“Maybe I’m not a student. I slip into class to keep you on your toes, Price. Wanted to see what kind of education you’re getting in this fine institution of higher learning, and it turns out I have a right to be concerned. This place releases robots into the free market. Little money makers who push buttons and learn how to pass their wealth onto the next generation. You could learn way more by spending a few nights with me than half a decade wasted in this place.”
His lips dusted mine so briefly that I wasn’t sure he meant to do it. But this was Elis… He never did anything he didn’t mean.
“Stop playing with me, Elis. I’m a fucking person.”
“You’re more than just a person, Princess.A beautiful, sexy temptress who turns me into an animal.” He nipped at my earlobe, sending currents of electricity through my body.
His lips edged mine, hovering out of reach. He pressed me into the jagged slabs of limestone at my back, his breath washing over my skin and sending tingles erupting in every sinful place.
“You like pretending to be a good girl,” he whispered, a low lullaby caressing my ear. I missed how the low octave of his voice would make my skin tingle and the butterflies in my stomach flutter. “But we both know you want to be very, very bad.”
“What do you want from me, Elis.”
His palm cupped my neck, and the pad of one finger dusted across my cheekbone in tender strokes. He gazed into my eyes with such brooding intensity that he made me want to run away and have his babies.
I hated him for that.
“I want you to hang around me and get dirty.” His eyes flicked to my mouth once before he pressed his lips to mine.
His fingers wove into my hair as his hips swayed against mine. The cool limestone at my back did nothing to quell the inferno he created inside me.
He nipped around the edge of my lips, his tongue trailing the seam as small breaths gasped past my lips. His tongue traveled inside again, searching me out slower this time, his hands crawling my neck and sending razor-edged goose bumps around my skin.
“You make me crazy, Price.” His chilly words against my hot lips made my heartbeat triple and beat in a chaotic rhythm. “But against my better judgment, I can’t get enough of you.”
Chapter 13
Elis
She tasted like my bitter past and my hopeful future. I couldn’t get enough of her lips or how she felt wrapped in my arms. All those years hurled back at me, the memory of her now a reality.
The other night was about my anger and resentment toward her, all bullshit lies I’d twisted around my heart like a gnarled vine. But this…this was about more. This was about the love I’d harbored for this woman my entire life. A love that had made me a prisoner to the memory of her touch.
She pushed me back, holding me at arm’s length. She gazed at me with eyes that had haunted my dreams for five years. “I can’t keep playing this game with you.”
“Who’s playing games?”
“Come on, Elis. Everything with you is a game. I’m just another way for you to give the elite the finger.”
“I want to give you the finger. Maybe two or three. How I remember it, you liked feeling full. Airtight, as they say,” I spat.
The anger raged out of me. I wanted to hurt her because I wanted her so fucking bad that I couldn’t think straight.
Shock sprang into her eyes before she cast them down. Her hands dropped to her sides and balled into fists.
I knew I’d hit a nerve. I knew I’d hurt her, and I felt like a fucking prick. I never wanted to hurt her. When I was with Devlynn, it was the only time the pain died and left me alone. She silenced all the anger and lulled the voices in my head.
When I was with her the other night, I felt it, the undying need for her. When I was with Devlynn, I was Elis, a guy with the girl he loved. Not an angry, bitter dick with a chip on his shoulder.
We had a history—a fucked-up, tangled history filled with pain and humiliation, and no matter how much I wanted that not to matter, somehow, it always did. The past was a tornado, and no matter how hard or fast I ran from it, it managed to catch up and swallow me whole.
I wanted to kill the ache in my heart for her. I wanted to scare her, make her so disgusted that she’d never let me back into her life again. It was a mistake to abandon her. A mistake that I’d spend the rest of my life making up to her if she’d let me.
I was tired of running. I was tired of hurting. For one second, I wanted to forget it all.
“Why won’t you let me go? Why do you keep this hold on me when you don’t want me? I’m not a toy for you to play with until I break.”
“I have a hold on you? You’ve got to be kidding me. You fucking moved on with your life and didn’t look back. Nothing changed for you, Princess. You were in your tower, high up in the city, untouchable and carefree. I was the one in Brooklyn trying to pick up the pieces. You lost your high school boyfriend. Some guy you were fucking. I lost my father, my home, my mother's sanity, and the beat of my damn heart!” I yelled.