Page 83 of Tears of Glass

When I find my voice, it’s cracked and hoarse. I place my hands across the ink I marked him with and press one palm into each half. “When I created this, I thought I knew you.” I breathe deep, giving myself the chance to try to find the right words. “Two halves of the man who was captivating my heart.”

He is still silent, his skin heating under my touch. His head hanging down as I judge him, give him the sentence of my heart.

“But I didn’t know anything. Didn’t get you. And you broke my heart, but in putting it back together I’m learning that there is no simple carve of two sides to your soul. There are so many facets of it, I want to spend my life learning, and I will until the day I die. With every breath I take I want to give you everything and maybe I can be the glue that connects it all.”

There’s a low gasp and his shoulders drop. When he turns, his face is marred with a shattering mirage of emotions. It tightens the skin around his eyes, pulls his lips into a tight line as he watches me, his bare chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.

Then his hands fall to my clothes, tugging and peeling; urgent gestures that make my knees tremble. His mouth is on my neck, sliding and burning. He presses me against the hallway wall as my clothes drop one after the other. His skin burns as it touches my naked flesh and his lips are hard and determined when they crash into mine. He shifts slightly so his hand can palm the space above my heart, the place with the shard of glass I once thought my heart represented. Now I know it’s more, so many shards, so many droplets of possibility that can scatter and then reform, more powerful, all encompassing.

“I never wanted to be on your skin.”

Our eyes lock. “Everything that ever made me feel is on my skin.”

His mouth catches mine, his tongue furious as it battles my own. I cry out as he pulls down the straps of my bra, freeing my breasts to brush against his chest. Pain and desire dart and mix into a heady warmth pooling between my legs. I edge my knickers over my hips, my fingers shaking as I push at the elastic. When they are at my ankles and I’m naked and exposed under his burning blues, I work the buttons on his jeans.

“Give me everything, Eli. Everything.” My fingers dig into his shoulders, anchoring us together and his hands palm my hips, digging into the flesh and hiking me up, tilting me slightly so he can slip his hard on between my folds. This is real. Every damn second of it. No foreplay, no games. No tender touches. Sheer desperation overrules us as he slides himself in and I arch my back to get him deeper. It stings a little as he fills me to the brim of everything I am, and I groan a guttural moan. His eyes search my face, his hands squeezing my breasts with rough fingers. I nod, giving him permission to take me, to give me all he has. His hips circle, pushing deeper and further into me until I whimper and my legs almost cave under the intensity. I’m splitting in two, and that’s fine because there will be more of me to give to the many sides of him. His eyes close, his hands still grasping, gripping, bruising, and then he pushes hard in and out, in and out, in and out until I whimper barely controlled cries. With every thrust he buries deeper and I no longer know where he ends and I begin; we’ve merged into one sinuous being. His fingers grip my neck, holding tight, and he presses me into the wall, the hardness of his body and the solid structure of the wall pinning me until I’m captive between the two. His thrusts tear deeper and deeper. As one hand moves from my neck into my hair, tangling and pulling on the strands, he yanks my head back, and his lips fall onto my captured neck. I edge over the cliff of my desire. It builds with every movement of his hips, every hard thrust of his yearning, building until I’m screaming and whimpering all at once, still caught and tied in his hands. It’s everything all at once. My name falls from his lips as he pushes his chest away, so he can drive his hips closer still. My legs are weak, numb and I’m suspended just from his hands. “Faith.”

I shudder as he cries my name.

“Faith.”

Tears begin to fall, splashing along my cheeks, landing on our joined skin, sliding between us. When he feels the wetness, his eyes open wide, holding mine, but his hands don’t move, still holding me as he takes me with brutal intensity against the wall.

“Faith.” He begins to shudder his hips, moving with frenzy as he pushes so deep he’s tearing me apart. “Scream my name.”

I echo his name into the depths of the silent dark house pitching myself off the cliff of our love. I sob and whimper as aftershocks run through my body, clinging my hands around his neck. He releases his hands and I slump as their stabling hold disappears. In one quick movement he sweeps me up and I clamp my numb legs around his waist as he marches for the bedroom.

He places me on the bed with a gentle bump and I fall into the soft pillows, my heart racing, my pulse thudding in my throat so hard there’s a chance I might be sick. His lips skim my shins, my knees, my thighs. He breathes in deep as he softly traces his nose around my sensitive core. Then his lips dance with delicate brushes across my stomach, my breasts which pucker as soon as he touches them, along my neck until finally he comes to my face. He plants kisses along my cheeks, my nose, my eyelids, every speck of skin he can find until at last they come to my lips. He presses gently, his tongue swiping across my lower lip. When he breaks the kiss, I let go of the breath I’m keeping. His eyes hold mine. “Did I hurt you?”

I shake my head, but stupid tears slide across my skin, landing on the pillow.

He hangs his head. “I did.”

I lift my hand, catching his chin and making him look at me. “You didn’t. I wanted everything, and you gave it without hiding any part of you.”

“I love you with such intensity.” He runs a hand across my cheek, cupping it and tilting my mouth to his. When the kiss ends, subtle and sweet, the blues find mine. “I’ll always be waiting for you to run.”

“And I won’t run. I don’t care who knows about us, or how this plays out. You own all of me.”

“For better and worse, including the Faircloughs?” A slow smile grows, turning his face into the dazzling glow of an angel.

“Until I die.”

He settles at my side, his hands gently tucking me into his stomach, until we are packed together as tight as spoons in a drawer. “I love you.”

“I love you.” And I mean it.

Sleep steals me from my aching but satiated body, and the artist and the baroness’ son go to sleep at six pm on a Saturday night.

I wake to warm licks spreading up my thighs. Eli’s fingers are trailing and dancing across the surface of my skin. His eyes are on me as I open mine and stare directly at him. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Morning,” I mumble and stretch, freeing one breast from under the confines of the duvet. He watches it pebble in the morning air. The blues are dark but when they meet my gaze they are troubled. He still thinks he hurt me, but he doesn’t understand that last night was the most real moment of intimacy I’ve ever had. It was everything. “Make love to me, Eli.” I whisper, stretching some more, pushing back the duvet so he can see my body coming alive at the mere thought of him. He hesitates. “Make love to me with everything.”

And he does, slow and sweet until I’m screaming out his name all over again. Then he walks us to the shower and the hot streaming jets of water heal our bruises both inside and out. He takes me once more, like a man starved, splaying my hands against the tiles and my heart against his.

“It’s Sunday.” I grin up at him from the kitchen island. He’s reading the paper and I’m doodling on a pad of paper. I’ve got an idea for a tattoo although it’s not what I should be thinking about. I’m sure I’ve got study I should be doing, I just can’t quite bring myself to care sat in this little slice of Sunday perfection with the man who owns me. “What does Robin Hood do on a Sunday?”

He chuckles and grabs at a tea towel. “Don’t make me punish you. You saw what I did to Bernie.” He raises an eyebrow, but his lips spread into the most gorgeous smile. I’m mesmerised by it.