And he could see shewasafraid, and she wasn’t even doing a good job of hiding it.
That terrible smile was still fixed in place. “Me? I’m just the spokesman. The people you’re going up against are much, much scarier than me.” He let go of the desk. “I’ll let you think over what I’ve said. No sense in missing breakfast. Come, Samuel.”
Samuel made no motion to resist, which would look cowardly later, but it wasn’t cowardice. It was just surprise. There was so much of it. He thought he knew Eli so well, but that terrible smile—
Eli paused in the doorway, and his voice was almost casual as he said, “I’d be careful with your next offer, Ms. Cruces. Some people aren’t as patient as I am.”
And then they were out of the room and the door was swinging blessedly shut after them. But that wasn’t the end of it. It wasn’t even the beginning. Because he was finally beginning to wrap his mind around what had just happened.
“Eli.”
Eli was pulling him along, and so quickly that their armswere pulled taut between them.
“Eli, what did you do? Why did you say all that? If she calls your bluff—”
“It wasn’t a bluff.”
It came out tight, but not angry. Samuel didn’t think it was anger. He put on a burst of speed to get ahead and look at Eli’s face, but Eli was moving so quickly it was difficult to see. That terrible smile, at least, was gone.
“You still threatened her. That won’t be taken lightly. What if she rescinds the offer? What are you going to tell Nat? This wasn’t—”
“Who do you think warned me that they would try something like this?”
The impact of that had him pulling up sharp. He paused only for a moment, but it was enough to put Eli before him again, and he was back to being dragged along, and even faster than before. It was making it too difficult to think. He wanted to demand they slow down, and almost did, but then he recognized the hallway they were in, and it wasn’t on the way to the cafeteria at all. “Eli, we’ve come the wrong way. You should have turned at—”
Eli’s mouth silenced—perhaps forever—any other words he might have said.
He didn’t know what kissing was like. Not really. He’d had a child’s body, a child’s features, and a child’s memories the last time he’d done any serious kissing. But he was pretty sure—ten thousand percent sure—that even if he’d had a whole army worth of men in his past, none of them would have been anything like kissing Eli.
The most surprising part was just how little his brain was involved. Not at all, in fact. It would make him wonder later if there was some kind of kissing reflex, some ancient evolutionary drive that determined the act to be an essentialpart of reproduction or something. Because within the same moment of Eli kissing him, he was kissing him back. And it had to be evolutionary biology, because he didn’t know how to kiss, and he definitely didn’t know how to do whatever he was currently doing to Eli which, if he had to be honest, was closer to what Cookie Monster did on Sesame Street than the kissing people did in Hallmark movies. But the truly unbelievable part of the whole thing was how not once, not for one second, did his overanalyzing brain kick in to wonder about it. He didn’t think about the state of his breath, his lack of technique, or the fact that he hadn’t had a real shower since before he’d been knifed. Actually, if it hadn’t been for Nathaniel, he might just have gone on kissing Eli until the next Chicxulub level asteroid wiped him and his species out entirely. But Nathaniel did exist, and it was the memory of his first actual adult kiss—the one Nathaniel had given him—that brought his brain colliding with reality. He remembered the hands caught in his hair, the eyes with their little gold flecks, and the scratchiness in that voice as he’d said, “I love you for this.”
He shoved at Eli, almost getting a finger in his nose as he did, and then his mouth was tasting nothing but air. The first thing he noticed about his newfound freedom was how much he hated it. Or how he would have been hating it if his mind wasn't too busy trying to process just how different the two states of kissing Eli and not kissing Eli could be. One was a state of total and impossible involvement—the kind of state that really justified four and a half billion years of evolution. And the other was just…nothing.
Eli was saying something.
“I had to be sure. I know it was too long of a wait, and it was cruel to leave you feeling like it was one-sided, but please understand. I had to be sure you loved Nathaniel more than you loved me.”
And he realized it wasn’t just air he was tasting, but subtleremnants of Eli. It was more impressions and memory than real taste, but he found his tongue probing at his lip, searching for evidence, and was quite bewildered when it did, in fact, find some.
And Eli was still speaking.
“It isn’t what it used to be. My feelings for Marie don’t even begin to approach what I feel for Than, but it’s been a constant source of guilt for me, those lingering feelings. I don’t understand why I can’t turn it off when so many other people feel nothing but contempt for their exes. I’ve tried everything and pretty much given up managing it. Nathaniel says I’m not allowed to feel guilty about it, and that he likes all the love inside me. But I always hoped to make up for it somehow. By loving him more than myself. By putting him first. But I can’t always do that because I’m a father, and anyway, Nathaniel wouldn’t forgive me for thinking of him before Hailey. But this—with you—this could be a way to do that. To even things out again. Don’t you see?”
