by Annie Evans
Following Fritz out of the barn, Eli groused, “Why is Sage’s ass never around when there’s manual labor to be done?”
“Dunno,” was Fritz’s only reply before they disappeared from view.
Bellamy set to work unpacking a box of decorations, arranging them for easy access on the square raised platform Fritz and Eli built for the band out of plywood at one end of the barn.
She was pairing up small salt and pepper shakers shaped like ears of corn, remarking on how cute they were, when she heard loud, agitated male voices outside.
“What in the world?” Kai said, cocking her head to listen.
“…because you never do shit, that’s why! And I’m sick of pulling your share of the load when you still expect to reap part of the profits!”
That was Eli shouting. Bellamy scrambled to her feet, skin prickling with worry.
“I do my part, asshole! Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it ain’t bein’ done!”
She thought that sounded like Sage.
Bellamy looked at Kai, who frowned, saying, “This could get ugly real fast.” When she headed in the direction of the argument, Bellamy followed.
Eli and Sage were squared off at the back of the open trailer, practically nose-to-nose, hands balled into fists, with Fritz standing to the side, his posture tense.
“I didn’t see you help haul the last load of hay to Dawson, but I bet I’ll see where you’ve stroked yourself a check from our hay profit account.”
“Yeah, and who balances those goddamn accounts? Who sees that all the bills get paid on time? Me, that’s who!”
Kai had a death grip on Bellamy’s arm as they watched it all unfold, repeatedly muttering, “Do something, Fritz,” under her breath while Bellamy held hers.
“Oh, cry me a fuckin’ river,” Eli said. “A couple hours’ worth of bookkeeping a week is supposed to offset all the shit me’n Fritz do all the time, day in and day out? Not even close.”
“Fuck you, Eli!” Sage shoved Eli hard enough to force him backward a step and Bellamy covered her mouth to stifle a gasp, afraid of what was about to happen.
One emotionally charged heartbeat later, her fear was realized.
Eli and Sage went at it, fists hitting flesh, hard bodies colliding, until they landed in a grunting, angry heap on the ground. Apparently, Fritz knew better than to try to break them apart at that point because he stepped clear of the danger zone, yet still remained close.
Dust flew as each scrabbled for dominance over the other. Sage wound up on the bottom, but he managed to wrap an arm around Eli’s neck so he couldn’t land any more blows to Sage’s face. Didn’t stop Eli from connecting solidly with Sage’s ribs, though. Even from where Bellamy and Kai stood ten feet away, they still heard the air whoosh out of Sage’s lungs, chased by a groan of pain. Natural instinct took over after the hard blow, forcing Sage to release Eli so he could protect his injured side from more punches.
Finally seeing a chance to step in, Fritz grabbed Eli by the back of his shirt and physically hauled him off Sage, growling, “Y’all just had to go and pull this shit right before Mom’s party.”
Sage turned onto his uninjured side, breathing ragged and uneven, then rolled to his hands and knees. Eli staggered away from Fritz and bent double at the waist, spitting blood onto the ground at his feet before he straightened and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Fucker,” Sage said. “I think you cracked a rib.”
“Good.” Eli traced his split bottom lip with his tongue. “I hope it hurts.”
Bellamy winced. Watching the whole scene made her heart break, but from the context of the argument that led to the fight, something ugly had been festering between the brothers for a while now. It was unfortunate they chose to lance it with violence.
Sage got one leg underneath him then used it to push to his feet. He wobbled sideways like a drunk, reaching out to steady himself against the back of the trailer. The skin over his left cheekbone was split open and blood streamed down his face to drip onto his shirt.
“You know, neither one of you have ever stopped to ask me what I wanted to do,” Sage said, breaths coming in short, shallow pulls, the bitterness in his voice so sharp Bellamy’s teeth ached.
“Anytime you want out of Carter Farms, brother, just say the word and it’s done,” Eli spat back at him.
