Behind her, Eli’s body stiffened. “What the hell?” he murmured.
Jeffrey winced. “Diane. Stop.”
“I won’t stop,” she exclaimed. “I won’t stop because Paige belongs with us. With Jeffrey and me.”
There it was. Out in the open. Sloane went white-hot and a high whine sounded in her ears. Her mouth dried and she began to shake. “I’m n-not to blame for JJ’s choices.”
“Who else then?” Diane cried. She crossed her arms, defiant and angry. “And I won’t lose someone else I love. I won’t.”
Jeffrey put his arm around her. “Diane—”
“We’ve contacted a lawyer.” The older woman eyes held a militant light now. “We’re going to sue you for custody.”
“We’re not going to sue,” Jeffrey said. “Sloane, yes, we talked to a lawyer—”
“This is nuts,” Eli said, stepping from behind Sloane so they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. “You’re not going to threaten this mother and daughter with a lawyer, with talk of taking custody, or with anything close to it.”
Diane narrowed her eyes at Eli now. “She’s my granddaughter. Don’t you understand that? Mine.”
Sloane, until that moment half-paralyzed by shock and fear at the accusation, came completely alive again. With the weight of her child in her arms, with Paige’s wet tears clinging to her neck, she took her own step forward. “That’s enough, Diane,” she said firmly. Decisively. “You’re upsetting Paige.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You—”
“Yes, me. I’m a person, Diane. Not an obstacle or an adversary. I’m the mother of your granddaughter and there is nothing, nothing, I won’t do for her.”
“There’s nothing I won’t do to have her,” Diane said tightly. “You fight me and—”
“I will fight you.” Sloane thought of Eli raising four little girls alone and her courage soared. He’d prevailed against difficulty and uncertainty and so could she.
“And you will lose if you take it that far,” she continued, her conviction ringing in her voice. Even she could hear it. One woman’s bitterness and selfishness was nothing against Sloane’s love and determination. “Believe me. If you try this, you will lose everything you claim to hold so dear.”
With that, she spun and marched to her car, Paige held firmly in her arms, Eli at her back, Boo eager to dispense doggy kisses to his human sister once they made it inside the vehicle.
Her daughter and her entourage safe.
Back at Eli’s, Paige once again in Sloane’s embrace, all of them tromped up the stairs on the way to the little girl’s room. Her daughter didn’t protest as Sloane tucked her into bed with Bun the bunny and when Paige asked for Baby Sally, Eli found the doll and slipped her under the covers as well. Boo jumped up on the bed, circled down, and then it was time for the three regulation kisses.
By the third, the little girl appeared already fast asleep.
Somehow Eli had Sloane’s hand as they went out the door. He continued holding it all the way down the stairs and as he led her into his room. Sloane put up no protest.
“I’d just like to hold you,” he murmured, drawing her toward the bed. “I just need to hold you.”
Sloane felt buffeted and bruised and remembering the contentment and peace she’d felt earlier in his arms, she went into them again, this time grateful and wholly aware. They stood in each other’s embrace for long moments, but then it wasn’t enough. He reached for the hem of her T-shirt, her fingers found the button of his jeans and unfastened it despite their fine tremors.
Then they were naked and on the sheets and it was not like their previous encounters. Now the fire of passion was banked, but it burned hot at the center, a steady pulse. She kissed his jaw and he kissed her throat. She stroked his belly and he caressed her breast.
They explored unhurried as if each touch was a healing wand to take away the slings and arrows of the day, the grief of the past, the uncertainty of the future. Eli slid down her body, peppering her with stinging kisses she hoped she’d feel forever and she opened to him, her legs splaying wide to offer him the center of her.
To offer him everything.
His mouth fed on her wet flesh like he needed sustenance, his fingers firm on her hips as she writhed against his clever tongue. He lifted his head, taking a look at her with drowsy eyes. “How can you be so sweet?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer before he went back to long, luscious licks and deep delves. She clutched his hair, not sure if she could handle another second of this pleasure-torture.
