23. Elizabeth
— ? —
Elizabeth
A week passes in the house that’s becoming ours.
A week of small moments, gentle touches, the careful rebuilding of something we both broke. We’ve kissed. Held hands. Slept tangled together in the big bed that used to feel like a mausoleum but now feels like sanctuary.
But we haven’t gone further. I’m not ready, and Jarec hasn’t pushed. He seems content just to have me here, to wake up beside me, to share meals and silences and the slow knitting together of our lives.
Tonight, though, something shifts.
We have dinner at the club - a quiet celebration of my gallery show’s success. Marguerite called this afternoon to offer me a permanent exhibition space. My paintings are selling faster than I can create them, collectors calling from New York and Boston and places I’ve never been.
For the first time in my life, I’m building something that belongs entirely to me.
And through it all, across the candlelit table, Jarec watches me with an expression that makes my blood heat.
Pride. Wonder. And beneath it all, hunger barely leashed.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I murmur, reaching for my wine glass.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to devour me whole.”
His eyes darken. “I do.”
The words land somewhere low in my belly and stay there, burning.
In the car afterward, I’m quiet.
He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh. I can see the tension in his shoulders, the careful control he’s maintaining. He’s waiting for me. Following my lead the way he promised.
But God, the wanting is starting to consume me.
“Jarec.”
He glances at me, attention immediately focused. “Yes?”
“I want you to know something.”
The car slows slightly as he splits his attention between me and the road. “What?”
I turn to face him, watching his profile in the darkness. The sharp line of his jaw. The way his hands have tightened almost imperceptibly on the wheel.
“I’m ready.”
The car swerves slightly before he corrects it. “Ready for what?”
I hold his gaze, letting him see everything I’m feeling. The desire. The trust. The absolute certainty.
“For you to earn it properly.”
His breath catches. I watch his throat work as he swallows.
Neither of us speaks for the rest of the drive, but the air between us has changed. Charged. Electric. By the time we pull up to the house, my heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
He comes around to open my door, offers me his hand. His palm is warm, slightly damp, and I realize he’s as nervous as I am. This man who has touched me before, who has made me fall apart on his fingers, who has tasted me and walked away - he’s trembling at the thought of what comes next.
We walk to the door. He unlocks it. We step inside.
The foyer is dark except for the moonlight streaming through the windows, silvering everything it touches.
And then Jarec drops to his knees.
Not reaching for me. Not pulling me close. Just kneeling there on the marble floor, looking up at me with an expression that steals my breath.
“Tell me what you need,” he says, voice rough as gravel. “Tell me how to make up for every night I wasn’t there.”
I reach out. Touch his face. Trace the line of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the proud angle of his cheekbone.
“I need you to understand something first.”
“Anything.”
“All those months you ignored me.” My voice wavers, but I push through it. “I was waiting. Leaving my door unlocked. Hoping you’d come.”
His eyes close like I’ve struck him.
“You let your mother and Victoria feed me lies. You let them make me believe I was nothing but a convenience, a placeholder for someone better.” My fingers find his hair, thread through the dark strands.
“You let me believe you were still seeing her. You walked away from me in the bathroom after you made me come, like I was something shameful. Like what we’d done disgusted you. ”
“I know.” His voice breaks on the words. “I know. I was a bastard. I was terrified and cruel and you deserved so much better than what I gave you.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Let me give you better now.” He turns his face into my palm, presses his lips against my skin. “Let me spend tonight worshipping you the way I should have from the beginning.”
My heart is racing. My whole body feels like a live wire, sparking everywhere he touches.
“Show me,” I whisper.
I don’t know what makes me do it - instinct, desire, the need to see him brought low the way I was brought low all those months. I move to the staircase, to the third step, and I sit. My dress pools around me, silk and shadows in the moonlight.
Jarec follows on his knees, crawling across the marble floor like a penitent approaching an altar.
“I was a bastard,” he says again, settling between my legs.
His hands slide up my calves, my knees, my thighs, and everywhere he touches burns.