“Hey now,” Kai said. “Let’s not do this tonight, okay? Please? It’ll ruin Ruby’s birthday. It’s bad enough that she’s going to take one look at the both of you and know you’ve been fighting.”
Without uttering another sound, Sage stumbled to his truck and drove away from the barn.
Bellamy went to where Eli was propped against the tailgate of his truck, carefully prodding at his jaw. “Do you have a towel or an extra shirt in your truck?”
“Backseat.”
She found a wrinkled t-shirt that didn’t smell particularly clean but would have to suffice, and scooped a few handfuls of ice into it from his cooler for a makeshift icepack. “Here,” she said, pressing it to his injury. When he replaced her hand with his, she brushed the hair back out of his eyes and off his forehead so she could check for more cuts and bruises. “Is your face the only thing that’s hurt?”
He nodded, working his jaw. “Sorry you had to see that.”
“It’s fine.” She forced a smile. “Even without siblings of my own, I know they fight occasionally.”
“But I’m old enough to know better than to let it come to blows. Those are the toughest fights to get over.”
From the distant, troubled look in his eyes, Bellamy knew he wasn’t just talking about the physical recovery. There had to be emotional cuts and bruises that hurt long after the surface wounds healed.
“You think Sage needs medical attention? I could check him over; maybe tape his ribs if one’s cracked.”
“Sage has been in enough fights over the years to know when to treat himself and when to take his beat-up ass to the hospital.”
“And the two of you? How many times does this make?”
Eli dabbed at his swollen bottom lip with the icepack, frowning at the streak of blood staining the cloth. “I lost count when we hit puberty.”
Chapter Nineteen
A strange, toxic mixture of chemicals and emotions still swirled in Eli’s blood an hour after the fight with his brother. A side effect was a tremor in his sore hand as he tipped two fingers’ worth of Jack into a glass. Without preamble, he downed the liquor in a single gulp that burned from the back of his throat to the bottom of his gut.
His knuckles hurt, his jaw throbbed, and his lip was tender and stinging, but his heart ached worse than anything else did. Fighting Sage wasn’t the way to work out their differences, but he’d be damned if he was going to bite his tongue about how he felt, or back down when Sage crossed the line and took things too far.
Eventually Eli and his brothers would need to have a heart to heart talk about what they expected from each other, where they were headed as a company, and whether or not they could all agree on how said company continued to be run. Because family bonds aside, it was a profitable, viable operation and it had to be treated as such.
Things had been so much easier when their dad was still in charge.
The shower started in his bathroom, prompting him to drag his mopey ass in there just in time to see a naked Bellamy step inside the shower stall. Instant mood improvement. Through the rippled glass, he watched her bathe as he methodically stripped out of his dusty clothes, wincing at the twinge of pain in his shoulder and hip from the collision with solid, unforgiving ground. By the time he joined her, she was shampooing her hair. He braced one hand on the tile wall, the other on top of the glass door, and drank in the wholly feminine way she moved, using the sexy sight to dilute the unease churning inside him.
Thick ribbons of suds tracked down her sleek body, following the gentle curves of muscle and bone. When she stepped beneath the spray, tipping her head back to
rinse her hair, the delicate arch of her neck and soft slope of her breasts sent arousal coursing through his blood to settle heavily in his cock.
His physical reaction only highlighted their differences. He was hard to her soft. Rough to her tender. Impulsive to her calm.
She hadn’t said much since they’d reached his house, but Eli knew she was disappointed in him—or more specifically, the barbaric way he’d handled things with Sage. And truth be told, so was Eli, except it was too late to change it now. The damage was done. He’d let rage get the better of him instead of holding on to his temper.
And the funny thing was, the only time he ever lost his cool was with his siblings or in defense of one of them back when they were in their late teens and early twenties, partying and drinking too damn much to maintain a level head.
His issues with Sage could perhaps be resolved, once they found their way past the anger and talked it out. But had acting like a hotheaded ass done any sort of harm to his relationship with Bellamy? There were women out there who abhorred violence of any kind, and as tenderhearted as she was, he could see her being one of them.
