Ella
I can’t move.
My back is so stiff it feels like I’ve got steel rods inserted in it, and I’m pretty sure someone put an iron ball into my head in the middle of the night.
“Here.” Tate sets a glass of water and a couple of pills on the nightstand.
“Ow!” I stop halfway sitting up. “My shoulders are hurting.”
“Come here.” He wraps his arms around me gently and eases me up. “Shhh,” he whispers, putting a pillow behind my back and leaning me against it. “All right?”
“Fine,” I whisper unconvincingly. “What are these?” I take the pills and throw them into my mouth before he answers. I don’t actually care—let’s be honest. “I guess it’s too early for vodka, huh?”
Tate takes the glass of water with a smile. “Yeah, darlin’, way too early. You want breakfast?”
“I don’t think I can get up yet.”
“Good thing I already thought ahead, huh?” He kisses me lightly then disappears. I stare at the open door until he reappears with a tray in his hands.
“What’s that?”
“Breakfast.” He grins, then winces. “Fuckin’ lip.”
Gingerly, I lift my hand to his jaw and touch my thumb to the cut on his mouth. “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” he murmurs, kissing my thumb. He snatches a piece of bacon off my plate and rams it into his mouth with a wink.
“Hey!”
“Mmm. Good.” He backs out of the room once more and reappears with a second tray. He sits next to me on the bed, stretches his legs out, sets the tray on his lap, and grabs the remote. I steal a piece of his bacon back and drop it onto my plate, then swipe the control and change the channel to Friends reruns.
Tate groans, but he doesn’t actually say anything. Especially when I turn and give him a sweet smile. Now he laughs and shakes his head, turning his attention to his plate.
“Joey doesn’t share food,” Joey says onscreen.
“Tate doesn’t share food,” Tate mutters, glancing at my plate.
“Then don’t steal mine,” I retort, munching on bacon.
His lips twitch. We eat in silence, my attention focused on the screen, his focused on me. His eyes trace the line of my profile now and then, but he’s mainly looking at me. Just . . . looking at me.
My gaze flicks to him several times, drawn there by the intensity of his. It’s irresistible, just like he is, especially when he sits up and pulls his shirt off.
My eyes are definitely drawn to him now.
Hey, my body is hurting, not my eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that, darlin’. You’re too fragile to fuck this morning.”
I laugh. “Give me half an hour. These painkillers are amazing.”
“Maybe not,” he laughs. “Believe me, I’d love to, but I don’t wanna hurt you.” He tucks some of my hair behind my ear. “Hey, you know we go home this weekend, right?”
“I . . .” I swallow and stare into my food. “Yeah.”
“You’re comin’, too.”
“I am?”
“Yeah, you are. I told you last night I’m not lettin’ you out of my sight, and I fucking meant it.”
“Tate Burke, you open this fuckin’ door right the hell now!”
I freeze at the sound of a girl’s voice and my head snaps around to Tate.
“Aw, man, she’s kiddin’ me,” he groans, getting up and walking around the bed.
“Uh, who is that?” I ask quietly, pushing my tray to the side and swinging my legs around and out of bed slowly. Thankfully I put on sleep shorts and a tank top last night before bed.
“My sister,” he mutters, opening the door. “Leila. What the hell are you doin’ here?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Tate. Maybe because Sof called last night crying and told me my big brother looks like he’s gone ten rounds with John Cena and he probably broke some guy’s nose! What the fuck, Tate? Can’t you behave for five minutes? What did he do? Sniff around your latest one-nighter?”
“Shut it, Lei,” Tate growls. “You have no fuckin’ idea what’s been happenin’, so until you do, stop runnin’ your mouth like you know it all.”
“I know I’m lookin’ at you, and fuck me, Tate! That black eye is so colorful I don’t know if it’s real or if Mila attacked you with her pens! Your lip looks like it’s been injected with fifty shots of filler, and your cheek! Look at the state of your sorry ass, Tate Burke! I’ve seen you in some messes, but this takes the cake and the damn cherry!”
“Leila?” Sofie shrieks. “What—how—why?”
“I got a four a.m. flight. Four fucking a.m.!” she yells. “Now will someone tell me why Tate looks like a pile of shit!”
“It’s my fault,” I say softly, stepping forward and breaking through the shouting.
“Els, it ain’t, and you know it,” Tate argues. “He put his fucking hands on you!”
