I feel Elijah behind me. He slips his arm around my waist and playfully whispers in my ear, just loud enough for the room to hear, “You’re making me crazy in this outfit, baby.” Then he stops nuzzling my neck and nods his head in Scott’s direction. “Who’s this?”
I don’t know who’s more stunned, Scott or me?
Still, I’m not stupid enough to not take the boon Elijah is offering. The fact that he’s deliberately marking his territory by wrapping me in his arms and calling me baby in front of a boy I trusted who broke my heart, even if it is mostly for show, sends a thrill through me, and I can’t help but snuggle into him when I say, “Oh, no one. Just some guys I knew in school.”
Scott’s eyes narrow and he thrusts his hand out in front of Elijah, who has no choice but to step away from me if he wants to shake it. “Scott Turner.”
Elijah shakes but doesn’t offer his name.
“Nice ink man,” Scott says in a voice like he thinks it’s anything but. He raises his brow and adds, “Did you get those in Juvie?”
Elijah smiles, “A few of them, yeah.”
Scott smiles too, only it’s smug, like he was just trying to prove a point and is delighted to be right. Elijah cocks his head to the side and looks thoughtful for a moment before pointing to the tattoo that is playing peekaboo with his shirt collar. “Though this one was done in a maximum security joint just outside of Sydney.”
Scott baulks a little. His friends, who’d been whispering and muttering oooohs and ahhhhs like the childish morons they are all fall silent. I glance at Elijah, wondering if that’s true.
“’Scuse us a sec, boys.” Elijah takes my hand and leads me into the hall, which is kind of pointless, considering there’s a direct line of sight from the poolroom to where we’re standing. Dissatisfied with the scene he’s making by dragging me away he pens me in against the wall. His face is oddly serious when he asks, “Goldilocks in there, did he screw you over?”
I nod, afraid he’s going to lose interest once I give him that clarification, and I’m thanking my lucky stars that Scott and his friends didn’t mention anything else about me being the town bike.
“You want me to beat him up?”
I laugh. “No Elijah, I don’t want you to get arrested for beating up some moron from my past.”
“You wanna make him so fucking jealous he can’t see straight?” he asks in all seriousness. It’s absurd. I shouldn’t give a crap about what Scott and his brainless goons think of me, and yet the idea of shoving someone as hot—and yeah, okay, pretty damn scary looking—as Elijah under his nose sends a thrill through me. I find myself nodding, though the way Elijah’s smiling at me makes me realise that I’ve no idea what I just agreed to.
“Then kiss me.”
“What? How do you even know he’s looking?”
“You, in this outfit? Trust me, he’s looking.”
“What’s wrong with this outfit?” I say, but the words peter off with the way he’s looking at me. I know that look. That’s the way he looks at my pies when he comes in for lunch, like he hasn’t had a meal in days. I want to be the meal.
He leans in, so close I can feel his warm breath brush my lips. “You gotta kiss me back.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to kiss you now and, despite the fact that you don’t like me, if you wanna make this dickhead jealous, you gotta kiss me with all you got.”
I can smell the whisky on his breath. I haven’t touched whisky since I was seventeen and got so sick I just narrowly escaped having my stomach pumped. I swore I would never touch the stuff again, and even the smell usually has me dry reaching, but suddenly I’m finding it a very welcome scent, and the fact that I’m hyperventilating has nothing to do with alcohol of any kind.
“I never said I didn’t like you. In fact, I don’t know anything about you.”
“Ana?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up,” he says, and mashes his lips to mine. His mouth is hot on mine, and at first, it’s awkward. I have no idea if I’m kissing Elijah because I want to make Scott mad with jealousy or if I’m kissing him simply because I want to. He pulls back to study my face. I try to rein in my bemused expression, but frankly, I don’t think I’m fooling anyone. I probably look like a stunned mullet. Elijah looks kind of intense. Intense and a little angry.
“That’s all you got? Seriously? Are you even trying to make him jealous? ‘Cause I gotta say, I think your method sucks.” I pull his face back to mine and take him with my mouth. I force my tongue inside while his eyes are still on me. He’s surprised, but when I clasp my hands behind his neck and push myself against him, his arm snakes around my back, his fingers tangle in my hair and he kisses me so hard and deep we’re practically consuming each other.
Elijah walks us back a step, until I’m pushed up against the wall. He’s found his way between my thighs and the pressure of his erection against my pubic bone elicits a moan from me. “You wanna get outta here?”
“Okay.”
He takes my hand and leads me past the gawking patrons, past Scott and his idiotic friends, past the smiling publican, Dave, who’s sure to give my dad a full report tomorrow, and out into the balmy summer air.
He holds out a hand for the keys, that I confiscated earlier in the night. “I’m driving.”
“Where are we going?”
“For a ride.” He watches as I fumble with the buckle on my chinstrap, hooks his finger in it and pulls me closer, kissing me as greedily as he did inside.
“I don’t think they’re watching out here,” I say when we come up for air.
“That wasn’t for their benefit. It was for mine.”
I bite down on my lip to keep the smile from busting out and making me feel like a complete mental case. Elijah runs his thumb over my lip, snagging it out from under my teeth and slipping his calloused thumb inside my mouth. My tongue darts out on its own, grazes the rough edges, tasting whiskey and leather. He releases a groan and smiles down at me, but it’s predatory and not all sweet enough for his dimples to pop out.
He takes a few steps back toward his bike and then straddles it, his gaze never once leaving mine. “You have a curfew?”
“I’m nineteen, Elijah. Of course I don’t have a curfew.”
“Your dad’s kind of a badass. I wanna make sure he’s not going to turn my balls into pumpkins if I don’t have you home before midnight.”
I slip onto the bike behind him, wrap my arms around his waist and hold on—and yeah, I may have trailed my fingers around a little slower and softer than was necessary. He flinches a little, his shoulders tensing, and the hard muscles of his stomach bunching beneath my fingers before he settles into the seat and my arms.
“Besides, he scares the shit out of me,” Elijah adds.
“Aw, he’ll be so proud when I tell him.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” He puts on his helmet and slides on a pair of black wayfarers with clear lenses and yells, “Hang on” before careening out of the parking lot at breakneck speed. I wrap my arms tighter around him, squeeze my thighs tighter against his. I see his head shift down to glance at my thighs and he swerves a little. I tuck my head in away from the wind, lay my cheek against his back and breathe in the smell of leather and Elijah.
Chapter Six
Elijah
Dropping Ana back at her house that night felt like one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I know, I know, that’s a gross pussy-ass exaggeration, especially for someone like me, but it was damn hard returning her to her dad’s house when all I wanted was to take her back to my motel, throw her on the bed and fuck her brains
