Page 136 of Break the Rule
“Beg me?” Eden says, kissing his way down Charlie’s chest and across his stomach until he’s half off the bed with his head between Charlie’s spread legs. “Beg me to own you. To use my come to finger you to release. Beg me to own you, Charlie.”
“You do own me,” Charlie whines, spreading his legs as wide as this damn tiny bed will allow. “I’m yours. Your slut. Your dumbass. Your Charlie.”
They come together in a mess of limbs and grunts and cries, and when Charlie comes again, it’s all Eden can do not to cry. Again.
“Fuck you,” Eden hisses, scrubbing at his eyes.
“You just did,multiple times.” He can hear the self-satisfaction dripping from his tone but really, can anyone blame him? He’s got the most gorgeous person on Earth on top of him, so desperate for him he just fucked Charlie’s brains out more than once and in the filthiest way.
Eden grumbles something unintelligible before collapsing on top of Charlie in a sticky heap. For a long time he doesn’t move, quietly tracing his finger up and down Charlie’s bicep. Copying the movement, Charlie moves both hands to Eden’s lower back, mirroring the touch.
“Charlie.”
“Hmm?”
“Would you…wanna meet someone?”
“Sure,” Charlie answers, “but you know I’ve met Addy already.”
“It’s not Addy.” Eden lifts his head. “It’s someone else. Someone important.”
“Is this someone the reason you always snuck out in the mornings and disappeared sometimes?”
“Yeah.” Eden licks his lips. “It might be easier to show you. Come on.”
Eden extricates himself from Charlie, grabbing a shirt from his dresser and tossing it to Charlie to use to clean up. Once they’re both moderately cleaner and dressed—Charlie in the clothes he wore here and Eden in a flowy cotton skirt and one of his usual oversized t-shirts—they make it out to the living room. This time, Charlie really looks around, noticing all the things he missed before—the dolls on the floor, the open coloring book on the coffee table and the plush pig on the couch.
Despite the questions he wants to ask, Charlie waits, watching Eden cross the living room and reach for a photograph on the end table. He carries it to Charlie, passing it over. In the photo is Eden and Addy, both with their arms around a little girl who looks like a copy and pasted version of Addy.
“Is she yours?” Charlie asks.
He’s wondered ever since he overheard Eden on the phone. Personally he’s never given much thought to kids. Unlike Alec or Jason, who have at one time or another made off-handedcomments about being a dad one day, Charlie never thought about it because he never expected to be in a relationship with someone he might want that with.
“Yes. But not in the way you might mean.”
“I’m gonna need some clarification.”
“This is Ella.”
“Ella,” Charlie echoes, several puzzle pieces slotting into place. That explains why he’d been so upset at losing the bracelet then.
“Ella is Addy’s daughter and she’s my…my family.” Eden traces a finger over her photo, a kind of smile on his face that Charlie has never seen. “Her and Addy both are. And you need to know, if…if you want to keep me, they come too. There’s no me without them. They’re all I have, and I won’t give them up for anything, not even you.”
“I’d never ask you to give them up, Eden.”
“Not on purpose, but you might not want kids, and she’s not mine. I know that, but me and Addy are all she’s got. Addy’s family kicked her out when she got pregnant, and the dad’s a piece of shit. And I won’t let her end up like me, not ever. I’m always going to be there for her. She comes first. If something ever happened to Addy, then Ella is mine. You need to understand that now, and if it’s too much you can…you can walk away.”
“It’s not too much,” Charlie whispers, overcome by a new kind of affection for Eden. His beautiful boy, who is scared and afraid and loves so fiercely in spite of it all. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Does it bother you that I’m close to Andrew? That he is always going to be involved in our lives? That in some ways, I’ll probably always be closer to him than anyone else in the world, maybe even you.”
“No.” Eden’s eyebrows pinch together. “You’re needy enough as it is. If you didn’t have Andrew, you’d drive me nuts. Besides I like Andrew, sometimes more than I like you.”
It’s such an Eden thing to say that Charlie laughs.
“So you get that me and Andrew are a package deal because he’s my family.”
