Chapter 16 #3
My meaning finally dawned on him, and he narrowed his eyes as they darkened with anger. “Did that motherfucker—”
I interrupted him. “Can we not talk about it right now? I don’t want to bring the mood down even more. I really wasn’t finished.” I did not want the night to end like that.
He laughed. “You are such a horny, feisty little thing.” But he was fully erect again too, even though he’d started to lose it when he thought he hurt me, so could he really talk?
He pressed me onto my back and started kissing me, running his hand down my body to grip my dick more gently, running it up and down my length.
I arched into his touch and felt him smile.
He leaned down and licked up my neck. “Mm, my feisty little cockslut is in need of more of my dick tonight, then?”
Pretty sure I still fucking hated him. “Yes.”
He smirked. Despite his words and cocky attitude, he moved to hover over me, sliding gently back in and looking at my face for an okay this time.
When I nodded, he dropped to his elbows, leaning down to kiss me so gently and passionately it made my dick leak.
I couldn’t quite fathom how he was so demanding, yet so full of care and concern.
I’d never met anyone who treated me like he did in bed.
It was always either one or the other, usually to an extreme either way.
He started moving slowly, but he was hitting just right, again with no effort, and I moaned into his kiss.
He pulled back, out of breath and keeping up the rhythm that despite being slow was rushing me full speed back toward the bliss I’d lost. “That feel good?” he asked me, looking at me earnestly and without that cocky smirk.
“Yeah.” It came out a whisper.
He rested his forehead on mine, continuing to move, lighting up what seemed like every nerve ending in my body.
“Do you know how bad I wanted you back then, Elijah? Do you know how bad I wanted to fuck you when I saw you watching me at the games? How bad I wanted to yank you into the locker room with me and fuck you up against my locker?”
Another stream of precum leaked out over my abs, and he noticed. He groaned and closed his eyes. He didn’t pick up speed but he hit a little harder each time. My nails dug into his back and they slid down as he moved. He cried out and leaned back in for another kiss.
I felt it coming and gasped into his mouth as my orgasm started in my core and seemed to spread through my entire being. He pulled his head back and watched, captivated, as my head pressed into my pillow and I cried out his name. My body shuddered right before my release hit both of our chests.
“Fuck, Elijah,” he gasped, as he started thrusting faster and kissed me again.
I felt it when he came, and he gave one last thrust as he moaned into my mouth, then sat up and pulled out.
I could feel his cum running out, and I saw him look down at it.
He shoved some back in with a finger. “Keep that. This ass is mine. Only mine now. I waited for it for a long time. And now it’s mine. ”
I looked up at his face, squirming a little at the feeling of his finger inside my sensitive ass. I refused to think about what it meant, about the future and what that meant for me, or what it meant when it was time for Mason to go home. “Yeah. It’s yours.”
The smile that spread across his face wasn’t cocky this time.
He leaned back down, pulling his finger out as he kissed me.
He sat up and wiped our chests off with his shirt, then flopped onto the bed beside me, facing me as he pulled the covers over us.
His hand found my belly under the blankets, rubbing over it and tracing the lines of my abs.
It was the closest we’d come to cuddling after sex, and I guessed it wasn’t so terrible.
“Good god, you’re hot,” he said lowly. “You were hot as fuck in high school but you’ve had a glow up even since then.” He was staring at me with a goofy grin.
I could say the same to him, but I wasn’t going to.
He still had a little bit more work to do.
He already knew I thought he was hot. He already knew he was hot.
I needed a little more groveling before I inflated his ego so far I could never talk him back down.
He was, however, doing a damn good job of earning my forgiveness.
I just grinned back and kissed him goodnight.
◆◆◆
I woke up in the middle of the night. It was dark and I realized Mason must have gotten up at some point and turned off all the lights in the house.
A small sliver of light from the nightlight across the hall in the bathroom failed to properly illuminate my bedroom and did little more than keep me from stubbing my toes on the way in there.
I could see that the motion sensor lights outside my house were off too, because my living room was nearly pitch black.
The dark didn’t normally bother me. In fact, I usually liked it completely dark when I slept, but for some reason, at that moment, it did bother me.
I heard a noise in the living room and thought Enyo must be getting into something, or having her middle of the night playtime, but when I moved my foot, I realized she was lying at the foot of my bed.
She barely stirred when my foot bumped her.
The noise came again, just a small thud.
The only thing comforting me was Mason’s arm circling my waist, and I was glad he was here.
I touched his arm, hoping to wake him without making any noise, but I saw movement from my open bedroom door.
I looked through the faint light in the hall and tried to adjust my eyes and focus on it.
My brain struggled to decipher what I was seeing.
There was someone standing there, just a shadow that was darker than the shadowy room, and, at least in my mind, they were facing the open bedroom door.
They were about six feet away from my doorway, but I couldn’t make out anything about them. It was just a dark shape.
I squeezed Mason’s arm, but he didn’t stir.
I was still disoriented by sleep and my lack of ability to see clearly in the dark, and I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.
The only thing I knew was that there was nothing in my living room that would appear like that in the dark.
I struggled to remember if I’d locked the front door.
I always did, but it had been a strange day all around, and I was off-kilter.
Had Mason really got up to turn out the lights, or had someone else turned them off?
I squeezed his arm again and he stirred in his sleep, but not enough to wake up.
Who or whatever it was just stood there, completely still and, I was pretty sure, watching me.
I couldn’t look away even though I wanted to.
Everything in my brain was telling me that I was being watched.