The feel of her hands on his chest snapped him out of his thoughts. She gently pushed him under the spray, ignoring the rigid state of his cock altogether, and left him alone in the shower. He gave half a thought to jacking off, maybe help rid himself of any remaining self-destructive urges, before scrubbing himself clean and turning the control knob over to cold in an attempt to douse the fire in his groin.
She was sitting on the edge of his bed running a comb through her damp hair when he exited the bathroom, a towel tucked around her body. He’d slung one around his hips, and when she spotted him watching her from the doorway, she crooked a finger, silently beckoning him closer.
On the nightstand sat a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a few cotton balls, a tube of antibiotic ointment and the first-aid kit he kept beneath the bathroom sink. His bed was the kind that sat so high off the floor, even Eli had to hop up onto the mattress. This put Bellamy at the perfect height to doctor the scrape on his jaw and the cut on his lip from a sitting position. She ended by examining and cleaning the three busted knuckles on his right hand, placing a careful kiss to each, before smearing ointment over the broken skin.
He was still half-hard beneath the towel—her gentle touch, the tiny droplets of water clinging to her collarbone and the smell of his shampoo on her hair kept selfish want simmering just beneath the surface of his skin.
When she ran her fingertips from the base of his throat down to his hip, a low groan rattled inside his chest. Her gaze snapped up to his, acute as ever. “That bad, huh?”
“Always,” he said, his voice rough before he swallowed. “I always want you. I might hurt you, though. There’s still some lingering aggression that hasn’t bled out yet.”
A flick of her fingers and the towel cloaking her body fell away then she loosened his. It landed on top of his feet and cool air brushed his straining cock. “You won’t hurt me, Eli.”
Her trust was humbling to say the least, but he feared it was also misplaced.
Bellamy didn’t reach for him. She left it up to him to decide, dropping her hands to the bed while inside him, desire warred with caution. Need won this fight, rather easily too, and he extracted a condom from the box inside his nightstand drawer.
“Scoot up to the pillows.”
She did as he instructed, then made room for him between her legs as he settled over her. He tested her with two fingers, watching her eyes close briefly and her chin lift when he drew the wetness up to her clit in a slow, deliberate stroke. A shuddering sigh broke the quiet of the bedroom.
Those long, sleek legs rode up his thighs, over his hips, heels nudging his ass to compel him forward. She grasped his cock in one hand, guiding him into place. It was all the invitation he needed, and braced above her on his hands, he drove inside her.
Clinging heat sparked a fire in his blood. A fresh burst of adrenaline chased it through his veins, making the jolt he’d felt during the fight with Sage pale in comparison. With Bellamy, he almost got high off the rush.
The hitching moan she let loose snapped the leash on any control he might’ve been clinging to in hopes of making this lasting and memorable. It wouldn’t be, yet Bellamy didn’t seem to care. She dug her short, blunt nails into his shoulders and dove headlong into the feverishness of their coupling right along with him.
He was hard as Georgia clay after a months-long drought, and felt just as brittle. Pressure and tension seethed in his cock as he fucked her so roughly, she had to brace a hand against the headboard to keep from sliding up the bed. Still, she didn’t complain when he deserved a smack across the face for being thoughtless and greedy.
Eli tried to focus on her, make this good for her, but all he could feel was the frantic urges of his own body, the white-hot need to purge the poison in his blood through sexual release. Right now, Bellamy was a conduit between lust and the other side of pain and anger, and that was so selfish and un-fucking-fair he probably wouldn’t be able to look at himself in the mirror for days.
But instead of letting him get lost in the self-loathing, her eyes caught his and held, reading him like a book. Her hand lifted, grazed his sore jaw, then slid into his hair to form a fist, demanding he slow down and recognize what they were doing. This wasn’t just about what he needed, though she’d made it seem that way. She was here too, with him, and she deserved so much more that what he was giving her. It tamed him instantly, her silent request for his mental presence.