“Please,” she said, tugging. “I want your mouth on mine.”
He stilled, his big, strong shoulders keeping her legs splayed and what should be obscene felt so personal, so intimate, her heart climbed into her throat. Then he began to move, and the wet of her on his lips tracked up her belly and her chest, the scent of her arousal on him more of an aphrodisiac than…
She couldn’t think of anything more arousing.
Until he kissed her, her spicy-salty-sweet flavor on his tongue making her moan. She rolled, taking him beneath her, and he let out a small laugh-grunt, and then she was on top, grinning down at him. Playful, in the midst of the intensely personal.
Because she trusted him, she thought. Eli King, the eradicator of beasts and brutes, who had showed her his vulnerable side too.
His fear of Baby Sally.
His grief over the death of his parents.
The anger that had him sitting on rooftops and shouting at stars.
Like her, he had his own bruises that needed treating.
So she offered her best medicine, with drawn-out kisses and long strokes of her hands. She played with his balls, crawling down his body to take them into her mouth, tonguing them until he called for mercy. Then she paid attention to his shaft and crown, sucking and stroking until his fingers flexed in her hair and she was drawn up to meet his lips again.
“I’ve never had it so good,” he whispered, causing tears to sting in her eyes. She bit the side of his throat and he groaned then guided her head to his left pectoral. “Here,” he said, his voice guttural. “Mark me here.”
So she did, understanding he wanted proof of this, that they’d come together for pleasure and for this deep connection. They were tender and rough in turn—he closed his teeth around her nipple then sucked it with soft lips and tongue. She firmly squeezed his swollen member and he bucked into her hand even as she pressed a long, gentle kiss to his lips.
Then he turned her to her side and he was behind her, spooning her like they’d been on the couch earlier in the night. Sex in this position was new to Sloane, and she arched her back, pushing her bottom into his groin to hear him moan. He lifted her thigh over his, opening her, and then he slipped inside, his condom-covered erection bumping over her clit and then sliding over sensitive tissues to find her opening. He pressed in, she pressed back, trying to take more of him, but this angle kept penetration shallow.
Still, it was delicious, and he added to it by sliding one hand beneath her so he could play with her nipple, thumbing and squeezing. His other hand slid down her belly to caress her folds and then toy with her clit. He circled and rubbed as his shallow dives became deeper lunges. It required concentration to take as much of him as she could with each thrust, opening her body to him, opening herself to a new experience.
His front was damp against her back and he buried his head in her neck, murmuring praise and nonsense words and dirty things that made her heart race and her skin flash hot.
“Yeah, that’s good, take me deep,” he said. “I’m going to fill you so full you won’t forget me for a week.”
She’d never forget him.
“God, so tight. So hot.” His teeth worried her earlobe and she could feel him throbbing inside her, or maybe that was her heart, or lust, or just wanting, greedy need.
“Make me come,” she moaned. Make me yours.
He rushed in on a groan, his forehead to her neck, his body heated steel behind h
er, inside her, heat surrounding her, Eli.
Eli at her back, her partner in this ferocious, beautiful moment.
Her excitement climbed and she fed it bit and pieces, his scent, the look of his hand cupping her breast, the feel of his groin against her bottom, the dominance of male penetration. On his next lunge, her breath held and she poised on the edge of it, on the edge of what she wanted most.
He bit her neck, he pinched her clit.
And as he groaned his own release, she shattered, a thousand swirling pieces, but all held within the circle of the arms of Eli. Slayer of hearts.
As the waves receded, she turned her face into his bicep and mouthed the words that wanted to burst from her. “I love you,” she said silently, blissful and triumphant that her secret had remained just that.
Chapter 13
Eli woke with the light of a gray dawn silvering his bedroom. For a moment he didn’t move, his body heavy with leftover sexual satiety and his mind humming with satisfaction. The solution had come to him in his sleep. He had it all figured out.
