NINE
Eloise had promised her father that she would offer up her apologies to Penelope straight away the morning after the carnival debacle. In reality, it didn’t wind up happening for three whole days. On each of those three days, Eloise had trudged over to the home of Penelope’s parents and rapped on the door, head lowered and heart beating too quickly to be considered quite comfortable.
On the first day, Penelope’s mother had shown her into the parlor and told her she would retrieve Penelope right away, only to come back a good fifteen minutes later with an embarrassed look on her face and some poor excuse about how the chill from the night before had got Penelope under the weather.
On the second day, the expression had been weary and although Eloise had been invited in it was with a good deal less cheer than she was used to from the woman who had been like a surrogate (and sometimes more like the primary) mother in her life. On the third morning, she didn’t even step foot over the threshold. Penelope’s mother had met her at the door and shaken her head. No, Penelope wouldn’t be coming down that day.
No, it wasn’t a good idea for Eloise to go up to her chambers and speak to her there. She could come back and try another time, only there was no telling when the poor girl would be “well” enough to receive company.
It was on the fourth day that Eloise finally made the progress she’d been searching for and by that time she was so tired of the whole mess that she didn’t know what to do with herself. Which only made her desire to see it through all the more intense.
It was her stubbornness coming out in full force and it was impossible for her to ignore. She did not plan on leaving without seeing Penelope on that fourth day, even if it meant she had to camp out on her massive front porch day in and day out.
The girl was bound to leave the house eventually and when she did, Eloise intended to be there. Perhaps it was that look that Penelope’s mother saw that did it. Perhaps it was the expression in her eyes that got Eloise through the door. She waited in the foyer, foot tapping expectantly, as mother and daughter hashed it out upstairs and out of sight.
Eloise imagined that she could actually hear the two of them arguing about whether or not she would be seen. In the end, Penelope’s mother must have come out on top because she was ushered upstairs and to her friend’s door. It felt strange, like coming to see someone who had been confined in convalescence, and Eloise had to fight not to let herself become overcome by her irritation. She was irritated, there was no denying that, but in a way, she was also glad to have the distraction. The last three days had felt hellish. She hadn’t told anyone that, of course, because they would have thought she was being childish and overly dramatic. But not speaking it out loud didn’t mean it wasn’t true and for her, it very much was.
Eloise had gone to sleep that first strange night, sure that when she awoke anew she would feel like her old self. That was always how it went, wasn’t it? A good night’s sleep (or in her case not good, but sleep nonetheless) and when you woke up things would be different. That had pretty much always been true for Eloise but in this case, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
When she’d opened her eyes upon the new day she had found that her longing to see Archer again, to feel his body pressing against hers, had only intensified. It whispered in her ear day in and day out, driving her towards the very thing her father had forbade her to do. Instead of getting fainter with the passing hours that voice only got louder, pushier, more impossible to ignore.
By the time Eloise found herself pushing open Penelope’s door she could feel the need to break out of the constraints her father had put her in, gnawing at her insides like a disease. She could see that Penelope was still angry at her but instead of bothering her she welcomed the challenge. It was something to do besides trying to be good when it felt so contrary to her own desires.
“What do you want?”
“To see you, of course. Why else would I have come here for the last four days in a row?”
“I don’t know,” Penelope sniffed, turning her head away from Eloise and studying the edge of her bed’s comforter with intensity that was almost funny. “Perhaps you can’t take a hint.”
“Oh no, believe me, your point came across. But what would you have me do?”
“You can do whatever you like, Eloise. Lord knows that’s what you’re going to do.”
“Because of what I did at the carnival.”
“I never even mentioned the carnival. Who’s talking about the carnival?”
“I know you didn’t. I just thought—”
“Of course. You thought that I was throwing a tantrum about the carnival. I can see that quite clearly. Is that what you came here to tell me? Because if so, you’re welcome to go. Your message has been received, loud and clear.”
“No. No, come on, Penelope, that’s not what I meant at all. I didn’t come here to accuse you of tantrums or any other kind of thing. I came here to apologize.”