“I ignored you. I let my mother look down on you. I let Victoria poison everything between us.” His fingers hook into the waistband of my underwear and draw them down slowly, reverently, like he’s unwrapping something sacred.
“I let you believe you were a placeholder because I was too much of a coward to admit that you terrified me.”
He presses a kiss to my inner thigh, and I gasp.
“Let me start to fix it.” He looks up at me, eyes dark and desperate. “Let me taste you properly. Not in anger, not in shame. Let me worship you the way I should have from the first night.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I want to earn the right to put my mouth on you.” His breath is hot against my most sensitive skin. “You can say no. You can make me wait another month, another year. I’ll still be here. I’ll still be on my knees, waiting for you to let me in.”
I don’t say no.
I thread my fingers through his hair and guide his mouth to where I need him.
The first touch of his tongue makes me cry out.
He’s slow at first. Thorough. Mapping every fold, every response, learning me the way he should have learned me months ago. His lips close around my clit and suck gently, and I feel the moan vibrate through him when my hips jerk against his face.
“So sweet,” he murmurs against me. “You taste like forgiveness I don’t deserve. Like something holy.”
His fingers find my entrance, two of them sliding inside, and I arch off the stair, hands scrabbling for purchase against the wood.
“That’s it.” His voice is rough, wrecked. “Take what you need. I’m sorry for every night I left you wanting. I’m sorry for every time I walked away when I should have fallen to my knees and begged.”
He adds a third finger, stretching me, and the fullness is overwhelming. His mouth never stops working, tongue circling and pressing and driving me higher with every stroke.
“Never again.” He maintains eye contact as he works me, watching my face, reading every shudder and gasp. “Never again will you wait for me. Never again will you doubt that you’re wanted.”
His free hand slides up my body, palms my breast through the silk of my dress, thumb circling my nipple until it peaks beneath the fabric.
“Come for me,” he begs. “Let me feel you fall apart on my tongue. Give me this. Please.”
The orgasm tears through me like lightning, my back arching, my fingers tight in his hair, his name breaking from my lips like a sob.
He doesn’t stop.
He works me through it, tongue gentling but never ceasing, coaxing a second peak from my trembling body before I can catch my breath.
“Jarec-” I’m gasping, oversensitive, the pleasure edging into something too intense. “Too much-”
“One more.” His voice is ragged, desperate. “Give me one more. I need to feel you come again. I need to taste it.”
I shake my head, but he’s relentless, and when the third climax crashes through me, I’m crying, actually crying, tears streaming down my face as wave after wave of sensation wracks my body.
He gentles immediately, kissing my thighs, my hips, the soft curve of my stomach. Murmuring words I can barely hear through the rushing in my ears.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re perfect. You’re everything.”
Then he gathers me in his arms and lifts me from the stairs like I weigh nothing at all.
He carries me to the bedroom, and his arms are steady even though I can feel him shaking. He’s hard against my hip, straining against his trousers, but he makes no move to address it. This isn’t about him. We both know that.
He lays me on the bed, pulls the covers over me, and climbs in beside me. Holds me while I shake with the aftershocks, strokes my hair, presses kisses to my temple.
“I didn’t know,” I manage when I can speak again. My voice sounds strange, raw. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”
“It can be.” He pulls me closer, tucks my head under his chin. “It will be. Every time. I promise.”
“But you-” I shift against him, feel the hard length of him still pressing against me. “You didn’t-”
“Tonight isn’t about me.” He kisses my forehead. “Tonight is about showing you what you should have had all along. What you’ll have from now on.”
I curl into him, exhausted and wrung out and somehow more at peace than I’ve ever been. This man. This impossible, infuriating, devoted man who spent months pushing me away and is now willing to spend the rest of his life on his knees if that’s what it takes.
“I love you,” I whisper against his chest.
His arms tighten around me. “I love you too. More than I have words for. More than I knew I was capable of.”
I fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, steady and strong beneath my ear.
Tomorrow, we’ll figure out what comes next.
Tonight, I’m exactly where I belong.