Chapter 112 The Floor

Chapter 112 The Floor
POV: BRIGAIL
Level 3 heat.
They never made it to the bed.
One moment he was pulling the wig off her hair and the next she had her back against the carpet and his hands were everywhere and she had stopped caring about anything except the fact that he was here and solid and real and she could feel his heart going as fast as hers.
She kept closing her eyes and he kept asking her to open them and she understood why even if she couldn't quite manage it. She was afraid that if she looked too long she would realize she had invented him.
"Look at me," he said, and his voice was raw in a way she had never heard from him. "I want you to see who's here with you."
She opened her eyes.
"There's no one else," she said. "Only you."
That was what undid him. She could feel it the moment the words left her mouth. The control he had been holding onto went, and he stopped being careful, and she didn't want careful anyway.
She bit down on the back of her hand to keep quiet and he pulled it away with a sound low in his throat.
He wanted her to be loud. She was. The guards outside the suite were going to have opinions and she found she couldn't bring herself to care.
Afterward he pulled her on top of him on the floor, both of them breathing like they had run a considerable distance.
She propped her chin on his chest and looked up at him.
"If this is how you tip room service," she said, "I am clearly in the wrong food business."
He laughed. A real one, the kind that started in his chest and worked outward. He rolled her onto her back and kissed her once, hard, and she laughed into his mouth.
What a pair of disasters they were.
She decided she didn't mind.
POV: BRIGAIL
They showered. They ate. He sat across from her on the bed in his black silk robe, working through the scrambled eggs with the focused attention of a man who had not eaten in two days, which he hadn't.
"You didn't make this," he said, pointing at the plate.
"How do you know."
"No shells."
She swatted him across the arm. He choked on his orange juice. She launched forward immediately, rubbing circles on his back, apologizing in a rapid stream of words.
He stopped coughing. Looked at her. Smirked.
"I can act too," he said.
"You absolute"
He caught her wrist and pulled her against him, laughing, and she gave up and laughed with him.
When it settled he tilted his head down until his nose grazed hers.
"You called me," she said.
"Mmm."
"I heard the voicemail." She kept her voice light. "I made that second recording ages ago."
"I know," he said. "I listened to it twice."
"It wasn't a promise. It was a threat."
"Semantics," he murmured, and pressed his lips to the side of her neck.
"Eli." She pushed back gently. "Don't give me a hickey. I can't go back with a hickey."
He went very still.
"Don't," he said. The warmth was gone. "Don't say it, Brigail."
"I can't stay." She held his gaze. "You know I can't."
He took her elbow. His eyes had gone that specific shade of dark blue that meant all the lightness had left the room. "If you think I'm going to let you walk back into Russell's hotel then you don't know me at all."
"Eli"
"No." He stood up. Moved to the bar. Poured two fingers of scotch and put it back down without drinking it. "Don't."
She followed him. "What would you have me do?"
"Be selfish," he said. "Pick me."
"I already did!" Her voice came out louder than she intended. "Why do you think I want to take him down? This isn't about getting my family back. It's about making sure he never uses me against you. He's been waiting for a reason to come after you since before I existed. I am the reason. And I refuse to be that."
He stared at her.
"You are my family," she said. "You and Jerry. That's it. That's the whole list."
"Then stay."
"And watch Russell dismantle everything you've built because you were foolish enough to fall in love with his granddaughter?" She shook her head. "He did it to Gran. He turned the strongest woman I ever knew into someone too afraid to fight back. He did it to my dad." Her voice dropped. "I will not let him do it to you."
"Maybe you should be afraid of him," Eli said.
She looked at him for a long moment. "He won't have me killed. I'm too useful to him."
"He doesn't need to kill you to break you."
"The only person who can break me," she said quietly, "is standing in front of me right now."
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
She stepped closer. "You said we could run. You said to say the word. But you would always be Eli Michealson, and I love Eli Michealson, and I will not let Russell Edgington turn him into someone else." She put her hands on either side of his face. "I'm an Edgington. And I have no intention of playing fair."
He stared at her. Something moved through his expression that was too many things at once.
"I'm about to be disgusted with myself," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I'm about to kiss an Edgington."
She grabbed the front of his robe before he could reach her first.