Chapter 33 Elsie
ELSIE
My head stays tucked against Wells’ chest as I ask, “Would you sleep with me tonight? In the Wisteria Suite?”
He traces the edge of my lower lip with his thumb, then tilts my chin. “Not in your room?”
“My grandmother kept that suite untouched for me,” I tell him. “I know she did. It used to be my favorite, back when I was little. I think she hoped I’d come back and want it again. And I do. I just haven’t had the nerve to go inside.” My voice catches. “I’m scared it won’t feel like mine anymore.”
“It will.”
“Would you come with me, anyway?”
He smiles, slow and sure. “I’ll go wherever you go, Elsie.”
“We don’t have to . . . I mean, we can just sleep.”
His brow lifts, thumb stroking across my mouth. “You think that’s what I want?”
My pulse trips. “I—no?”
“I want to see you take what’s already yours, Els. I want to watch you walk into that room like it belongs to you. And then I want you to claim me, too.”
My knees almost buckle. “Is that right?”
One hand cups my jaw, the other the back of my neck, cradling me like something cherished.
“You asked me to sleep with you like it’s a favor, but I’ve been waiting.
I’ve been thinking. About you, about the sounds you make when you’re trying not to want me.
Wondering what it’ll feel like when you finally stop fighting it. ”
Something in me gives way, certain and unafraid.
“Then come with me.”
Upstairs, the Wisteria Suite waits for us at the end of the hall. The wallpaper is pale as old porcelain, patterned with faint vines and ghost blossoms. The bed is turned down, linens crisp, windows latched tight to shut out the chill.
I step inside first, heart hammering. Wells follows, shutting the door behind us.
I stop at the foot of the bed, palms open at my sides. His shadow spills over me as he comes closer, so close his warmth seeps through my sweater.
He skims his fingers up my arms from elbow to shoulder. His palms come to rest at the base of my neck, thumbs stroking the hollow space just there.
“This room’s yours,” he murmurs. “This whole fucking place is. And so am I.”
With a gentle brush, he moves a bundle of curls away from my neck. When he kisses the spot below my ear, my head tilts against his shoulder. His hands find the hem of my sweater, palms warm against my ribs.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I’m nervous.”
“We’ve done this before.” His hands flatten against my bare skin. “But not like this, not here.” He turns me to face him. His eyes are dark and fixed as he adds, “I’ve been fucking starving for you, Elsie.”
When I don’t move, he catches my wrist, brings my hand to his chest, presses it over his heart. It’s racing as hard as mine.
“It’s not just you,” he says. “You feel how wrecked I am for you? I told you, baby, you take me apart.”
“Good thing,” I say shakily. “I wouldn’t want to suffer alone.”
Without a word, he sinks to his knees in front of me and presses his face to my stomach. Not just to kiss, but to breathe me in, to rest there like he’s finally made it home after a long walk in the cold.
His hands cradle my waist, fingers flexing.
“I think about you all the time,” he murmurs, mouth brushing over my sternum. “When I’m alone. When I’m fixing something, or laying awake at night, or hearing the creak of the stairs. You’re everywhere in this house. In me.”
He kisses the place where my heart beats—once, then again—slow and sure, like he’s trying to map the rhythm into memory. The warmth of it ripples through me, quiet and devastating. It feels like being known.
I cup the back of his head, fingers threading into his golden hair. “Then let me keep you.”
He lifts the hem of my sweater again. This time, I help, arms raised, the knit skimming up and over. The air kisses my skin, and then so does he—gentle presses of his mouth along my collarbone, the slope of my shoulder, the tender hollow at the base of my throat.
He peels away the rest of my layers with a patience that makes my pulse stutter. Buttons slipped. Zippers eased. A low sound of approval when I shiver against his touch.
“Look at you,” he says roughly. “You’re mine to look at. And I’m yours to own.”
“Say it again,” I whisper.
“I’m yours,” he says, steadier now. And the room seems to echo it back. The curtains part ever so slightly, moonlight stretching across the floor.
I tug him closer and work clumsy fingers at his shirt until it’s open, then gone. I smooth my palms over his shoulders, down his chest, greedy for heat, for the slide and flex of solid muscle.
He’s firm in a way that speaks of physical labor. Broad across the chest, thick through the arms, built by years of hauling wood and lifting beams instead of lifting weights.
A body made for me to hold on to.
His hands map mine, too—spine, hip, the soft place at my waist that makes me gasp, and he follows the sound like a compass. When the back of my knees meet the bed, he breaks our kiss only to look at me properly.
I lie back, and he follows, braced on one forearm, the other hand smoothing down my thigh. His mouth trails a line lower, lower, across my stomach and then the inside of my knee. It’s the sort of slow worship that has me arching helplessly into the sheets.
He meets my eyes and holds them, dark and intent.
“Breathe,” he whispers. “I want you soft and wet and ready for me.”
