10. Elise
— ? —
Elise
We get careless.
It’s bound to happen, I suppose. When you spend every waking moment thinking about someone’s hands on your body, about the way they taste, about the sounds they make when they’re inside you, eventually the wanting overrides the caution.
For us, it happens on the sixth night at the cabin, well past two in the morning.
I came downstairs for water. That’s my story, anyway, what I’d tell anyone who asked.
In reality, I came downstairs because I couldn’t sleep, because my body was still humming from what Rowan and I did in the study earlier, because I knew he was awake in his room and I wanted him again with an intensity that scared me.
I don’t expect to find him in the kitchen. But there he is, leaning against the counter in nothing but a pair of low-slung sweatpants, a glass of water in his hand, his hair mussed from sleep he clearly hasn’t been getting.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” he asks.
“Something like that.”
The kitchen is dark except for the moonlight through the window, laid in stripes across the floor and his bare chest.
I should get my water and go back to bed. Should maintain some pretense of self-control, some boundary between us that isn’t constantly being crossed.
Instead, I walk toward him.
“Elise.” His voice drops, taking on that rough edge I’ve come to crave. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
I stop in front of him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin. Close enough to smell him, soap and something deeper, something masculine and distinctly Rowan that makes my mouth water.
“It looks like you’re about to get us both in trouble.”
“Maybe I want trouble.”
His eyes darken. “Simon’s just down the hall.”
“Simon’s been snoring for hours. I could hear him from my room.”
“And if he wakes up?”
I reach out and trace a finger down his chest, feeling the muscles jump beneath my touch. “Then I guess we’ll have to be quiet.”
Something shifts in his face, the caution losing. He sets his glass down on the counter and grabs me, spinning us so my back is against the refrigerator door, the cold metal a shock against my thin sleep shirt.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he mutters, and then his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is hungry, urgent, flavored with the desperation of people who know they shouldn’t be doing this and can’t stop themselves. His hands are everywhere, my waist, my hips, sliding under my shirt to palm my breasts, thumbs brushing across my nipples until they’re hard and aching.
“I’ve been thinking about you all night,” he says against my throat. “Lying in that bed, knowing you were right next door, imagining all the things I wanted to do to you.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.” His hand slides into my sleep shorts, fingers finding me already wet. “Fuck, Elise. Already?”
“I’ve been thinking about you too.” My voice comes out breathless. “Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t…”
His fingers stroke through my folds, circling my clit, and my words dissolve into a moan.
“Quiet,” he reminds me, but there’s a smile in his voice. “You don’t want to wake him.”
“Then stop making me… ah…”
He slides two fingers inside me, curling them just right, and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Be a good girl. Stay quiet for me.”
The words shouldn’t turn me on as much as they do. But something about his voice, low and commanding, about the way he’s holding me pinned against the refrigerator while his fingers work magic between my thighs, it pushes buttons I didn’t know I had.
“Rowan…” His name escapes around my fingers, half-plea and half-warning. “I’m going to…”
“Not yet.” He withdraws his hand, and I actually whimper at the loss. “I’m not done with you.”
He spins me around, pressing my front against the refrigerator, and yanks my shorts down around my ankles.
I hear his sweatpants hit the floor, hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper, he’s taken to keeping them in his pocket, which says something about how often we’ve been doing this, and then he’s pressing against me from behind.
“Tell me you want this,” he says, his cock nudging at my entrance.
“I want it. I want you. Please…”
He pushes inside me in one smooth stroke, and I have to bite my fist to keep from crying out.
The angle is different standing up, deeper, more intense. The cold refrigerator door against my breasts, his hot body pressed against my back, his hands gripping my hips as he starts to move, it’s overwhelming. Sensation flooding in from every direction, pleasure building faster than I can process.
“You feel so fucking good,” he groans against my ear. “So tight. So wet. I could do this forever.”
“Harder.” The word comes out as a gasp. “I need…”
He doesn’t hold back. His thrusts become sharper, more urgent, the sound of our bodies meeting obscenely loud in the quiet kitchen.
The refrigerator rattles with every impact, and somewhere in the back of my mind I know we should stop, should be more careful, but I can’t think about anything except the feeling of him inside me.
“Your hand. Now,” he commands. “I want to feel it when you come.”
