“You’re not happy, you’re miserable,” he growls, lowering his head closer to mine until I can feel his breath on my face. He smells like bourbon and peppermint and I want to drown in that smell until it washes everything away. “You’re sad and miserable and pathetic. I can’t believe I fought so hard to come back to this. I can’t believe you can stand here, supporting that woman, when you know what she did.”
He finally drops my hand, removes his arm from around me, and takes a step back as the band finishes their song and everyone claps for them. A chill of fear works its way up my spine, wondering what he means about knowing what my mother did. Does he know about the threats she’s held over my head? It doesn’t make sense. How could he? Why would he still be so angry with me if he knew?
I let his words of hate give me the strength I need to take my own step away from him. Everything inside me is screaming to deny what he said so he’ll look at me with love instead of hate, but I can’t do that. I can do nothing but let him have this moment and this anger that he so rightfully deserves and hope to God he doesn’t know about the bargains I’ve made with my mother to keep him safe. He’ll never be able to keep quiet if he knows, and she’ll stop at nothing to make sure he does.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I hope you can find your own happiness and move on, like I have.”
I see him clench his jaw before I turn and walk away, gently pushing my way through all the people as the band starts back up again. I hear people say my name but I don’t stop moving through the ballroom. I see Meredith out of the corner of my eye, her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes as I move quickly past her, out into the foyer and across the hall to a small office with the door closed. I just need a moment alone, to remember how to breathe and to remember how to push the hurt away so I can go back out there and do my job. Hold my head high with a smile on my face and pretend like dancing with Eli, being close to Eli, and letting him rain insults down on me, didn’t cut me in half.
As soon as I turn the handle and push open the office door, I feel something solid slam into me from behind, moving me faster into the dark room. I trip over my feet and an arm slides around my waist to steady me before whirling me around. I smell his soap and recognize his firm hold on me before the moonlight shining in the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me illuminates the shadow of his face, but that doesn’t stop the rapid thumping of my heart as the door is kicked shut with a slam and my body is turned and pushed roughly against the wall next to it. With the first touch of his hands, the first feel of the heat from his skin against me, I’m lost. I’m drowning in a pool of desire I’ve only ever felt with him, and I never want to come up for air. Every inch of my body is on fire, begging for more, needing everything I’ve been missing, but knowing everything about this moment is wrong. This can’t happen. I can’t want this and I certainly can’t act on what I’m feeling.
Before I can shove him away, shout at him, and tell him to let me go, his mouth is on mine. His chest pins my arms between us and I clutch a fistful of his dress shirt in my hands when my lips automatically part for him. His tongue quickly pushes into my mouth and I feel tears prickling behind my eyelids when I taste him, so familiar and so beautiful it breaks off yet another piece of my heart. One of his hands moves from around my waist and I feel the heat from his palm as it slides against the side of my neck to the back, his fingers gripping tightly to the hair at the base of my skull to hold my head in place. His kiss is punishing and hard and I can do nothing but hold tightly to the front of his shirt as our tongues battle together and I try to remember how to breathe.
His arm that holds me close loosens slightly until I feel his hand skim down my spine, clutch my ass, and pull the lower half of my body up and against his hips. His hardness presses into me and every nerve and cell in my body I thought had long since died suddenly fire back to life as I push myself into him, wanting to feel more, needing to feel everything as our tongues swirl together and push deeper.
This kiss is killing me.
This kiss is bringing me back to life.
His fingers dig into my ass as he moves me against him and his hand in my hair tightens, the pain immediately replaced by the pleasure only his mouth and his lips and his tongue can give me. My body loses all of its stiffness and I melt into him, molding my body to his from thigh to chest until I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. That’s how it always was with us when we came together and it’s no different now after years of being apart, no matter what kind of hurt lies between us. He makes me feel whole, he closes up wounds while at the same time ripping them wide open…and I never want it to stop.
I match the intensity of his kiss, sucking his tongue into my mouth after he does the same to me, biting his lower lip after he nips at my own, letting his breath with a hint of bourbon on it and his lips tasting faintly of peppermint breathe me back to life even though I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I’m not allowed to have this. I’m not allowed to be this person who loses herself in this man. As our tongues blend together and our heads move from one side to the other to get the best angle for the kiss, I feel myself getting wet for him, I feel my legs shaking with the need to wrap my thighs around his waist and let him sink inside me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt something like this, only with him and never with anyone else, that I can’t stop a gentle moan from floating out of my mouth and into his.
The muffled music and murmur of voices on the other side of the door feel like they’re a million miles away, and my soft moan sounds like an explosion in the quiet room, suddenly so loud and needy.
Eli immediately pulls his mouth away from mine, drops his hold on my hair and his hand from my ass, stumbling a few feet away from me, putting so much distance between us I feel like I’ll never be able to reach him. I have to lock my knees and press my back as hard as I can into the wall behind me just to stay upright and not collapse on the floor at his feet. I’m light-headed and I can’t stop my hands from shaking as I reach up and brush my hair out of my face that his quick departure caused.
My head thumps back against the wall and I wrap my arms around my body to try and hold myself together.
“It’s all good and you’re happy, huh? You want me to move on, just like you have?” Eli asks in a low, angry voice.
He moves back to me in a rush and I shrink away from him as much as the hard wall at my back will allow. Without his mouth on mine and his body pressed into me, all the reasons why I can’t let myself have him come rushing back, the coldness seeping into my pores and taking root in my heart.