When we were friends before, Abel was the hot-headed one. The one who’d charge into any situation without thinking things through. He won more often than he lost, but that didn’t change the fact that he let his emotions drive him more than he likely should. I was the one who acted as his brakes. The cooler head meant to prevail.
Obviously that’s not the case anymore. He hasn’t lost control once since he walked back into my life. Even the way he’s been with Harlow is calculated, no matter how hot the chemistry sparks between them.
It doesn’t matter. Abel might have learned how to be cold, but he’s always had a fire burning deep within. Something like that doesn’t just go away, not when it’s such a fundamental part of the person he was for twenty-eight years. All I need to do is tap it, and he’ll stop thinking so clearly. There are two ways to make that happen.
Fighting or fucking.
Fucking and fighting.
We have the desire for both in abundance. No matter how hard he tries to hold himself apart, eventually his walls will come down. That’s when I’ll strike. Until then, I might as well enjoy myself.
All in the name of my plan, of course.
I slide off the bed and sink to my knees before him. He undoes his pants in short, angry movements and pulls out his cock. I got an up close and personal experience with it the other night, but just like noticing the differences in him, this feels different. I’m not still riding a tsunami of adrenaline and fucked-up emotions the way I was after the fight on Lammas. I am myself.
Fuck, I’ve wanted this for so long.
I shut the thought down almost as soon as it presents itself. How I felt about Abel before the coup doesn’t matter. Neither of us are the men we were. We’ve both changed in the near-decade apart. The attraction may remain, but that’s all. There’s no trust, no friendship—certainly no love. We’ve been boiled down to our worst parts, refined by cruelty and the need to do anything to survive.
“If you bite me, I’ll knock your teeth in.” He says it casually as he fists his cock, giving it a rough stroke. As if he’s not so hard, I can practically see him throbbing. His dark eyes are so cold, they burn me. “Whatever plan you have going on in that twisted brain of yours, it won’t work. I win, fucker. Sucking my cock doesn’t change anything.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
I lift my chin. “Who’s to say I’m not on my knees because I want to be?” I lean forward a little. Not close enough to touch him, not yet, but closer. “You thought about it, back when we were friends.”
“Back when I thought we were friends.” He sounds so bitter, I can taste it on my tongue. “That’s what you really mean.”
No point in telling him that I considered him my best friend for all those years. It won’t make a difference, and he’ll just call me a liar. As I am reminded time and time again, intentions don’t matter. Not only did I underestimate my father, resulting in the death of forty people, but I never went after Abel once he and his brothers were driven out of Sabine Valley. I could come up with a thousand different reasons why it was never the right time, or talk about how Abel hid the trail too well for my people to find him.
Intentions don’t matter. Even attempts don’t matter.
The only thing that makes a difference is the bottom line.
And the bottom line is that Abel and his brothers suffered through eight years of exile, in part, because of me. There’s no coming back from that. Not even with twenty-eight years of friendship between us.
Friends and never more. We were very careful to keep it only that. If we occasionally shared a partner in bed, it was always us sharing them and never each other.
An image slams into my brain hard enough to have me rocking back on my heels. Harlow between us. Riding Abel’s cock. Sucking me down with that little smirk she gets when she knows she’s about to make me come despite my best efforts at control.
I take one breath and then another, forcibly pushing the image away. It’s not in the cards for us. It never was, even before how things played out this morning. I have to mend things with Harlow, at least enough that we’re not at each other’s throats, but it’d serve me right if she never let me touch her again. No, better to let that fantasy disappear with the rest of our relationship. I still don’t quite understand how I’ve fucked things up so thoroughly with her, but the anger is too thick to think past, even now.