Underscoring his good mood was the fact that Sloane had not left his bed. Unlike their other encounters, when she’d scurried upstairs while it was still dark, today he was greeting the morning with her beside him, her naked body sprawled on her stomach, her head turned his way. He stared into her sleeping face, noting her kiss-swollen lips and flushed cheeks. With her curly hair mussed she looked debauched…and delectable.
Innocence corrupted.
And optimism saved, if the plan his subconscious had hatched overnight worked—and it would. It might not be the romantic happy-ever-after she so wanted to believe in—somebody gets to have that, she’d once said, as almost a plea—but it would guarantee an ending that both mother and daughter deserved.
He smiled to himself, thinking he couldn’t ask for a better conclusion to his bachelor spring break. Though it wasn’t exactly what he’d sought as he’d waved his sisters on their adventure, he wasn’t going to complain about the sex…or the warm, beautiful, valiant woman who had unexpectedly come with it.
As he watched, Sloane’s eyes fluttered open. They widened slightly at her first glimpse of him, then they squeezed shut again and he almost laughed at her transparent attempt to pretend away the fact she’d spent the entire night in his bed.
“Think about it like this,” he suggested. “I’ll get up first and make you coffee.”
She remained unmoving. “I didn’t intend to sleep this late,” she said in a husky voice that caused his dick to twitch. Hmm. Maybe not so sated.
“It was a rough night.” In more ways than one. First, the confrontation with Paige’s grandparents, and then the ardent and extended tumble in his bed, the manner and mood of it swinging wildly between tempestuous and tender. Anyone might not be at their sharpest come morning.
Except Eli. He felt energized and downright eager to face the day.
“Paige is still asleep?”
The monitor stood on his bedside table. “Seems so,” he said, “which gives me time and opportunity to present to you my clever plan.”
He sat up, and so did Sloane, her hand pressing the sheet to her bare breasts. “What kind of plan? Why do I need a plan? Why do I need a clever plan?”
So damn wary. He frowned, disliking this notion that she was always looking for a catch, that she always expected things to be harder rather than easier. “You need to see more evidence of things going your way,” he said.
She drew back a little, a crease between her brows. “And you’re going to show me that evidence?”
“Damn straight.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the pajama pants slung over the straight chair beside the bedside table. He pulled them on, then tossed the flannel shirt he’d worn the night before in her direction.
In another context, his idea could be delivered naked, but now he thought she’d appreciate being decently covered. With six long strides, he reached the tall antique dresser against one wall, and used the small key on the dish there to unlock a narrow top drawer. He fished out a square jewelry box, the maroon velvet covering worn with age.
Then he turned toward Sloane, her beautiful eyes on him, her expression puzzled, her shoulders and chest enveloped by his shirt.
She might as well have been wearing satin and lace. His mind spun off on a brief fantasy of it, Sloane in a creation from that high-end lingerie catalog that he’d recently found in the mail. She’d have the time and leisure to tempt some man with the seductive outfit, the beginning to a sunlit or starlit escapade unbound by real world limitations or responsibilities.
He wanted to give that to the woman right now in his bed—something he more than suspected the single mom had never afforded or allowed herself.
His fingers closed around the velvet ring box. This would have to do.
Approaching her, he watched her try to tame her mussed hair with her fingers, her watchful gaze trained on his face and not on what he held. “I’m thinking,” he said, then flipped open the box to reveal the white gold band and the simple diamond at its center, “that we announce we’re engaged.”
She jumped, eyes rounding. “What?”
“We announce we’re engaged.” He tilted the box to give her a better view of its contents.
Her glance flicked down, and she recoiled, as if spying a snake. “What is that?”
“My grandmother’s ring. We can size it to fit you if need be.”