I reach between my legs, find my clit, rub in frantic circles. The tension coils tighter with every stroke, every thrust, building toward something explosive.
“I’m close…” I pant. “Rowan, I’m…”
The snoring stops.
We both freeze.
Rowan is still inside me, buried to the hilt, both of us breathing in short, ragged gasps. The silence from down the hall is deafening. My heart pounds so hard I’m sure it must be audible throughout the entire cabin.
Footsteps. A door creaking open.
“Hello?” Simon’s voice, groggy and suspicious. “Someone out there?”
The footsteps come closer. The stairs first, then floorboards creaking as Simon makes his way down the hallway toward the kitchen. I’m frozen against the refrigerator, Rowan frozen behind me, both of us caught in the headlights of impending discovery.
He’s going to walk in. He’s going to see us. He’s going to see his brother balls-deep inside his wife, and everything is going to explode.
I should be panicking. Should be scrambling to cover myself, to put distance between us, to salvage some shred of dignity.
Instead, I feel Rowan’s hand slide around to cover my mouth, and something dark and reckless pulses through me.
The footsteps pause just outside the kitchen doorway.
“If someone’s there, you better answer,” Simon calls. “I’m armed.”
He’s not armed. Simon doesn’t own a weapon of any kind. But his voice is getting closer, and in seconds he’s going to round the corner and see us.
Rowan pulls out of me in one swift motion, yanking up his sweatpants. I grab my shorts from the floor, pulling them on with shaking hands, and we spring apart just as Simon appears in the kitchen doorway.
He flips on the light.
We both wince at the sudden brightness. I’m leaning against the counter, trying to look casual, trying to control my breathing. Rowan is on the other side of the kitchen, a glass of water in his hand that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there five seconds ago.
Simon’s eyes are bleary, his hair standing up in every direction. He looks between us, my flushed cheeks, Rowan’s mussed hair, the charged energy in the room that we can’t quite hide, and his expression darkens.
“What the hell are you two doing down here?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Rowan’s voice is remarkably steady. “Came down for water.”
“Both of you? At the same time?”
“Coincidence.”
Simon’s gaze moves between us, calculating. I can see him putting the pieces together: the timing, the tension, the fact that we’re both breathing too hard for people who were supposedly just getting water.
“Bullshit,” he finally says.
“Believe what you want.” Rowan takes a sip of his water, utterly unbothered. “I don’t really care.”
The dismissal hangs in the air. Simon’s jaw tightens, and for a moment I think he’s going to push it, going to demand answers, going to make a scene.
Instead, he mutters something under his breath and heads for the bathroom. The door closes behind him with more force than necessary.
We hear him moving around. The toilet flushing. Water running.
The second he’s out of sight, Rowan’s mouth is on mine again.
“Are you insane?” I whisper against his lips, even as I lean into him. “He almost caught us. He’s going to come back…”
“Then we’ll stop when we hear the door.” His hand slides back into my shorts, finding me still wet, still aching. “But I really need to finish what we started.”
“Here? Now?”
“I was so fucking close.” His fingers stroke through my folds, and I shudder. “I could feel you about to come. I could feel how tight you were getting. And then we had to stop, and now I need to feel you fall apart around me or I’m going to lose my goddamn mind.”
The raw desperation in his voice undoes me.
“Okay,” I whisper before my brain can veto it. “Okay. But we have to be fast.”
“I can do fast.”
He spins me around again, bends me over the kitchen counter this time. I hear his sweatpants drop, hear him roll on a new condom, and then he’s pushing inside me and I have to stuff my entire fist in my mouth to keep quiet.
He fucks me hard and fast, both of us chasing the finish we were denied, the danger of getting caught adding a desperate edge to everything. The bathroom door is maybe twenty feet away. Simon could walk out at any second.
The risk makes it hotter.
“Finish it,” Rowan commands, his voice barely above a whisper. “Come for me. I need to feel it.”
My hand slips between us, fingers pressing where I need them most. Whatever was building before comes roaring back, wound tighter now, every thrust dragging me closer to the edge.
“I’m going to…” I gasp against my hand.
“Then come. Fucking come, Elise.”
I shatter around him, my inner walls clenching, pleasure flooding through me in waves that I barely manage to keep silent. He follows seconds later with a strangled groan, burying himself deep, his whole body shuddering against my back.
We hear the bathroom door handle turn.