Note: I had a few ideas after Sunday's episode to try to fix (or at least explain) that train wreck, but exams and papers kept me busy for a bit. I finally got to write this at 3-4am, so please forgive any mistakes.
He'd be lying if he said it didn't bother him. In fact, after it had settled in, it downright pissed him off.
Family. Family?
Now if that didn't set some boundaries...
He knew they'd come to an agreement. Well, she had come to the agreement. They were friends. Family. A part of a team. She needed it right now amid doubt and supposedly misplaced trust, and he would give her anything.
But loving him like family? She was reverting back to three, maybe four, years ago, when untested sexual tension pervaded the air – when she'd trusted him with her life but apparently not her heart, when someone who would leave her scared her less than someone who would love her.
It screamed defense mechanism. And he was hell bent on breaching her defenses.
That was exactly what he was doing as he swung his car into her driveway and slid it to a hasty stop right next to hers. After he'd rung the doorbell, she was standing before him in a matter of moments looking utterly unprepared to see him. She tugged the light robe shut over her low-cut chemise at the sight of him, not because she was uncomfortable but because it would be too comfortable – for both of them.
Her brows furrowed questioningly, but she hadn't been able to get her confused, "Hey," out before he stepped into her doorway, gripped the back of her neck, and tugged her lips to his. He kissed her hard, mouth hot and insistent against hers as she stumbled in surprise.
She was pushing back at him, struggling for solid ground until she found exactly that in his touch. His fingers, still firm and determined, had slipped into her hair, and his lips had slid into that perfect spot against hers where their mouths just melded together. It was overwhelmingly familiar, both wonderfully suffocating and like taking a breath of saturated air. She let her eyes drop for a moment to take it in. Suddenly gaining control became a halfhearted attempt.
The hands that had been pushing at his chest were now taking up fistfuls of his grey tee. And when he guided her inside to kick the door closed, he drew kisses from her lips instead of protests. She sighed into his mouth and then parted her lips for him, immediately greeted with a scrape of teeth and tongue against her bottom lip as he hurriedly pushed for more.
She had to press up onto the tips of her toes to run her hands over his toned shoulders and secure them at the back of his neck. His had made a heated trek down to her waist, tucking her body closer to his as he urged her back toward the nearest surface. She let him have his way, let him steal deep kiss after deep kiss from her lips until they'd become a blur of lips and tongue and longing.
He lowered down slightly until he could cup the back of her thigh, gently forceful as he pushed silky material aside. And then his fingers pressed into her skin, wanting, needing, as he lifted her up onto the little hall table by the wall. Her body arched against his and he leaned into her, hands gripping creamy skin as he tried to quell the ache inside him.
He tore his lips from hers, somehow just as desperately, and rested his forehead against hers while he licked his lips. His eyes, dark and angry, finally met hers in a haze of confusion and denial.
"Like family?" he questioned, fingers dancing over lace and up to the hollow of her hip. He needed to make it bother her, too.
She screwed her eyes shut and breathed in a hiss of air. Her hands dropped away from his skin.
But his pressed further, sinking into her skin as he gripped her hip. She looked away.
"Calleigh," he muttered, and her name sounded sharp on his lips. Foreign.
Her eyes flitted over his demanding features in silence and he sighed in frustration. Dropping his lips to her skin, he kissed her shoulder just as hard, lips trailing down her chest until he was leaving kisses and nips over the swell of her breast.
"Like family," he repeated, and that time it made her squirm beneath his touch.
"Eric," she warned, moving her body away because she couldn't – wouldn't – take back her words. It would mean giving up her hold on this, on her carefully constructed world of overrated simplicity and disguised emotions. He would make her vulnerable and conflicted, and she hated that.
"You love me like family." He pushed the robe off her shoulders and it cascaded over the table before falling to the floor.
"No," she finally insisted through gritted teeth. But as her eyes met his again she was less angry, more open and hurting.
He'd thought it would make him feel better, but the pained way it had fallen from her lips had him resting his forehead to hers, cradling her body against his. She sighed again and, threading her hands together at the base of his neck, drew his lips down to hers.
He was slow this time. Gentle.
She let out a relieved and terrified breath, dropping her hands to his sides.
No, she thought again, fingers gliding over the ridges of his abdomen. I just love you.