Chapter 10

10

Harlow

After all this time, I should really be past the point where Eli’s able to break my heart. I hate that my throat is tight and my face is on fire as I sit up and strive for some kind of dignity at that dose of humiliation.

For his part, Abel watches me the way I’d watch a cornered animal. Not sure if it’s going to collapse or attack. I wish I knew the answer to that question, too. I reach down and snag my jeans off the floor. It takes a few moments to set them right and pull them on, but I don’t feel better once it’s done. Not when I can hear the water running in the bathroom. No doubt Eli is scrubbing off every bit of evidence of me from his body.

That’s what I want, isn’t it?

I should be happy that it’s over. Or at least relieved.

Except it’s not over. For better or worse, we’re tied to Abel for the next year. There’s no clean break, no escaping this proximity. We’re going to be sharing space, digging our fingers into each other’s wounds, trampling each other’s emotions, for twelve more months. It makes me exhausted just thinking about it.

I smooth my hair back from my face. “Did you need something?”

“This your room?”

I don’t know if I’m grateful or irritated that he’s going to ignore what just happened. Maybe a little bit of both. “Sometimes. It’s mostly Eli’s.” I’d claimed a room down the hall and spent more and more nights there in the last year. Eli never commented on it, simply taking my half-assed excuse about differing schedules at face value. Not a single fucking word to address the growing distance between us. No, he just kept on moving as if nothing had changed. It felt—it still feels—like further confirmation that he never really wanted me. He wanted what I represent.

Someone to save.

Proof that he’s not like his father, that he’s really a good man.

Joke’s on both of us, after all.

Abel looks around the room for a long moment. “Get what you need.”

“There’s nothing I need here.” I’ve long since moved most of my stuff to the other room. There’s just a handful of clothes and books here, but nothing irreplaceable. I give the closed bathroom door one last look and then follow Abel to the door and out into the hall. He motions for me to precede him, and I walk four doors down and open it.

My room started as a spare room, but over the last year, it’s acquired a scattering of my knickknacks on the dresser, most of my clothes in the walk-in closet, and all my various makeup and bathroom stuff in the large en suite bathroom. It still doesn’t quite feel like mine the same way that my bedroom with Eli used to, but it’s better than lying next to him every night, listening to him breathe and aching over our shattering relationship.

Abel moves around it, eyeing my bed, sifting his fingers through the container of jewelry on the dresser, disappearing into the closet and then the bathroom. When he returns, he looks just as unreadable as he’s been since I met him. “This will do.”

I know I need to dig in my heels, to tell him to fuck right off with what he’s obviously assuming, but I’m still reeling with how ugly things became with Eli. “You’re living on the edge if you think I really won’t smother you in your sleep.”

“Nah, you’re too practical for that.” He walks to the narrow window and peers out. We’re high enough to see over the wall, and this room has a decent view of the river that separates our faction’s territory from the Amazons to the northeast. “Even if you managed to kill me before I snapped your neck, my brothers would tear you to pieces.”

I know. It factored into my decision to accept Abel’s offer. I have little recourse. The Paine brothers might as well be a hydra. Even if someone manages to kill one, there are six more where he came from, and they’ll all howl for the responsible party’s blood. The only way would be to kill them all, and if Eli’s father and an alliance with both Amazons and Mystics couldn’t manage it, I doubt anyone living can.

No, better to work this from the inside and use his obvious attraction to me; anything to benefit my people. Abel isn’t the type to let desire cloud his mind, but he’s wise enough to realize what an asset I am.

I cross my arms over my chest. “What’s next?”

“My people will use today to get settled in. Tomorrow we start patrols out into the faction to let people know who’s in charge and see us.” He glances at me. “That means you and I will be taking a nice little walk through Old Town. Eli, too, if he can behave himself.”

Old Town is a sector that runs seven blocks long and about three blocks wide, filled with shops and bars and restaurants that have been here since Sabine Valley’s inception. Or that’s how the story goes. Most of the business owners can trace their lineage back at least three or four generations in the same place, and they compromise the backbone of the faction. If they don’t get on Abel’s side, then he doesn’t have a chance in hell of transitioning smoothly into power.

I almost sit on the bed but think better of it at last moment. What happened with Eli is too fresh; I don’t trust myself not to do something self-destructive like fuck Abel just to get the memory of Eli’s ugly words out of my head.

Enjoy my sloppy seconds.

He’ll be lucky if I don’t sink a knife between his ribs the next time I see him, the bastard.

“Harlow.” From the tone of Abel’s voice, he’s said my name more than once.

“Sorry, I’m listening now.”

He doesn’t move from the window, but somehow he seems closer. “Did you know that Eli and I were friends when we were kids? All the way up through our teens and most of our twenties until all that shit went down eight years ago.”

I knew that, but only because people like to gossip about the Paines when they think no one is listening. Eli never talked about Abel. Not once in all the time we’ve been together. I should have recognized that as a red flag, but I had stars in my eyes for too long after we started dating. “Do you have a point for this little walk down memory lane?”

His dark eyes flare, and his lips curve in something resembling a smile before he shuts it down. “My point, sweetheart, is that Eli was never the kid who’d come at a problem head-on. I wanted something, I’d go after it with everything I had, no matter what stood in my way. Eli likes to flank the situation and attack it from the side. He always has.”

“I’m aware of how Eli works.” This isn’t making me feel any better, but then why would Abel want me to feel better? I might not have been in any kind of power when his father was killed, but I’ve been fucking the man who was for five years. Surely he blames me, at least by proxy.

Abel slowly crosses to me. “I got used to losing. You can’t win them all, and I learned something valuable every time I lost. It made me better, sharper, hungrier.” He stops in front of me. “Eli never lost. Not once he set his mind on something. He’s too damn good, spent too much time playing out scenarios in that big brain of his. He never makes a move unless he can be sure he’ll end up victorious.”

