Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I’ll bring my tool belt up here,” he said with a chuckle. “The super here is useless.”
“Isn’t the super your cousin?” I said, vaguely remembering Juno saying such a thing.
“That’s how I know he’s useless!” Phil shot back. We walked back to the writers’ room and he tugged at the door, inspected the frame. “Yeah, I can shave a bit off the bottom here, perhaps oil the hinges, I’ll fix it up.”
“There’s probably no point,” I said sadly. “I’m leaving next week. This will be a storage closet again soon enough.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he said politely. “But I’ll still fix this. No point giving up on it.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I said, my insides giving a flip.
Phil shot me an odd look, then left me to it.
I finished off my proofing to the sounds of him ordering his team to finish up and a little later he popped his head in to say goodbye, promising to come back and sort the sticky door next week.
I toiled on and, as midnight approached, I hit ‘save’ triumphantly then emailed the final copy to RJ and Sadie.
Crazy to think that a few weeks ago I’d emailed RJ about all the things I’d change about his script and now here I was sending him the final, polished version.
As I pondered the full-circle moment, I heard the lift ping again and I frowned.
Had Phil forgotten something? He and his team always did an amazing clean; there was no way he’d have missed a spot.
Or perhaps he’d decided to fix the door now and not wait until next week. I got up, stretching my tired body.
“Phil?” I called. “Don’t worry, it’s really not that bad, see, you just have to give it a good hard yank and it—” I grunted as I gave the door a big pull and it scraped open another foot.
But it wasn’t Phil standing the other side of the door. It was Elliot, chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon, hair sodden and clinging to his skull.
“Elliot, what are you—”
He stepped closer. “We never finished our conversation.”
“It’s still raining.” I slow-clapped myself internally. That was the best thing I could come up with?
“Um, yeah,” he said, looking down at his damp clothes. “Traffic’s bad, so I ended up jumping out of the Uber to run the last five blocks.”
“In the … with all the rain.” Someone gag me. “I mean … are you okay?”
“No, I’m not.” He swallowed audibly.
And that was my fault. “Elliot, I’m s—”
“I need to say something,” he said forcefully. “I know you’re scared and that you didn’t expect this thing with me, but it’s happened and I’m not sorry.”
His tone was severe, but his eyes were endless pools I couldn’t look away from, a mind-muddling combination. “I never said you should – I mean, I’m not—”
“Lucie.” Elliot stepped forward again, rivulets of rain tracing paths down his face. “I have to tell you something important.” His strong hands cupped my face, and I held my breath, ready to absorb this seminal truth. “Independence Day is a modern classic.”
For a moment, I froze. That was not what I had expected to hear when I’d opened the door to see him standing there. “Ind— what?”
Elliot nodded slowly and seriously. “As an ode to nineties American culture, a symbol of people uniting across class and race divides to save the world, it is a vital message.” He shook his head in awe. “But, more importantly than that, it’s a fucking good time.”
For some stupid reason, tears sprung to my eyes.
He’d watched my favorite movie, despite everything I’d said to him in that awful argument, despite not answering my calls and texts.
Elliot watching a cheesy action movie he’d once sworn to avoid was possibly the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me. “I told you,” I said with a wet laugh.
“And you were right,” he said ruefully. He pulled me against him, chipping away at the last iota of my effort to do the right thing. “I was wrong.” He frowned. “About that. But I’m not wrong about you. About us.”
I could feel myself falling, every vestige of control slipping from my grasp. “I’m just being—”
He tsked. “Practical, I know. But what I’m telling you is, if you’re a risk, Lucie Clifton, you’re one worth taking. And I don’t care what you say—”
“Stop talking,” I ordered. “Stop talking and kiss me again.”
Elliot’s kiss was fierce and hard, his hands raking through my hair as I tasted sugar and rainwater on his lips.
There was no holding back, all caution thrown aside.
I wanted to give him everything, no matter what it cost me.
Melded, we staggered backwards into the writers’ room, our momentum halted when the backs of my legs collided with our desk.
Elliot groaned into my mouth, cupped my behind and scooped me up onto the desk’s surface, where he settled between my thighs.
