Chapter 34
ELIJAH
Slap!
Slap!
Slap!
Lining up another row of pucks with my stick, I drag in a breath, tell myself for the umpteenth time I didn’t chicken out, then rifle every puck into the open goal.
They ricochet, skid back, and I tee off again—line ’em up, shoot, slap—until my body screams as loud as my head, and my skates skitter on the lake’s glassy surface.
Daylight fades to a silvery glow off snow and ice. The porch lights behind me barely cut the dusk when Jayden steps out.
“It’s dangerous playing out here without proper light. You won’t see the cracks,” he says, nudging the last puck straight with the fluorescent toe of his snow slip-ons.
I blast a few more while I hunt for words after he watched me buckle earlier. I was close to saying everything, and then—nothing.
Crickets.
Not because Finley isn’t strong, but because I can’t be the one to shatter what she believes about herself the way Presley shattered me.
“You must have a death wish,” he starts, a chuckle turning to a rough grunt—as if that’s all he sees in me now. He’s wrong. I’ve never cut myself with the intention of ending my life.
But how do I show him?
I wish I were more like Finley. That I could open myself to him like one of his beloved books. So that I could be as black and white to him as the stories he loves.
“I told you, I want to be here,” is all I say while he watches the last pucks fly.
“I know. I’m sorry, it was a poor joke,” he murmurs, stepping back when a shot pings the post and skitters toward his feet. He chuffs, “Guess we don’t have to worry about breaking the ice.”
A laugh slips out. I sweep a stray puck aside and find him smiling—soft, serene. For a second, I exist inside that smile. The noise hushes; it’s just us on the frozen lake.
“You want to talk?” he asks, threading our fingers.
I shake my head, but my mouth betrays me anyway. “I can’t win, Jayden.”
Squeezing his hand in mine, I glance down his body, noting that he’s only wearing his onesie again.
His feet are already big, but the bulky rubber soles make them appear bigger. Sturdy. Enough to hold him up, no matter how heavy the weight of the chaos surrounding us becomes.
“Well, from the shots I saw you take, I know that’s not true.” He’s disarming me, and I let him.
I need him to center me.
“How long were you watching?” I meet his stare as his other hand closes over mine on the stick.
Jayden’s so devastatingly gorgeous that my breath catches in my throat.
He rests his chin on our wrapped fists. “Long enough.”
Everything about him is lazy and relaxed. His ease seeps through his touch, deep into my bones with the unhurried lick of his lips.
My mouth instantly dries, thirsty for a taste of him. My feet shuffle closer, the blade caged between our toes. “You must be freezing…” I breathe across his lips to warm them.
They tip up in a smirk. “Not really. Watching you handle those pucks, owning the shots, bossing that goal… kept me nice and toasty, Sweetheart.”
His announcer voice makes me laugh—and that’s when he kisses me. Bringing our joined hands to his chest, he drinks down my laughter-turned-groans. Circling his tongue with mine leisurely until I whimper.
I don’t want slow or soft. I need him to devour me, consume my senses. From the burn of his stubble to the bite of his teeth.
We brace the stick on the ice as we shuffle to the snowbank, and then forget it entirely. My hand fists his jaw; his tunnels into my hair with just enough tug to make my body sigh.
Fuck, yes.
We stumble inside, toeing off shoes when we make it through the door. The warm air tingles over my skin, making it more sensitive to his touch and his ravenous mouth as he laps up my jaw to nip my ear.
Jayden pushes my jacket off my shoulders before we trip and stumble up the stairs, and then crash into his room.
It’s the first time all evening I laugh as we fall inside and he pushes the door shut. Without pause, Jayden pins me to it, his groin throbbing against mine.
Every seed of thought disappears when he rakes his teeth down my neck to my collarbone. Our hands busy themselves, pulling and yanking and unzipping through the layers of clothing between us.
Jayden’s palms plant on either side of my head as his forehead rests on mine. Hazel eyes locking on my dark stare. The golden flecks are all but eaten up by his pupils.
“What do you need, Eli?”
Him.
I don’t know what that means, but it’s what I need right now. To make him feel good so that I’m not a complete failure. So I know that I can be what they need. What he needs.
“What do you want?” Jayden husks over my kiss-swollen lips.
“To make you feel good,” I manage, sliding cold hands down his warm back. He shivers into me, and I hold him there with his bulge pressed into my groin.
The strong lines of his body fit seamlessly with mine. Creating the most maddening friction with each inhale and every exhale.
Swallowing down his groan, I grab his ass hard over his underwear when he grinds into me.
