Chapter 27
ELIJAH
It’s the middle of the night. Jayden and Finley are tangled in each other, their breaths mingling with light, alternating snores. Pulling the duvet up over them, I carefully move Jayden’s hand from my stomach to Finley’s hip before I slowly ease out of his bed.
The adrenaline from our win—my first goal in ages—and the conversation with Gerry is finally wearing off, and reality is setting in thick and fast. I’m overwhelmed as I traipse toward the bathroom.
Maybe a quick shower will settle me. It’s worked before.
I slip through the closet and close the en suite door, dimming the lights.
Jayden’s bathroom mirrors mine; dark-gray granite tiles with brushed-gold fittings and a natural-stone suite. Unlike mine, his counters are bare. Everything is hidden behind the vanity mirror except for the brushed-gold soap and hand-lotion dispensers.
It’s a good thing, because the first place my eyes land is where my razor sits in my bathroom—beside the sink with my toothbrush.
Gripping the edge of the stone counter, I remind myself of the promise I made him—to be better, not to cut.
I keep repeating it, waiting for the noise in my head to fade.
It doesn’t.
And I can’t go back to bed like this. I can’t rest or relax. There’s no way I can lie with him and Finley when my head is screaming.
It fucking kills me. I know it’s wrong. But I need it—the pain and burst of adrenaline to overwhelm my thoughts.
Tonight, I know that I’m not winning.
Flipping the tap on, I crank the tap to hot and allow the water to sting my hand. The burn can’t drown the images boring into my conscience—Jayden’s pained face, Finley’s sad eyes—and any hope I had of quieting the noise disappears. If anything, the guilt roars above the existing dissonance.
Why?
Why does it have to be like this?
I slam the tap shut and brace myself on the stone vanity, staring at my smarting hand as the burn continues stinging through reddened skin.
Why do I have to be like this?
All the pride from earlier evaporates, replaced by that old disappointment and an ache behind my eyes.
There’s a muffled knock behind me before the door opens, and Jayden lengthens across the floor.
“Hey,” he says. “You’ve been in here a while…”
I stare down at the polished stone, clawing my fingertips into it when he pauses beside me.
“You okay?”
I almost nod, but I can’t lie to him. It’s bad enough that I can’t keep my promise. I lift my eyes to the mirror and shake my head.
I don’t need to say or do anything more.
Turning toward me, Jayden holds out his hand, offering it to me.
“Come here,” he says, and I don’t fight the immediate pull toward him.
The instant my hand grips his, Jayden tugs me into his chest. His arms close around me as I bury my face in his neck and breathe him in.
I suck his scent all the way into my lungs until it burns.
Until the peppery tang coating his skin and the heat of his touch muffle all the noise, and all that’s left is my hammering pulse and the warm prickle of his jaw across my cheek.
Coiling my arm tighter around his shoulder, I flatten my other hand to his chest, relishing the strong, steady thrum of his heart beneath my palm. As I rake my lips along the side of his throat, it stutters before quickening to the chug of a runaway train.
“Eli…”
“I need you, JJ. I need you to make it go away… to drown out the noise. Please… Please, make it better.”
“Tell me,” he says, palm on my face, the other at my nape. “Tell me what you need, Sweetheart. What do you want?”
I don’t know. I can’t think past the throb, the vice in my chest… I just need to let it go. I need the noise to go away. I need…
“You,” I whisper, kissing the heel of his hand.
“Eli…”
I cut off the protest with my mouth. Our chests press together with our erratic breaths when he takes over our chaste kiss, tongue thrusting into my mouth. His hands bracket my throat, slowly stroking down to my collarbone as he turns us on the spot.
My back is to the mirror, my ass partly perched on the edge of the vanity when he parts my legs and steps between them.
Holy Christ. My brain threatens to black out when his teeth sink into my lip with brutal force. Exactly the way I need it; the pain shoots white-hot relief through me, skating down my spine with a shiver.
