Page 142 of Cross the Line
Eli freezes.
I can’t tell if he’s stunned at my brazenness or too abashed to tell me what happened between him and JJ last night. Either way, my curiosity is avalanching to a relentless need to know every in and out and moment in between.
Clutching his biceps, I pull myself flush to him. His arms cross at the small of my back, bowing me deeper into him.
“I can’t stop imagining it,” I whisper, voice dipping. “You and JJ. Together.”
A shiver runs through me at his throaty groan.
Yeah, it happened.
“Was it amazing?” I rise onto my toe picks so our faces are level.
My hands slide to his shoulders and cross behind his neck.
Eli nods, cheeks flushed as I feel.
“What was it like? How did it feel?” My pulse hammers the questions out. “I need to know. Please, Eli.”
He swallows, arms cinching around me. “It was incredible. Jayden felt incredible. He tasted…just like heaven. Everything about it was crazy good, and?—”
My mouth crashes into his. Every word off his tongue winds my insides tight. My core is clenching with desire. So hot… so wet…
“Oh, Lord,” I breathe against him, scraping my teeth over his slick lip.
His tight jeans do nothing to conceal the hardening bulge behind them when I grind into him. I can feel the heat of it through my wool leggings. “Eli, that’s… Oh, my God…”
“You like it.” His statement is a breathless groan.
“I love it. It makes me happy and it—” I swallow the spit pooling in my mouth. “—it excites me… turns me on…”
“Jesus, Fin, you’re making me so damn hard right now. Talking about how JJ felt while you’re rubbing all over me… You’re killing me.” He grips my ass and spins me on the toe picks, a slow, dizzying turn.
“Will you let me watch sometime?” My voice shakes with a mix of arousal and trepidation as his fingers claw deeper into my flesh.
“You don’t have to ask.” Dark, glittering eyes lock on mine. “You’re a part of us.”
Oh, shoot.
I melt at his remark, punctuated by his half-bitten smile.
“Come on now, sweet girl, hold my wrists, bend your knees, and let me take you around the ice at least once before it melts beneath us.” His raspy laugh hits me everywhere—chest, stomach, between my legs, all the places with a pulse.
For so long, I’ve been set on finding the boy I fell in love with, that it didn’t occur to me that he’s not what I need anymore. I’ve outgrown him the way Eli has grown into this gorgeous, stoic man who can make the world stop turning with a crooked smile and a raspy laugh.
A man with so much love to give, despite everything he’s survived. All the spiritual manipulation, the beatings, the cutting, the purging…
He has endured and bloomed. Like a plum blossom, his pain has become an endless love, budding bigger and brighter by the day.
I get to be a part of it. Of him. Of Jayden. I get to love them and be loved by them. More than that, I get to watch them love each other. To be a part of them loving each other. I get to breathe their air, steep in their need, and bathe in their affections.
For all the purpose I’ve searched for, I am certain that they areit.
The rest is semantics.
CHAPTER 37
JAYDEN