Emotion wrapped around his heart, threatening to squeeze the life right out of him. He slowed his movements, gentled, blocked out the previous two hours and remembered the night he’d met her instead. Discovered the sweet taste of her mouth and kissed the smile on her lips because he’d wanted to feel it against his own. To memorize it, like he’d memorized the sound of her voice and the smell of her skin.
It mattered. It’s always mattered.
“Bellamy,” he said, just to hear the word fill the air around them, a mixture of reverence and raw desire making it sound desperate as it left his tongue.
He loved her name, loved her incredible face and her giant heart and the way she made his race when he looked at her.
God, he loved her.
“I’m right here,” she whispered, urging him down to rest his weight on top of her.
He felt the ripple of pleasure work its way through her body, the urgent grip of her hands on his shoulder and in his hair. Her breath caught then she moaned softly as she came. Nothing earth-shattering, just a gentle quake, but it relieved him still. The clasp of her body around his was enough to break the stranglehold he’d somehow managed to keep on his orgasm, and he let go, burying his face in her shoulder as pleasure crested, sharpened, then faded away to a dull, sweet ache in his muscles.
She patted his hip, prompting him to move and allow her room to breathe. He rolled to his back, giving his heart a minute to calm and his brain time to regroup. If there was such a thing as gratifying pain, he felt it. Tomorrow he would be feeling the pain parts even more acutely.
He was getting too old for this combative shit with Sage.
Eli sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “We’re going to be late if we don’t get moving.”
Behind him, Bellamy shifted then her arms slid around his shoulders. She placed a gentle kiss on his bruised jaw, brushed her mouth across his cheekbone. “Talk to Sage tonight. The longer the two of you wait to address what happened, the wider the rift becomes.”
Sighing heavily at the prospect of having that conversation, Eli nodded once and stood to get dressed.
He needed to talk to Sage because it was the right thing to do, and because once his mother figured out her sons had fought, she would be upset until they made amends, or at least made it appear that all was right with the world again, even though it wouldn’t be. Not entirely. Sage had too much bottled-up resentment for a single conversation to cure, and Ruby knew t
his too. She just chose to pretend otherwise.
For Bellamy though, Eli would have that talk because she made him want to be a better person, and an even better man.
Chapter Twenty
Bellamy and Eli arrived back at the barn just in time to help Kai set up the food and light candles before guests starting showing up and Fritz went to fetch Ruby and Joe for the big surprise. Sage was nowhere to be found, but Kai assured them she’d talked to him on the phone and he promised to be there, although he hadn’t said much else.
There were too many cars parked in the field out front for it to be a hide-and-jump-out kind of surprise, but when Fritz rolled his parents up to the wide open doors of the barn, Ruby was still overcome with delight and happy tears.
In spite of Kai requesting guests not bring gifts, packages were mounded up on a side table near the cake. Bellamy had fretted for days over what to get Ruby until she remembered seeing a few pieces of milk glass inside her china hutch the first time she’d eaten dinner with them. It took several trips to various antique shops around the area before she found a pretty cake stand that fit the bill perfectly. As special as Ruby had become to Bellamy, there was no way she wasn’t buying her a gift.
Once the food was devoured, “Happy Birthday” sung and the cake cut, the band started playing and folks began dancing. Laughter and chatter filled the cavernous space of the barn, sometimes overtaking the strains of music. It was obvious the Carter clan was well liked around Serenity because they were constantly caught up in conversation, sometimes all together but oftentimes singularly. No sooner would one end before they were drawn into another.
Bellamy had made lots of new acquaintances, including several of Eli’s relatives, been asked a few strange questions about what it was like to be a large-animal vet, and had one inquiry about declawing someone’s cat. Not her area of expertise, and besides that, she found the practice inhumane. Buy the cat a scratching post and it won’t use your damn furniture as a substitute. She’d almost asked the woman how she’d like having all her nails permanently removed before she remembered that might be seen as impolite.