She stared at him, her expression aghast. Maybe it seemed an odd offer, to permanently adjust the heirloom for a temporary alliance, but not to him. Above all things, Eli wanted Sloane feeling secure, for once with her feet squarely on a solid foundation such as he’d always had…and perhaps too often taken for granted.
“Eli,” she spoke slowly. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “The Dunlaps will back off if we present a united front. You know I’m right about that. So today we’ll tell a little white lie and declare we’re engaged. Then they continue their visit to the area with or without contact with Paige—your call, of course. When they return to Florida…”
“What then?”
He shrugged. “We return to our pre-spring break lives.”
She looked at him, her expression noncommittal. “And I return your ring for the day when you find the woman you truly want to marry.”
Hmm. That part he hadn’t thought through. Would some future female object to jewelry he’d already given to another woman? No matter. He didn’t see himself with anyone else.
Right now.
Before he had a chance to communicate that, Sloane had scrambled out of the bed. His shirt tails fluttered around her thighs as she flitted about the room scooping up the pieces of her wardrobe that had been thrown off the night before. “We won’t be doing that,” she said, brisk and businesslike.
Frowning, he crossed his arms over his chest. “We won’t be doing…what?”
Her blue eyes turned stony. “Any of that.”
At the rejection of his grand plan, that crap mood he’d battled for days descended swiftly. “And why exactly not?” he asked, insulted.
“It would be bad for me.”
His mouth dropped. “Are you kidding? It would be good for you. And Paige. We’d be doing this for you.”
“You mean you’d be sacrificing that swinging bachelorhood you’ve been dreaming about for more than a decade on my behalf. I don’t need rescuing, Eli.”
Well, of course she needed rescuing. Wasn’t it obvious? And rescuing was what he was pretty damn good at, if the many batches of beast-and-brute spray he’d mixed over the years meant anything. “I’m only trying to help.”
“I don’t need your charity.” Clothes were clutched to her chest, an armor, he could tell. “And I see that I’ve given you the wrong idea about that by moving in. I’m sorry I took advantage of you.”
“Took advantage of me?” Now he was getting really pissed. She mad
e it sound like he was some mark. Like he was some…some fool. “You cleaned, you did laundry, you cooked me meals.”
Sloane threw out a hand. “I prepared food.”
“You helped me get over my fear of dolls.”
“Baby Sally still makes you shake in your boots.”
True. But… “You brought life into this house, you and Paige and Boo, when it walked out with my sisters.”
“You wanted to be alone.”
He ignored that, because it turned out alone wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be…instead of feeling liberated, he’d felt, fuck it, lonely. “You’re good company. You made me laugh and you listened to me and you…shit, Sloane, I’ve never had sex so good.”
Her flushed face told him he’d found a weak spot. “That’s not a basis for an engagement.”
“We’re getting fake engaged,” he pointed out. “So there’s no reason to get all prickly and stubborn about it.”
“There’s one reason to get prickly and stubborn,” she countered, vehement, then she sighed and her voice softened. “I…I don’t want anything fake with you, Eli.”
“For God’s sake, it’s for a greater good,” he started, feeling uneasy because she was edging for the door and he thought he was about to lose her. A dark premonition told him it might not be a temporary loss.
Sloane put one hand on the doorknob. “You know,” she said, sighing again. “I want to get angry, I want to accuse you of insensitivity and rail at you for your white knight tendencies.”
He huffed. “I’m no—”
“I want to tell you I see that you’ve been using your business and your sisters as a reason not to live a full life, one that includes a romantic partner. They’re your excuse. You use them as a defense against more potential grief because you were so hurt when those you loved left you.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “They died.”
“To you, they left.”
Stung, he threw the ring box to the bed. “And you’re so different? Four years of celibacy, remember?”
“Four years raising a child and trying to keep us financially afloat.”
Yeah, he saw that. Admired it, even. But he wasn’t feeling reasonable right now. “Again, how’s that any different than me?”
NO LIMIT (7-Stud Club Book 2) Page 19
