: Chapter 23

The gates open as we draw near. We follow the sweeping curve of the driveway and Eli casts me a glance as the house comes into view. Its dark, sharp lines collide with sweeping curves in harmonious balance, deriving its inspiration from contemporary Japanese architecture. Between its size and its style, it’s not your average home in Montana. But Samuel has never been your average man. I still remember the first time he brought me here when his project in Nevada was finished. An oasis, I’d said. Yes, he’d replied. The perfect place for snakes to find cover.

I don’t ask Eli to stay, and he doesn’t ask if he should. It’s what we both want. He simply parks in front of the garage to the left of the house and we enter to the scent of Fabuloso cleaning spray and a fresh bouquet of maroon and yellow lilies in the vase on the kitchen counter. Kane chatters a mewing greeting as I reset the security system and Eli takes in the space.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, entering the living room where he looks at the paintings Samuel has collected over decades of investment. Samuel’s beloved Fazioli grand piano sits at the end of the room, framed by two tall, narrow, north-facing windows whose gentle light never scars its lacquered surface. I watch as Eli tours the room and stops at the fireplace, examining the row of photos on the mantle. Samuel at his retirement celebration with the chairman of the university. Me with two other students in our caps and gowns, graduating with our master’s degrees in New York. Eli picks up the only photo that doesn’t feel like it’s part of a staged show home. “How old were you?” he asks as he points to the image.

“Sixteen,” I reply, uncorking a bottle of Malbec and pouring two glasses. The photo shows me holding Kane as a kitten, sitting on the steps of the back deck of the house. I’m smiling with a shit-eating grin. Samuel is watching me in the background, trying not to scowl. “It was taken by one of my tutors. Samuel was a bit chagrined that I’d suckered him into keeping a stray cat.”

“How did you manage that? He doesn’t seem like the type of guy to give in easily.”

A dark laugh huffs past my lips as I join Eli in the living room, handing him a glass of wine. “He’s not. But he lost a bet. And when it comes to games, he’s fair.”

“What kind of game?”

I try to dampen the triumph I still feel at winning that particular little bet. It’s one of my favorite trophies to visit in my memory palace. “Samuel thought I couldn’t punch as hard as I knew I could. We tested it out. I exceeded his expectations.” Samuel didn’t think I could kill a man with a single punch, but I had good aim and I went for the throat. It took a minute or two for Malcolm Thompson to choke on the blood that filled his ruptured trachea, but I still succeeded. Of course, I conveniently leave that part out. “As soon as I won the bet, I marched right outside and grabbed the scraggly kitten that had been hanging around for a week. He was pretty easy to catch since I’d been sneaking him bits of ham. Samuel felt a little better when Kane scratched me to high hell for giving him a bath.”

Eli smiles and looks closer at the photo, the scratches visible on my arms. And I look at it too, wondering if I see a little pride in Samuel’s expression, or if it’s just imagined. I haven’t noticed it before. It confuses me, because I’ve never tried to make more of Samuel than what he is. A savior, yes. A partner as well. But a monster too. Just not my monster.

“I’ll be alone when he’s gone,” I say, immediately astounded that those words just left my mouth. Why would I say that, even if it’s true? I will be alone when he’s gone. It’s just a fact. There are other serial killers in the world, of course, but it’s not like we have a club and it’s not one I’d be keen to join. Besides, I doubt there are many like Samuel and me who break the mold.

Eli sets his glass down on the mantle and pulls mine from my hand, setting it next to the photo. “You won’t be,” he says as he takes my hand and reels me into his warmth.

“I don’t mean it the way you think,” I grumble against his chest as the scent of bergamot drifts from his skin.

“Ah, you meant he’s the only one you let close, and when he’s gone, no one will understand you? Yeah, I think I got it just fine.” I pull back to look into Eli’s warm brown eyes, his dark lashes crinkling together at the edges as he smiles. He brushes hair back from my face, his grin widening as I raise a skeptical brow. “It’s not like I hadn’t noticed you’re a bit secretive. You don’t talk about any close friends. I don’t see you with anyone aside from Tida and David, not that it really counts since you share an office. You don’t even have any social media presence.”

“Yes, I do, you stalker. My Insta handle is @kanethekillercat. It’s mostly cat pictures—you’re not missing much. They’re artsy though. He’s highly photogenic.”

“Why haven’t you added me?”

“Because I hate you, remember?”

