Secrets Of The Guilty [Nanowrimo 2019]

TEN

Eli levelled the gun at his chest.

Half his body was hidden in the shadows from the loft light, the rest blending into a mixture of yellows from the half converted streetlights, just outside the window. The tones of it turning his brown hair and his shadow of stubble across his jaw, to soft copper.

He used to keep it like that for her.

Eli shifts forward, straitening her spine. The usual control she had started to slip, becoming a tremble in her fingers.

"Be very careful," she says, voice low, "with what you do next, James."

The room becomes enveloped tense silence, the moment suspended as she waits. He pulls his palm up towards her. The coat around his shoulders pulling back at the sides, letting her see he's unarmed. The picture of August is still on her coffee table, turned over from when she knocked the remote over, the dead laptop and the shuffled papers teller her enough about why he's here.

"Looking for something?" Eli asks, her voice flat. She lowered the gun, finger still resting on the trigger.

"You told me to come. No errand boys, remember?" His voice is hard. His father's Italian dipping the vowels. His attention stays on her face. Examining her. The cut of his features making it hard to read him.

He was always good at keeping his emotions in check.

"So you come when called now? That's good to know. Saves me any trouble." Eli's voice cracks at the end. James takes a step forward towards her into space between them. She presses her lips together. Her arms stand rigid at her sides. The bravado crumbling a little more each time he takes a step towards her. He was drawing a line on her side of the city, claiming pieces of it with every inch.

"Why is that?" James gives her a slow measured smile. She keeps herself steady raising her chin to take in the full site of him.

"I wanted to ask about your message. Though it came a little premature. It seems the city is still in one piece. All players accounted for."

"Even the new ones?" His eyes flash a cruel grin pulling at his mouth. Eli's attention sharpens. She may have had the gun but he would always have something over her. Strength over her.

"You tell me," she says evenly. His words drip into her slowly, building her own anger. She should have smelled trap then and there. He was pushing her to say something, admit to knowing something. But she didn't, and she hated herself for it.

"You don't quit, do you?" He's close now, a foot or two away. The proximity tightening her already pressed stomach. She could feel the heat of him, smell the scent of her favourite cologne on his skin. It had been so long since she'd seen him. Solid and real standing in front of her. "Was my warning not enough?"

That snapped her focus.

"Is mine?" Eli cocks the gun, drawing out the motion, holding the feel of it under her finger. The end of it marks the middle of his chest, pushing the warmed metal into his skin. Her grip is white and angry.

She felt stupid for letting him pry like that, letting him get to her and throw it all back in her face, for what? A memory that hadn't lasted when it was real? Eli cocks her head to the side, her own grin coming out now, some part of her control coming back, filling the empty spaces. "I told you to be careful. Now, why did you send someone to warm me?"

Eli faces him squarely, unwavering.

He waited for a moment. Mouth open a fraction. He seemed calm again.

He moved into the gun, having it push against the flat bone at his chest. Eli tightened her grip, knuckles white. His own held the end of the gun pressed into him.

"Has it occurred to you that someone might want you dead? That someone could be watching every step you take, monitoring everyone you talk to? That I sent you a warning to get you to look the other way." He growled it. Voice rising the longer he spoke.

"How do you know someone's looking into me? Because you are?" She threw it back at him.

"No, because I'm watching them while they're watching you." His eyes darkened. She let the world drip into her head, letting it spread across her body until it hit the end of her toes. The danger simmered around him. There were two kinds of people like him: those that negotiated what they wanted and those who simply take it.

Her stomach tightens as his hands come up to her cup her elbows, his fingers firm and warm, down up her arms to place his hands over hers. His eyes met her, bright and wide, before pulling the gun slowly from her. When she doesn't move, he places it next to her on the side table, within reach of them both.

Her temper is simmering, no longer blatant anger but heated all the same. He's so close. The frustration she felt was only with herself, for being so impossibly stubborn that she wasn't moving away from him. Instead, she watches him follow his own hands back up her arms to the material at her collar, slowly pushing her coat off her shoulders.

"What do you want, James." The material pools on the floor at her feet.

"Same as you," he murmured. He touches her cheek, one hand coming around until it cupped the back of her neck. She rocked back slightly, enough to pull her body one inch away from his, to look at him properly. He simply closed his fingers over her wrist, eye dark. Glittering in the dim light.

"I told you to leave." She says softly when her lips were an inch away from hers. The kiss hovered there, a breath away.

"I heard you." He whispered moving against her capturing his mouth with hers.