For the first time since Eloise entering the room, Penelope looked up from her task of unraveling her covers one thread at a time. Her eyes were hooded, untrusting, but her interest was piqued. Eloise could see that she’d gotten her friend’s attention and felt a rush of relief. When it was all said and done, she didn’t want Penelope angry at her, not really.
Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have mattered enough for her to make the gesture of actually apologizing but because her father had made her do it and because she had no choice, she was allowed to come to Penelope in a way she didn’t usually allow herself to do. In the past, their fights had always resulted in stalemates.
The two of them would avoid each other entirely, not speaking or interacting at all, until one of them would cave and make a house call. That someone had always been Penelope and there had never been an apology issued by either one of them. They would just go on as if nothing had happened until there was another squabble, at which point the whole thing would start over again.
Eloise coming to visit four times and then apologizing on top of it was unheard of, a phenomenon, and Penelope couldn’t help but be excited by that. That excitement was probably the only reason she’d started talking in the first place and now that she was, the things she needed to say came out in a flood.
“You came here to apologize?! For which part? Which thing would you like to apologize for?”
“I don’t know. I guess...all of it?”
“Because you do it a lot, Eloise. You know that, right?”
“Do what, exactly?”
“Steamroll me! You just roll right over me, and why shouldn’t you? You’re the pretty one, the funny one, the smart one. You’re the one everyone wants to spend time with. Why shouldn’t you take advantage of it? Why shouldn’t you make jokes at my expense and throw me off for a good-looking man?”
Eloise was stunned. During her speech, her tirade was probably a more appropriate word, Penelope had risen off her bed and let her comforter go. She was no longer using her hands to pull it apart but instead had them balled up in tight little fists held stiffly at her sides, her fingers actually white from the strain of it.
Eloise had heard the saying “white knuckling it” before but she hadn’t ever actually seen it in action. All of this time the two of them had been friends and she hadn’t had a clue of the way she was making Penelope feel. Any resentment she had towards her father for forcing this apology evaporated. Instead she was grateful. At least something good would come out of her strange experience with the carnival and its unsettling aftermath.
She would have a more honest friendship with Penelope, and that wasn’t nothing. When she was reasonably sure that the unloading was done, Eloise cleared her throat and smoothed out her blue sundress quietly. When she looked back up at Penelope she felt something she rarely felt stirring in her chest; fear. She was afraid of what she would see in the frustrated girl’s face.
“Penelope, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. Please, I want you to hear me. I’m so, so sorry I’ve made you feel this way. I didn’t realize and I never meant to, not in a million years.”
“I know you didn’t,” Penelope said in a low, strained voice. “I shouldn’t have said any of that.”
“That’s not true!” Eloise cried, jumping to her feet and moving cautiously towards Penelope without quite daring to touch her. “I’m so glad that you did! There’s no way our friendship could have kept on going and going well if I continued to make you feel that way. I’m glad you told me. And I hope you realize that my apology is sincere. I’ll be honest, I don’t think that it truly was when I came here, not today or any of the other days either, but I certainly am now.”
Penelope looked at her uncertainly, her eyes swimming with tears but still just a little bit mistrustful. They remained frozen that way for one second, two seconds, three, and then the spell was broken. Penelope rushed forward and practically threw herself into Eloise’s arms, crying and hugging her at the same time.
When they finally separated some, both girls were laughing breathlessly, gripped with the unique kind of relief only experienced by people who thought they might actually lose somebody they loved to conflict. Eloise used one thumb to wipe away the tears still on Penelope’s face, then flopped back down on the bed, the relief flooding through her making her feel shaky and very tired. Penelope sat down beside her, looking down at her with concern.
“What’s going on with you, Eloise?”
“Aside from fighting with my best friend? Nothing. Nothing that I can think of, anyway.”
“No, that’s definitely not true.”
“What do you mean? Why do you say that?”
“Because, you look awful.”
“Oh. Well, thanks?”
“Lord, I sound like the most terrible person. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that you look terribly tired. There are bruises under your eyes that make it look like you haven’t been sleeping well at all.”