“Who did?” Leila cries. “Wait, who even is she?”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“She is?” Sofie and Leila say together, as I say “I am?”
“Yeah, you are.” Tate’s turquoise eyes pierce mine. “You all right with that, darlin’?”
“Uh. I’m sensing I don’t have much of a choice here.”
“You sense right.” He smirks, then turns to his sister. “This is Ella, my girlfriend and personal assistant.”
“Wow, you move fast. Now you wanna tell me why you’re beaten up?” Leila asks, putting her hands on her hips. She swishes her long, dark hair over her shoulder, and her bright eyes pin onto her brother. She’s the female double of Tate, tall but slim, her features softer than his, but she’s still scarily beautiful.
“Yeah, when she’s sittin’ down, because she’s supposed to be in bed,” Tate grumbles. Grabbing my hands, he pulls me to the sofa.
“Meds have kicked in!” I protest.
“Sit down, Els.” He sighs. “I’ll feel better if you do.”
“Fine. But you go make me coffee.”
Sofie grins and sits opposite me. “Me, too, thanks.”
“Me three,” Leila adds, dropping next to Sofie. “Then you talk, Tate, because Marc already heard.”
Tate pauses. “Shit.”
He makes four coffees and sets them on the table between us. I glance at him as he sits next to me and curls an arm around my waist. Leaning into him, I rest my unswollen cheek against his chest and swallow.
I explain everything, why I left New York, how I got to them, what I dealt with, how I lived. I tell her about the emails and the messages, and then, my throat clogs. I can’t . . . I squeeze my eyes shut, wince at the pain, and bury my face into Tate’s chest.
He takes over and explains about the threats and, eventually, what happened yesterday.
And I sit, listening, fighting the trembling of my hands, scrunching my eyes shut, reliving the punches and the slams and the raspy words and the insults and the constricting of my throat as he pinned me to the wall.
His touch, rough and harsh, unforgiving, unrelenting.
“Els.” Hands frame my face. “They’re gone.”
I stare into worried turquoise eyes. “I’m okay,” I whisper.
“Don’t lie to me, darlin’. Don’t react that way when I talk about him then tell me you’re okay, because you’re fuckin’ not.”
“I’m okay,” I lie again, because I want to believe it. I want to believe I’m okay. I want to believe I can see the light at the end of this jacked-up, never-ending tunnel.
This dark, scary, all-encompassing tunnel. It has to end sooner or later.
I hope it’s sooner.
“Els,” he whispers my name again. It only takes a single second, but there’s so much warmth in the tiny word that I soften.
“I can feel him.” My voice is barely there, so quiet I don’t know if I said those words or if I’m imagining them. But Tate’s looking at me, so I guess I did say them. “Whenever I close my eyes, whenever I think, I can feel him, right there, in front of me, touching me, whispering into my ear.”
Tate’s hands curl around my body to my lower back. Slowly, he inches his fingers lower until they’re curving around my butt, and he pulls me onto him. “We’re alone, baby. I made them leave.” The words are mumbled into my neck. He buzzes his lips upward to my ear. “Let me take him away,” he breathes, hot air cascading across my skin and eliciting goose bumps everywhere. “Let me get so far under your skin he’s never going to be an option again.”
“I’m scared.”
“You don’t need to be.” His fingers graze along the tops of my shoulders until they sink into my hair. “Don’t fear me, darlin’? Remember?”
“Never,” I whisper. How can you fear the person you’re falling more irrevocably in love with every second that passes?
His lips touch mine tentatively. I let my fingers ease up his chest to his shoulders and his neck, then they curl around him, holding him close, letting me breathe him in. His hands cascade down my back, his fingers massaging in gentle circles as his lips do the same thing.
I breathe Tate Burke in. Cocky words, overconfidence, determination. Sweetness, softness, gentleness. Every part of him seeps into me through the connection of our skin. Every part of me forms into him with each gentle sweep of his tongue against mine.
He slides my shorts over my ass and encourages me to stand. My feet hit the floor and I push the shorts down my legs. I step free from the material constraints, and Tate wraps his hands around my thighs, pulling me closer until I’m straddling his bare cock.
“Mine,” he breathes, his touch feather-light. “Mine, Els. You’re fuckin’ mine, and I’ll bury myself inside you until you’re fully aware of it. Darlin’, I’m gonna stay inside you until I’m the only thing you can think of.”
