Page 27 of Cross the Line
He nods, fingers lacing behind my neck. “Me, too.”
Awhat thenfrown creases his brows together.
“Finley needs to know the truth; otherwise you’re never going to be able to look her in the eyes and love her the way you want to. You’ll never be able to be with her the way you need.”
He gasps at my words. Like I’ve hit the epicenter of his gaping wound and brought the pain back to life a hundredfold.
I don’t know where they came from. I haven’t had enough time for the truth to settle, to truly hit me, for me to deduce that what happened to him is the reason he can’t be intimate with Finley. But this is Eli, and like when Finley told me about his grandmother and the cutting—I know.
“There will always be this dark secret between all of us—” A tear skips down his face as heavy as the rock in my stomach. “—and we willalways be afraid of the day that she does find out. Because that day is somewhere in our future, Eli, whether we acknowledge it or not.”
“How do I tell her what her brother did to me? How am I supposed to look in her eyes and tell her that he—” He stops. The look on his face tears me apart.He can’t even say the word. “How, JJ?”
His eyes dart between mine, searching for an answer I don’t have.
“I don’t know,” I breathe.
Shuffling forward on my knees, I trail my hands down his chest slowly, giving him the chance to pull back. When he doesn’t, I settle between his thighs and wrap my arms around his chest until he’s cradled into me and his arms coil around my shoulders.
I hold Eli as tight as I can and promise, “We’ll figure it out together.”
“It’s not your problem,” he says with a choked sputter that wrenches all my insides into my throat.
After telling him I love him, I thought that it was plain to understand that we’re in this together. He’s not on his own. The pain that lives in his chest is mine. The hurt he carries is mine. His fight is my fight.
“Anything and anyone that hurts you or Finley is my problem.” I pull back to hold his face in my hands. Tracing every line of his bewildered expression, I wipe away his tears until his eyes focus on mine. “You’re mine, Eli, and what hurts you, might as well kill me.”
His arms loosen around me with the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Silent hiccups vibrate through him while his hands mold to the back of my head. The light trail of his fingertips through the short strands of my hair sends a wave of heat through me. My heart loses track of what to do when his eyes lower to my lips. Narrowed with longing. Blinking with curiosity.
I want to sate every want and need glimmering in his stare. I want to give him every ounce of love and affection he doesn’t know yet. My love. My affection.
“JJ…” he breathes my name like a prayer, leaning closer.
Holding his gaze, I tilt my head, thumbing his cheeks in a gentle caress. “Eli…”
The air in my lungs heats, the particles expanding with a heady buzz.
Then the tip of his nose brushes mine, and a choked hiss parts my lips. His eyes flit to mine again while his fingers tunnel deep into the longer lengths of my hair. Twisting and pulling with each of his shallow breaths growing raspier as my hands trace down from his cheeks to his jaw.
“I don’t…” His deep, obsidian stare skirts back to my lips. “I don’t know what… how… I…”
“You know, Sweetheart.” The endearment rolls off my tongue without prelude. There’s no thought, no pause, just feeling. With his focus back on my gaze, I tell him, “Do whatever you want, how you want. Because I want it all.”
My stomach whirs with a breathtaking thrill every second he studies my face, and a slow smile ticks up the corners of his lips, lighting his eyes with a bashful glint. The tremor in his breath wracks through my chest, punctuating the light tug of his fingers in my hair.
It’s so good.So fucking good, that I gasp at the same time as my face lifts to his and his lips brush mine.
Eli freezes. Still as stone. His top lip pressed to my bottom one. His hands tangled in my hair. His breath ghosting my skin.
Waiting.
Holding.
“Fuck,” he groans, the sound dragging from his chest until his mouth crushes to mine.
Everything explodes. Breath, heat, need. His tongue sweeps into my mouth with a sigh that sounds like release. Like he’s wanted this as long as I have.
Our teeth clash, our hands fumble, desperate to hold, to feel, to anchor. Eli deepens the kiss, tasting me, pulling me in until I’m nothing but our frantic heartbeat and unrelenting want.
