Of Eternal Life (11 page)

As though she heard his thoughts, her eyes drifted to the bulge behind his fly. Her hand stilled over his belly button, and she began to nibble her lower lip. He could see excitement and nervousness mixed in her eyes.

“Do you want to see me there, too?” Eli asked. His voice was so low it was almost unrecognizable.

She nodded once. Eli moved his own hand to the button of his jeans, and Abilene’s eyes flashed. He knew she was a doctor — hell, she’d even seen him naked before — but she looked terrified when Eli undid the button. He stopped.

“Hey,” he whispered, reaching out to touch her cheek. “We can stop right here. Just say the word.”

She shook her head. “No, I want to, just — ” she closed her eyes and finished her sentence in a rush of words, “I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-and-I-might-be-bad-at-it.” She exhaled, relieved that she’d gotten it out.

Had he heard her right? Somehow he knew
Are you fucking kidding me?
was the wrong thing to say here.

“Oh … darlin’ … you’ve got me on a hair trigger.” He turned her face until she was forced to look at him. “I’ve almost come a million times since falling on top of you. Just touching you, the smell of your skin, the look on your face — ” He brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “I can’t
wait
to feel your hand on me. You couldn’t be bad at it if you tried.”

She gave him a brilliant smile and leaned down to kiss him. For once, he’d said the right thing.
Thank you, God
. As she deepened the kiss, her hand began a slow slide down to his fly. He felt a tugging, and the sound of the zipper ricocheted through the room.

And then, sweet God, she was touching him. The tentative brush of her fingertips almost ended everything right away.

She pulled away from the kiss to whisper, “Your pants … I can’t quite … Will you push them down a bit?”

He rushed to comply, lifting his ass and shoving his jeans down his thighs in record time. She smiled into his eyes before looking down to the erection she held in her palm.

She gasped. “Oh my God.” Her grip tightened, and Eli moaned. Loudly. “You’re …
beautiful
,” she whispered.

• • •

Abilene had never seen anything so incredible in her life. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Eli’s mostly naked body — a body that was like something out of a myth. The ache between her thighs throbbed for what she held in her hand.

There was no way any other man looked this good.

His chest and abdomen were packed with muscle. A happy trail started just below his belly button and thickened as it approached his erection.

Her eyes focused there, and the world faded away. This part of his body was more than she’d ever hoped for in a man. In her studies and examinations, she’d never found that part of a man’s body attractive. It was functional. And, frankly, a little weird-looking.

But Eli — he was just breath taking. He was all smooth, velvety skin over hard, unforgiving length. His size was a little daunting — she couldn’t quite fit her fingers all the way around him — but he was gorgeous.

She gave another experimental squeeze, and he groaned in that sexy guttural way he had when she’d done it the first time. When she slid her hand from the base to the plum-colored head, his hips kicked forward to follow her.

God, this made her feel powerful. Sexy.

She repeated the movement again, and this time, a single tear wept from the tip of his length. His groan was more desperate this time, but Abilene didn’t notice. All she could see was that glistening droplet.

Her mouth watered to taste it. To taste him.

Would he let her? She looked at his face and was struck by the expression he wore. His eyes were hooded and glazed. His lips were parted and wet, as though he’d been licking them while she had been focusing her attention elsewhere. His breaths were coming in pants

In a second, she knew he would let her do anything to him she wanted. And she wanted her mouth on him.

She began by kissing his chest while she gathered her courage. His breathing changed. When she moved down to his stomach, he brought a hand up to the back of her head.

“Abi …baby, what’re you — ”

She was about to lose her nerve, so she went for it. She closed her eyes and pressed a tentative, open-mouthed kiss where the droplet of moisture lay.

“
Fuck
,” Eli moaned harshly, his back arching off the bed, and his fingers tangling in her hair.

Abilene groaned from deep in her chest. God, he tasted …
amazing
. She licked her lips, then licked him with the flat of her tongue from base to tip, relishing every new flavor.

“I can’t …believe you’re — ” Eli was panting desperately. “Abilene …it’s so …
God
!”