His insistent lips blazed a trail from my mouth to my neck and back again, the combination of his soft lips and faint stubble against the sensitive skin making me tremble with pleasure.
Then his hands were under my shirt, snaking up my sides until they reached my breasts. His touch was cool and damp from the rain, but his moan was primal as his thumbs brushed the lace covering my skin.
Emboldened, I pulled back from his kiss, reveling at the way his eyes greedily lit up as I slowly undid the buttons on my shirt and let it slide down my shoulders to reveal the delicate bra underneath.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed.
I reached around and unhooked the bra, pushing the straps down my arms. When the underwear finally came away, he let out a low groan of appreciation and dipped his head to nuzzle me, and when his tongue touched my nipple, it was like lightning hitting the most sensitive and secret parts of me I had yet to name.
I fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and he grinned wickedly, pulling it over his head. He thought I was beautiful? Elliot Fox looked like he’d been sculpted by a master. He placed a hand either side of my hips and dipped his head to kiss me again, his knee working its way between my thighs.
“You know,” he murmured against my lips, “how much I have thought about your body? How I’ve pictured this?
” He leaned into me, pushing so I lay back on the table.
“How I’ve been wanting to do this?” His hand flicked the fly of my jeans open and slipped under the waistband of my knickers.
I was so hungry for him; I didn’t care about anything else.
I ground against the heel of his hand, stars momentarily clouding my vision.
Elliot tilted his head back so he could watch my face as I took my pleasure and that just turned me on even more.
Elliot moved his hand, and then his fingers were inside me, strong but gentle.
His face contorted with need as he felt just how ready for him I was.
I gripped his wrist to guide him as I slowly but certainly lost my mind, my body flowing loose, like liquid.
It was like that, laid across our shared desk that Elliot made me come, harder than I’d thought possible, watching me with eyes heavy-lidded with desire.
“Fuck, Lucie.” He picked me up, his boxer’s hands wonderfully rough against the bare skin of my back.
Still kissing, he carried me with ease around the table, his destination the battered sofa at the other side of the room, but I was impatient and rubbed against the thick ridge in his jeans, sending him staggering into the office door with a heavy thud.
“Shit!” I pulled away from his kiss. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” He winced.
“Put me down.” I slid down his body and checked his back, where I could see a small red mark level with his hip. I brushed my lips against it. “I think you’ll survive.”
“I think so too.” His hand found my chin and he tugged my face to meet his in a kiss so tender tears sprung to my eyes. “Hey.” He pulled back, looked at me. “What’s— You’re shaking.”
He was right – suddenly, I was trembling, head to toe.
Elliot wrapped me in his strong arms, and I could feel his heart beating steady against my naked skin.
It was fear, I realized, but a good kind of fear, a fear that told me I actually cared about getting this right.
I didn’t want to rush through the foreplay and get out of the door, back to my life, I wanted to prolong this. I wanted to stay.
Just then the phone on reception rang, startling us, Elliot even banging his head against the door. As the call went to voicemail, he and I looked at each other from the comfort of our embrace and laughed.
“You know what?” he said softly. “As much I dreamed about this happening with you, I never imagined it happening in here.” He gestured to the room.
I laughed, my flesh goosepimply. Now the heat of the moment had passed, I was very aware of being half-naked in my workplace. “But what could be more romantic?”
“I want you in my bed, Lucie Clifton,” he drawled. I could only agree.
We threw on our clothes and made it out to the rain-soaked street, where, as luck would have it, a yellow cab was passing.
Elliot hailed it, told the driver to head to Moore Street, wherever that was.
No sooner were we in the taxi than we were kissing, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to not straddle him in the back seat.
But, fortunately for the sanity of the poor driver, we kept the action PG.
Soon enough, the car screeched to a halt, Elliot shoved a couple of dollar bills through the partition, and we were on the street, kissing yet again.
Joined at the lip, we staggered across the pavement and into his building. I was vaguely aware of some kind of warmly lit vestibule, the ding of a lift. Elliot dragged me inside and hoisted me up, legs around his waist.