Chapter 4
The cane’s mocking me. Leaning against the doorframe like it knows it won.
Like it’s earned the right to stand upright while I limp around this resort with a femur that feels one wrong step away from betrayal.
I glare at it from across the room. Bare-chested, towel slung around my hips, hair still damp from the rinse I didn’t finish.
My whole body aches—not the good kind of sore, not the kind you sleep off with a smirk and an ice pack.
No. This is the kind that throbs deep in the bone. And five days of honeymoon sex with a very flexible, very loud, very insatiable husband has done me the fuck in.
I mutter something dark under my breath.
Then I grab the cane. It’s heavier than I remember.
Or maybe I’m just pissed off enough to feel it today.
The wood’s smooth, the grip familiar. I hate it.
I still use it. Elias made me pack it. Elias, who’s currently singing in the shower like his throat wasn’t raw yesterday from screaming my name into a pillow.
I limp to the patio door, shove it open with my shoulder, and step outside into the blaze of morning heat. The ocean’s glittering. Birds are screaming. Somewhere in the distance, someone’s probably having a normal vacation.
I lower myself into the lounge chair with a grunt and the second my ass hits the cushion, the tension in my thigh eases just enough to stop grinding against my patience. I shift the cane to lean beside me and stretch my good leg out, letting the breeze skim over bare skin.
It’s not a bad pain. Not really. It’s just a reminder that even when I’m stronger than I should be, even when I keep up with Elias at his worst and ride him through every high he throws at me, I’m still healing. Still not whole in ways no one but me ever gets to see.
But hell—five days with his thighs around my head is worth it.
Every ache, every throb, every bruised muscle in my neck from letting him grind down until he forgets his own name.
I tip my head back against the chair, eyes closing as I let the sun sink into my chest, warmth spreading slow and heavy through bone and muscle.
Behind me, the water shuts off, and I know—I know—what’s coming. He’ll step outside damp and glowing and insufferably pleased with himself, wearing nothing but one of my shirts and a towel that won’t stay put, all confidence and mischief and bad intentions. I’m already hard just thinking about it.
Then I open my eyes.
And there he is. Standing right in front of me, still dripping from the shower and not wearing a damn thing.
Jesus fucking Christ. He’s just… there. Glowing in the sun, curls dark and damp against his forehead, skin flushed from heat and days of too much fucking and not nearly enough rest, muscles drawn tight and loose all at once.
He doesn’t cover himself. Doesn’t even pretend to.
Just stands in the light like he knows it’s a spotlight, like he knows I can’t breathe when he looks like this.
My cock twitches in my towel like it just remembered how erections work, and all the tension in my thigh—the sharp burn in the bone, the dull ache in the muscle—slips behind a different kind of heat.
Then I look up at his face. And fuck me, the look in his eyes—bright and soft and dangerously smug—tells me everything.
He knows my leg hurts. He saw the cane. He caught the flicker of something I didn’t say.
And instead of poking at it, instead of joking or deflecting, he just tilts his head and murmurs.
“Want me to make you forget about it?” His smile curves.
He doesn’t move yet—just stands there, bare and beautiful and gleaming like something I do not deserve, but somehow wake up to anyway.
I let my gaze drag over him—slow and hungry. I already have forgotten about it, but I’m not above milking this. “Mmm…” I whine, the softest, fakest sound I’ve ever made. “Yes.”
His grin goes feral. “I’ll be right back!” And then he bolts. Just turns and runs back into the suite, bare ass bouncing in the sunlight, leaving me hard, confused, and blinking after him like I missed a page in the script.
“Pup—what the fuck—” I mutter, dragging a hand over my face as the patio door swings shut behind him.
I groan, flop my head back against the lounge chair, and close my eyes like that might undo the last thirty seconds of confusion and blue balls. The ache in my thigh twinges again. Not enough to bite. Just enough to remind me that I’m too fucking old for whatever he’s plotting.