It’s the truth. Eli’s hesitance to act quickly might have driven me up the wall more times than I can count, but when he finally did make a move, it usually led to victory. “And?”

“And he just lost you. Fuck, he just realized that he lost you even before I came on the scene, all on his own failure. It’s going to fuck him up for a while, and he’s going to strike out at the cause during that time. At you.”

I stare up at him. “Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”

“Neither. I’m stating a fact. You should have run the second you realized you didn’t want to be with him anymore. Now you’re stuck here in the bed you made, and it’s going to be messy as hell.” He shrugs. “That going to be a problem?”

Of course it’s going to be a problem. No matter how much I’d like to avoid Eli, the truth is that it’s impossible. At least for any extended period of time. Every time we end up in the same room, it’s going to be more of the same. Ugly words and uglier actions. “I have it under control.”

“Do you? Because you were coming all over his cock twenty minutes ago.”

I lift my chin. “Do you find that threatening, Abel? Even when he’s being an asshole, he makes me feel so fucking good when he’s inside me.” I know I’m tugging a tiger by the tail, but I can’t seem to help myself. I hurt. I hurt so fucking much, I can barely breathe past it, and Abel’s standing here, solid and unbreakable. He can take whatever poison I need to purge; I’m sure of it.

“What you do with him has nothing to do with us. Keep fucking him, for all I care.” He leans down until his breath ghosts over my lips. “But don’t pretend you weren’t still aching even after he was through with you.”

“I—”

He grabs my arm and spins me around, pressing my back to his chest. I’m still processing the new position when he hooks his thumb beneath the band of my jeans. It’s the slightest touch, but I jump like he’s zapped me with a live wire. His words growl in my ear. “That orgasm was just an appetizer, wasn’t it, sweetheart? You’re still feeling needy, and I have nothing but time today.”

I shouldn’t.

I might have learned a long time ago the necessity of separating sex from emotion, but Abel is too overwhelming already. I’m not certain I can keep my distance, avoid getting washed away through the sheer force of his presence.

I’m not sure I care. “I’m tired. It was a long night.”

“You’re not going to be able to sleep, not with your mind spinning out. I can help.”

My chest feels like I have a gaping hole in it. I’m all too willing to let him distract me from it, at least for a little while. I lean my head back on his shoulder and relax against him. He takes it for the invitation it is and pops the button of my jeans. The slow drag of my zipper, and then his fingers are there, dipping beneath the denim until he cups my pussy. The jeans are too tight for him to do much more than that, but it feels unforgivably possessive, as if he’s claiming me.

“You didn’t use protection with Eli.”

I close my eyes, giving myself over to this. “I’m on birth control. We’re monogamous; or at least we were before you came along.”

He slips his hand almost all the way out of my jeans and then back in, this time wedging two fingers into me. I inhale sharply, barely biting back a moan. I shouldn’t like how owned I feel right now. I shouldn’t be fighting down the need to beg him for more. Abel holds me like this, deep and intimate, for several long moments. I can feel my heartbeat racing through my entire body, but I somehow manage to hold myself perfectly still.

He flattens his free hand to the space below my breasts, pressing me back against him more firmly. “I’d like to have you without a condom, Harlow. Have you wet and slick and pump you full of my come.”

I let out a harsh laugh. “You only want that because he has it.”

“Maybe.” He nuzzles my hair off my neck and kisses me there. “But I think you want it, too. Isn’t that why you’re arching back against me right now? It’s not because you want me. It’s because you want me to erase all evidence of him on your skin.”

He’s not wrong, and I hate that he not only sees the truth but doesn’t hesitate to call me on it. “Bold of you to think that I trust you enough to go there.”

“Ah, but I’ve never lied to you, sweetheart. And I never will, even if you hate me for it. I was tested before we came back to Sabine Valley—all of us were—and I haven’t touched anyone since.”

Strangely enough, I do believe him. I don’t know if the Paine brothers plan on trying to keep any of these relationships going past the year deadline, but it makes sense that they’d prepare for the eventuality of possibly fucking their Bride more than the first night. If they’re all as arrogant as Abel, they’d probably assume it’s a sure thing.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t trust me.” I gasp a little as his fingers flex inside me. “Be a shame if I got knocked up and didn’t know which of you was the father.”

“Would it?” His voice is so dry, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “I don’t think so. That kid would be mine, regardless of whose DNA contributed to its creation. And wouldn’t that be a kicker? Me and you raising his biological kid. Just another thing of his that I’ll take, and gladly.”

I tense. “You really hate him.”

“I would think that’s readily apparent.” He gives my neck another light kiss. “So what will it be, Harlow? Do you want my cock or not?”

I don’t understand how everything with Abel feels so inevitable, but I want what he’s offering. Escape. “Yes.”

“With a condom or without?”

So reckless to go without, but he’s right. He has no reason to lie to me. Not about this. Not when we’re stuck together for the next year. I lick my lips. “Without.”

He makes a growling sound against my neck, and then he’s moving, easing his hand out of my jeans and pulling my tank top over my head. My bra joins it on the floor, and then he sits on the bed and tugs my jeans down, his gaze on every inch of exposed skin. When I finally stand before him naked, he slowly peruses me as if he didn’t have me pinned to a bathroom counter just this morning. He finally catches my gaze. “I want you to ride my cock, sweetheart. Use me to make yourself feel good.” I open my mouth, but he catches my chin before I can speak, his eyes going hard. “I can keep fucking you from behind, but there’s no pretending I’m just some asshole off the street. It’s my cock you need right now, and you know it.”

He’s right. I hate that he’s right.

I pull in a shuddering breath. “Stop talking and get naked.