“Comfy,” he declared.
“Get off the bed, Elias, and try to behave yourself, for once.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” he quipped.
I struggled to hide my smile, but Caroline was too busy casting him a disparaging look to notice anyway.
“It’s freezing in here,” she declared suddenly, eyeing the open doors to the patio for a moment before she moved into the room.
My heart leapt into my throat.
“No, Caroline, honestly, don’t worry, I’m hot!” The words tumbled out of my mouth, but she was already across the room, pushing the gently flapping curtains aside.
She peeked out onto the balcony and my heart stopped.
Had Tiernan got down in time or was he pressed against the wall out there? Would she spot him sprinting across the grounds like a cat burglar who had robbed my virtue?
But no, she was already pulling the doors closed and adjusting the curtains.
A sigh leaked out the side of my mouth and every muscle in my body relaxed at once.
“You’ll send a draft through the entire house, Bianca,” she chastised me, knocking Elias’s shoes off my bed with swat as she walked back to the door. “I expect this to remain open at all times and if my nephew tries anything untoward, please call for help.”
She paused on her way out then shot Elias a cool glance. “Though, I very much doubt you’re his type. Curfew is ten pm, be gone before then.”
With a swish of smooth blonde hair, she was gone, the clack of her designer heels fading down the hall.
I blinked after her, still discombobulated from the craziness of the last hour.
Elias’s husky chuckle was the only thing that finally jerked me out of my haze. I turned to face him to see him holding up my torn underwear on the edge of one shoe. His brows were raised, eyes wide as he laughed.
“I never would have taken you for the kind of girl to rip off her own underwear,” he teased.
Heat poured through me, setting my skin on fire. “I didn’t.”
I stalked over and snatched the incriminating scrap of lace from him before shoving it in my pocket. He was still laughing, a tear forming in his eye that he dabbed away.
“Shut up, Elias,” I ordered, but his humor was catching and I found myself shaking my head as I chuckled. “Okay, okay, it’s funny.”
“It’s hilarious,” he declared. “I wish Caroline had seen them.”
“Um, no.”
He laughed at me again before laying back on my bed and tapping the spot beside him. “Oh relax, Bianca, she didn’t. I’m just saying, it would do her some good to realize women can be lovers not just fighters, you know?”
“No, and I don’t think I want to talk about Caroline’s sex life.” I shivered. “Or mine, for that matter.”
“Ah, so you had a guy in your room?” he asked, and a caught an edge of something in his tone. Something hard and bright.
I tucked my hair behind my ears and got onto the bed with him even though I didn’t relax back against the array of oyster silk pillows.
“Maybe,” I said hesitantly. “What would you say if I had?”
Elias studied my face for a long moment before sighing and looking up at the canopy. “I don’t know. Lucky bastard, I guess.” He glanced at me. “It is a boy, yeah?”
I nodded, though ‘boy’ didn’t exactly suit the thirty-year-old shady billionaire that was Tiernan Morelli.
“You shouldn’t assume,” he said in explanation.
“Do you like…boys?” I asked, because I’d wondered sometimes if he was gay, if that might be why Caroline had such a problem with him.
“Sure,” he agreed with a flippant shrug. “I like girls too.”
“Oh.” That made sense, it was only that Elias was so at ease with it that shocked me for a moment. He was a seventeen-year-old guy in a fairly traditional family. “That’s cool.”
He peered at me from under a lock of blond hair that fell into his eyes. It was obvious some of his coolness was an act, because he seemed relieved by my nonchalance. “Well, that’s a better reaction than it’s garnered before.”
I shrugged. “I don’t hate people for who they love.”
Besides, who was I to judge?
I’d just had rough sex with my family’s arch nemesis under their very roof.
I had no moral high ground to stand on, especially when the rug burns on my ass still stung as a pleasant reminder of my sins.
“That’s a nice sentiment,” he said, bitterness creeping into his tone.
I sighed, reaching out to squeeze his shin. “Truly, Elias. You’ve been nothing but a friend to me. Why would that change now?”
His eyes shone with moisture, round and vibrant blue like marbles. “You’re a good person, you know that? Everyone in the damn family pretends to be good, but they’re not. Not when it counts. You know what Caroline said when her watchdog Ronan found me fucking a man and woman together one day? That if I didn’t break it off with them, if I didn’t toe the line and end up marrying a respectable woman one day, I’d be disinherited and erased from the family.”