That’s about enough of that. I stalk toward him, stopping next to the bed and planting my hands on the mattress so we’re eye to eye. “You’ll stand next to me and offer your silent support because if your people riot, they’ll be the ones to pay the price. They might outnumber my people, but my people have been in exile for damn near a decade. We’re harder, more ruthless, willing to do absolutely anything to ensure we keep the home we’ve claimed. This isn’t a fight you can win, and I know you’re smart enough to realize that. The only thing still up in the air is whether or not you’re willing to sink the entire faction in response to your bruised pride.”
“You took everything from me in the course of a few hours. I hardly call that bruised pride.”
I ignore that. “As for fucking… You can pretend that you’re only asking out of spite, but we both know how hard your cock was when you were sucking me off. Our friendship might have burned right along with my childhood home that night, but the attraction remains. You want to do something about it?”
He inhales sharply. “Just like that?”
It will never be just like that, but I haven’t survived this long by ignoring hard truths. There’s more than a little lust for Eli simmering beneath my skin. I can hate him and want him at the same time. I’m complicated like that. “You know me, Eli. I see something I want, I take it. I want to cut you into little pieces and throw you into the river. That’s not an option, so I’ll settle for la petite mort.”
“La petite mort.” He gives a choked laugh. “Really? Since when did you ascribe to the French way of thinking about orgasms?”
“Since now.” I drop my gaze to his mouth, letting him see a hint of the lust surging through me. “Up to you how you want to play this. I’m more than happy to hogtie you and keep you in this room for the next year. I don’t need you for any of this shit.” I lean back and make a show of looking around. “I do that, I might not have to kill you myself. You’re liable to die of boredom. Your choice.”
Eli looks at me for a long moment. When he smiles, alarm bells ring through my head. “With that kind of pitch, how can I resist? I’ll play Bride, Abel. Shall we start by my getting on my knees and asking nicely to suck your cock?”
15
Eli
If Abel were any other man, he’d back off and I’d win this particular exchange. But he’s not any other man. We’re playing a game of chicken, and we have too much history and too much stubborn pride between us to veer off into safer territory.
Too much pent-up lust. Can’t forget about that.
So, instead of changing the subject or leaving the room, Abel reaches for the front of his pants, a mocking expression on his handsome face. I hate how good he looks. He’s bigger than he was eight years ago, thick muscle roping his form, giving his shoulders extra breadth, his chest more definition through the thin T-shirt he has on. There are new scars, too. On his knuckles, and a faint one at his throat that his beard almost hides, as if someone tried to garrote him. Most notably is the difference in his eyes.
When we were friends before, Abel was the hot-headed one. The one who’d charge into any situation without thinking things through. He won more often than he lost, but that didn’t change the fact that he let his emotions drive him more than he likely should. I was the one who acted as his brakes. The cooler head meant to prevail.
Obviously that’s not the case anymore. He hasn’t lost control once since he walked back into my life. Even the way he’s been with Harlow is calculated, no matter how hot the chemistry sparks between them.
It doesn’t matter. Abel might have learned how to be cold, but he’s always had a fire burning deep within. Something like that doesn’t just go away, not when it’s such a fundamental part of the person he was for twenty-eight years. All I need to do is tap it, and he’ll stop thinking so clearly. There are two ways to make that happen.
Fighting or fucking.
Fucking and fighting.
We have the desire for both in abundance. No matter how hard he tries to hold himself apart, eventually his walls will come down. That’s when I’ll strike. Until then, I might as well enjoy myself.
All in the name of my plan, of course.
I slide off the bed and sink to my knees before him. He undoes his pants in short, angry movements and pulls out his cock. I got an up close and personal experience with it the other night, but just like noticing the differences in him, this feels different. I’m not still riding a tsunami of adrenaline and fucked-up emotions the way I was after the fight on Lammas. I am myself.
Fuck, I’ve wanted this for so long.
I shut the thought down almost as soon as it presents itself. How I felt about Abel before the coup doesn’t matter. Neither of us are the men we were. We’ve both changed in the near-decade apart. The attraction may remain, but that’s all. There’s no trust, no friendship—certainly no love. We’ve been boiled down to our worst parts, refined by cruelty and the need to do anything to survive.
“If you bite me, I’ll knock your teeth in.” He says it casually as he fists his cock, giving it a rough stroke. As if he’s not so hard, I can practically see him throbbing. His dark eyes are so cold, they burn me. “Whatever plan you have going on in that twisted brain of yours, it won’t work. I win, fucker. Sucking my cock doesn’t change anything.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
I lift my chin. “Who’s to say I’m not on my knees because I want to be?” I lean forward a little. Not close enough to touch him, not yet, but closer. “You thought about it, back when we were friends.”
“Back when I thought we were friends.” He sounds so bitter, I can taste it on my tongue. “That’s what you really mean.”
No point in telling him that I considered him my best friend for all those years. It won’t make a difference, and he’ll just call me a liar. As I am reminded time and time again, intentions don’t matter. Not only did I underestimate my father, resulting in the death of forty people, but I never went after Abel once he and his brothers were driven out of Sabine Valley. I could come up with a thousand different reasons why it was never the right time, or talk about how Abel hid the trail too well for my people to find him.