“And you? What do you want, JJ?” His blown stare flicks between mine as he sucks in a deep breath and holds it. “Tell me,” I coax, bucking into him at the same time I knead his ass.
“You… inside me.” Dipping his face into the curve of my neck, he releases his breath over my skin. Hot and sticky, his need clings to my pores, burning all the way through me as he tells me, “I want you to fuck me.”
The instant the words leave his mouth, it’s all I can think about.
Sinking my cock into him. How hot and tight he is. How he’ll sound when he moans my name, begging me to bury myself deeper in him.
I don’t know what’s happening to me, because I want that so fucking bad. To physically lose myself in him. To him.
“I’ve never done that before, Jayden.” I bury my face in his shoulder with a sigh.
As much as I want to give him what he needs, I’m petrified of hurting him. That I won’t be good enough, and he’ll be disappointed with me.
He swallows. “Neither have I,” is all he says, pulling back until we’re looking at each other again.
What? “But you’ve been with other people… you’ve…”
“I’ve never bottomed before. I’ve never wanted to. I’ve never needed that connection with anyone else.” His pink tongue slicks his lip as my palm cups his jaw.
I’m speechless.
Stroking my thumb along his cheek, I wrap my other arm around his waist. “Why me?”
A breathy laugh escapes him. “Because I love you and you love me, and you need to get lost in me, and I need to belong to you. I want to be yours, Eli, in every way.”
My need flames to a desperation I can’t contain as I spear my tongue past his lips. Greedily taking what he gives me.
My hunger for him is insatiable, even as I drink down his breathless pants and groans. My lungs are threatening to burst, blood screaming like a fever coursing through my veins as I slip my hands beneath his boxer briefs and skim the underwear down to the top of his thighs.
I want to ask him how to make it good, but I can’t break our kiss. Even if we’re on the verge of passing out.
As though he can hear my silent deliberation, Jayden drops his hand to where mine is now gripping his hip.
“There’s nowhere I don’t want you to touch me,” he rumbles through the messy swirl of our tongues and clumsy clack of our teeth while we stumble to his four-poster bed.
The back of my legs hit the wooden frame, and we topple onto the mattress. We’re a tangled heap of limbs and desperation. Grappling whatever inch of flesh we can put our hands, lips, tongues on.
The urgent abandon rips the friction between us raw.
As he licks up my throat, his hand grips my ass and slowly rakes down my thigh while he hooks my leg over his hip and rolls onto his back, taking me with him.
I’m straddling his hips as I brace up on my hands above his shoulders. Roving my stare down his body, I trace the etched lines of his chest to his naval. The sight of his piercing makes me smile, because it sums him up so well.
Jayden’s a strong, unshakeable force of nature. He’s that person who will burn down the world for you. He’s also funny and kind, off-the-cuff with attitude, and so lighthearted that he makes the world a brighter place.
There’s never been a man so magnificent that they literally take my breath away with nothing more than a glance. Than the faint smile that’s quivering his lips when I look back at his face.
“What?” He whispers with a bashful roll of his eyes.
His cheeks are flushed, and his half-lidded stare is dark and sultry as hell. My heart is pinballing between my ribs as I lower my chest to his, bringing my face close enough that the tip of my nose skims lightly along his cheek when I tilt my face to press a chaste kiss to his lips.
“You’re so fucking pretty, JJ,” I say, lifting my eyes back to his.
He licks his lips with a hum. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Be serious.” I nip his lip, and he groans.
His groin bucks up into me, grinding his hard cock into my aching bulge. “I am, Eli. You’ve got me all worked up, and I’m on edge, and… I’ve never done this before, so—”
“You’re mine, Jayden.” I twist a finger in his necklace, tugging lightly so he sits up as I shift down to his thighs. “Whether I fuck you or not, you’re mine. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to for me.”
“I want to. I need to.” The guttural rake of his voice sparks through me, straight to where his hard length is pressed to mine.
“JJ…” I groan as he yanks my briefs, and my cock bobs free.
“I need to feel you inside me.” Jayden grips us both, so tight that the sensation shoots up my spine and I fall into him.
My gaping mouth slots over his as he continues pumping our cocks.
“I’ve imagined it so many times. Wondered what it feels like to be fucked by you every time I watch you fuck our girl. ”
Fuck. I groan, twisting his necklace tighter around my fingers as he thumbs my slit.
“Dreamed about it, and fucked myself to thoughts of it.” His whisper trembles with the admission, and my heart stutters with a jolt of excitement.