I let out a tiny moan in response and tug my underwear back up. Why can’t I hold back with him?
Hot air tickles my ear. “That was…”
“Embarrassing.” I roll away, tucking my knees and giving him my back.
“—stunning.”
Oh, the anger. How easily it bursts inside my cells and takes me over. I flip back to glare at him. “I told you not to say shit like that. Not when you make me promise not to love you. You can’t have me if I can’t have you.”
He stiffens and pulls his head away, darkness slipping over his eyes. I can taste him in the air, like minerals and stone at the coldest depths. “So I think you finger fucking yourself is stunning. What does that have to do with love?”
Nothing.Maybe Iamdelusional. “You tell me. You were the one who brought up love while balls deep inside me only days ago.” I snatch his discarded shirt and wipe my belly clean… and everywhere else I spread his seed when I rolled over, then toss it aside.
“I can’t imagine a better time.” Not even the start of a smirk splinters his face.
I abandon my anger, letting desire leak from my heart. “Why did you make me promise that?”
He tucks himself inside his pants, pulls his sticky-looking hand back out then turns to sit with his back to me, as if that were an answer. Or his way of telling me he doesn’t care about love. Maybe I don’t either. But the sight further subdues my temper. I have to form fists to keep my hands from reaching for those two black towers on his back. Actually—close like this, with the lines of muscles and the post-fuck glow of his skin in my face—the tattoos don’t look like towers. They don’t even look like tattoos. The tops and bottoms of each are rounded, and the skin appears more burnt and scarred than tinted with ink.
“Where did you—” I start.
A bang on the door rattles the thin walls. Kelter’s head pokes through the broken window, blocking the moonlight. His hands grip the sharp edges, and he climbs inside.
“Kelter!” I pull my shirt down over my exposed chest and scramble for a blanket to cover my legs. “You could have waited for me to open the door!”
He ignores me and storms across the room. Eli finishes wiping his hand on his shirt and throws it to the floor as he stands to meet him.
Flushed and freshly cut from the window, Kelter stalks up to Eli and socks him in the face. As Eli’s head whips to the side from the blow, Kelter grabs his own cheek as if he’d been hit.
“What are you doing?” I screech, but I’m nothing more than background noise as they pummel each other.
Fists fly. Muscular thuds and smacks of skin on skin fill the room. Kelter’s long arms reach every which way, but Eli is a mass of muscles. He takes Kelter down with an arm around his neck and sits on him. Kelter fights on, his shirt stretching tight over his bony ribs as he tries to escape. Deep maroon blood spills from the split in his lip, brightening as it trickles down the side of his chin.
“Are you done?” Eli says, holding Kelter’s arms in an X over his chest, his elbows bent at awkward angles. Both are smeared in Kelter’s blood from the window cuts. “You take every hit you give.”
“So do you. And what is wrong with you?!” Kelter tries to spit inhis face, but only manages to send a splatter of blood raining over himself, like red freckles. He calms his body with a defeated breath.
“You didn’t seem so concerned when you were making suggestions.” Eli frees his arms, and Kelter clobbers his jaw immediately. Saliva sails through the air and wets the mattress.
“Then you took control! And can you blame me for enjoying it? That doesn’t make what you did right.” Kelter tries to evade a punch only to be hit in the ear.
“What are you guys even talking about?” I bunch the blanket around my legs and move to the edge of the bed.
“Would you quit already?” Eli hisses at Kelter, letting him out from beneath him. “This wouldn’t even be a fight if she wasn’t weakening me.”
Milo carefully drops through the window and takes a confused look around at the television and shadeless wall lamp before assessing Eli and Kelter. It’s not surprising he’s unaffected after the amount of violence he’s seen. He tilts his head to the side, frowning, and goes straight to yanking on the door handle. With no success, he jiggles it one last time and turns around, leaning his back against the door, one ankle crossed over the other, and swipes a hand through his wild hair. “Could you two stop your cock fight long enough to open this damn thing?”
“You don’t get to do that to her,” Kelter fumes, his fists a blur as he pounds them into any part of Eli he can reach.
“She did it to herself,” Eli grits out between the nauseating thumps of his return punches, targeted and brutal.
“Eli!” I yell. How could he tell him that?
“Liar,” Kelter growls, finally sitting back for a breath. “She was supposed to rest.”
Eli turns to look at me, his face already mottled shades of red and purple at the start of a new round of bruises. He smirks, raising one brow in amusement. “I guarantee she feels better than she has in days.”
A vision crawls in, stealing me away as Milo twists the knob of the final deadbolt and lets Kaleida and Sypher inside.