That they could see me much better than I could see them.
I couldn’t place how much danger I was in.
I wanted to cry out, to yell loud enough to wake Mason and tell him to grab the gun that was against the wall beside him, but I wasn’t sure if screaming was the right thing to do.
I squeezed his arm harder and bumped Enyo with my foot on purpose this time.
I needed her to let me know how concerned I should be.
Mason pulled me to him, and I felt Enyo move and stretch.
I felt safer up against Mason’s body, wrapped completely in his arms, but he was still asleep.
I could finally make out Enyo’s figure at the foot of the bed when I dared to move my eyes to her.
Her ears perked up and her head turned toward the doorway.
The figure moved suddenly, away from my line of vision in the doorway, and I reacted instantly.
I shook his arm. “Mason,” I hissed. Enyo stood up and stretched again, then hopped off the bed and walked toward the door.
I was worried about her. “Enyo, no!” I whisper-hissed.
“Mason, wake up! Someone’s in the house! ”
That did it. He sat bolt upright in bed. “What?” he was rubbing his eyes and looking around in the dark. “Elijah, what’s going on?” His voice was thick with sleep, but he was already reaching for the gun.
“I saw someone in the living room,” I said.
He climbed out of bed stark naked and chambered a round, moving quickly to the door and reaching around to the light switch in the hall.
He flicked it on as he moved out, gun aimed in front of him.
I leapt up, a little more modest than him, and I grabbed my sheet and wrapped it around my waist before grabbing the knife off my nightstand and following him out the door.
I met him in the living room where he had the light on and he was watching me with a raised brow. “Were you dreaming?” he asked me.
I looked around. Enyo was in the kitchen getting a drink from her water dish as though she’d just left the room because she was thirsty.
There was no one in sight. Probably to humor me, Mason checked the bathroom, opening the shower curtain with the barrel of the gun.
He flicked the lights on in the sunroom and walked into the kitchen, looking around even though the entire room was visible from the living room.
Then he checked every door and window. They were all locked securely.
He flicked on the porch light and looked out the window for the hell of it.
“There’s no one here,” he stated. “I even checked the doors and windows after you fell asleep, and they were all locked. So I turned out the lights and went to bed.”
“I wasn’t dreaming,” I said weakly. “I know I saw someone. But I guess . . . I guess it wasn’t an alive someone.”
He looked a little incredulous, despite everything. “Wouldn’t you be able to tell?”
I shook my head. “No, I’d just woken up. All I could see was a shadow because it was so dark. I heard a noise, then saw the outline of a person in the shadows. It moved away when I woke Enyo up. I couldn’t tell anything about them, but it felt like I was being watched.”
“Do you think it was that fucking asshole who broke your ribs?” He looked pissed, but at least he was giving me the benefit of the doubt and wasn’t treating me like I was stupid or crazy.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t get terrible vibes from it, just the feeling of being watched.
I tried to wake you up. I could swear Enyo saw it when she woke up, but she didn’t hiss or growl.
I think if it had been too bad, or someone angry and threatening, she would have.
It was there.” I pointed to the spot where the shadow had been standing, near the couch.
“I swear, Mason, I saw it. I know something was there.”
He walked over and hugged me. “I believe you. But even if I’d woken up when it was standing there, I probably still wouldn’t have seen it.” I could hear the sucks to be you that he didn’t say.
“Ugh, what time is it?” I asked, grabbing my phone off the end table where I’d left it when he pulled me into the bedroom earlier.
“Early enough that we have time to go back to sleep,” he said, yawning as he stood there in my living room, holding a shotgun in all his glory. He walked past me and back to my bedroom, climbing into bed without waiting for me to follow, but holding the covers back because he knew I would.
Enyo glanced at me, yawning just like he had, and then followed him. Neither of them was worried, apparently. Whatever had been there was gone, so I followed them. I flicked off the lights and closed my door, then climbed into bed and Mason covered us up.
He pulled me into him to spoon, and he wrapped an arm around me.
“Are you okay?” he asked when I settled in.
At first I thought he was talking about what had just happened, but then his hand came up and traced the spot on my neck he’d been squeezing when I panicked.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said softly. “I hope you truly know that. I know when I showed up here you had no reason to trust me, but thank you for remembering who I was before, back when we were best friends. Thank you for hearing me out. And thank you for using your safe word with me when you needed to. Just knowing that you knew you could say it, and that you trusted me to stop even after everything you’ve been through and what I put you through, Elijah .
. . it means everything . . . I . . .” His voice broke.
That was the moment that my heart truly, fully forgave him.
The moment I let go of everything bad in our past and knew I could start over with him.
He’d been broken badly since the last time I’d seen him, but he’d broken himself even before he lost his partner.
I knew I risked heartbreak, and I knew that even if I somehow survived everything going on, I’d never be able to go to Chicago with him and he’d never be able to stay here with me.
He hadn’t been able to get out of town fast enough before, and I could never live in a city.
For right now, though, we were okay. We were together.
I turned in his arms and touched his face.
“Thank you for not being like them,” I whispered.
He was everything I’d been looking for since senior year, but Mason was the last person I’d ever dreamed would be the one I needed.
Though maybe my soul had known all along.
Maybe it had been waiting for him to come back.
He pulled me to him, hugging me tightly, protectively, as Enyo curled up against my back. It felt as though they both wanted to protect me from whatever was coming for me. It was an odd thought, but it comforted me enough to allow me to fall back to sleep and rest peacefully until morning.