Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rowan
Elijah stares back at me with a blank, unresponsive expression. He does not understand me.
“I know how old you are,” he says. “It’s on your website. Is it really that big of a deal that we have the same birthday?”
I can almost laugh at how insane this is, and how eager he is to pretend it means nothing.
“You just had a vision—”
“A dream," he interrupts.
“—where we both died together. And now we are realizing that we were both born on the same day.”
“I don’t… I don’t get it.” Elijah seems determined to let our relationship mean the bare minimum.
Even as he can acknowledge his intense attraction to me, he refuses to fully wrap his head around all of the other factors that align the two of us almost completely.
The moment he shared his vision with me, the moment I was told we very well could have died together, something inside of me knew that he had to have been born onto this Earth on the exact same day I was.
We would have followed each other relentlessly, even into death. Just as two star-crossed lovers should.
“Elijah,” I say, and I pull him as close to me as I possibly can while still keeping those big hazel eyes in sight. “We died together, and then we entered this world together, too. Do you not get it? Do you not see how beautifully everything has laid itself out in front of us?”
Elijah is quiet for a long moment, but I can see it in his eyes. I can see it as his defenses crumble, and he starts to make sense of everything around him.
But then his bottom lip trembles, and a singular wall snaps back up into place.
“All I see is you,” he whispers, and I find myself shivering against the length of him.
“For now, I think that’s enough. I can make that be enough.” As the words leave my mouth, I wonder if I mean them.
His warm body is trembling in my hold, and it takes everything in me to keep from stripping us both naked to transfer my body heat into his. Elijah is still crying softly.
“I’m so scared. I’m confused. Why do I feel this sadness? Why is it that when I see you, I ache? I thought falling in love was supposed to feel good,” he confides.
I sigh into his hair as I lay a gentle kiss against his head.
“It’s okay, Eli. It’s okay.” My hands seek him out even as he’s already in my grasp, trailing his arms and his back as he subconsciously presses closer. “I’ve known my entire life that love is meant to hurt.”
“To hurt?” he chokes out, and when his soft, warm lips brush my neck, I suppress a shudder.
“Yes. For as long as I’ve loved you, I’ve hurt and feared and longed. It’s nothing new to me. But it is for you, and I understand why you’re having a hard time with it. I can be patient; I can love you slowly.”
“You… you love me?” His voice is breathless and disbelieving, yet I feel him harden in his jeans against me at the thought.
He wants that. He needs it.
“I’ve waited my entire life to love you, Elijah,” I confess.
A long, loud groan leaves his body at the admission, and my own body follows suit in its desire. I heat, my hands tightening where they grip him.
“This is so messed up,” he whispers.
“And yet you want it. You want me.”
“I do,” his response is immediate. “I want you so badly. From the moment we met, I’ve wanted you.”
“That means something,” I insist, shoving a hand into his golden halo of curls to tilt his head back. His eyes search mine—he’s looking for some kind of reassurance that I’m struggling to give him. I can’t share my dreams. “Everything you feel, every touch we share. It all means something.”
“That you love me,” he states. It’s no longer a question.
I want to remind him that he loves me as well, but I don’t want to push. He will come to that realization on his own.
“Yes, Elijah. More than anything else. So much so that I’ve devoted myself to you. That I crave being weak and pathetic in your presence. That I would follow you around with my camera, just for the chance to capture you.”
Elijah’s lashes flutter, his lips parting as he watches me. “This should freak me out. I should be running.”
“But?”
“But,” he pushes his hips into mine. “Kiss me.”
My mouth crashes into his, and I moan into his open lips as I feel his tongue slide against mine. I’m momentarily aware that he’s just thrown up and has yet to brush his teeth, but that fact only serves to spur me on—knowing I’m getting such a raw, unfiltered version of him.
The messy, sick version that is bearing itself fully to me.
Before I can think twice, I’m falling to my knees in front of him. My hands fumble with the button of his jeans, but as soon as it pops open, his hand is over mine.
“Stop,” he rushes out, and I look up at him in confusion.
“Are you okay?”
“Stand. Right now,” he orders.
Something akin to fear ignites in my stomach and begins to spread into my chest, but before I can speak again, Elijah pushes me back until I’m plopping down to sit back on the edge of his bed.