He didnotsee, and a large part of that was due to him not really hearing, never mind absorbing, all that Eli was saying. He could tell by the tone and intensity that the words were important. And he dearlywantedto listen. But his mind refused to throw away certain other preoccupations, like for example, just how beautiful the overhead lighting was reflecting off Eli's skin, particularly his lips which, still slightly wet, were glistening like beaches of diamond sand, entirely unhelped by the stunning realization thathehad made them that way, and could do so again if he could only make his head tilt back up to claim that mouth once more.
“I have a jealous streak,” Eli went on, as if he wasn’t rearranging the universe with every breath. “It’s one of the uglier parts of my character. But it doesn’t act up as much with you. Not when you’re with Than, I mean. It’s terrible around anyone else. But thinking about you with him is soothing.It’s one of the best ways I can get myself to sleep, actually. I’ll imagine you together, sharing mugs of coffee, or snuggled together on the couch after a long day, and it releases something in my chest. Some of that awful tightness this place puts in me. But it’s more than that. When I think of how much joy you give him—all the things you can do better for him than I can. The books and your words and that impossible puppy loyalty I can’t get enough of. Tell me that makes up for my faults. Tell me I’m not just imagining it as an excuse to have you. Because I’m about to kiss you again, and I don’t think I can stop myself.”
Wellthatcaught Samuel’s attention in a big way—the wordskissandagainrevolutionary when linked together, and he found his hands reaching out to seize hold and make sure of those words when his brain pulled him up short. There were all the same reasons that had stopped him in the first place, but he wasn’t ready to deal with them. “What?” was all he managed.
And then Eli was kissing him again, and with even more energy this time. Samuel felt his back collide with something, and recognized, somehow, that it was the door of their closet and that this, rather than the cafeteria, was what Eli had been aiming for. The realization that this act had been premeditated—that Eli hadwantedto have him in a place all alone, might have proved too much if something even more shocking hadn’t come along to knock it away—and that was the reality of Eli’s hands pushing their way up his shirt. The shock of them—big and warm and entirely sure of themselves—took all of his brain’s computing power, and that was even before one of them took a handful of one of his pecs, and brushed a wonderfully knowledgeable thumb over one of his nipples.
His whole body shuddered, and he heard the gasp that went into Eli’s mouth, but then he was lost. He forgot about his body, the way it all combined into a person with an attached brain. He was just a series of parts, seemingly disconnected, because the shock of being touched or tasted in one place didn’t at all prepare him for the experiences of another, andhe knew, theoretically, that he was giving responses and even making gestures of his own. His hands clutched at flesh and muscle, and his mouth was tearing and devouring with enough enthusiasm, if not skill, to ensure that even a man as big as Eli wouldn’t soon have an inch unexplored. But those things also seemed unattached somehow, like all of it and everything, his body and Eli’s, were bits of some puzzle that were happening too much and all at once. And if his mind hadn’t already been destroyed by it all, he might have had a worry that this would kill him—that he, perhaps, was already dead. Though in hell or heaven he couldn’t say, because though circumstances should have indicated heaven, there was too much urgency, too much unslakable and terrible thirst, to describe any of it asenjoyable.There was still too much need and anxiety and thoughts likeIf I don’t have him now—NOW—it must be now!shouting at him in too many languages, that actually, it gave him some sympathy for Nathaniel, who, if he had to put up with this feeling all the time, would have been more than bad enough to deal with even if he didn’t have to add “being cheated on” to the pile.
He broke away with so much force he nearly knocked the man to the floor. But he didn’t notice that part. His breaths were like knives in his chest. “No!” And he understood now, even if he couldn’t make sense of all he’d been doing and feeling, knew enough to understand it was betrayal. That he was paying back some of the greatest kindness of his life with the blackest of disloyalties. “Nat.” And the naming was worse than anything. He could feel the letters of that name carved directly into still-beating flesh and sinew, more than bone deep. He wouldn’t do this. Couldn’t imagine how he’dalreadydone it, and more than that, how Eli could have done it. Madness, that’s what he decided. It was a kind of temporary madness, some sort of miasma that had taken hold of them both, but one he wouldn’t allow to defeat him. Desperately, he flung his mind open, rampaging his own memories for something to hold on to. “You’re going to get out of here, and go right toNat,” he said. “Father already said he’d take care of it. That he’d get you out. It can’t be long and then you’ll—”
“What?” Eli’s eyes were so dark and wide and deep that all he wanted was to fall into them again, but when Eli took hold of him it was to give him a shake. “What do you mean? He didn’t do anything, right? Nathaniel said he already spoke to him about—any interference at all—it could wreck everything, Samuel. All our negotiations.”
He didn’t let himself get lost again. He was digging his nails into his own arms to ground himself, and it was a good thing too, because he wouldn’t have believed what he was hearing otherwise. “That’swhat you’re worried about? You’re cheating on Nat, and the thing on your mind is—”