I do what he says. One slow inhale, and then a ragged exhale through my mouth.
I’m still trembling—not from nerves now, but from anticipation, from the charged awareness of his hands on my skin, the warmth of his breath, the steadiness in his gaze. There’s nothing rushed about the way he moves as he kisses down the line of my body.
“Wells,” I say, and I don’t recognize my own voice—low, pleading, sure. “Please.”
“Tell me what you want,” he says. “Remember, Els. This time, it’s not one and only. It’s forever and a day more. What do you need from me?”
“You,” I whisper. “All of it. Everything you can give me.”
When he settles between my thighs, I go still. His palms span my hips, anchoring me to the mattress, and then his mouth is on me. He parts my folds, licks into me like he’s parched, and I’m the only thing that could ever slake it.
The first long sweep of his tongue makes me gasp.
The second has me clutching at the sheets.
The third—paired with the slow, curling press of two thick fingers—breaks me open.
He works me with painstaking control, groaning low when I arch into his mouth. It makes me feel like my pleasure is the only thing he’s ever wanted. My unraveling is the only thing he seeks.
His eyes flick up, locking on mine, and there’s something wildly indecent and wickedly reverent there. He doesn’t stop pumping and licking until I’m shaking, slick, and helpless, every muscle tensed toward the finish.
I’m lost in the warm heat of his mouth, the steady drag of his fingers, the way his tongue circles and flicks and presses until I’m unraveling in his hands. When it finally crests, I desperately cry out for him, and he doesn’t stop until I’m fully spent.
He thoroughly kisses his way back up my body. My skin is damp, my pulse wild. He presses his lips to my ribs, my shoulder, the hollow of my throat, then finally my mouth.
I taste salt and sweetness, something warm and heady and real.
“Elsie,” he breathes against my lips. “Let me take you apart, too. Let me wreck you.”
“Only if you promise to put me back together,” I whisper.
He smiles softly. “That’s the whole fuckin’ point.”
He shifts us gently, lays me back against the pillows, and when I reach for him, he slips inside me with one slow, seamless stroke. My breath catches. He groans, hands braced on either side of me, eyes fluttering shut.
The sensation is too much. The sight of him is almost holy. He stays still for a beat, buried deep, his forehead pressed to mine.
When he kisses me again, slow and deep and dizzying, I start to move. I want to be on top. I’ve never done that before, not really. I’ve always let the man lead, let him take what he wanted until it was over. But this time, I want to know what it feels like to choose.
It’s like he knows that about me. He catches my hips and rolls us, settles me over him. My thighs bracket his, hands splayed on his chest as I start to ride. His head falls back with a raw sound, a low, choked-off moan that makes me clench around him.
“God, look at you,” he pants. “Prettiest fuckin’ girl I’ve ever seen.”
I smile through the burn, through the ache and stretch and want. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing, but I think he knows that, too. And he doesn’t laugh or correct me. He watches, gaze warm and hungry, like he’d follow me anywhere.
He grips my hips, then slides one hand to my backside, guiding me, helping me find the rhythm that makes me gasp. I feel every inch of him—how deep he is, how perfectly we fit. When I falter, he brings my hands to my own breasts, encourages me to touch myself, to see myself the way he sees me.
“You’re in charge, baby,” he says roughly. “Claim me.”
I ride him until my legs shake, until I’m breathless and blushed and soaking. When I come, it’s with a helpless cry, and he follows with a groan, hips jerking while he spills inside.
I collapse against his chest, and he holds me close. We stay like that, tangled and quiet, his arms around me, his cock still thick and twitching inside.
“I like you begging,” I murmur into his collarbone. “Makes it easier to forgive you.”
He laughs, hoarse and disbelieving. “I wasn’t begging.”
“You definitely were.”
“You were the one whimpering and shaking.”
He shifts beneath me, and I feel him growing hard again.
I lift my head and arch a brow. “Already?”
“You’ve really got no idea how much I needed this. Needed you.”
“Prove it.”
He flips me onto my stomach, hikes my hips up, and slides back in like he never left.
I’m still aching from the first time—sore in that delicious, swollen way that makes me tremble as he fills me again, thick and hot and so deep it feels like he could live there.
Wouldn’t that be something? If we could stay like this, two bodies held in a single breath.
I pulse around him, greedy and stretched, and all I can think is don’t stop, don’t leave, don’t ever let me go. But all I can do is gasp and writhe beneath him.
His hand curls around my throat. The other anchors my hip. It’s slow and deep and adoring. It’s exactly the way I didn’t know I needed to be touched. Exactly the way I want to be loved.
His breath stutters near my ear. “God, Elsie. You feel like home.”
“So do you.”
Every movement of his hips is a promise. Every thrust tells me to stay. And I do. I take all of him, braced and burning, fingers twisted in the sheets. This time, I don’t just give him my body for a night.
I promise him everything. Forever.