“Now, now, Pancake. We both know that’s not true.” I scowl but Eli remains unfazed. He kisses me on the nose as though my murderous glare is adorable. I could punch him in the throat, or spike his drink with enough tranquilizer to flatten a horse, or kill him with the twenty different weapons hidden in this room alone. But no. He just grins with that stupid fucking dimple, teasing and cocky at first, but then it becomes something warmer. Something that looks heartfelt and hopeful. He frames my face in his palms and searches my eyes. “I want to understand you, Bria. I think I get a bit, but I know there’s a lot you’re not ready to share, and I won’t push you.”

“Have you considered what would happen if you found something you didn’t like? Maybe there are things you wouldn’t want to know.”

“I do want to know, actually. In case you hadn’t noticed, I like that you’re not all unicorns and cotton candy. You broke into my house and played sexy hide-and-seek, and it’s not like I was calling the cops, was it,” he says, and another kiss finds my skin, warming my cheekbone. “You embrace the hidden parts of me. You let them free. I want to do the same for you.”

I close my eyes and try to force myself to pull away. Every time I resolve to, there’s another kiss that stops me. On my eyelashes. On the bridge of my nose. On the corner of my lips.

I grip Eli’s wrists. Part of me wants to shove his hands away and rage at him. He’s rippling the surface of the waters I hide beneath. Things are stirring that I don’t have names for. Emotions I’ve never felt and I don’t understand. Fear most of all, the worst kind of fear, the kind I’ve so rarely had. Fear for someone else.

“Why are you doing this?” I whisper. My voice comes out strained. My chest burns with every press of Eli’s lips. I keep hold of his wrist with one hand and lay my palm above his heart with the other. It thunders beneath my touch. I take my first step backward toward the hallway that leads to the bedroom, pulling him with me even though I’m desperate to push him away.

“Kissing your face? I like kissing your face.”

“No. This,” I say, gesturing between us as though that can explain the way I feel. More kisses pepper my skin, one for every freckle, for every step I can’t help but take toward my room. “You’re supposed to not like me. It’s…easier. I’m not…”

Words flare and die on my tongue like embers in the dark. Each step we make is a battle in my mind. I let out a strangled sound I’ve only ever made when I pushed my bloodied body from the desert floor, or when I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. The same sound I made when I tried to swim in the flood, the shore so close yet unreachable as I was swept away by the current.

But it doesn’t scare Eli away.

“You can let me in, sweetheart,” he whispers. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

I shake my head. Something burns in my throat when I swallow. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

Eli doesn’t stop the spread of kisses when he sweeps his arms across my back and lifts me from the floor. “Let me worry about myself. Just tell me where I’m supposed to go in this enormous house. I understand now why you laughed when I asked if you needed help paying for the trip to Ogden.”

When I try to smile, it feels like I’m forcing the wrong piece into a jigsaw puzzle. I point down the hall and lock my legs around Eli’s back and my arms behind his neck. My heart feels like it’s liquifying, dripping between my ribs. I’m too hot. Burning hot. This thing in my throat feels like a squeezing fist.

Eli stumbles when I catch his lips with mine and kiss him back, and he knocks into the wall, breaking the press of our lips with a whispered curse. We weave down the corridor until we finally make it to the bed. Eli hauls us onto the mattress with one arm still braced around me until my head is on the pillow, and when it is, he spends a long moment just hovering over me, brushing strands of hair from my face, taking whatever he sees and filling it with warmth.

When I look into Eli’s eyes, I don’t see the same man as the one in the coffee shop who stole glances like a leopard stalking in the shadows. He’s not the man who stoked my rage in his office the first time we met, or the one who teased me in the library, or the beast who consumed me in his bed. He’s so much more. He’s generous and funny and kind. And he looks at me like I could be all of those things too. I wish I could be. I’ve never wanted it until this moment, and now that I see it, it’s as distant as a star. I could try for a thousand years and I know I’d never get there.

“What are you doing to me?” I whisper, an echo of his question last night.

“Taking care of you,” Eli says. I’m about to argue when he taps my lips with an index finger. “If it helps to not weird you out, I can claim to have an ulterior motive. If I do a good enough job looking after you, you might not gut me when I introduce you as my girlfriend.”

Girlfriend.

That tightness winds around my throat once more. It slithers into my chest, pulling at my bones. The breath that passes my lips is unsteady, and a faint smile lifts the corners of Eli’s mouth when no argument follows it. Just a breath. An admission in a simple thread of air, that maybe I want that too.