He reached down and grabbed her jeans, tearing them the rest of the way off her legs. “I’m not coming without giving you this, too.” He grabbed her by the thighs and swung her around until her knees where planted on each side of his head.

Abilene panicked and tried to squirm away. He placed both hands on her ass. “Abi,
please
,” his hands squeezed as punctuation. “Let me taste you, too. I want to so badly.” He leaned his head up and placed a kiss on her panties where they covered her aching core.

Sensation shot through her, stronger than anything she’d ever felt. She arched her back into his kiss, sighing with pleasure. Her embarrassment began to fade, and she didn’t protest when Eli hooked one finger beneath the crotch of her panties to pull them aside.

“Oh,
shit
,” he murmured, and Abilene stiffened. Was something wrong? Was he turned off by what he saw? She renewed her struggles, and Eli shushed her and prevented her from moving away.

He brushed a finger over the folds he had pleasured earlier — intimate skin he now could see plainly — and she froze. “Abilene,” he began, “you’re the most exquisite woman I’ve ever seen.” He leaned in closer and blew a gentle stream of air over her moist flesh.

Abilene cried out. The pleasure was so intense that tears sprang to her eyes. She buried her face in his groin to steady herself. When he jumped beneath her, she remembered that she had a part to play in this, too.

It was the thought of putting her mouth on him once again that calmed her. She hadn’t gotten enough of him, and she relished the idea of getting to kiss and lick him some more.

She wrapped her hand around his base and took the tip of him into her mouth to suck lightly. It had the same effect on Eli as slapping the hind end of a horse. He jerked into motion, pressing his mouth over her swollen clit, pushing Abilene right up to the edge of orgasm.

All embarrassment vanished. This just felt right. Perfect. Molten hot.

She took more of him into her mouth, and when he groaned this time, she felt it vibrate against her. She undulated her hips, and he squeezed his hands encouragingly and licked her.

Things fell out of control. Abilene began to move her mouth at a frantic pace, the desperation she was feeling in the pit of her stomach manifesting itself in a frenzy of motion. Eli grunted and set his own brutal pace, his face pressing against her, his lips and tongue driving her to new heights. Talk was impossible, but her mind was screaming at her, telling her that she’d never felt anything like this, that Eli was changing everything, that she was falling for him, beginning to …
love
him.

Eli pulled his mouth away to groan, “Baby, you need to pull away — ” He tried to move away from her mouth, but she tightened her grip and took him more deeply. His whole body jerked, and his voice grew desperate. “Abi, I’m going to … .” She curled her upper body around his erection and moaned against him to let him know she wanted
all
of him. He cried out and buried his face between her thighs once again to plunge his stiffened tongue inside her.

The moment she felt him jet hotly at the back of her throat, she lost it, too. She ground against his face, stars flashing behind her eyes, as she swallowed everything he had to give her.

When she collapsed against him, her breaths harsh and ragged, he reached down to gather her into his arms, rotating her until she was nestled against his side with her head tucked under his chin.

She could hear his heart pounding and knew that her own was beating out a similar rhythm. He was holding her so tightly, yet his grip was gentle, caring. He pressed a kiss into her curls and squeezed her even tighter.

“Abilene, this is going to sound crazy — ” When she tried to sit up, he put a hand to her shoulder to prevent it. “We’ve only known each other for three days, but …I think I … . Something is making me … . I’m falling for you.”

She felt him wince at the words — the admittedly crazy words — and she brushed his hand aside and sat up despite his protests.

“You can’t mean that,” she whispered. He certainly
looked
like he meant it. A part of her was overjoyed with his confession, another part was offended that he hadn’t been able to say it without wincing, and the biggest part was overwhelmed with a sense of foreboding.

“I think it’s time we had no more secrets between us,” he said, his brow furrowing in resignation. And then he said the words that make every woman’s heart stop.

“Abilene, I have something to tell you.”