And he does.
He slips inside me, tilting his hips so he’s inside me deeply and the only sensation I’m aware of is him. His cock inside me, his hand around the back of my neck and the other at my hip.
He sits still as my hips rock against him. Again. Again. Again. Again. Over and over until my fingers entwine with his messy hair and he grips my hips. Until his hips meet my gentle thrusts. Until heat swamps my body, throbbing, pulsating, beating through me. Until he groans my name into my ear and crushes our mouths together barely seconds later.
Until I come so hard tears stream from my eyes.
Until he presses my face into his neck.
Until he whispers my name, again and again.
Until he wipes every salty tear from my cheeks before he wipes them from his chest.
I smile as Tate walks off the stage to deafening applause from the crowd, grinning. He sweeps his arms around my waist, and I hug his neck. The swelling on his eye has gone down, and the makeup girls did a great job of covering the bruising that’s spread onto the side of his nose and his cheekbone.
He touches his lips to my forehead and takes the water Carla offers. Since Ajax briefed her on Matthew and what happened three days ago, she’s been a little nicer to everyone, me and Tate specifically. I think she actually smiled at me this morning.
Sofie bobs Mila on her knee, deep in conversation with Conner and Kye. Aidan is looking at an iPad held by the girl Tate dubbed Tits, and one of the makeup girls pushes past them and scurries to Tate.
“Turn around,” she demands, pulling a compact and pad from the bag slung across her body. I get up so Tate can sit down, and the girl bends in front of him. She covers the pad in makeup and gets to work re-covering his bruises.
They’ve already been the subject of media speculation, and the fact his PA has sported similar bruising hasn’t gone unnoticed by the vultures that stalked us almost all day yesterday. All of us are trying to ignore the rumors that we did it to each other, and all of us but Tate are doing pretty good at it. No less than eight magazines and papers have been torn up, and his phone had to have an emergency replacement this morning when a link popped up on his Facebook feed.
Yeah, he isn’t taking that speculation well at all. So it’s nice when he looks at me and smiles, or when he hugs me like he just did. It reminds me that he’s still Tate and I’m still Ella, and the only difference is that we’re a little more beaten up than we were four days ago . . . and our relationship is defined.
It seems crazy to me to slide from an abusive relationship, one I was almost committed for life to, into a brand-new, not-abusive one just a few weeks later. But it makes sense . . . it feels right. From the tingles of attraction that spread through me the first time we met to the heated tingles he sends through me now with a single touch, it’s right.
I know with certainty that I’m falling in love with Tate Burke. I can feel it building inside me. Every touch, every smile, every purr, growl, or whisper of my name pushes me closer to the edge, builds the anticipation of the fall. I fear it’ll only take one more of those things before I give myself over to the inevitability of my emotions.
I am a bomb on the brink of explosion, and Tate Burke holds the detonate button.
And I want him to push it.
Tate grabs me and presses a kiss to my lips before he heads back out on the stage with the guys. I sit back down and take Mila so Sofie can use the bathroom. Mila snuggles into me and rubs Bunna’s ear against her cheek, and she hums along with the music. I smile and hug her, rocking side to side. She giggles quietly, then continues with her humming. Every now and then she mumbles the words to the songs with a tired lisp, and I keep rocking.
“My love Dutty B.,” she whispers, yawning.
“I do, too.” I smile and look at the guys onstage.
Conner, his guitar hanging around his neck and resting against his stomach, has his hand wrapped tightly around the microphone as he sings into it with an exaggerated drawl.
Kye, his fingers strumming against his guitar, playing each note to perfection, perched on a stool for the slow song.
Aidan, sitting behind the drum kit, his eyes on the drums as his sticks move across them, beating gently, adding a soft upbeat background to the guitars.
And Tate, holding his bass guitar, his focus on nothing but the strings beneath his fingers and the beat of the music around him. His biceps are tight with his hold on his guitar, and I trail my eyes up and down his arms. My gaze flicks across the designs tattooed onto his skin; the music notes, the owl that peeks down from beneath his shirt sleeve, the rose, the vines that reach out from it, the guitar. All the tiny images that are unrelated but so well-fitting.
“Hey,” Sofie whispers when the song breaks. “Mila’s asleep.”
I glance down. Mila’s tiny eyes are closed and she’s snuggled further into me than I remember her being. A smile curls my lips.