Then, it’s him who is falling to his knees between my legs. He’s panting again as he yanks my sweats down, and I lift my hips as both them and my boxers are pulled to my lower thighs.
Elijah nearly gasps at the sight of my half-hard cock. Wide hazel eyes trace the length of me, one hand moving to run up and under my shirt. A second later, he’s pulling it over my head and throwing it haphazardly behind himself.
“Jesus,” he mutters, tracing the lines of my abs with his fingertips.
“You really don’t have to,” I tell him, and he shakes his head.
“I want to.”
With his other hand, Elijah grabs me at my base, and I use every ounce of self-control I possess to keep my ass planted to the mattress.
I was right. His warm, soft palms feel completely different from my own, and I find the feeling absolutely intoxicating.
He grips me loosely and gives me a slow tug from root to tip, the friction of his dry skin just barely muted by how smooth and warm it is.
His thumb takes a moment to brush gently over my slit, pushing into it lightly. I hiss at the sensation, hardening further, and Elijah watches me greedily from where he sits below me.
Then he’s removing his hand from my body and spitting on it generously. I watch a string of his own saliva as it connects from his bottom lip to his palm, and I find that I can’t breathe around the visual.
Far before he makes me come from sensation alone, I fear I’ll come from the sight of him.
Elijah’s hand wraps around me once more, wet and hot as he jerks me slowly. He wets my entire length in several passes, and my hands clench at his comforter to keep myself from touching him.
He’s in such a fragile state right now that I’m scared of startling him with any sudden movements.
I’d give anything for this not to end.
“You are so fucking hot, Rowan,” Elijah murmurs, seemingly entranced by his own maneuvers. My cock jumps beneath his hold, and he grins, looking up to gauge my reaction.
Those big hazel eyes watching me from beneath little golden curls heighten the heat swirling inside of me, and I hear a soft whine as it escapes my throat.
I don’t even have the gall to feel embarrassed about it—I’m too caught up in him.
I watch in real time as he slowly lowers his head, and my eyes widen as his tongue flicks out to lap over my tip once, and then twice.
“Eli,” I groan, my hand shooting out to intertwine with the hair on the back of his head. He hums, pulling my cockhead into his mouth with one clean suck. “Fuck.”
He’s in no rush. Each movement is slow and deliberate, as if he’s memorizing me; as if he’s learning the taste and the shape of me one slow lick at a time.
And as I watch him slowly sink further onto me, an unbearable affection builds in my chest. One so bright and devastating that tears prick at my eyes and my breath escapes in stuttered releases.
Once he’s taken as much of me as he can without choking, he brings his hand back into the picture and grips my base again, massaging the rest of me.
I’m not really a receiving kind of guy. In every instance before Elijah, I’ve enjoyed being the giver more than being on this side of things. And in most ways, that still holds true, even with him.
But right now, as I watch his eyes flutter shut and his spit spill from between his lips, I realize that I do like receiving.
The only difference is that it must be him.
To put it simply: no one else can do the things that he can do. No one else can make me feel this way. Elijah has a way about him that no other man does—he is able to bring my body to heights that it’s never reached before. All from his mouth and hands alone.
I doubt it has anything to do with skill—though he does possess that—but has everything to do with who he is. He is just that special. He means that much.
Elijah’s tongue rubs generously at the spot just below my head, underneath my shaft, and it effectively mutes all of my thoughts. I choke on a moan, my fingers tightening their hold. He pops off of me.
“You like that?” he asks, and his voice is low and a bit garbled with spit and traces of my arousal.
“Y-yeah,” I breathe.
He does it again, and I lean back on my own palm, my thighs twitching. The slow, torturous pace he’s keeping is starting to kill me. I want to be slamming into him already.
I want him to cry and scream.
But I also want him to praise me and to demand what he wants from me. It’s such a confusing and lust-soaked contradiction that I don’t know what my next move should be.
Not that I have much of a choice. Not when Elijah is torturing me with his mouth and hands with each passing second.
“Eli, please,” I beg, and he must understand me because his lips tighten around my length, and both hands land on my thighs where they tighten their hold.
He sinks further onto me, choking aggressively as his eyes water and tears begin to fall.
“Wait,” I panic. “Don’t hurt yourself, you don’t have—ugh, fuck!”
Elijah’s nose brushes my skin as he deep throats me. It’s not an elegant, practiced motion; he’s gagging around me as his throat constricts over and over again.