hands under my cheek. “What does it feel like?” I know he’s already in a grumpy mood, but that literally has never bothered me.
His eyes focus in front of him, as if he’s taking a few seconds to collect himself, before they collide with me. “What the fuck do you mean? Go to sleep.”
“I mean, what does it feel like?” I run my tongue over my lip.
“It’s fucking painful for you, so don’t get any ideas. Go to sleep.”
“Really?” I ignore his commands to sleep. “Well.” I yawn, closing my eyes. “I, for one, can’t wait to see what all the hype is abou—”
The words barely leave me before fingers are around my cheeks, squeezing so hard my lips pucker. Slowly, I peel my eyes back open lazily, and if I could smile, I would. I’m faced head-on with wrath. Eyes wild, lips snarled, and veins pulsing through the soft flesh of his neck.
“First of all, don’t fucking play with me, because you will always lose, and secondly, no one, and I mean no one, will ever come close enough to be able to fuck you.”
He releases my cheeks, shoving my head back into the pillow roughly.
“Wrong,” I say, suddenly that same anger is bubbling below the surface of my skin. The lighting in the room is the same, so low it’s almost a dark burgundy. “You are always that close.”
Silence, his eyes still on mine, and just when I think he’s going to snap at me again, he throws his head back and laughs so hard his hand has to go to his belly. “Go to fucking sleep, Dea. I’m not fucking you.”
I absently hear my phone vibrate on the bedside table but ignore it. I know I shouldn’t look too much into his words, but I can’t help it. They’ve already sunken into the areas of my brain that won’t let anything go and are staying there.
“Eli would…” I whisper, rolling onto my back. I don’t even catch the moment it happens, but instantly his body is covering mine, the heaviness of it pressing me into the mattress, his hand covering my mouth with one leg between mine.
“Say it one more time.” His voice is low, dropping to a level I’ve never heard. “Go on, do it.” He releases my mouth, his lips grazing mine. “I fucking dare you.”
I bore my eyes into his, the will to not back down too strong to submit right now, and with the rejection still an open wound, I feel like being brutally honest. Not to shock him, or because I’m being reckless, but because it’s the truth. I know it, he knows it, Eli knows it. Though I know it’s not something I should be proud of, since I get the feeling it wouldn’t take much to have Eli jump into bed with you, but I say it anyway, because again, it’s the truth.
“Eli. Would. Fuck. Me.”
Before I can even cringe at the crass word leaving my mouth, his teeth have sunk into the side of my neck and I yelp in pain, my fingernails sinking into his back.
“Brantley!” I meant to yell at him, but it leaves my mouth confused.
My eyes close and I move my other leg. I almost think he’s going to fight it, but he doesn’t, sliding his leg over mine so both of them are between my thighs. I wrap them around his waist, the pain in my neck long since being replaced by his tongue circling slowly. He brings his head up, his nose against mine. I catch the red smudge on his upper lip, but I don’t think anything of it.
“You’re a fucking pain in my ass,” he growls, and before he can slide off me again and go back to being the corpse he is ninety-nine percent of the time, I lean up, wrap my arms around the back of his neck, and press my lips against his.
His body stiffens, but I don’t release. It’s not until I carefully run the tip of my tongue across the slit between his lips that he snaps, opening and kissing me back. His tongue is against mine, sliding together as our lips move in perfect rhythm, as if they’ve done this before. As if they’ve been starved of each other for centuries and are finally reunited. He swells between my thighs and my hips tilt, a thick throb penetrating all of the sensitive areas that are already well acquainted with what he can do.
A soft grumble