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Eli’s large hand cupped the back of my head tenderly, and he massaged my scalp in a way that made me moan softly.
“God,” I breathed out, my cheeks flaming from both the embarrassment and exertion. “I cannot believe I let you fuck me while talking to your brother.”
Eli laughed, and I could feel the reverberations of it against my chest. “I’m pretty sure that you were fucking me.”
I slapped my hand against his arm. “You know what I mean.”
“Matteo couldn’t hear anything. I had you muted.”
“You did?” I asked, surprised. Eli and I had fallen together in a fit of annoyance. He’d been watching me, and the feeling of his eyes on my back made it impossible to work. I had not expected to fall into his arms when I grabbed his book.
Eli played with the hair that was hanging down my face. He rolled the strand between his fingers, and it felt very intimate. “I don’t want anyone hearing you like that.”
Though possessive, the warmth of his words washed over me. I couldn’t remember the last time someone in my life had actually cared enough about me to try and protect me. My father liked to pretend, but I suspected that part of the reason he sent me to New York was not to have to deal with me.
I sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Eli asked.
“What makes you think that something is wrong?”
I lay back down, propping my head up on my bicep. Eli’s fingers smoothed themselves over my brow, and I felt that warm tenderness envelop me once more. “Whenever you are deep in thought, a little crease develops here.” He pressed his thumb between my brows.
I chuckled. “Am I that obvious?”
Eli shrugged. “No, but I spend a lot of time looking at you.”
The breath I was holding came out in a small whoosh. I didn’t know what I expected him to say, but it hadn’t been that. Sure, I knew that Eli wanted me. After all, we’d slept together. Not once or twice, but several times.
But desire didn’t mean that Eli liked me in any way that was not physical.
“What?” he pressed again.
This time I knew that we needed to talk about what had happened. Sex always complicated things, but between the two of us, it was that much worse.
“Why are you pretending like you care about me?” I asked, pulling myself back up. I wrapped the linen around my upper body, hiding myself from Eli’s eyes once more.
His eyes narrowed in on me. “What about everything that just happened between us makes you think I don’t care about you?” His words seemed so logical, but I knew better than to let things go that easily.
“When I came to New York, which wasn’t that long ago, I’ll remind you, you made it clear that you didn’t want me here. Hell, it seemed to me that you hated me. And while I would agree that we couldn’t be more different, I don’t think that I warranted that.”
Eli’s immediate anger towards me was confusing. And even though we’d slept together, we’d been fighting right up to the moment we’d fucked. Hell, even our sex was angry.
Eli sighed. “That had nothing to do with you.”
I snorted. “Please do not give me some sort of ‘It’s not you. It’s me’ type story.”
“I’m not.” Eli was sitting up, and I tried to focus on the conversation between us and not the way that the actions contracted his abs. Eli was very buttoned up, but I knew that a lot of passion was underneath all of that.
“Then, you are going to need to give me more if you want me to believe you.”
A long tension stretched between the two of us, and I wondered if he was going to tell me the truth or a lie. Or if he was just going to tell me to fuck off. After all, Eli didn’t owe me anything.
“I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but my father and I don’t have the best relationship.”
My brow crinkled as I picked over his words. He hadn’t really told me anything. “And?” I did not want to admit that I hadn’t studied Eli’s family as much as I studied him. Marco and Ivy were nice enough, and they seemed like decent parents, but I had made no effort to delve deeper.
I hadn’t seen the point.
