CHAPTER EIGHT || ELI
Desire erased all logic the moment Nicolas’s lips met mine.
He kissed me with a hunger unlike anything I’d ever experienced—like he wanted to consume me.
His lips were soft and warm, his tongue demanding as it met mine—but it was the desperation in him that melted the last of my resistance.
As though he were a drowning man, clamoring for air, and I was the lifeline keeping him from sinking.
I could practically feel it coiled through every part of him, and it jerked something free in my chest too.
Because I understood. I felt it too. Like I’d been missing him for a thousand years, but hadn’t known it until now.
I stripped Cole’s shirt off him and threw it on the floor. Then I went for his belt. It came undone, and then I popped the button on his pants and slipped the zipper down. Cole hardly seemed to notice. He was too intent on kissing me.
Nicolas got my pants down too, much faster than I had done his, all the while kissing me with that frantic desperation.
A flash of memory surged—of a deep stone chamber with walls, floor, and ceiling of rock, torchlight etching shadows across Nicolas’s face.
His chest rose and fell beneath an emerald-green tunic, his cheeks flushed, lips swollen from kissing, his shaggy golden hair slightly mussed.
We touched each other in the half-darkness.
It only lasted an instant, but it was so vivid I might have been in two places at once.
When I came back to myself, he was watching me closely, breathing hard, his eyes dark with emotion.
“Sorry,” he whispered, almost as if speaking to himself. “Foolish of me.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it didn’t matter.
“Kiss me again,” I demanded, my voice rough.
Nicolas’s lips curved, and he arched a brow before stepping forward. “I have a better idea.”
Then he wrapped his hand around my cock. His other arm encircled my waist so I couldn’t move away, even if I wanted to. I let out a groan as he began working me with his hand, and I bucked against him, desperate for more friction.
“Nicolas,” I breathed, as he picked up the pace. “Nicolas, fuck. Yes, yes.”
My palm found his cock, which was leaking a steady stream of precum, and I began to stroke him the same way, loving the feel of him in my hand. I slipped my other arm around his waist, pinning his body to mine the way he’d done to me.
His eyes slid halfway shut and he let out a soft, needy gasp.
Satisfaction rumbled through me. It had clearly been a while since anyone manhandled him back, and he liked it—I could tell. His lips parted and he moaned as I worked him toward his climax.
He copied my rhythm exactly and I couldn’t stop myself from bucking against him, needing more of that delicious friction. My eyes were fixed on his delicate, beautiful mouth. What would those lips look like wrapped around my cock?
What would it feel like, plunging into his mouth? Or perhaps my lips around him, instead. Could I make him lose control and rut into me? Would he make me gag on his hardness until my eyes watered and my own cock was ready to blow?
The thought alone brought my orgasm on out of fucking nowhere. I let out a surprised sound, somewhere between a groan and a shout, my whole body locking up.
Nicolas dropped to his knees and took me in his mouth as I came, letting me shoot rope after rope of hot cum down his throat. That delicate, pretty mouth looked incredible with my cock between his lips—and the sensation of being buried inside all that warm wetness was almost too much.
He jerked his own cock furiously, clearly close.
“Stand,” I ground out, gripping his shoulder and popping him off my cock. He let me, rising to his feet.
His voice was husky, eyes hooded with lust, and he didn’t stop jerking himself for an instant. “What are you—”
It was my turn to drop to my knees.
“Oh,” he breathed. His eyes slid halfway closed, voice turning into a soft whine as he continued stroking himself. “I’m getting close.”
Then his body tensed, just like mine had, and he let out a sharp moan as he came.
Without hesitation, I put my lips around his cock and took him all the way to the base. He bucked against me, fingers threading through my hair, letting out another strangled moan as he shot his load down my throat.
I swallowed without missing a beat. Not something I usually did for most guys—but for Nicolas, it was impossible not to want to.
He bucked again, gasping, as I dragged my tongue along the underside of his shaft on the way back up.
Then I pulled off, wrapped a hand around his cock, and stroked him a few more times until another bead of white gathered at the tip.
I licked it off, savoring the saltiness, the faint sweetness, the taste of Nicolas.
“You’re more dangerous than I thought,” Nicolas said as I rose. His lips curved into a coy smile, meeting my gaze with those strange electric-blue eyes. “I like it.”
I pulled him in for another kiss. He let me—but this one was slower, less desperate. Oddly tender. Almost vulnerable.
“Eli,” he breathed, stepping back suddenly, eyes going wide. Then he turned away with a startled laugh. “Fuck. That hasn’t happened on its own before. I’m usually more in control.”
I had no idea what that meant—or why he lifted a hand to his mouth, hiding his face. But maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nicolas was touch-starved, desperate for contact, for connection. He’d just told me that without saying a word about it.
“When was the last time you let anyone touch you like that?” I asked quietly.
He turned to me, his expression strange. “Like that?” He gave another breathless laugh. “It’s been a long time, Eli.”
That was true. I could hear it in his voice.