“I suppose I haven’t been.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eloise, come on.”
“What?” she laughed, feeling her skin grow hot with a blush she knew she wouldn’t be able to hide at all. “I told you, I don’t know. Sometimes people just don’t sleep well.”
“But that’s never been a problem for you. If you aren’t sleeping there’s a reason.”
“Alright, fine, there is, but I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“Why not?” Penelope asked with hurt radiating from her voice. “Aren’t I your best friend? Or have I been replaced so quickly?”
“No, not replaced. Never replaced. It’s just that you won’t approve and I know it. I don’t want the two of us to have made up only to step straight back into another fight.”
“It won’t. I promise you, Eloise. I know I’m too hard on you sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time. I’ve always tried to make you into the same person as me, and that’s not fair. You’ve never tried to do the same to me, not really. I’ve been jealous of you and I’ve let it stop me from being the best possible friend. I would like it if you could tell me, although I understand that you might not want to. If you do, though, I promise I won’t judge you.”
“You might, and if you do I won’t say it isn’t justified. It’s about a man.”
“A man?” Penelope repeated, making a valiant effort to hide her shock and almost succeeding. “What man? You met someone in the last three days?”
“No, not exactly.”
“It’s a man you haven’t met before?”
“No, that’s not what I meant, either.”
“Well what, then? I’m so confused and the suspense is killing me!”
“You were there when I met him. It was at the carnival. You weren’t very impressed by him, if I recall, which is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“The man outside of the fortune teller’s tent?!”
She shrieked the words, actually shrieked them, and Eloise winced and put her finger up to her lips. The last thing she needed was Penelope’s parents talking to her own and telling her father that she’d been talking about some carnival boy. That was the perfect way to get herself into a boatload of trouble and that was something she was looking to avoid.
Penelope responded as she’d hoped for the admonishment, clapping her hands over her mouth so that her face appeared to be all wide eyes and nothing more, and Eloise felt herself relax the tiniest fraction. When she was reasonably sure that Penelope wasn’t going to start yelling her head off again, Eloise nodded silently. Penelope removed her hands from her mouth and scooted closer to her friend, her face practically glowing with excitement that surprised Eloise completely.
“Seriously, Eloise?”
“Seriously. Are you mad?”
“Why would I be mad?”
Eloise looked at Penelope with a hesitance she was sure she wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding. Penelope all of a sudden having decided that she was able to get on board with Eloise being attracted to one of the carnival gypsies seemed like a very unlikely thing indeed. The two of them had made up and that was something she was very glad of indeed, but she couldn’t keep herself from remembering the way Penelope had acted when they had actually been in front of Archer and his friend.
It was one of those things she thought she would never be able to forget, the look Penelope had worn on her face. It was the kind of look that stuck with you, that showed you a person’s true nature to a greater degree that you ever wanted privy to. Once you saw something like that, you couldn’t ever unsee it. It was just stuck in there, rolling around your brain and popping up at the most inopportune times.
It made it more difficult than she would have liked to engage in the typical girlish gossip of girls her age, which was a sad thing indeed, as far as she was concerned. Because Eloise wanted to engage in that gossip. More than that, she felt like she needed it. Aside from her trips to and from Penelope’s house, Eloise had done very little aside from stew over the mysterious gypsy man.
She felt like she was going to burst with all of the things she had not said and Penelope was the only one she really had to say them to. Because of this, she jumped lightly to her feet and hurried to shut the bedroom door, then turned back to face a friend who was now practically foaming at the mouth for want of information. She was also wearing a look of mild hurt, probably because she had picked up on the fact that Eloise no longer totally trusted her.
“Why would I be mad?” she repeated, this time with a tone that sounded just a little bit sulky. “It’s not like I’m your parent or anything.”
“Sure, I know that,” Eloise answered quickly and in a placating tone, wanting very much to avoid falling headlong into another fight with her best friend. “It’s just that I also know you worry. You’re the more practical one of the two of us, after all. I think we can both agree on that.”