Abilene watched in mute apprehension as Eli extricated himself from her arms, pulled his pants back up, and moved to the other bed. She immediately felt cold and missed his closeness, but she was more worried by his sudden change in mood.

He settled himself on the edge of the opposing bed, facing her, his elbows on his knees. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I need to tell you why I was in that medical facility,” he said to the floor between his feet.

Abilene sat up and backed up to the headboard. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs to clasp her hands in front of her shins. She desperately wished her pants were within arm’s reach; the intimacy of her lack of clothes felt out-of-place.

“Didn’t you already tell me why you were there?” she asked, not quite wanting to dreg up the story she hadn’t believed entirely in the first place.

Eli didn’t respond right away.

“Eli,” Abilene made her voice stern. “What didn’t you tell me?” She had a sick feeling in her stomach.

He scrubbed a hand down the front of his face and straightened. “I told you I was a prisoner, but I didn’t tell you why.” He exhaled and looked her in the eye. “Abilene, I was a test subject for the fruit from the Tree of Everlasting Life.”

She blinked at him.
The …Tree of Everlasting Life?
He sat for several seconds, letting her digest what he’d just said. “You mean, like from that
story
you made me tell the first night?” she asked, emphasizing the word
story
with a heavy dose of disbelief.

He sighed, her reaction obviously what he had expected. “Yes, Abilene, like from the
story
. Which, I might add, a good deal of the world’s population believes was recorded from historical
fact
.”

Yeah, the uneducated, religious part of the world’s population
. “Eli — ” she began, but had to stop. The sick feeling in her stomach was growing. She suddenly didn’t care if she had to walk to Alaska to get her pants, she couldn’t stand to be undressed in front of him anymore. She scrambled from her spot at the headboard to snatch her pants from the floor between the beds. She pulled them on in jerky movements, then resumed her defensive pose against the headboard once again. Eli watched the proceedings with resignation in his eyes.

When the heavy silence between them grew too uncomfortable to bear, Abilene tried speaking again. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” She couldn’t look at him.

“Are you willing to listen to the whole story?” he asked.

She wasn’t, but she felt her head nodding anyway.

“Okay, I’ll start at the beginning,” he said, almost to himself. But then he remained quiet. Finally, she forced her eyes to his face. His expression was imploring, but defiant. “Just, try to keep an open mind,” he admonished.

She nodded again.

“You know we’ve been at war in the Middle East for decades. Well, right after 9/11, rumors began to circulate that some American soldiers had stumbled upon what they swore were the remains of the Garden of Eden.”

He laughed without humor. “Everyone thought they were crazy. It became this huge joke among those of us stationed in Afghanistan. I mean, come on, the Garden of Eden in the middle of the fucking desert?” He shook his head, then shrugged. “But the rumors reached the right ears in Washington. A year later, a small troop of us were ordered to excavate the site those soldiers marked for us on a map.”

He seemed to get caught up in the story. “We didn’t mind. By that time, the fervor of the American public after 9/11 had died down. We weren’t heroes anymore, just invaders. We jumped at the chance to break from our boring, everyday duties.”

His eyes flashed and he clenched his fists. “But the moment we pulled up to the site, every single one of us knew — ” He swallowed. “Abilene, it just
felt
different.

“There were only five of us, and we just sat in that Humvee, staring at each other, no one willing to say what each of us was thinking: that the rumors might have been true. That we were about to step foot in the
Garden of Eden
.

“I don’t remember who got out first, but we all just sort of
followed
this pull. It was almost like the trees were tugging us toward them.”

Trees?
Abilene’s mind latched on to that word. Plural. As in, more than one.

Eli continued, “We could definitely tell we were in the remnants of a garden, the biggest garden any of us could ever imagine. We could make out the skeletons of different plots — flowers, vines, vegetables. It looked like a burned out, scorched — ” Eli paused to search for a word. “
Graveyard
.”

He took a deep breath. “And then we came to the center of the garden. Instead of sand, we were standing on dry, cracked mud. It crumbled under our boots. And poking up through the cracks like they had been buried?” His voice got very quiet. “The tips of tree branches.”