“Fuck me,” I moaned. “Please, just fuck me.”

“Not yet,” he said, and I felt the heat from his breath closing around my pussy. A loud moan moved through my throat as I felt the sensation of my clit being sucked hard between his lips and then tugged on with his teeth.

I tried to reach between my legs to touch his face, to feel the movement of his jaw as he licked me, but he caught my fingers in his mouth and sucked on them before grabbing both of my wrists and pinning them behind my back.

“Be fucking still,” he said.

He spread my legs apart even further and slipped his tongue inside my wetness. I gasped and moaned and whimpered. I wanted to see it, I wanted to watch him lick me, but with my cheek pressed against the mattress, all I could see was my ass raised in the air and Elias’s legs, bent at the knees, behind me. He licked me fast and hard, and I pushed my ass toward him. Then he sucked on my clit again, so hard I tried to pull away, because it was too intense.

“God, please don’t stop,” I begged him.

He flicked the tip of his tongue against my little bead, spreading my lips with the fingers of his free hand. When he let go of my wrists, I found the sheets above my head and grasped them tight. Two fingers slid into my pussy, and he moved them in and out of me while he licked my clit as I began to crawl upward across the bed.

“Oh goddamn!” I closed my eyes and held fast onto the pillow, as he curled his fingers into a hook inside of me, forbidding me to move any farther. He held me there, licking and sucking and fucking me with his fingers until my body became stiff as I felt my orgasm coming on.

“I’m going to come,” I said through uneven breaths. “God, please don’t fucking stop.”

He stopped.

“No, please, Elias, don’t stop!” I wanted to cry. No, I was crying. Every part of my body was opened up to him, wanting him, yearning to feel him inside of me. But I needed that orgasm. I fucking needed it.

He shoved his cock deep inside of me where I ached for him, hitting the spot. I gasped and grabbed fistfuls of the sheets again. The surprise and the intensity of it took the breath right out of my lungs. Tears streamed down my face. Tears of emotional pain. Of anger. Of guilt. I wanted it out of me. All of it. And instead of clawing at my wrists for a release, I wanted Elias to fuck it out of me. The bed banged against the wall as he slammed against me from behind. His strong fingers dug partway into my thighs and my ass cheeks as he made sure to keep me spread wide open for him to see.

I still wanted to watch. I wanted to see what he could see, his hard cock moving in and out of me, glistening with my wetness. I felt the orgasm brewing again so quickly. I wanted to call out to him, tell him I was about to come again, but I was afraid he would stop again.

I got very still. Very quiet. But I think he knew I was going to come, because I was so quiet and still.

“Say it,” he told me, still thrusting in and out of me. “Say it, baby.”

“I’m going to come,” I whispered.

He thrust hard and held his cock deep inside of me for a moment. Then he did it again and held it there for another moment.

I felt my eyes rolling into the back of my head.

“Oh goddamn, Elias… if you fucking stop I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you!”

He slammed into me harder and held himself there, so deep I could’ve sworn I felt it in my soul.

I gasped and shuddered as an explosion went off deep inside my belly, my legs trembled and shook and felt like jelly the more I tried to hold myself up on them. I felt myself constricting around his cock as I came, and tears of relief and pleasure streamed down my face.

Elias let out a moan and pulled his cock from inside of me just before he came on my backside.

Everything was quiet except our heavy breathing.

He collapsed on top of me, the sweat of his naked chest mixed with the sweat on my back. He kissed me there with his arms wrapped around my stomach. I felt the tip of his tongue moving up my spine and between my shoulder blades. He rosed up and made his way back down and kissed me between the legs softly. Chills attacked my body all over. He kissed my thighs, giving each one the same amount of attention.

I rolled over onto my back, and Elias crawled up my body, his hands pressed into the bed on either side of me, and he kissed me all the way up. My belly button. My stomach. My breastbone. And with the same grace and attention that he gave my thighs, he kissed each breast.