“You said it, not me.”
“That’s right,” she laughed, feeling horribly relieved at the effectiveness of her small deception. “I did. And you don’t, like him, do you?”
“Come on, Eloise. I never said that. I don’t even know him.”
Eloise nodded, careful to keep her face level and without any real discernible expression. Penelope seemed to have forgotten the way she’d treated Archer and although she didn’t like it, Eloise wasn’t surprised. It was the way things worked with people, especially people in their particular circle. It wasn’t something that was nice to talk about, this prejudiced and ugly way of thinking, and so they simply didn’t do it.
Eloise wasn’t supposed to be mentioning Penelope’s behavior at the carnival and in doing so she was breaking an unspoken agreement. It was better to pretend Penelope had been perfectly polite and never in the least offensive.
“I know. It’s just a feeling I get, let’s say that.”
“Who cares though, right? What I think doesn’t matter a lick. You seem to be pretty worked up over the man.”
“No!” Eloise laughed a little bit too loudly. “No, not at all. It’s just…”
“See? I knew it! I knew there would be a ‘just.’ Come on, spill it. It’s just what?”
“I just can’t seem to get him out of my head, that’s all. You know the way most people, most strangers anyway, just sort of go right back out of your head almost as soon as you meet them?”
“Sure, I guess I know that.”
“The funny thing is that hasn’t happened with him. I can still see him as plainly in my mind’s eye as I would if he were standing right in front of me. It’s like his image is embedded there and I can’t get rid of it. Even if I wanted to, I can’t get rid of it. Something about him keeps drawing me in.”
“And I’m guessing your parents wouldn’t be so alright if they knew that.”
“Are you kidding me? They would be so far from alright it wouldn’t even vaguely resemble the emotion. And I made my father a promise.”
“What sort of promise is that?”
“That I would stay away. The carnival is still here, Penelope. It’s still here and I’m not to go anywhere near it or near him. It’s been far more difficult than I would have imagined. It’s been much harder than I would have believed.”
“And will you break it? Your promise, I mean. Are you going to keep it?”
“I’m going to try my best. I don’t want to disappoint my parents, Penelope. I think you know that. Because of that I’ll do my very best, it just feels like it might not be possible.”
“Of course, it’s possible. People don’t just fall for people that way, not outside of fairy tales and we are most certainly not living in one of those. No, if you want to stay away you will, and I for one think that’s for the best. There’s no need for you to be mixing with the likes of him. Especially when there are so many nice men in our circles. And besides, he’d only be picking up and leaving when the carnival left town and then where would you be?”
“I don’t know,” Eloise answered slowly, feeling as if she was trying to see through some kind of a fog. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Heartbroken!” Penelope crowed, sounding almost gleeful now with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. “Heartbroken, that’s where you would be. Heartbroken and worse off than when you started. It’s better for you to stay away, your father is definitely right about that.”
“You’re probably right,” she answered, feeling like the assessment was anything but right but not knowing why or how to articulate it. “There’s no need to stoke the fire, I suppose.”
“Exactly. See? It’s better when we can talk to each other about things. I’m glad we’re alright now, Eloise, truly I am.”
“I am too. Now, why don’t we talk about something else? All this has made me feel strangely light-headed.”
And so that was exactly what they did. They spoke on all manner of things, none of which were what Eloise had inside of her heart. Even in that friendly session of gossip and talking about things that didn’t really matter at all, at least not to her, by the time she arrived back home she was beyond frustrated and wanted nothing to do with anyone.
Instead of sitting down to cocktail hour with her parents (something of a tradition in the Wright home and a rather magnificent one at that) she marched straight up the stairs, pouring herself a cocktail out of the little bar stash she kept in her own set of rooms. When she threw herself on top of her plush duvet, it was much earlier than she was accustomed to falling into bed and she was sure she would never drift off to sleep.
As is often the case when people go to bed with that sort of sentiment, she was completely wrong and without even realizing when it was happening, she drifted off into a fitful, restless slumber. She would undoubtedly have kept sleeping the whole night through if it weren’t for the strange sound outside her window that pulled her out of the grey land of dreams.
