straight tomorrow. Maybe you’ll get that edge back.”
“Put your shirt back on.”
“No.” She reaches behind her and unclasps her bra. It falls. She stands there, bare from the waist up, arms at her sides, chin raised, daring me to look. I look. God help me, I look, and every barrier I’ve built turns to tissue paper.
“Sage—”
“What? You can watch me on a live feed or when I’m getting finger fucked by Micah but you can’t look at me now?” She steps closer. “You can hold me while I’m covered in blood but you can’t touch me when I’m offering?”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” Her hands go to the waistband of her shorts. Button. Zipper. She shoves them down her hips and steps out of them, and now she’s standing in front of me in nothing but black underwear, and my hands are shaking.
“Sage, stop. You have no idea what you’re fucking asking of me.”
“Make me stop, Eli. Fucking make me.”
That’s all it takes.
I’m across the room before I register moving. My hands find her waist and I lift her, her legs wrapping around me on instinct, and her mouth crashes into mine. The kiss is violent. Teeth, tongue, weeks of starvation compressed into a single point of contact.
Contact. The one thing I never let myself take.
Weeks ago I watched Micah take her apart with my own hands fisted at my sides and called it discipline.
Days ago I watched her come on a screen because she sent the feed and I let a lens do what I wouldn’t let my hands—because a camera was a wall, because looking has never once been the same as having.
As long as I only looked, the line held.
There’s no camera now. No screen. No Micah. Nothing between her skin and my hands, and the line doesn’t hold.
It was never going to.
“Little savage.”
She tastes like coffee and defiance and everything I’ve been starving for, and the sound she makes when I grip her—too hard—is the sound of a lock breaking open.
I drop her onto the chaise. She bounces once, hair fanning out, eyes blazing up at me—wild and triumphant and so fucking beautiful I can’t breathe.
“Eli.” My name in her mouth is gasoline on a fire that’s been burning since the beach.
I pull my shirt over my head. She watches, her lips parting, her breath coming fast. Her eyes track down my chest, my stomach, the ink snaking up my ribs, the old scar below my shoulder from a job that went sideways three years ago, and when they come back up they’re dark with something that mirrors exactly what I feel—hunger edged with desperation edged with the terrifying suspicion that this is going to change everything and there’s no going back.
I lower myself over her. One hand braced on the chaise, the other sliding up her thigh, her hip, her ribs. Her skin is hot under my palm and she arches into the touch.
“Is this what you wanted?” I growl, my mouth hovering over hers, close enough to feel her breath but not touching.
My hand moves higher, fingers grazing the underside of her breast, thumb brushing her nipple until it hardens under my touch.
She gasps and bucks against me. I pin her hip down, keeping her still.
“You keep pushing me, Sage. Keep daring me to lose control. Is that it? You want the thing I keep locked up?”
“Yes,” she whispers, breathless and defiant. “Show me, Eli. Lose it. I can take it.”
The words snap something inside me—the last frayed thread of restraint.
I crush my mouth to hers, devouring her, my tongue claiming every inch as my hand fists in her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat.
She moans, the sound vibrating against my lips as I bite down on her pulse point, hard enough to leave a mark but not break skin. Yet.
“You have no idea what you’re giving me permission to do,” I mutter against her neck, my free hand sliding down to grip her thigh, spreading her legs wider as I settle between them.
“Then tell me. Show me.”
She’s already wet—I can feel the heat through her panties—and it makes my cock throb painfully against my jeans. But this isn’t about me. Not yet. This is about showing her exactly what happens when I let go.
I sit back on my heels, grabbing her wrists and pinning them above her head with one hand.
She writhes under me, testing the hold, but I don’t let go.
With my other hand, I reach for my belt, yanking it free from the loops with a sharp snap that echoes in the room.
Her eyes widen, but there’s no fear—only heat, anticipation, that same wild spark that’s been driving me insane for weeks.
“I should spank your ass for pushing me,” I say, voice low and rough as I loop the belt around her wrists, cinching it tight, wanting her to hurt. “That what you want? To be punished for making me snap?”
She nods, biting her lip, her chest rising and falling in quick breaths. “Yes. Punish me, Eli. If you need it. Make it hurt. I won’t break. I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”
Fuck. The words go straight to my dick, but I force myself to stay in control.
I flip her over onto her stomach, her bound wrists stretched out above her, and yank her hips up so she’s on her knees, ass in the air.
The black panties are a flimsy barrier, and I hook my fingers in the waistband, dragging them down her thighs slowly, deliberately, exposing her inch by inch.
“Beautiful,” I murmur, running my hand over the curve of her ass, squeezing hard enough to make her gasp. “But you don’t get to decide how this goes, Sage. You pushed me. Now you take what I give.”
My palm comes down on her right cheek—sharp, stinging, the crack echoing off the walls.
She jolts, a cry escaping her lips, but she pushes back into my hand, begging for more.
“Is this enough for you?” I ask, spanking the left cheek harder, watching her skin bloom red under my touch.
“Me losing control? Me marking you like the defiant little thing you are?”
“Yes—fuck, Eli, more—” Her voice is muffled against the chaise, but the plea is clear, her body trembling as I alternate strikes, each one building the heat, the pain, until her ass is glowing pink and she’s writhing under me, bound wrists straining against the belt.
Her body shudders under my hand and she’s saying my name like it’s the only word she has left, and the thing inside me—the thing I have spent almost five years building walls around—breaks open and floods the room.
I love her.
I’m fucked.
I lean down, pressing my chest to her back, my mouth at her ear as my hand soothes the stinging skin, fingers dipping between her thighs to find her dripping.
“You love the pain, don’t you? Love knowing you can make me lose control like this.
” I slide two fingers inside her, curling them as I spank her again, the mix of pleasure and sting making her moan louder, her hips bucking back against my hand.
“Please—Eli, I need you—”
“Not yet,” I growl, thrusting my fingers deeper, my free hand coming down in another sharp slap that makes her cry out.
“You wanted me to lose control? This is it, Sage. This is what happens when I let go.” I add a third finger, stretching her, my palm connecting with her ass in a rhythm that’s as punishing as it is precise, her body clenching around me with every strike.
She’s shaking now, tears in her eyes, but the way she pushes back, the desperate pleas falling from her lips—it’s everything I’ve been denying myself, and I can’t stop, not when she’s covered in welts and so close to breaking.
“Your safe word is ‘hangmen.’”