I cupped his face in my hands and guided him toward my lips. His warm naked body fell between my legs and he kissed me with so much passion that I never wanted to open my eyes again. I wanted to die in this bed, just like this, with him on top of me. If I’d known he would’ve given me that kind of death, I would’ve asked it of him. But I didn’t want to ruin the moment. Because I knew in my heart that it would be the last moment like this I would ever share with him.

Three days. I promised him, and I had every intention of staying true to my word.

Three days.


Elias

“I love you, Bray,” I whispered as I lay with my face nuzzled against her breasts. I wanted to hear her heart beating. “I love you more than you will ever know.”

She wound her fingers gently through the top of my hair. “How is that?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Because I would do anything for you,” I said. “You just don’t realize yet what ‘anything’ truly means.”

“Maybe I will someday,” she whispered, and I shut my eyes softly, holding in the tears. “I love you, too, Elias. More than you could possibly ever know.”

“How is that?” I asked.

I felt her lips against my hair. “Because I’d never ask you to prove your ‘anything.’ ”

We fell fast asleep, our bodies tangled, the sound of her heartbeat so soothing in my ear.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Elias

Caleb saw my fist coming, but he didn’t have time to react. I heard the crunch and felt the pain sear through the bones in my hand as he fell against the side of the Jeep.

“You ever fucking hit on Bray again,” I said, pointing my finger at him, “I’ll beat you unconscious.”

“Elias!” Bray came running out of the motel with wet hair. “Baby, please! I told you he wasn’t serious!”

I felt both of her hands pulling on my arm, but I didn’t move from in front of Caleb. And he wasn’t fighting back. He massaged his jaw with one hand and just looked at me with no emotion.

Tate came out of his room, wondering what was going on. “Something tells me you deserved that, little brother,” he said, looking between Caleb and me.

“I guess I did,” Caleb said, and a small smile crept up in his eyes. I almost hit him again on principle, but I stepped away from him and let Bray feel as though she was pulling me back.

Tate gave me a nod of approval and said, “All right, we need to hit the road. Rocky is expecting us by four o’clock. I want to get this over with.” He looked at Caleb. “Get your shit together,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about personal belongings.

* * *

Two hours passed and we were getting closer to the Texas state line.

Tate glanced at me over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. “When we get there I’ll drop you and Bray off at a store or restaurant somewhere. It’s not a good idea if you come with us.” He looked at Caleb in the front passenger’s seat and then put his eyes back on the road. “It’s probably not a good idea that you come, either.”

“No way, Tate,” Caleb argued. “I’m fucking going with you.”

“Look, I can just go in, meet with Rocky, hand him the money, and go about my day. If you’re there it probably won’t go as smoothly.”

“I’m not letting you go in there by yourself,” Caleb snapped.

“But you’ll let me use my savings to bail your ass out,” Tate retorted.

Caleb stared right through Tate from the side.

“Hey, Tate’s right,” I spoke up from the backseat. “I may not know what this is all about, but I have a pretty good idea. Caleb, you’re likely to just create tension.”

“Nobody asked you,” Caleb snapped, turning his head to look back at me. “Why don’t you deal with your own damn problems? Remember? You got cops looking for your ass. Deal with the dead-girl issue and stay out of mine.”

I hated to admit it, but Caleb had a point.

Bray and I spent the rest of last night talking about what other options we had. Of course, there were none, so the conversation was very short. Then mostly we just stared up at the ceiling, wrapped in each other’s arms. I never wanted to let her go. I felt the same from her. Eventually, our minds drifted from the matter at hand and we started reminiscing again. We talked about our childhood and about all of the things we missed and enjoyed and loved. But time passed all too quickly, and the present snuck up on us again. We thought about what else we could do, but still came up short. Stared at the ceiling some more. Fell asleep. And that was that.

But Bray was different. She hadn’t been herself since we saw the newscast back in Panama City. Since I found her on the bathroom floor. I got the feeling that she wasn’t really worried anymore about finding other solutions. She seemed more laid-back than concerned or on edge. It scared the hell out of me, and I didn’t know why.

We stopped at a gas station to fill up.

“I’ve got to pee,” Bray said and hopped out of the Jeep.