“Wha—?”
She woke with a start, her heart pumping too fast and so loudly she felt like it might burst. Her eyes flew open, staring up at the ceiling without comprehension as her body fought to pull her back down into her slumber. She lay perfectly silent and perfectly still, waiting to see what it was that had woken her up in the first place.
When nothing happened and she was very sure she was alone in her room, she began to wonder if she’d made it up, if her mind was playing tricks on her born out of her prolonged agitation. But no, that couldn’t have been it because there it was again, a strange, oddly dull little clinking sound. It came twice in a row in quick succession and Eloise was sure it wasn’t in her head.
She was also sure it wasn’t in her room, which gave her the courage to sit up and take a look around. She was terribly tired, the kind of bone tired that made a person feel a little bit ill, but she had so much adrenaline pumping through her veins that she hardly noticed the fatigue. When the noise came a third time, she was able to isolate from which direction it was occurring and her fear (which was stupid and unfounded, seeing as she could have easily shifted into her lion form and ripped any intruder apart) quickly began to change into something else. It was curiosity she felt now, curiosity and a thrill of excitement that something unusual was happening in her otherwise ordinary life.
Perhaps a part of her already knew what she would find when she went to her window sill as well, there was always that possibility. Some part of her felt it, felt it and was almost sick with anticipation.
“It’s you,” she said in a breathless whisper, all of the air in her body rushing out at once so that she felt dizzy as a result. “It’s really you.”
As she peered down at the lush lawn beneath her, she saw the man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for even a second of her time. There was Archer Grant, his hand cupped and holding a loosely gripped fistful of pebbles from the front drive. When her eyes met his, she saw a flash of gold and couldn’t tell whether it was real or imagined.
It was there and just as quickly it was not, leaving her to think about the discussion she’d had with her father several nights before. It had been a lecture of warning, one meant to scare her out of doing the things her father wished to forbid, but any effect it had achieved was long gone.
The only thing Eloise cared about, the solitary thought she kept coming back to, was that Archer Grant was here and that he was here for her. He had found her, found her and come to her and that was the most exciting thing in the world. As if she could hear his thoughts, his voice called out to her to come to him.
His mouth did not move but she could hear him all the same and she did not hesitate to comply with his wishes. Even if he hadn’t wanted her to join him, it would have been virtually impossible to stop her at that point, after all of the thinking about and longing for she had done over the man.
Leaving the house by exiting her bedroom and descending the staircase was not an option and Eloise knew it. If that strange, frenetic night of the carnival had taught her anything it was that her father was a man of instinct. He had known on that evening that something would happen and he had acted accordingly by sitting up for her with a drink and a temper.
She had no way of being sure, but something told her that her father might be down there again on this night, not knowing why he was doing it but feeling the need all the same. She knew that her father understood that she had done what she was told and stayed away from the carnival, but something told her he no longer trusted her, not really.
She got the strange feeling that he was watching her, calculating the odds of her doing something against the rules for a second time. If she was right about that and not just giving into a young woman’s dramatic paranoia, he might very well be down there in the dark waiting for her to do something she shouldn’t be doing at all.
For all Eloise knew, he could have spent every night since the carnival doing that very thing, watching and waiting for something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Eloise couldn’t stand the idea of being intercepted and thus missing her opportunity to discover what Archer had come to find her for and so she would not leave her parents’ home by conventional methods.
Instead, she slipped the window up, wincing as it squeaked from lack of oil and making a mental note to have that taken care of in the future. She stood still again, waiting to see if the small intrusion of noise would draw any unwanted attention. When it didn’t, she slid one long, lithe leg over the frame, ducked her head and then did the same with the other leg. The night had the kind of chill that meant New Orleans’ brand of winter was on the way and a stiff, cool breeze ruffled her hair and made her nipples go hard beneath her sheer chiffon slip.
Although she had never in her life sneaked out of her parents’ house, not even once, she managed it with surprising ease and after a rather graceful little shimmy down a drainpipe she found herself mere steps away from the object of her obsession.
