12. Elliott
— ? —
Elliott
I wake with Odette pressed back against me, her hair spread across my chest, her breathing slow and even.
I’m the luckiest man alive.
The thought arrives fully formed, undeniable.
I lie still in the pale morning light, afraid to move, afraid to break whatever spell has led me here.
Her bedroom smells like her perfume and sex and the faint green of the flowers she keeps on the sill.
The sheets are tangled around our legs, neither of us having bothered to fix them before we fell asleep.
She’s warm in my arms. Soft. Her body fits against mine like it was designed to be there, every curve slotting into every hollow, no space between us.
I’ve wanted this for so long.
Years. Literal years of watching her across dinner tables and charity galas and family events, wanting her so badly it felt like a physical ache. Years of telling myself it was wrong, she was married, she was my brother’s wife, I had no right to even think about her like that.
But Laurence never deserved her. I knew that from the start. I watched him ignore her, dismiss her, make her feel invisible, and I hated him for it. My own brother. I hated him for having everything I wanted and not even noticing.
Now she’s here. In my arms. And I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I’m not going to question it.
Odette stirs against me. Makes a small sound in her sleep.
I hold my breath.
She shifts, pressing back against me, and my body responds immediately. I’m hard, have been hard since I woke up, and there’s no way she doesn’t feel it against her ass.
“Mmm.” Her voice is sleepy, amused. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
She doesn’t move away. Instead she shifts again, deliberately this time, grinding back against me in a slow roll of her hips.
“Odette.” My voice comes out strangled. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” She does it again, harder. “Just stretching.”
“That isn’t stretching.”
“No?” She turns her head, looking at me over her shoulder. Her eyes are bright with mischief. “What is it, then?”
“Torture.”
She laughs. The sound vibrates through me, settles somewhere in my chest.
“Poor Elliott.” Another roll of her hips. “Is this torture?”
“Yes.”
“What about this?” She reaches back, her hand finding my hip, pulling me closer against her.
“Definitely torture.”
“And this?” Her hand slides lower. Wraps around me through the sheet.
I groan. Actually groan, out loud, like a teenager getting touched for the first time.
“Odette.”
“Don’t tease me,” I growl, and roll her onto her back.
She goes with a laugh that turns into a gasp when I get a hand between her legs and find her already slick, already ready, still loose and wet from the night before.
“You’re soaked,” I say against her jaw. “You wake up like this?”
“I woke up with your cock against me. What did you expect?”
The word out of her prim, careful mouth undoes me. I stop being gentle. I push two fingers into her, rough, and she arches off the mattress and grabs a fistful of my hair, and there’s nothing reverent about it now, nothing slow. This is want with the manners stripped off.
“Elliott.” Her nails bite into my scalp. “I don’t want your fingers. I want you. Now.”
“Then take me.” I plant a hand flat on the bed by her head. “You want it, you take it.”
Something flares in her eyes. She shoves at my chest, hard, and I go over onto my back and let her, and then she’s straddling me, flushed and fierce and gorgeous, the sheet sliding off her shoulders.
She’s beautiful in the morning light. Messy hair, swollen lips, her skin flushed pink. The small swell of her belly catches my eye and I reach up to touch it, my palm resting flat against the evidence of new life.
“Hi,” I say to her stomach.
“Are you talking to my belly?”
“I’m saying good morning to the baby.”
She laughs, bright and surprised. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m happy.” I move my hand to her hip. “I’ve never been this happy.”
Her expression softens. She leans down and kisses me, slow and sweet.
“Me neither,” she whispers.
Then she reaches down, lines me up, and sinks down onto me in one slow slide that punches the air out of both of us.
“Christ.” My hands clamp on her thighs. She’s tight and hot and slick, and watching herself take me is doing something to her, her lip caught in her teeth, her eyes half shut.
“Look at you,” she murmurs. “Already desperate.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Mine.” She bottoms out, grinds down, and holds there, testing what it does to me. It undoes me. “I like you like this. Under me. At my mercy for once.”
Then she starts to ride me, and there’s nothing careful about it.
This isn’t last night. She takes what she wants, chasing her own pleasure on my cock, rough and greedy and unashamed, her hips slamming down until the headboard knocks the wall.
I grab her hips and drive up to meet her and she throws her head back and moans.
“Yes,” she breathes. “God, yes, right there.”
I sit up under her, wrap an arm around her back to hold her against me, get my mouth on her throat, her collarbone, the fuller weight of her breasts. I take a nipple between my teeth and she cries out and clenches around me so hard I nearly lose it.
“You’re filthy like this,” I tell her, low against her skin. “Nothing like the woman who pours tea at charity lunches. You’re all mine when you’re like this, do you know that?”
“Say it again.”
“Mine.” I bite the word into her shoulder. “Every part of you.”
She laughs, breathless and wild, and somehow laughing during sex is the hottest thing I’ve ever felt.
She’s so present, so alive, nothing like the careful, controlled woman I watched fade away year after year.
I get a hand between us, find her clit, and rub tight fast circles until her rhythm falls apart.
“There,” she gasps. “Don’t stop, don’t you dare stop.”
“I’ve got you. Let go for me. Soak me.”
She breaks with a raw cry, her whole body shaking, her walls fluttering around me so tight I see white. I fuck her through it, up into her once, twice, three times, and then I’m gone too, spilling into her with her name torn out of my throat.
She collapses onto my chest.
We lie there, breathing hard, neither of us moving. The sheet is a lost cause, tangled somewhere around our ankles. Neither of us fixes it.
“Well,” she says eventually. “Good morning.”
I laugh. It comes out shaky. “Good morning.”
She lifts her head and looks at me, her chin resting on my chest.
“So,” she says. “What are we?”
The question hangs in the air. I know what I want to say. I’ve known since the moment I caught her in that ballroom, maybe before.
“What do you want us to be?”
She considers it. “Partners.”
“Partners.” I like that. “And lovers.”
“And lovers.” She grins. “And co-parents, I suppose.”
My heart stutters in my chest. “You want that? You want me to be...”
“The baby’s father?” She touches my face gently. “Elliott, you’ve been more of a father in the last few weeks than Laurence has been the whole time I knew him. The biology doesn’t matter to me. What matters is who shows up.”
I can’t speak. My throat is too tight. My eyes are stinging.
She kisses me softly.
“I want you,” she says. “All of you. For as long as you’ll have me.”
“Forever,” I say. “I’ll have you forever.”
“Bold.”
“Honest.”
She laughs again, and I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her, breathing in the smell of her hair and the warmth of her skin.
The sheet is still tangled. Neither of us fixes it.
“I want everything with you,” I tell her.