Red Leather (Book 2)

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

 

"If it's a girl, I'll kill them both." Cigarette smoke curled into my lungs and throat, soothing my angry thoughts and bitter intentions, before I released it out of my nose. It created a steady stream of smoke, and I imagined myself a dragon – capable of terrorizing and killing and setting Jessabel and her unborn baby ablaze right where they stood. Eli was almost through his tenth cigarette, while I was barely through my fourth. He lay sprawled beside me, his head propped up by pillows, with one hand on his cigarette and the other stroking my thigh.

"What if it's a boy?" he asked. His voice dropped several octaves whenever he smoked, and I loved the gritty feel to it. The back of his hand made its way along my hip.

I let him do what he wanted, contemplating his question. "Depends on who he resembles most." Eli chuckled quietly.

"That's sick," he murmured, sounding anything but disgusted. He seemed to approve my way of thinking. It was in the middle of the afternoon, and we were barely dressed – Daddy was at work, which meant that I had the house all to myself. Eli invited himself over, and that was all I needed. Eli could make my troubles dissolve, even if it were temporary.

Eli would help. Eli would know what to do.

He sat up and reached over me, putting out what was left of his cigarette on the edge of my dresser. His body heat was infectious, almost as infectious as what he had done to me before. I leaned forward him and kissed his neck, biting into the flesh and leaving a very noticeable hickey. His chest was so muscled, so detailed, and he smelled of nicotine and whisky and smoke...

He made a 'tsk' noise at the back of his throat, and yet he grabbed hold of my hair and jerk my face towards his. He smirked that dangerous, mocking smirk of his. "Your Nathan wouldn't like that."

I smiled coyly. "What? This?" I grabbed the back of his throat harshly and tilted his head, sucking fiercely on the spot below his ear. A small hiss escape through his teeth, and he pulled back harshly, his dark eyes smouldering through thick lashes. "Nathan liked that. He liked it a lot."

I took immense pleasure in using Nathan against him. Not that he was overly jealous – whether he showed it or not – but Eli hated the man in the same way I hated Jessabel. Nathan had sent his brother, Noah Lincoln, to prison for assisting in the kidnapping and torture of Jennifer Hockley and Robert Blight. Telling him that I loved Nathan – and I did – brought out such a fierce reaction that I couldn't help but be amused.

Eli and I would still burn the world down, just as we'd planned. Expect he would not be at the centre of my attention. Nathan was.

Nathan was everything. Nathan was mine.

"Is this his?" he asked sharply, pulling out my pillow from underneath me and examining the shirt it was wrapped in. He sneered. "Now you're stealing from him? That's fucking pathetic, Renee."

"Fuck you," I spat, feeling my anger spike once again. The cigarettes did nothing but fuel the flames, doing the complete opposite of what they were meant to do. How dare he mock me?

There was nothing calm and lazy about him now – he pinned me to the bed using his whole body before I could say more, locking our legs together and gripping my arms so hard that I felt bruises. His face took on that of an animal; flared nostrils, teeth clenched, and the eyes of a man who wanted to seriously hurt me. His earlier sense of ease, it seemed, had merely been an act. He had been holding back his real emotions, and now they were out to play.

Son of a bitch.

"Look at you," he jeered, mockery dripping off of his every word. "Following him around, throwing yourself at him whatever chance you get, thinking it will make him leave that pregnant freak for you. Snap the fuck out of it. You've gotten weak."

Rage, pure and undiluted, made me see red. I trashed in his grip and tried to get away, wanting the leverage I need to grab the lamp beside me and bash him bloody with it, just as I had done with Byron all those years ago. But Eli, fucking Eli, knew me enough to expect what I would do. This isn't how it was supposed to go. Today was supposed to consist of unadulterated pleasure, and I was supposed to ask him for help and he was supposed to give it to me.

"I'm not weak! How fucking dare you call me weak?" I growled, baring my teeth at him. He could sense my anger and fed off of it the way I fed off of weakness. I refused to be mocked. I refused to be talked down to. And most importantly, I refused to be told that I couldn't have what I wanted.

Without warning, he freed one of my wrists and slapped me hard across the face. I tasted blood in my mouth from where I had bitten my tongue, and I wished it were his. I wanted to bite through his face, to shred him to pieces and kill him with my bare hands.

I had never been so angry in my life.

"You listen to me, and you listen good," he hissed ferociously, spitting into my ear. "You want the boy? Fine. But if you expect to just march in, get Jessabel out of the picture and expect to live happily ever after, everything is going to unravel. Your entire life in this town – no, you listen to me – was built around this girl. Your friends and family and popularity; everything is connected. There's your biggest mistake, right there. Letting this happen in the first place.

"And what about Chloe, huh? She's still out for your blood. Are you just gonna sweep her under the rug and pretend she never happened? She's the biggest threat you've got, and she's still hunting around for you. Your Nathan will end up dead in the middle of an alley before you even get the chance to dry hump him again. You don't rush head-on into another ploy, do you understand? You take care of the unfinished business first, before it has the chance to bite you in the ass."

I gritted my teeth, seeing the sense in his words but being too mad to comply. Chloe was still a looming threat, but I wanted Nathan and I wanted him now. "Chloe's as good as dead. She won't get to me." I gritted my teeth, wanting to believe what I'd just said, and wanting to resist his logic even more.

His mouth lifted up on one corner of his mouth, teeth gleaming, giving me sour grin. "So that Sarah woman was nothing? And those phone calls your Dad received – they meant nothing, too? If you got your head out of your fucking ass for just one second, you'd realise that everything is actually at risk here. It only takes one phone call to tell precious Daddy everything you've done."

That was one piece of logic that I couldn't lie to myself about. The anger was still there – hot molten lava that pumped in and out of my veins, rushing to my brain and tainting every thought with its heat. Expect now it was slowly solidifying into something steadier, something I could control and lock away and save for another time.

I was still angry with Eli. But my anger was something I could now work around.

I had completely pushed Chloe out of my mind, indeed.

And that in itself was a show of weakness. I could deny it as much as I wanted, but Chloe could have torn my life apart as easily as I had torn her boyfriend to pieces.

I looked at Eli and saw him in completely different eyes, though I still regarded him with some contempt. If there was one thing I couldn't stand being hurt, it was my pride. And yet... he had done it for the right reasons. I studied the ridge of his nose, the high cheekbones, the stubble on his cheeks. His dark hair and equally dark eyes and the unhinged intensity they held.

That was the moment I decided to trust him. Completely.

"So what do you want me to do?" I asked cautiously, keeping our eyes locked.

He smirked, and this time it was his familiar smile – dark and devilish and undeniably sly. "Glad you asked."

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