“You found me.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I was highly motivated.”
They exchanged words in whispered tones, a whole conversation of whispers somebody without their unique physical attributes might not have even been able to hear. There were very few of those words however, because words weren’t what either one of them was interested in. Eloise hardly had the words to name what had her interest. She wasn’t even sure she understood it, only that she knew she wanted him in a way she hadn’t ever wanted anything in all of her life. She wanted him in a way that made her burn, a way that made her insides feel like they had been twisted into something totally foreign to her.
Because she had no words to explain this to him, she didn’t bother trying. She understood that her words would not do her justice. She understood it the same way that she understood that she was connected to Archer on an animal level normal people could not and would not understand. So instead of speaking, she closed what little gap remained between them and without ever breaking eye contact, took him by the hand. She held onto it lightly, only holding onto his fingertips really, but where their skin touched there was electricity that felt like it could someday be lethal.
As if the very earth they stood on were linked to their physical reactions, the sky suddenly split apart with a massive jag of lightning and then booming thunder that made even the trees tremble. People all across the city woke with starts and gasped in surprise in their beds, but neither Archer nor Eloise even flinched. This raw savagery of nature was their element and they were now completely in it.
Eloise began to walk, never looking to see if Archer would follow because she never had any doubts, and led both of them towards the family barn. It was several yards back from the house and hadn’t been used regularly in quite some time. It was a place Eloise never thought about, a place that wasn’t typically on the radar of her life, but that now felt like the only place for them to go.
They walked together silently, drinking in the rapidly oncoming storm as they went. By the time they arrived at the wide, tall doors and Archer easily swung one aside to gain them entrance, Eloise was shaking all over. She was shaking, but not with cold or fear or any such mundane emotion. She was shaking with want. She was shaking with the anticipation of what was coming.
“Archer.”
He turned to her then, the beautiful profile of his face chiseled into the night sky with another streak of lightning, and her words deserted her. Then he was upon her without bothering to shut the door. There was nothing to shut it for, nothing they needed to shut out. There was nothing that existed except for her and him and the feeling of his warm, calloused hands grasping her by the chin.
Neither of them paid any mind to the sharp sheets of rain that began to fall right outside of their realm. Neither thought about the fact that their families were mortal enemies and that hers was right next door. When Archer bent and took her lips with his own, neither of them cared about a damn thing except for having more of each other.
“Oh god,” Eloise gasped as Archer’s lips moved to the base of her neck, moved up the side of her neck and to the lobe of her ear. When she felt his teeth graze the skin there, she moaned low and soft in the back of her throat, a moan that sounded something like a purr coming from a very large cat.
It was a sound she would normally have been embarrassed by but in Archer’s embrace didn’t think twice about. Even if she had, even if she had tried to become embarrassed or demure or to make excuses for her unlady-like behavior, Archer wouldn’t have given her time to see it through.
His hands moved to the small of her back, then pulled her in roughly towards him, holding her so tightly to his body that it was as if the two of them had been glued together. His tongue pushed against her lips, parting them gently and slipping into her mouth. Her body exploded with the tingling of nerve endings that had never been used in quite this fashion.
Oh, but they wanted to be used by him, they wanted to be explored and to explore, and she met every movement he made with one of her own. The taste of him flooded her mouth, filling it with spice and something that might have been smoke. Her hands moved up to his thick hair, intertwining it in her fingers and tugging on it lightly. His response was a low growl in the back of his throat and to pull her in even tighter.
She could feel the length of him growing against her hip and her loins burned in return. Without even being aware that she was doing it, her hands moved from his hair down the length of his chest, where she began to pop one pearl snap button at a time. In mere moments, his chambray work shirt was off and discarded on the hay-covered floor. His skin was hot and beneath it was nothing but muscle. Her hands, continuing with their busy work, moved down to the band of his slacks, fingering the button and undoing it with clumsy but ultimately effective speed.
“Are you sure, girl? Are you sure you want this?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” she gasped, wanting to laugh at the fact that he’d called her girl but feeling too breathless to manage it. “Don’t ask questions you know the answer to.”