Intentions don’t matter. Even attempts don’t matter.
The only thing that makes a difference is the bottom line.
And the bottom line is that Abel and his brothers suffered through eight years of exile, in part, because of me. There’s no coming back from that. Not even with twenty-eight years of friendship between us.
Friends and never more. We were very careful to keep it only that. If we occasionally shared a partner in bed, it was always us sharing them and never each other.
An image slams into my brain hard enough to have me rocking back on my heels. Harlow between us. Riding Abel’s cock. Sucking me down with that little smirk she gets when she knows she’s about to make me come despite my best efforts at control.
I take one breath and then another, forcibly pushing the image away. It’s not in the cards for us. It never was, even before how things played out this morning. I have to mend things with Harlow, at least enough that we’re not at each other’s throats, but it’d serve me right if she never let me touch her again. No, better to let that fantasy disappear with the rest of our relationship. I still don’t quite understand how I’ve fucked things up so thoroughly with her, but the anger is too thick to think past, even now.
I look up at Abel. “You want me to suck your cock, or you want to sit here and bitch about the past?” A calculated prod.
He steps forward, backing me against the mattress. “You know, there was a time when I would have given you anything.”
My throat goes dry. “There was a time when I would have done the same.”
“It won’t be that way again.” There’s no pain in his voice. He’s simply stating a fact. No matter what happens in the future, we can never go back.
I could have told him the words didn’t need to be said. I know better than any
one that our friendship, the partnership that was going to change the entire faction for the better, burned to ash alongside the Paine house. I lick my lips. “I can be just as much an asset as Harlow.”
“You want the same deal I gave her? Partnership and open communication? You have to earn that shit, Eli, and you haven’t even started.” Abel gives his cock another stroke and taps my bottom lip with the wide head. “Put your money where your mouth is. You want to play nice? Stop trying to provoke a response, and suck me off.”
I drag my tongue over the head of his cock and suck him down. Down and down and down, until his width and length border on pain, until my lips meet his base. It’s a fight not to gag, to muscle down my body’s instinctive panic at having lost the ability to breathe through my mouth.
Abel barely gives me a chance to adjust. He brackets my head with those big hands and starts fucking my mouth. He’s not holding me tightly, certainly not tightly enough that I couldn’t move away if I wanted to, but there’s no denying that he’s the one driving the pace. Slowly and then faster, harder. I don’t mean to grab his hips. I simply need to hold on to something to keep from impaling myself farther on his cock.
But then it’s like my hands take on a life of their own. They delve into his jeans, pushing them down a few more inches so I can touch his skin. So I can feel the powerful flex of his muscles as he drives into my mouth.
I make the mistake of staring up at him, and the tormented look on Abel’s face is so fucking sexy, I almost come in my pants.
He picks up his pace, slamming into my mouth. I’m a receptacle for his rage, and I take it willingly. It’s not penance. If I have guilt about how things played out between us, it doesn’t matter. My feelings never mattered when it came to what’s best for this faction. Not when it came to Abel. Not even when it comes to Harlow.
He curses and shudders, orgasming into my mouth. I drink him down without a second thought, holding his gaze. It feels so devastatingly intimate, and the sensation only gets worse as he eases out of my mouth and roughly tucks his cock back into his pants. Abel looks away. “That was serviceable.”
I use my thumb to wipe the edge of my mouth. My jaw aches like a motherfucker, but I’ll be damned before I show any outward indication of it. “You came pretty fast for just ‘serviceable.’”
He shoots me an unreadable look. “We’re going to Old Town this afternoon. If you can act right, you can come along. Prove you really want what’s best for the faction like you always used to claim.”
“Not wasting any time, I see.” The quickest way to win over the faction is to win over the families in Old Town. They’re the backbone that runs through our section of the city. I wish I could say they were loyal enough that they wouldn’t take a new Paine family rule without a fight, but if I’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s that this faction is filled with pragmatic people. A long as Abel doesn’t do anything to fuck with their day-to-day life, they won’t challenge him. Three years under my father, and then five under me, and they’ll just keep going on like they were before he and his brothers showed back up again.
I don’t know what about that irritates me. It’s exactly what happened after we staged our coup. My father sat down the families of Old Town and gave them his word that they could continue to operate as before. And that was that.
Abel holds out his hand. I take it on instinct. It’s not until he pulls me easily to my feet that I realize I should have slapped it away and stood on my own. Nearly a fucking decade apart and old habits still haven’t completely gone away.
He raises a brow. “There’s no reason to waste time. The sooner everyone realizes we’re here to stay, the sooner things get into their new normal.”
I should leave it at that, but I’ve never been able to keep my head around Abel the same way I can around other people. “Are you planning on reversing all the things I’ve spent the last five years doing?” Improvements and foundational building to improve the community. To create a community. Most people look at this faction, see the ruler, see Old Town, and think that’s an indication about how the rest of its citizens live. It’s nowhere near the truth.