The faint smile that was there on Eli’s face dissolves, melted away by the heat in his eyes. It’s not the same desire I’ve seen in him before. It’s longing, not need. I can’t decipher everything I see in his expression. There might be fear or hope. Or resignation or resolve. The emotions I see blur together like paint in turpentine. “Tap my shoulder three times if you need me to stop,” Eli says, and before I can ask why, his lips meet mine.

This kiss is slow and deep. There is no rush. No brutality. Just gentle pressure and languid strokes of our tongues. When Eli’s fingers trace the lines of bone or the curve of sinew and flesh, the touch is purposeful. He paints my skin with tingling caresses. Long, sweeping streaks of goosebumps follow in his wake.

I try to memorize every detail of Eli that I can. The way his stubble scratches at the swirling ridges of my fingerprints. The pulse of his heart as it drums against my chest. My touch follows coiled muscle and ridges of spine. I break the kiss only long enough to pull Eli’s shirt up, and then his weight settles on me once more like a blanket of warmth.

Eli doesn’t try to undress me. He doesn’t push or demand anything. I take off each piece of clothing in my own time. When I unbutton my shirt, he kisses my collarbones. His palm curves around my shoulder. When I squirm out of my jeans, Eli’s hand flows down my leg, all the way to my ankle and back up again. I’m still in the cream-colored corset, and when I take it off with the hope that the constriction in my chest will get better, it doesn’t. There’s just an ache that burns inside me, growing hotter with every kiss and touch, consuming me when there are no clothes left and it’s just skin, just Eli’s broad shoulders and corded muscle and the weight of his body on mine.

It’s me who reaches between us. Me who folds my hand around his erection as he pulls away to look at me, that pained expression returning to his eyes as they shift between mine. “Am I hurting you?” I ask, loosening my grip until his hand finds mine and squeezes. Eli shakes his head and gives me a faint smile, but his brows draw together as he centers himself to me.

“No, Bria,” he says, the crown of his cock pressing to the dampness gathered at my folds. He glides into me with a slow stroke, my flesh stretching around his girth, his eyes still fused to mine, watching my reaction as pleasure replaces the emptiness. When he’s fully seated, he stops to press his lips to mine before falling into a gentle rhythm of thrusts, and then I’m trapped in his eyes once more, his hands framing my face. “I have to tell you something. I want you to stop me if it’s too much.”

My heart folds in on itself like origami. Confusion churns in my guts with a sudden wave of nausea. My voice echoes in my head in a melody tuned to the steady pace of Eli’s strokes. What are you doing to me?

I swallow and nod.

Eli traces my cheek and my jaw, the pace of his thrusts slowing. “I want to know everything you’re comfortable sharing with me. And I meant what I said, I won’t push you for more. I don’t expect anything in return, but I need you to know.” His eyes follow the path of his thumb across the edge of my bottom lip. “I love you, Bria Brooks.”

Air flees my lungs.

I search every memory, but I don’t find it anywhere. I already know it was never there.

No one has ever said that to me before.

I shake my head. My eyes sting and burn. “No,” is all I can manage to say.

Eli’s smile erupts with a laugh, as though this is endearing and sweet and not monumental and tectonic. “Yes.”

“You can’t.”

“I can. I do. Sorry, not sorry.”

My breath is unsteady. Eli kisses the bridge of my nose and I press my fingertips into the firm muscles of his arms, willing myself to hold on and not tap his shoulders. He doesn’t know me. He thinks he knows enough but he doesn’t. And yet he seems so sure. Is this how it works? Do people really just feel some kind of magic and they put it out into the world and it’s real? I want to ask how. I want to understand the alchemy of it. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid that if I ask, it will vanish, nothing more than a mirage on the horizon.

Eli searches my face. His knuckles graze my cheek as he glides into me with deep, rocking strokes. Pleasure floods my core as I wrap one leg around his hips. And it’s not just the steady rhythm or the way he fills and stretches me or the friction of his body against mine that drives me closer and closer to coming undone. It’s just him.

My palms slide up his arms and over his shoulders. I lace my fingers together around the back of his neck and I hold his gaze with mine.

“You’re mine,” I whisper. “And I’m yours.”

When the surprise and relief dissolve from Eli’s face, there’s only the deepest longing left behind. No more words. No more admissions. Just his kiss, like a promise of dawn after night.

Maybe he does love me. Maybe I can let him. I can try.