“Tell me when,” Jayden rumbles.
One of his hands holds my jaw while the other traces down my chest to my waist, where he grips me tighter.
The scratch of his stubbled jaw ignites a trail of goosebumps that chase his open-mouthed kisses from my mouth to my neck, across my collarbone, and down the middle of my chest. I lean back on my hands, bracing myself.
The raw twist of my insides has me panting with every lash of his tongue over my skin to one side of my chest. When he swirls it around my nipple, I moan—so loud it ricochets around us.
“Shhh,” he breathes, pushing three fingers into my mouth to hold my tongue while his teeth rake the nub, then bite.
It hurts so damn good that my eyes roll to the back of my head. My cock throbs with a new kind of ache. “Fuuuck…”
Jayden curls his fingers in my mouth, cutting me off as he pulls off my nipple and soothes the sting he leaves behind with a long, languid lick before he moves to the other side of my chest and repeats.
I’m gone, brain blistered by the scrape of his stubbled jaw as his fingers slip from my mouth and down my torso, smearing spit.
His other hand hooks the waistband of my boxer briefs.
“Lift your ass, Sweetheart,” Jayden croaks in that deep, dry voice of his that is the fire to my gasoline.
We both know he could pull my underwear down with one strong tug, but this is his way of checking in—making sure we’re still on the same page. That I still want him.
And I do.
I need Jayden so fucking badly that my legs tremble when I do as he told me. I push up onto my hands when my legs don’t cooperate and lift my hips, letting him tug my underwear around the curve of my ass before I perch back on the vanity.
Hazel eyes flicker up to mine, and even in the dim light, they’re bright and so alive that I’m transfixed when he lowers himself to his knees. The instant he yanks my underwear down my thighs, my erection springs free with a wet slap to my stomach.
“Fuck. JJ—” His hands grip my hips so tight I hiss at the sharp stab of his trimmed nails. “—just like that.”
In contrast to his ferocious eyes, his mouth presses to my knee tenderly, and as his thumbs drag down my hip bones, he licks up the grooves of my thigh muscles.
“I’ve waited so long for this,” Jayden says with a long, yearning sigh across my skin.
The graze of his stubble sends a shudder through me, a bolt of electricity that throbs all the way to the tip of my cock.
My hands shift to the edge of the stone slab, clenching when his stare finds mine. Watching him. Longing for more of him. Pining for every part of him.
“What are you doing to me?” The question tumbles from my mouth without warning when his hands roam down to the top of my thighs and he nips at the tender flesh on the inside.
A tender smile pulls at his pouty lips. “Worshiping you.”
I swallow at his remark, because yes, that’s what his touch and his kisses feel like—sweet fucking veneration. And I’m not worthy of it. Of him.
Jayden’s got this totally wrong. I should be the one on my knees, worshiping him. He is the better man. He’s everything.
I comb my fingers through his hair to his nape, and when I attempt to pull him back up to his feet, he blows a scalding breath across the length of my cock. As his mouth reaches the tip, he pokes his tongue past his lips and flicks it across my slit, tasting my precum with a hum.
“Fuck, that’s good… You taste so fucking good,” he says, brushing his bottom lip along the sensitive ridge.
“Holy shit,” I sputter, my hand tightening in his hair when he fists the base of my shaft. “You don’t—”
Jayden spears the tip of his tongue into the slit of my crown. This time, when he hums, his hand squeezes my cock so tight my toes curl on the granite floor.
Smoldering eyes dance to mine, that brain-scrambling, dimpled grin of his hitching higher. “I don’t… What?”
“Mother… fuck,” I choke as he lifts up and wraps his pretty pink lips around the head of my cock.
Jayden’s hot, wet mouth sinks over me. His eyes never leave mine, and that connection alone is enough to end me. He’s not just swallowing my cock; he’s taking everything. Sucking me all the way into him.