“You moved in next door,” I whispered, watching him. I knew I should be afraid, but I wasn’t. “And you can move impossibly fast. And I remember you. I’ve never met you, but I have these memories of you—and it’s like it was yesterday.”
Nicolas froze.
“Who are you?” I asked again. My voice lacked heat, carrying only a desperate, lost note I didn’t like but couldn’t suppress.
“Good God,” Nicolas whispered, staring at me, stricken. “You’re the most beguiling mix of strength and vulnerability, aren’t you?”
“I know the fucking feeling,” I shot back, heart in my throat. “Nicolas, I need honesty from you.”
He let out another startled laugh. “I don’t know if I can do that.” He paused, shaking his head, his gaze haunted as it locked with mine. “And you don’t understand how funny that is. Because I always tell the truth. Always.”
“Then why can’t you give that to me now?”
His eyes closed and he swallowed hard, oddly emotional, like my words were somehow difficult to hear.
And when he opened his eyes again, his expression was more open and vulnerable than I had ever seen it.
“Because I’m afraid of scaring you,” he admitted softly.
“I haven’t been afraid of anything in a very long time, but I can safely say that I’m afraid of that. ”
Once more, I somehow knew he was telling the absolute truth.
But it was maddening, because his words made no rational sense.
He barely knew me. Yet there was a strange familiarity I felt with him too—something I couldn’t explain.
As if I had been waiting for him my entire life.
Like part of me had always been tense and now that he was here, close enough to touch, that tension had abruptly vanished.
As though his nearness meant I could finally relax.
It was insanity. This was insanity.
But it was also true.
The idea that Nicolas was afraid of me—afraid that he might accidentally hurt me in a way he couldn’t ever take back—shifted something deep in my chest. It was obvious he wasn’t used to fear.
And yes, I had been right: he wasn’t used to being touched either, even though he clearly needed it.
And he certainly wasn’t used to giving someone honesty when it might actually cost him something real.
One truth snapped into place for me with absolute certainty: Nicolas had been alone for a very long time.
Somehow—and perhaps it was the peak of my newfound madness—that realization wiped everything else away.
I retrieved my pants from the floor and pulled them on.
Nicolas watched me with a strange look. I got the impression there was an internal battle raging within him—as though half of him hoped I would tell him off and leave, but the other half wanted to stop me, to do anything to keep me. Maybe he wanted both equally.
But after a moment, he copied me, pulling his pants back up and re-fastening his belt.
“Eli, look, I understand if you need to—”
“Stop talking.” I didn’t say it harshly, but his lips snapped shut, and I could see the fear in his eyes again. Once more, raw emotion twisted through my chest, and I wasn’t sure what I was about to do until I did it.
I stepped forward and took him by the hand. His skin was smooth and warm against mine. And even though it shouldn’t have, it felt right.
He looked down, staring at our joined hands in confusion. “Eli—”
“Nicolas, it’s okay.”
I wasn’t sure what I meant by okay. Was it okay that he had dropped into my life and taken over every single one of my thoughts?
Was it okay that he had bought the house next door and moved in with impossible speed?
That he’d admitted to following me, to stalking me?
That he couldn’t explain any of it—but was worried his honesty might frighten me away?
None of that was actually okay, but it could wait. I wasn’t letting him off the hook forever, but I could for now.
His mouth snapped shut again and he looked back up at me, abruptly afraid all over again.
But it wasn’t the same fear—the dread that he might drive me off.
It was the more ordinary kind: the fear that comes from letting another person care for you, from opening your heart when it’s been closed for way too long.
I led him to the bed. Later, I’d probably wonder how he’d gotten it there—and assembled—so quickly. For now, in this strange and surreal moment of stolen intimacy, it didn’t matter.
Instead of doing something rational—like asking any of the million questions I had for him—I dropped his hand and sat on the mattress. Then I patted the space beside me. “Nicolas.”
He watched me a moment longer, his lower lip quivering, his eyes still filled with that same fear. It hadn’t gone away.
But then he did the bravest thing I’d seen him do yet. He joined me on the bed.
Wordlessly, I pulled him close, cradling him in my arms, his back to my chest. He let me spoon him, his lips parting slightly, his eyes sliding shut.
And then, with neither of us speaking at all, I held him in silence.
I knew he needed it. He needed my touch.
He needed me to hold him and remind him that something good and simple and pure could still exist. And I needed it too.
I didn’t know how I knew any of that, but I knew it was true.
At first, I thought he might be holding his breath, afraid to move a muscle.
But moments turned to minutes, and the minutes began to add up, and Nicolas still hadn’t breathed. There was no telltale pulse rushing blood through his veins. Yet he was still warm, solid, and trembling ever so slightly in my arms.
And after a very long time, with him so near that the years of loneliness and isolation melted away as if they’d never existed, I became deeply aware of what I had somehow known all along.
It wasn’t possible. And it certainly wasn’t rational. But it was still true. Whatever Nicolas was, I knew with absolute certainty what he wasn’t.
He wasn’t human.