Archer growled again and in the next strike of lightning she saw that his eyes changed for just a fraction of a second, flashing gold before returning to their alarmingly pretty grey. She should have been afraid of him, maybe, almost any other girl on the planet would have been, but there was none of that, not even a small sliver of fear to saddle her with inhibitions.
Instead she felt enlivened, emboldened, and when Archer lifted her into the air she wrapped her legs around his waist without hesitation. He carried her deeper into the barn, neither of them really knowing where they were going and not caring either, and when he came upon several large bales of hay that had been split and spilled over the floor to form a makeshift bed, he laid her down upon it.
He bent his head forward, his haunting eyes smoldering into her own, and took one hard nipple into his mouth through her flimsy slip. The feeling of his rough, hot tongue sliding over the smooth silk and her aching nipple was exquisite and she arched her back, head rocking from side to side helplessly as she cried out with pleasure. Her knees pulled up, opening to him, ready to take him in, and her hips began to rock helplessly against his torso.
Her hands snaked down beneath the weight of him, tugging at the slacks that still stood between them, and all the while his tongue worked on her breasts with expert precision. It was tantalizing. It was torture. It was such magnificent pleasure that she could feel herself rocketing towards the edge of climax without him ever having touched her below the belt.
“What do you want, girl?” he whispered in a harsh, rasping voice into her ear, the heat of his breath making her skin prickle. His hair fell across his face, grazed along her skin, the smell of cedar wafting up to her nostrils and making her ache for him anew.
“You know what I want!” she gasped, her back arching again as her legs began to quiver and shake. “You know that.”
“I want to hear you say it. I want to hear the words on your pretty lips.”
“I want you,” she moaned, eyes opening and locking onto his. “I want to feel you moving inside of me.”
With no more words needed between them, Archer reared back and stood quickly. He made quick work of removing his trousers as well and stood above her with nothing but his naked flesh and the tension built between his thighs. She could see the length of him now and it was big, but not so big that she couldn’t handle it. She could handle everything about this man.
She knew that without having any right to know it, with perfect clarity and certainty. She knew it and she knew she didn’t want to wait for him anymore. She was not a patient girl, not even under the best of circumstances when she was concentrating on maintaining her decorum, and this was not a time for that.
She wasn’t even entirely herself at that point, not even entirely Eloise. Although she remained that young woman in physical form, her spirit existed in perfect duality in those sweaty, salty-sweet moments with Archer Grant. She was herself and she was her lion and the things she was doing were physical in nature without reprimand.
She looked up at him, teasing her with his girth, and smiled a coy, devilish smile. When his head dropped to one side in question, she slid her hand down again. Only this time it wasn’t to fumble with his clothing. This time there was nothing fumbling about her actions at all.
When her fingers landed on the slit of her sex, she found that it was slick with lust and she gave a sharp exhalation of breath. Her fingers worked over her clit expertly, the way they had thousands of times in the dark privacy of her room.
She found her rhythm and closed her eyes and then it was as if she was flying, flying towards that climax that would light up her insides like a thousand suns. Dimly she could feel Archer watching her, could feel his pleased surprise, and it only spurned her on. When she felt his hands run quickly down the inside of her thighs, spreading her legs wider apart so that he could lower himself between them, she felt no surprise. She had called him there, led him there.
Eloise’s hand moved from the steadily increasing pressure she was applying to herself and helped to guide Archer’s throbbing member inside of her. The immediate sensation was that of being split open, of being made bigger somehow to accommodate this massive man, and it was a splitting open she welcomed.
Her legs hooked around the backs of his thighs, one hand finding his back and digging her nails in while the other flew up over her head to give herself better leverage. She gasped at the new feeling of fullness and heard him sigh contentedly above her as he began to rock his hips slowly. It was a delicious slowness, a tormenting slowness, and Eloise’s hips bucked against his without any apparent ability on her part to control their movements.