“JJ…” My hand slides to his hollowed cheek as he sucks me deeper, his throat squeezing around my crown with his moan. “So… fuck… so… Jesus… so beautiful.”
Pulling up my shaft with his teeth scraping along my throbbing length, his hand grips my balls—squeezing and rolling, tugging until a new kind of pain blisters from his touch to all my extremities. It twists my insides so tight it takes all my willpower not to blow my load this second.
When he pops his mouth off me, his hand takes over the divine torture.
“Please… JJ… please.”
The rhythm of his hands changes; his grip on my length and balls tightens.
“Does it hurt, Sweetheart?” He rakes his lips back down the underside of my cock with teasing licks all the way to the root.
“Yes… so good…”
When he sucks on my balls, his thumb presses to the sensitive flesh behind. White heat rushes up my erection, dripping from my slit when I buck up with a breathless grunt.
“So close, JJ,” I groan, twisting my fingers in his hair with both hands, holding his head, trying to slow him down so I can make this last longer.
I don’t want it to end. Me, him… this blissful desperation we’re drowning in.
Jayden moves his hands to the backs of my thighs, lifting them over his shoulders as he slots deeper into my groin.
His tongue circles my crown before he sucks me into his mouth again, and this time he’s all teeth and growls—pulling me deeper with each tight swallow until his face is pressed to my groin and I’m all the way inside him.
“Jayden… JJ… fuuuck…” My words jumble incoherently with every clench of his tight throat.
When I tug at his hair, he closes his teeth around my girth, and when his head bobs, they scrape up my cock—faster, harder. I bottom out so deep in his throat that his moans break.
Fuck, he’s going to be the death of me.
Without warning, heat spreads through me—pulling sensation from my head to my toes, sparking my pores one by one.
The desperation is a different level of real as I yank him off my cock. The rough scrape of his teeth makes it almost impossible to stave off the inevitable as I tell him, “Come here.”
With my pull, he pushes to his feet, and I bring him flush to me—his chest to mine—as I push his underwear to the top of his thighs, freeing his cock. I’ve never felt anything like this. Like the moment his erection slaps mine.
I grip us together, sucking his lip into my mouth when his hand closes around mine and he strokes us hard and fast, using his spit and our precum as lubrication.
“I’m so fucking close, JJ,” I say, my free hand closing around his throat as he hoists my leg over his hip, slotting us flusher.
“Fuck, you feel so damn good.” Jayden thrusts his tongue into my mouth, and the taste of us together sends me over the edge.
So fucking perfect.
So damn hot.
I’m swallowed deep by the bliss of my release as Jayden chases his own, fucking our fists with raw desperation. And I’m still coming—spurting all over his stomach, his chest, my chest…
Still shaking with my orgasm when he bites down on my lip with a muffled cry.
His cum shoots and spatters over us as he devours my mouth. Our smeared hands grip each other’s faces, and I want to live in this moment for as long as we can.
We’re drowning and falling and crashing, and it feels like heaven. Like soaring so close to the sun that the world disappears. There’s just this need—this unquenchable ache that drags on and on.
“I love you, Jayden,” I croak the words into his mouth in between nips and sucks of his tongue.
“Love you, too, Eli,” he says, dragging his mouth across my cheek to my ear. “So much. So, so much.”
“Thank you.”
His face moves in front of mine. “I told you, I’m always here. I will always show up for you.”
I nod, nuzzling into his hand and pressing a kiss to his slick finger. I can’t resist the urge to taste our release on his skin as he tells me, “I’m yours and you’re mine. Nothing will ever change that.”
He pulls back a tad and runs the water before grabbing a washcloth from the drawer beside us.
“Not yet,” I tell him, pulling his sticky chest back to mine. “Stay like this. Just a little bit longer.”
“Okay, but we’re sleeping late. I know you’re okay, but you have to rest. I can’t see you get that sick again.” His arms coil around me, and I hold on to him as tightly as I can, perching myself further back on the vanity so I can wrap my legs around him.
My savior.