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Then returns to whisper in my ear. “I’ll tell you when I want you to beg.”

Dammit, I need him. And I want to hate him. That wetness low down gushes again. My hips meet his, and I work my hands down his back, cherishing his form, every muscle and bone and the give of flesh under his damp shirt. My ear is back in his hot mouth as my hands find their way around his sides, tucking between our bodies and inching down the ridges of his abdomen to the sliding angles of a V, following them down and down and—

He recoils and hardens all over, eyes darkening. His hand slides from my pants and into his pocket. In a split second filled with the clang of metal and the silent sinking of my soul, he grabs my arms, and this man who just kissed me cuffs my wrists behind my back.

“You won’t be running from me again unless I’m chasing you,” he says, tightening them, then smacks a kiss on my lips. I’m stunned, mouth open as he pushes me off his lap, bends my knees and cuffs my ankles.

Finally, words surface. “What in the raging fuck are you doing?”

Kneeling before me, he looks down at me with those beautiful brown eyes, full of the same hesitation that nags at me, and so clearly wanting, longing,needing…and resisting.

“I can’t—fuck—I can’t do this.” His fingers tug at my ear, an affectionate touch, his eyes falling shut for the time it takes my heart to remember to beat, then he backs away.

I’m speechless, still dizzy with desire, wet and swollen and distracted as he collects his knife with a blood-soaked hand.Eyes heavy with regret and a pain I know all too well, he admires the blade up close before wiping the remaining smears of blood on his thigh—and walking away.

Chapter

Thirty-Seven

The whispers of the trees dissolve into silence after the rush of life following another vision fades away. I can’t give way to sleep after the eventful night, much less with the shiver in my bones and the tangled net of thoughts tightening around my head. Kelter, screaming babies, my mother’s painful touch…and Eli, how he somehow took away the pain, the way he kissed me, the way his cock rubbed—

No. Not going there. I lick my lips. I can still taste the metallic tang of blood from his dark aura like a lingering kiss. But I only want him because I’m hurting, because my mother is worse than any version of her I concocted during recent years to convince myself I wasn’t missing anything. And because I don’t know who I am…or what I am.

I thought the elixir chose my life for me, imprisoning my mind, but I chose it—every path, every direction, every landmark on my map leading to this moment. And I get to keep choosing. What to believe. Who to trust.

And I choose to ignore the man sitting on the other side of the clearing, watching me. It doesn’t matter that he saved me at the lake, that he wiped away my tears or how good it felt when he forced his tongue so deep. Those very same hands that wandered over me locked me in cuffs right after. Then he walked away.

I’m just a mistake to him.

Focus. I have to find Kelter. I have to go home.

I pinch my eyes shut and roll my head back against the tree, counting minute after minute until the thoughts fall away.

A rapping sound rides on the wind, low and steady, occupying the edges of my half-asleep mind. The boomy pulse quickens, and my heart mimics the anxious beat. My eyes pop open. A peppery scent fills the air.

Eli is kneeling in the center of the clearing, bent over a wide tree stump with a cluster of flat rocks arranged into a drum set atop it. He raps them with the length of his fingers, whacking them in a fluid pattern of blurry hands. Skin on rock. Rock on skin. Slapping and tapping. His eyes are closed, his movements exaggerated as though the music in his head flows from the looseness in his elbows, the dancing hills of his shoulders. Somehow he’s mastered the art of escape, found a peace in this realm, one he can reach for even in the woods at night. He’s acompletely different man from the rigid, rankled one I see so often.

And that choice to ignore him slips deep into the depths of my mind. I stand up and take one tiny cuffed step toward him at a time. The beat loudens, pulsing through me in violent waves.

He’s beautiful, there in the dark, the moons illuminating him from behind and casting a deviant shadow across the clearing. It lunges toward me with sweeping, drumming motions, pulling me closer and dragging me into his spell. A soft wind flows over my body, taking away the cold of my damp clothes and warming me, though not a single leaf rustles in the trees.

His eyes open a slit, and a twitch of awareness confirms he sees me. He doesn’t stop. One hand reaches to his side and picks up a burning roll of teva. He tucks it between his tightened lips and inhales deep, his other hand thumping away at the rocks, his body rolling. He extends his arm toward me, the roll resting between two fingers.

An escape.

But it’s not what he offers in his hand that makes my cuffed feet pick up one after the other, or the way he moves, or his sculpted face. And it’s not the memory of his lips on mine.

It’s something dangerously infectious…yet irresistible. Something that wakes up inside me when we’re near, something that strums to life amidst all the death in my head.

I cross the clearing and kneel at his side in the melted hail and dirt, wrists still cuffed behind my back. He lets the air loose from his swollen chest, a cloud of clove-scented purple smoke escaping from his mouth.

I don’t think twice. I don’t think at all. My lips part, and he slides the roll between them. I take a long, delicious hit, watching the ember drag upward until my lungs ache with fullness and my cheeks puff out. His eyes are on me as he assaults the drums, his movements looser, his blows harder. Ihold in the spicy smoke until I explode from within, seized by a coughing fit. Unphased, he bangs away. The goodness travels straight to my brain, cutting through all the knots and ties I can’t undo, and my thoughts run loose, lost in the haze.

He watches me closely, my eyes teary from coughing, and brings the roll back to my lips for another hit. I suck in the smoky escape, the red glow almost reaching his fingertips. I cough again, less this time. His eyes close, the roll now on his lips, and he inhales until there’s nothing left to burn. Such intensity, such devotion. I want him to inhale me like that—until there’s nothing left.

I bend into a slouch. The very last of my worries whisper away with the thick smoke, swirling higher, dispersing into the night. Eli pulls at my waist, a wrenching movement, sending me falling without hands to catch myself. But he catches me…and sweeps me in front of him. Urgency crashes through me, my body craving the undeniable attraction—and fighting it, denying the heat sprinting through my veins, the swelling between my legs, the tingle of my skin under his rough hands.

I kneel in the slush, wedged between his thighs and sitting on my cuffed ankles. My back and arms are to his chest, and it takes only a second for him to wrap his arms around me, crossing them over my front and tightening. His chest presses against me, tearing the breath from my lungs. The metal on my wrists pushes into my lower back.