Page 43 of His Elder

Eli froze for half a second, and then his hand came up to the back of my neck, pulling me closer. His mouth opened against mine, and I tasted him—salt and heat and something indefinable that made my chest ache.

I climbed onto the bed, straddling him, my hands tangling in his hair. He made a sound low in his throat, his hips arching up against me, and I gasped.

"Samuel," he breathed against my lips. "Are you sure?"

I pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was flushed, his eyes wide and dark.

"No," I said. "But I don't care."

His hands slid under my shirt, his palms hot against my ribs, and I shuddered. He sat up, pulling me with him, his mouth moving to my neck, my jaw, the hollow of my throat. I tilted my head back, my fingers digging into his shoulders.

"Tell me to stop," he murmured against my skin. "If you want me to stop, tell me."

I didn't tell him to stop.

13

ELIAS

The mattress dipped beside me. A shadow fell across my face, eclipsing the orange streetlamp glow leaking through the blinds. I kept my breathing even, a practiced stillness I learned years ago, hiding in plain sight. But my heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. It was him. I knew it without looking.

"Samuel?" His name was a ghost in the dark.

He didn't speak. A trembling hand settled on my cheek, the calloused tips of his fingers a strange counterpoint to the nervous tremor running through his arm. His touch was a question. And a surrender.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, my voice rough.

A beat of silence. "I don't know."

Liar. For the first time since I met him, Samuel Price knew exactly what he was doing. He was throwing the first stone. Tearing down the walls he had so meticulously built.

He leaned in, and his lips met mine.

It wasn't a sin. It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a moment of weakness. It was a choice. Deliberate. His mouth was soft at first, a hesitant question, and then it turned firm, resolute. It was a full-body confession, a renunciation of everything he thought he knew. A current passed between us, sharp and clean, scouring away the silence and the shame of the last twenty-four hours.

My own hesitation evaporated. I reached for him, my hand tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him down. His mouth opened, and I tasted the clean, minty flavour of his toothpaste and the deeper, muskier taste of him. Samuel. He groaned, a low vibration in his chest that I felt in my own. He climbed onto the bed, straddling me, his weight a welcome anchor, his hands finding the front of my shirt, bunching the fabric in his fists.

"Samuel," I breathed against his mouth, a desperate prayer. "Are you sure?"

He pulled back, his face a landscape of shadows and moonlight, his eyes wide and dark and bottomless. All the rules, all the prophets, all the fear swam in those depths. And he drowned them.

"No," he said, his voice raw. "But I don't care."

That was it. The breaking point. The two words that unravelled a lifetime of obedience. 'I don't care.' It was the most honest thing he had ever said to me. The most honest thing he had ever said to himself.

My hands were under his shirt then, palms flat against his ribs, and he shuddered, a full-body tremor. He broke the kiss to sit up, pulling me with him until we were kneeling, face to face on my narrow bed. His mouth found my neck, then my jaw, then the hollow of my throat where my pulse hammered a wild, frantic beat. I dropped my head back, my fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders, clingingto him as he mapped my skin with his lips. He was charting a new world. We both were.

"Tell me to stop," he murmured, his breath hot against my collarbone. His voice was a ragged plea. A final, desperate offer of an escape hatch I knew he prayed I wouldn't take. "If you want me to stop, tell me."

I answered by pulling his shirt over his head.

It snagged on his wrists for a moment, and we fumbled with it, a clumsy, graceless movement that broke the tension. He laughed, a short, breathless sound of disbelief, and then the shirt was gone. In the dim light, his chest was pale, perfect. The body of a statue, all lean muscle and smooth skin, but it was warm. It was alive. I ran my hands over his ribs, his stomach, feeling the muscles there contract under my touch. He was so beautiful it hurt. He was a cathedral built to honour a god that wanted to see him in ruins. And I would worship there instead.

I pressed him back against the pillows, my mouth following the path my hands had blazed. I kissed the space over his heart, feeling its frantic rhythm against my lips. He gasped my name, not Elder Vance, butEli.

"It's okay," I whispered against his skin. "This is okay.You'reokay."

I kissed lower, over the sharp jut of his hip bone, my own desire a hot, coiling thing in my gut. But this wasn't about that. Not yet. This was about him. About showing him his body wasn't a battlefield. It was just a body. A beautiful, human body that deserved to feel something other than shame.