“How can she sleep with those guys so loud?”
Sofie laughs. “When I figure it out, Ella, I’ll let you know. I’ll take her to her stroller.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I can carry her out there.” I adjust her in my arms and shush her when she stirs. She falls straight back to sleep and stays that way as I stand and Sofie walks to the dressing rooms with us.
Sofie bends to put the stroller in the lying-down position, and when she turns to grab Mila’s blanket, I ease the little girl out of my arms. She sniffs, hugs Bunna into her, and curls up into a ball on her side. Sofie tucks her in and kisses her forehead, then smiles at Carlos sitting in the corner.
He puts his hand up in a wave, which quickly turns to a thumbs-up.
“His turn for babysitting duty, huh?” I smile at Sofie.
“Gotta make it fair.” She laughs, closing the door lightly. “He’ll call when she wakes up.”
“And you hear your phone?”
“No. I have it on vibrate in my pocket. Something which has been the butt of many jokes by the guys.” She shakes her head just as my own phone rings.
“I can imagine.” I pull my phone out and look at the screen. I don’t know the number, and a frown pulls my brows together. “Hello?”
“Ella? Oh, thank goodness! I was so afraid you wouldn’t be able to answer the phone!”
“Mom?!”
Sofie’s head snaps around to me and she grabs my arm, stopping us both in the middle of the hall.
“Can you talk? Is he . . . around?”
“Is who around?”
“That guy . . . the one in the band. The one who beats you up.”
“What?” I shriek.
“Honey, you don’t have to be afraid. Matthew told us everything. He said he came to get you but you were too scared to leave, and well, given his broken nose, we can see how violent this man is.”
“Wait. Matthew told you Tate beats me?”
Sofie’s face contorts into something that resembles a creature from a haunted house. She is not happy.
“Yes! Oh, honey. I’ve been so worried. Did he make you run away? Are you okay? Matthew said you were in awful shape when this Tate creature threw him out.”
“I’m sorry. I’m stuck on the part where Matthew says Tate beats me.”
“Do you need me to call the police? I can have them bring you home, Ella. Your father is ready to make the call right now.”
“Tate does not beat me! He has never hit me, ever!” I yell into the phone.
“Ella!”
“No, Mom. Don’t Ella me. You wanna know who beats me, then you ask your precious Matthew. Yes, Tate broke his nose and threw him out of the room, but that’s because Tate walked in to find me pinned against a wall by Matthew. Something he’s been doing for the last two years, Mom.”
“Is he there? Is he making you say that?”
“No, he isn’t. I’m telling you the truth, Mom. I swear. That’s why I left . . . I won’t do it anymore.”
“Oh, Lord. Richard, call the police!”
“Don’t you dare!” I mean to shout, but it comes out as an angry snarl. “I’m safer here than I ever was in New York. I’m not coming home. You’re not calling the police. You’re going to leave me here, because I’m happy!”
“He’s there, isn’t he? Oh, honey, come home and we can rearrange the wedding. It’ll be okay.”
Shit. Does no one listen to me in this goddamn family?
“There is no wedding. I am not fucking marrying Matthew.”
“Ella!” she gasps. “Did you just curse?”
“How did you get this number?”
“Your fiancé retrieved it from the tablet in the hotel room,” my father says, presumably so my mother can locate smelling salts to wake her up from the shock of her daughter saying “fucking.”
“Awesome. And he isn’t my fiancé, for the hundredth time.” I meet Sofie’s eyes. “Look, Dad, I appreciate yours and mom’s concern, but I’m okay here. I’m happy here. So call off your search parties and don’t think about calling the police. I’ve not been kidnapped or something crazy. I’m staying here. I’m not marrying Matthew. End of discussion.”
Sofie’s eyes widen. I end the call and stare at the phone.
“Well. That was stressful,” Sofie breathes.
“Uh-huh.” I’ve never spoken to my parents like that. Ever. Ever. I’ve always been polite and courteous. And I’ve sure as hell never told them what to do or what not to do. I’ve always done what I’m told.
The phone rings again. Sofie snatches it and drops it on the floor.
Then she slams her foot into the screen.
Now my eyes widen.
“What the . . . ?” Tate rounds the corner with Conner.
I lick my lips and drag my eyes from the phone to him. “I’m gonna need a new phone.”