Palm of Destiny (6 page)

Chapter Ten

She wouldn’t stop crying. She couldn’t. Every time she tried, more tears would come. And then they would turn into great, jarring sobs that hurt her entire body. Her fingers clutched into the fabric of Elijah’s t-shirt, stretching the collar to the point where he almost felt like he was being strangled. He reached up to try and adjust it, but it only bit tighter into the left side of his neck.

Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he awkwardly placed his hands around Rosalie’s form. It couldn’t be called a hug, as there was no meaning behind it, but it could pass as him holding her. While he thought that it would calm her down enough for her to tell him what was going on, it only seemed to make her even more inconsolable.

There they sat on his old, worn out excuse for a couch. By now the cushion—if it could even be called that—that they were sitting on had dark tear stains spattered all across it. Some of those stains could have been snot, as hard as the Spanish woman was crying. Elijah swallowed hard, then let out a sharp sigh as he rubbed one of his hands along her back.

“Rosalie…are you…” No, that sounded stupid. Besides, he had already asked her at least five times what had happened. His only answers had been inaudible words and…well, this. “Did you, um…did you want me to call someone?”

As she clenched him harder in her fists, Elijah rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. He was no good at this at all. Telling people what they needed to do in their lives in order to make them better was the only thing he was even remarkably good at, but he had never been adept at comforting them. With a hard swallow, he tried to push her back from him, if only slightly. She responded by ripping his shirt, the seam tearing loose over the top of his left shoulder.

“
Rosalie
!” Elijah shocked himself with his outburst. His face flushed, and grew even redder when she snapped her head up and looked at him.

“Why are you yelling at me?” It was the first real sentence that she had spoken since arriving here almost an hour ago. Her entire face glistened with tears, both fresh and drying, and her eyes held a sadness that Elijah could hardly bear to look at.

“I just… I…what’s wrong?”

“Angelique…she’s…” Rosalie’s head shook slowly back and forth, and her fingers clutched into Elijah’s shirt again. Some of her fingers clenched through the hole she had made by accident and pressed directly against his skin. “Morgan called here earlier today. Elijah, she’s…she’s dead.”

“
What
?!”

She must have seen the stricken look in his eyes, because she pulled away and placed one of her hands against the side of his face. “He told me, last night, about the amulet. He said it had come in. It was around midnight, but… Ang told him to call her and I the second it arrived.” She sucked in a deep breath, her words shaking with emotion.

“So, this morning, I phoned Angelique to see if she could pick it up for me, since she lives so close to the shop. I hadn’t heard from her at all, either, so…I was a little worried. I’m surprised she didn’t phone last night even. But she didn’t answer. And then…then Morgan called me. He said she had been in some kind of accident…” Fresh tears spilled from her eyes and sparkled down her cheeks.

It felt like hands were crushing his chest. “An accident?”

“Yes.” Her body shook with sobs. “She just…he said she went into the shop just after it opened and just collapsed. I don’t even know what could have happened!”

“Okay… I’m going over there. Now.” There was that unheard of backbone in Elijah’s tone again, but Rosalie gripped him hard.

“No, please…stay with me. You’re the only one other Ang that I even like a little bit since my father died.” That admission brought on a whole new series of sobs, but she managed to choke them back. “Please stay. We can talk about anything…do anything. I don’t care, I just don’t want to be alone right now. Neither of us should be.” Her voice took on softer tones. “I know what she meant to you, too.”

“What she
meant
to me?”

“She told me, Elijah… about you and her. She told me everything.” Stepping closer, she tried to catch his eyes. “Stay…I don’t want to be alone.”

His lips parted, and Rosalie could see the protest and the confusion in his face. His body tensed, and she knew that he was going to say no. She could see it there on his face. Reluctance was written all over it. Desperation made her do what she did next, although she couldn’t have explained to anyone why she did it. It all happened too fast.

One moment she was holding onto him, begging with her eyes to try and make him stay, and the next her lips were covering his. She expected him to push her away, to draw back, maybe even flee from his apartment as quickly as he could. But he did none of those things. He returned the kiss instead, albeit slowly. Even, as was his way, awkwardly. He couldn’t tell if this was just a bartering chip to make him stay, or if it meant something else.

“Rosalie, what are—”

Elijah didn’t get a chance to finish his question before she was kissing him again. Slowly, but with a deep, sensual passion. Her hands moved to his face, their warmth meant to soothe and to comfort the both of them. She needed this more than she needed anything else right now. She needed the comfort of a man’s body. At one point she had seen Elijah only as a boy, but she saw him in a much different light now, understanding that there was far more beneath the surface than she could have ever imagined.

Slowly, not wanting to scare him or make him feel any more awkward than he already did, she slid one knee over to his right side. And then she slid her other knee to his other side, gradually straddling him. As her hands moved to his chest, she could feel the pounding of his heart. His was beating much harder than hers, and at a rate that almost scared her.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, her lips brushing against his with each word. “I think we both need this.”

