“Kiss me,” I breathe, almost a whisper. “Please.”
I haven’t been kissed in so long. It’s been even longer since it was a kiss I wanted. And I want it from Alfie more than I want to keep breathing right now.
It’s like I’ve electrocuted him. He jumps away from me, my eyes left hollow and staring at a blank spot in the air, yanking me out of the ocean and leaving me free-falling from space instead.
“I’m – I’m sorry,” I stutter, humiliation burning every inch of my skin.
“You can’t do that, El.”
I blink several times and find Alfie leaning on the sink a million miles away, the bridge of his nose pinched by his thumb and forefinger. The fingers that were on my skin just a moment ago. Fingers that were igniting my body and breathing life back into my dead, deprived soul.
“I’m sorry, I read it wrong.” My voice trembles. Maybe if I squeeze my eyes shut hard enough, I’ll be in another life when I open them.
“You didn’t read it wrong at all.” His breathless voice makes my eyes spring open. He doesn’t turn to me but looks up at the wall in front of him. “But you can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You can’t entice me like that.” He whirls around, irritation and something raw and impatient burning in those eyes that were just so soft and sweet a moment ago. “I can’t fuck you. Kiss you. Touch you like that.”
My defences shoot up. “You touched me like that first.” I still feel the phantom pressure of his fingertips around my neck, below my ear.
His eyebrows slant. “I know but – I just – I can’t.”
I fold my arms, the rejection shooting a rod straight up my spine. “Why, because Master Caden said so?”
Those eyebrows flatten, eyes hardening. “Because I have respect for him. Make sure you’re not forgetting that you are with us to marryhim,to become the lady of the family. Not mine, certainly not Fiz’s.His.”
“Why did you bring me here then, if you don’t want me? You introduced me to your mother.”
He rubs his forehead, seeming already bored and fed up with me. “Because I arranged to see her today and you’re my responsibility still. I wouldn’t cancel on her, and I wouldn’t risk leaving you alone.”
My heart splits in two. “That’s all?”
He blows out an agitated sigh. “Yes, that’s all, Elodie” – my full name – “stop taking my kindness for an invitation.” Something frosty sets over his face, and I want to recoil away from it. “You’re hot, but…” He pauses, considers. “I won’t betray my morals for you. You’re not going to come between us.”
My jaw falls open. “You think that’s what I’m trying to do?” By the look on his face, it is. “You started it!”
He lifts his chin, fills his chest with impenetrable air. “Now I’m ending it. Caden’s not the only one with trust issues. I may like you, El, we may get on well, but make no mistake in believing I’m naïve, malleable or just outright stupid. I still don’t know you. I don’t know fully what your intentions are.”
I’m suddenly repulsed by getting so close to him. How can he not feel this chemistry between us? There’s no way that fire is only felt by me. Only burning my body alive. Or maybe I am delusional. When it comes to Alfie, I think I’m pretty desperate for any ounce of affection, and he makes it clearer every time it’s not going to happen. That he’s not interested. And my broken, battered heart just can’t take any more.
My arms hug my body tighter, going from my stance of defiance to shrinking smaller and smaller until I’m the size of a speck of dust in the room. I look down at the floor. “I want to go back now. Please.”
He makes a sound that tells me he’s about to protest, then changes his mind. “Go wait in the car.”
He doesn’t dare give me the keys. He unlocks it and disappears back inside once I’ve climbed into the passenger seat, locking me in.
How could I be so stupid? This has nothing to do with Caden. Alright, so there’s a little, teeny tiny part of me that would find it entertaining to watch him learn that I’d hooked up with Alfie instead of him, but the rest of me truly feels something there. He’s nice. He’s so, so nice it’s impossible to believe he’s relatedto that animal. Unfathomable to think he has a bad bone in his body. It’s just not possible. That turn in attitude just then was purely because of Caden. It’s not what he truly wants. He can be good to me; we can be good together.
My stomach flips and twists and knots itself up into a bunch. We can’t be together. I’m not even staying here a second longer than I have to. I find resolve in the reminder. I won’t let stupid, pointless feelings get involved now.
CHAPTER 28
FIZ
Ifeel like a total shitdick for not telling Caden what happened with Elodie and Rosco. It’s eating away at my fractured soul. I tell him everything, literally everything. But for some reason, some faint, logical part of my brain is telling me it’s not worth what would happen. And that’s me saying that. The way I see it, Rosco and Elodie shouldn’t have any more run-ins, whatever happened between them shouldn’t rise back to the surface now she’s with Caden.
I’m thinking long term. Rosco is the masked man’s right hand. I tell Cade that something went down with them two, Cade will do something drastic, like kill him just for speaking to her and making her cry, then what – Drago comes after him? Makes the Blackwood business crumble? All because of a chick that doesn’t even like him. Not worth it. I’m doing it for him. For all of us. It has nothing to do with Elodie asking. Nothing to do with the desperation that was in her eyes. The sadness. Nope, it’s the wise thing to do.
