Chapter Fifteen
Mars rushed into the room, breathless and that was the first time he’d done that, entered without so much as knocking. “Eli, you must go to him. He’s…he’s so lost and I know he’s doing all this for you.”
“Doing all what for me, Mars? He gathered all those fucking favors and he’s still voting along the lines his party expects, still avoiding the protestors, avoiding the television channels not approved by the party to give interviews. Nothing has changed.”
“Sir, I think it has.” Mars went to the sofa but didn’t join him on it. He knelt in front of Eli, pleading, “He’s in need of a direction, and you may be the only one that can provide it.”
“Mars, this was over before it began. I’m simply here, getting enough money to pay off my loans, when he inevitably calls them in.”
Mars’s head dropped and Eli saw it, the hope he’d just dashed in the man. Beating himself because Mars had been his only friend in the place, he gave in to his request. “If you really think he’ll be open to me, I’ll go to him.”
When his face rose, Mars had tears streaming from his eyes. “Thank you, Eli.”
Mars told him where Lee was and that was where he headed, to the dining room, but once he got there, the plate was still filled with food, the glass half filled with wine and Lee wasn’t there.
“What the hell?”
He jogged up to Lee’s room, knocking only once before he went inside, and he wasn’t there either, not in the huge bathroom, in the sitting room or bedroom, but as he was about to leave, Eli turned to the door and saw Lee as he stood in the doorway.
“What is it you need, Eli? I’m tired and not in the mood for a fight.”
“I didn’t come here to fight.” Eli stood still, and yet he was moving all over, hurting in his chest as it restricted, quivering from his toes to the top of his head. “I came here because…I’ve been neglecting my job.”
It was stupid, and he had meant to say other thing, sexy things, things that would make Lee finally see him. John Locke would have said it so much better.
“You’ve been doing a fine job,” he said, moving past Eli, then sitting on the edge of the bed. “Despite the fact you hate everything about it.”
“Not everything,” he said turned slowly. “I don’t hate you.”
“Really? You could have fooled me.”
“The…the part of my job I’m neglecting is one of the reasons you hired me. I think…I think I’m ready for that part to start.”
Lee looked up at him, brows drawn in his obvious confusion, eyes moving over his face, trying to find the jest there. Lee stood, then scrubbed a hand over his face, and Eli sensed his frustration.
Suddenly, he knew that was where to start. Make him angry, make him fight. It may be the only thing that worked on a man like Lee. “I get it. You only want to torture me, not actually fuck me. Tell me, Lee, do you actually fuck the men you bed? Or do you just pretend that you can?
Lee’s eyes reddened, turning in to slits on his handsome face. A face that was lined with anger in that one instant. “What? What the fuck are you thinking?”
Lee advanced on him, and Eli did want to cower in response. He wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of getting knocked out with a fist. But Lee didn’t hit him, simply getting in his face.
That close to him, with that roiling emotion seething off him, making his body heat sore, Eli felt his own resolve weaken to the point that he would beg the man if he had to.
“Do you not remember all that I hold over you?”
It wasn’t time to recoil in fear. Not yet. “Is that all you got? I have plenty on you too, Lee.”
Lee took a step back from him, shocked that Eli said that. “You can’t use any of it.”
“I have something set up so if something happens to me, like I’ve been threatened with time and time again, all that information will be released to the media. A lot of careers and lives will be ruined.”
Lee stood there, shaking, the anger boiling up inside him until it threatened to take the top of his head. Then, it all happened, and it was so fast that Eli was helpless to stop it.
A hand gripped his throat, another his arm and he was forced backward, barely able to make the steps himself until he was slammed into the wall. “Fucking tired of you!” Lee moved his mouth next to Eli’s ear and all Eli heard was passion. “Always judging me, wanting me to change myself, to change everything! I’m not God, Eli, I can’t change the fucking world, but I will change you.”
Lee’s mouth moved to his, his hot breath on Eli’s lips making them part, and he saw the fury, the hatred and so much more in the glistening eyes that pierced his. “Fuck me, please, Lee.”
“Beg me. Beg me. I don’t care anymore about what you have on me or how things will be flipped around. I’ll choke the fucking life out of you unless you beg for me to take you anyway I want to.”