“But I…”

She wasn’t going to let him finish, her mouth sinking around his again. She sucked softly before her tongue nestled against his lips. There was a moment of hesitation from him, and then she felt his lips part. With a sigh, she pressed herself into him while gliding her tongue into his waiting mouth at the same time. Moments later she heard him moan and felt his fingers moving beneath the sparkly black tank top she was wearing.

Her tongue massaged against his until she felt him respond. A sound of delight passed from her lips to his, and her onyx hair slid and tickled across his neck when she moved her kisses along his jaw. When she found his earlobe, she felt his body tighten beneath her. Purring softly, she scraped her teeth along the soft nub of flesh before removing his shirt. Even before the fabric was tossed somewhere beside them, she was stopping.

Wide eyes caught the sight of scars criss-crossing over the tops of his shoulders and across his chest. She drew back and stared at him, one of her hands moving to her throat. Elijah took that hand and drew it down, meeting her gaze with the slightest shake of his head. Rosalie chewed on her lower lip, wondering if she should be regretting this course of action. Her father dead, and then her best friend. And now Elijah seemed to have far more secrets than she could conceivably handle.

“I know,” Elijah said, his eyes casting down and to the side, toward the far end of the couch. “I’m hideous.”

Rosalie felt a pang in her chest, and she quickly shook her head. Breathing in, she slid herself out of the tank top, revealing not the bra that he had expected, but bare, naked skin. “No more talking, okay?” She leaned in and suckled on his lower lip, gazing into his eyes. Her fingers were light against his biceps as she brushed her mouth down the side of his neck and over to the first of many scars she had seen.

She was gentle as she kissed along the pale line, her tongue following with soothing motions. Elijah’s fingers slid into the thickness of her ebony hair as she made her way down his chest. He gasped when her teeth nipped at his nipple, which quickly grew harder than a pebble. Another groan fled from his throat when her fingers attached themselves to his other one, rolling around it and tugging.

He felt weak with desire when her mouth came back to his own, and he all but devoured her lips. She rubbed and squeezed her breasts against his chest while her hands pulled and tugged at the button and zipper of his jeans. Breaths were coming harsh and ragged from them both, sweat mingling and mixing with tears.

Elijah had no words to describe how it felt as Rosalie closed her whole hand around his painfully erect penis. A shudder rolled through him, and his mouth and throat turned so dry that he didn’t know if he would be able to speak. He felt helpless and without choice when their mouths clashed again. But it was the most exquisitely real moment that he could ever remember experiencing.

Her vaginal walls sunk around and over him. He couldn’t recall her removing her short black and blue patterned skirt, but he wasn’t in any state to wonder. Inhaling a sharp breath, he felt more lost than found. His hips lifted from the couch, but Rosalie squeezed her fingers against his thighs and pushed them back down. The world seemed so far away with the intense passion of their kiss. Pleasure fulfilled his every desire, and within moments there was nothing else that he wanted.

The blue of his eyes was glazed, making them appear paler than they really were. He was barely even breathing, his nostrils flared as Rosalie took them into much deeper and darker places. Space and time no longer existed. Only they did.

Slowly, she lifted her hips away from his. Before he could feel the intense loss of her sex squeezing around his penis, she dropped down again. Hard. He cried out, and his body jerked, bucking beneath her. He grabbed onto her hips, a subconscious effort to try and control them. Her head tilted back, the kiss breaking apart, and shifted herself upward again. This time she leaned her chest into him. He suckled one of her erect nipples into his mouth before he knew what he was doing.

The feel of it only made him lose more of himself to her. Soft and hard at the same time. So primal and ancient as to be the only thing that truly mattered in this world. When she came down again, he was ready for her. Instead of trying to take her mouth, he crushed her breasts together and sucked on both of her nipples at the same time. His tongue played across flesh both hard and smooth until she moaned, and then he sucked on it some more.

By the time he released her, she had an infuriatingly slow rhythm going, sometimes slamming onto him so hard that it hurt his bones.

Their mouths met again, and so did their tongues. Her arms wound around the back of his neck so that she could tighten herself against his body. As she pressed herself into him again, molding her body around his, it didn’t offer much in the way of movement. But the short, almost violent thrusts were enough to plunge them even further into the depths.

Elijah could feel his abdomen and thighs tightening, a heavy heat flooding into his shaft. The pleasure that it caused was nearly paralyzing, and he couldn’t stop the sounds as they rose from his throat. One for every outward breath, hoarse and low like he was in pain.

Rosalie moaned hard as she withdrew her tongue, encouraging him to follow hers into her own mouth. He was completely pliable and willing, tilting his head to the side in order to push his tongue further between her lips. When she sucked on it, the heat that had arrived out of nowhere intensified. He felt a strange, light dizziness overtake his mind, and suddenly he could hardly even feel his body. There were only the heavy, heated sensations of sex.