It didn’t matter. She was not the one ruling this encounter; Archer had that job and he was the one who established the rhythm the two of them found together. His hips rolled languidly, almost leisurely, his eyes following her face intently as they did so. It was almost too much for her to take, that eye contact, and she felt herself sinking into him in a way that made her unsure of where her own person stopped and his began.
She had heard of that sort of thing happening before but she’d never believed it to be something that transpired outside of lewd novels. Now she found that a great many things between a man and a woman were true, she’d just never experienced the right man before.
“I want you,” he growled, his breathing speeding up as his hips began to do the same. “I want you so goddamned much.”
“You have me,” she gasped, arching her back to meet him so that her breasts grazed his chest as he pumped himself into her. He seemed to lose some of his control then, burying his face in the crook of her neck as his body moved faster and faster, driving into her deeper and deeper so that her entire body shook and quaked.
She heard a low moaning, a crying out that happened again and again and again. She was astonished to realize that those sounds were coming out of her. They were coming out of her and Archer was the one eliciting the sounds. She wrapped her legs around him even tighter, feeling a tingling begin in her toes that quickly spread up her legs and took hold of every inch of her.
She closed her eyes tightly, knowing what was coming and knowing that she couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to. And oh God, she didn’t want to, she didn’t want to stop it, only to keep it going forever and ever. The two of them wrapped in their sweaty embrace was the only thing she had any interest in at all and she wanted it to last forever but then her body was exploding with pleasure, causing her to scream, to actually scream out her pleasure and to bite down on his shoulder to keep the noise from traveling too far.
Later, after it was all over, she would see that her teeth had drawn blood from his perfect, taut skin, and she would feel a dull embarrassment she couldn’t quite shake. In that moment, however, neither one of them noticed because Archer had joined her in her explosive orgasm and nothing else in all of the world mattered even a little bit. It was the two of them, bodies weathering wave after wave of pleasure, and nothing else mattered.
They stayed that way together for a long time, long after their orgasms had faded into quivering memory. When Archer finally rolled off of her, Eloise felt a sudden mournful loss that was so powerful she was, frankly, shocked. It wasn’t a feeling that lasted, though, because he pulled her in closer to him and they lay there that way for as long as Eloise dared, talking of things in the fashion in which only lovers could.
When she could stay no longer and it was time to send Archer on his way, Eloise felt ridiculous tears threatening to fall from her lashes and wondered that she could feel so much for a man she knew so little. She would have felt foolish for it if she hadn’t seen the same stricken expression on Archer’s face, but he appeared to be as unhappy about their parting as she was and that made it somehow better.
Only a little bit, mind you, but still better nevertheless. She rose up onto the tips of her toes and kissed him, soft, sweet, and slow. When she finally broke the kiss, she took several steps away from him, using the distance in a sorry attempt at severing the tie that now bound them securely together.
“You have to go, Archer. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Right. I guess I know that.”
“And you can’t come back, not ever.”
“I guess I know that, too.”
“Do you know what I am? Did your Gram tell you?”
“She did. And your father told you all about me, I suppose. About me and my family.”
“He did,” she answered in a quiet, forlorn voice she hardly recognized, “and that we’re meant to be mortal enemies. That’s why we can’t see each other again.”
Archer opened his mouth, started to speak, then turned and strode away from her as quickly as he could manage. Eloise stood and watched, the tears no longer able to be contained, and only moved when he was completely gone. It was only when he was so gone it was as if he’d never come to see her at all that Eloise allowed herself to move listlessly towards the great house that held no joy for her now.
She felt weighed down by a preoccupying sadness and it was this sadness that made her forget. It made her forget all about the father she loved but who had become something of an adversary over the last week. It made her forget the way she’d known to shimmy down the drainpipe instead of using the stairs for fear that he would once again be waiting for her in the dark.
She forgot these things so completely that they did not occur to her until it was too late. She opened the front door, the door that was never locked, and shut it behind her without really knowing what it was that she did. She hardly even knew where she was. It wasn’t until she heard her father’s menacing voice coming out of the dark that she remembered, and by that time it was too late.