“Case by case basis. Some shit will stay, some will revert.” He slides his hands into his pockets, expression unreadable. “No matter what else you think of me, the plans I have for this faction are the same they were when we talked about it.” He turns away. “But then, if you trusted me enough to believe that, we would have been ruling together the last eight years instead of what happened.”
That’s the problem. I don’t trust him. He’s been gone too long from Sabine Valley, reminds me too much of his father now that he’s back. I can’t afford to believe he still wants the same things we spent countless hours talking about. “Then we want the same thing.”
“Do we? I’m not so sure.”
That right there is why I have to play nice. Why I suspect Harlow has decided to do the same. If she has a chance of influencing Abel’s decisions, she’s going to take it. A choice she shouldn’t have to make, but she’s been plenty clear about how little she cares about my feelings when it comes to her choices. It still makes me fucking furious, but I can put that aside for now.
Our people are the most important thing.
Playing nice means having a chance to convince Abel that not all the changes made while the Paines were gone were bad. Hell, most of them weren’t. “I’ll be ready.”
He doesn’t move. “Don’t try shit, Eli. I’d hate to have to kill you in front of Harlow. It’ll upset her.” He almost sounds like he means it. As if he cares one way or another about Harlow’s mental health.
I want to strike at him. If not physically, than verbally. The impulse is almost overwhelming, but I manage to muscle it down. “I wouldn’t do anything to upset Harlow.”
“Uh-huh.” Abel shakes his head. “That’s one thing I don’t get. You might have shoved a knife in my back, but that doesn’t change that you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. The man I was friends with wouldn’t let a single resource go to waste, and Harlow is one hell of a resource. Why the fuck didn’t you use her?”
“She’s been through enough,” I grind out. “She deserves better than to be used.”
He doesn’t blink. “You were never such a sanctimonious prick when I knew you. You pluck her off the street, put her in your bed, and then decide you know what’s best for her. Did you ever ask her?”
I’m not having this conversation, especially not with him. I drag my hand through my hair and adjust my glasses. “You don’t have the high ground in this conversation. You didn’t ask her what she wanted, either.”
A strange little smile pulls at the edges of his lips. “Didn’t I?” He heads for the door. “Be ready at four. Dress to impress.” And then he’s gone, closing the door softly behind him.
It’s only then that I realize he never asked me a single question about my role in the coup that killed his father and burned his childhood home. A normal person would want to know why. Either Abel already thinks he knows, or he doesn’t care. I don’t know why that bothers me so much.
He’s…different.
I never really expected him to come back here. There might be a small, insignificant part of me that wanted to see him again, but not like this. Never like this.
I should have gone after him that first night. I never should have let things stay this long unsaid between us.
I close my eyes and strive to think. No matter what kind of man Abel is now, he’s still just a man. There will be a way to set things right. Even now, with rage simmering in my blood, I don’t want him dead. The last few days have been infuriating, but they’re two days in a lifetime. He was my friend for nearly thirty years.
Fuck, I can’t afford to think like that. Abel sure as hell isn’t letting some long-dead friendship color his motivations and actions. If he realizes I have a soft spot, he’ll aim for it and dig his knife in deep.
No, Abel isn’t the one I need
to move forward.
Harlow is.
16
Harlow
It takes the better part of two hours to calm all the Brides down. I don’t manage to convince either Beatrix or Mabel’s bodyguard—Sonya is her name—to leave, but no one sheds any blood. It’s not a win, but it’s a solid stalemate. Breaking through to the Brides will take a lot more time and effort.
I sip my cold tea and just let myself exist for a few minutes after they all leave. Today hasn’t been a win, but it hasn’t quite been a loss, either.
A small creak behind me, so quiet that I wouldn’t have heard it if I weren’t sitting in perfect silence. The small hairs on the back of my neck rise. I’m facing the door. No one should be able to enter the library without me seeing them. And yet I am not alone.
I spin around, ready to throw my cup at the intruder’s head, and barely manage to check myself when I recognize the man standing there. Eli. He’s showered and changed and looks remarkably put together in a pair of slacks and a pale gray button-down. He’s still got one hell of a black eye, but the swelling’s gone down significantly in the last few hours. He always did heal quickly.
He’s not worth ruining one of my tea cups over. Then again, he’s been such an unforgivable ass, he deserves cold tea dumped over his head.
I study the wall behind him, but there’s no indication of where the fuck he came from. It’s not the first time he’s appeared in a room when he shouldn’t have been able to, but he’s never answered my leading questions about how the hell he gets around. There have to be passages built into these walls, but their secret is yet another one that Eli’s kept from me over the years. He won’t answer now. That’s for sure.
I turn back around. “Come to call me sloppy seconds again?” Damn it, I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I should be focusing on minimizing the antagonism between us, but I can’t quite manage it. I have too much anger pent up over too many years. I will be able to hold it together for public things—I don’t have a choice—but I refuse to fold into myself to make him comfortable. Not ever again.
Abel: A Sabine Valley Novel Page 11
