Chapter 14 You Don’t Think I Could Take Him? #3
His eyes roved all over her face, no doubt at war between his own wise and careless selves. She watched his throat bob, up then down. Waffle panted between them rhythmically like a ticking clock.
“I’m starting to worry it might be impossible.”
He spun the ring on her finger, waiting, searching her face like she held some sort of answer.
This was it: their “what if?” moment. Anticipation fluttered in her stomach like a moth trapped in a jar.
Right at that moment, Waffle chose to jump onto her chest and lick her face. Elliot released her hand so all of her fingers were free to rub the sides of Waffle’s belly.
Tension poured from her body like a faucet. Lainey mentally apologized to the woman she’d side-eyed for losing her emotional support gecko in her car, because she finally understood the power of a therapy animal.
A giggle slipped from her throat. “Hey there, boy,” she told Waffle, feeling frustrated, grateful, and every other emotion in between.
“Looks like your plan worked,” Elliot said, clearing his throat.
She looked out the window, seeing nothing but the dark sky. “Do you have a leash for him?”
Lainey led Waffle out of the truck. He promptly peed—likely the true impetus for his spontaneous display of affection—and then followed her and Elliot out of the dark.
“He can stay in my room,” he offered, just as Waffle curled up on the couch with the long-suffering sigh of a stubborn old man who had zero intention of moving again for the rest of the night.
“I think he’s made other plans.” Lainey tilted her head in the dog’s direction. “Leave your door open tonight. He’ll find you if he needs you.”
Lainey stared at Elliot at the threshold of his bedroom, wishing she could access his thoughts. She wanted to unspool his brain. Uncover what it was he wanted. What was he hoping would happen next?
She searched for something to say.
When she finally spoke, so did he. “I should go—”
“Do you want to watch another—?”
They both laughed. “What did you say?” he asked.
“Just that I should probably go to bed.”
“Oh. You’re tired?”
“I’m not tired. I was…What were you saying?” she asked.
“Just…” His hand fell to her waist, reaching out for the bottom hem of her shirt. He leaned closer, his eyes trained on the maroon fabric caught between his fingers.
She should go into her room. She should close the door behind her and go to bed. Her brain swirled with “shoulds,” but she couldn’t make her feet move away from him, trapped in his gravitational pull.
“We should—”
“Lainey, I…” He trailed off, his voice thick.
His eyes drifted up to hers. She stepped closer without thinking, his locking gaze like the tug of a string.
With each of her footfalls, he drew her backward into his room until suddenly they were beside his bed where the air was warm and time was slow.
Her pulse pounded in her ears, waiting for this man—her husband—to do… something.
“Elliot, you…” When she spoke he dropped his head to her shoulder, like being both this close and this far was physically painful.
He let out a deep, deliberate breath that skimmed down her spine, hot and precise as a finger.
Her heartbeat hammered in her chest and pulsed in her hands.
“You said that you and I…you said we can’t—”
“I know what I said.”
He lifted his forehead to hers. Their breaths came in shallow waves, drawing them together and apart.
“I just—I need…” His voice fell away, replaced by his hands. They swept up the sides of her arms and all the way into her hair, his fingers flexing among the strands. “I don’t know if I can do this much longer.”
The words tightened in her body like a coiled spring.
“Do what?” Her hand pressed against the hard lines of his stomach—a bald contradiction to her innocent question.
“Pretend I don’t want you.”
Her breath hitched. Her limbs went loose and weightless. His bedroom wall was the only thing holding her upright. That and the hand gently tugging at her hair and the thigh creeping between her legs. She was surrounded by the sight of Elliot and the scent of her soap on his skin.
“God, Lainey.” He sighed her name into her cheek like it was something forbidden.
“What if we just did this once?” She hardly recognized her own voice. It was breathy and desperate. “I’m guessing that wouldn’t be smart, huh?”
“No, it wouldn’t be,” he answered through a strangled throat. “But I’m starting to think I’m not that smart.”
Her thoughts scrambled as their mouths caught for an instant—like each was waiting for the other to come to their senses. But his mouth opened for her at the first slide of her tongue. Like he’d known. Like he’d hoped that they would be this comfortable. This in sync immediately.
He let out a soft, bitten-off groan into her mouth, as if she was simply too much to take, while his hands traveled her body with a firm touch. He was sculpting her between his palms, like she was a work of art he wanted to live inside.
His lips traversed her jaw, her ear, her neck with smooth, languid sweeps against her skin that sent tiny rivulets of desire through her abdomen, building until her need for him poured out of her like water.
Their bodies crashed, a collision of waves, as he pressed himself so tightly against her that she could no longer tell what feeling belonged to her or him.
When she couldn’t bear the slow agony a second longer, she took his hand and guided it under her shirt.
Newly calloused fingers scraped up her soft belly, sweeping under the swell of her breasts.
He groaned into her lips, hot and feral, as though the feel of her alone was everything and not nearly enough, all at once.
It made her crazy. It made her want more.
So much of their relationship was like that—trying to best each other.
She should’ve known they’d be that way in this, too.
He moved against her with care and confidence. He knew she liked what he was doing because he’d made it a point to notice what she liked. She wanted to be closer. She wanted him. Lainey was beginning to worry that she’d never get enough of him.
“Elliot, please,” she whispered against his throat. “Just this once.”
“You sure?” he asked. He pulled back to look at her, his eyes darting all over her face like a polygraph.
She nodded, but nothing changed. He continued to look at her, the silence pressing against her chest until she could no longer bear it. “I’m sure. Trust me.”
In an instant, the two of them were on his bed. They moved like they were fighting the end of a dream—that frantic, weightless moment when you feel yourself waking up but your mind is desperate to stay in the surreal haze.
It occurred to her, between the rip of a wrapper and a kiss to her shoulder, that she would never be closer to Elliot than she was right then.
That she needed to sketch the feeling of him into her chest and memorize the colors swirling behind her lids as the pleasure built in her body with each touch.
The inevitable loss of him ached even as she cataloged their every point of connection.
But when she collapsed into his chest, his mouth stayed pressed to her ear, muttering things like how beautiful she was.
How good she felt. How he always knew she’d feel this good.
How much he’d needed to be with her like this, at least once.
How he wanted her to let go and feel everything with him.
So she did. She let herself feel all of it until they were nothing but tangled limbs and ragged breaths. They’d have only a few seconds in that liminal space between dreaming and awake until they’d be forced to face reality. The moment their feet touched the floor, it would be over.
She was building the courage to leave—she really was—but then, Elliot did something extraordinary: he kissed her forehead.
Her heart hummed beneath her ribs. She couldn’t make herself wake up. Not after that gentle press of his lips. It was so intimate and vulnerable. Unselfish. It wanted nothing from her. It only sought to give.
She kept her body still and her eyes pinched shut, imagining how heavy her arms would feel when she eventually let him go.