The door opens again, and I hear the jingle before I see it—the unmistakable sound of sin packaged in plastic. My eyes flick open.
Elias is strutting across the patio like he’s walking a runway built specifically for deranged husbands. Curls dripping, skin glowing, and now he’s holding a bottle of lube from the Cole bag like it’s a goddamn torch of victory. Strawberry-scented, of course.
He comes straight for me, grin sharp and unapologetic, and without saying a word he shoves my good leg off the lounge chair. My foot drops to the warm stone tile, balance shifting as my thighs spread wider on instinct, my body adjusting before my brain can catch up.
I raise an eyebrow slowly. “Pup…” I warn, voice already low and curling with heat.
He doesn’t answer. He just drops to his knees between my legs, flicks the cap open with one thumb, and leans in. His mouth presses to my inner thigh—hot and soft and too close to be accidental.
Another kiss follows, higher this time. Then another, equal parts mischief and reverence. I groan, head tipping back, one hand curling tight around the armrest while the other twitches uselessly at my side, aching to grab his curls and drag.
His mouth reaches the crease of my hip, breath hot there now, kisses lingering longer, turning hungry. One of his hands works lower while the bottle waits in the other like he’s about to bless a very particular altar. He looks up at me then, smirking, eyes blown wide with exaggerated innocence.
“Strawberry,” he whispers. And I know I’m fucked.
Elias reaches up, eyes locked on mine, and pushes my towel aside like it’s in his way—like it’s an offense to his current mission. It falls open across my hips, warm air hitting my skin, and then his gaze drops to my cock like he’s greeting an old friend he plans to devour.
And then, just to make sure I know this isn’t going to be anything close to holy, the little fuck slicks his own fingers.
“Planning something, pup?”
He doesn’t answer. Because the next second, his mouth is on me. Hot and slow and perfect—lips stretching around the head of my cock, tongue dragging with precision that borders on cruel. I groan, spine tensing, hands gripping the arms of the chair like if I don’t anchor myself I might drown in it.
He goes deeper. Not fast. Not sloppy. Just slow enough to keep me on the edge of what the fuck is happening, every motion fluid and intentional.
He knows my body too well. Knows how I sound when I’m about to snap.
Knows how my legs tighten, how my stomach jumps, how my breath shudders through clenched teeth.
And just when I start to forget my own name—his fingers slip between my thighs and I stiffen.
Not because it’s unwelcome. But because it’s him.
Because he’s still sucking my cock, slow and deep, like he’s done it a thousand times—and now his fingers are pressing, ghosting, slick and patient and unshaking as they tease lower, waiting.
He doesn’t push further yet. He waits. Just a whisper of pressure. Enough to be unmistakable. Enough to let me stop him, but I don’t. Instead my thighs shift a little wider for him.
He groans around my cock—feels it—and that noise, low and desperate and proud, punches through me like a fucking sledgehammer.
His mouth stays steady, his fingers push deeper. And I still don’t stop him. Because fuck it.
The tip of his finger slips past the rim, slick and careful, and my whole body tenses—because it’s new, not just the sensation but the fact that it’s him.
That I’m letting this happen. That I’m choosing it, breathing through it, not fighting the tight coil of discomfort and adrenaline but letting it blur into something hotter, something heavier, something I can’t name.
And then I hear him moan. He moans around my cock, like the feeling of sliding that finger inside me made him come undone. Like my body giving him this is the most intimate thing I’ve ever done. Like this is his pleasure, not mine. Not mine alone, anyway.
His mouth doesn’t stop. Tongue dragging, lips sucking, taking me in deeper as he works that single finger with slow thrusts, curling just slightly like he’s already memorized where I’m sensitive without ever being told.
And it’s good.
God, it’s so good. The tight stretch, the warm pressure, the impossible rhythm of his mouth and his hand and I can’t fucking breathe, can’t fucking think.
My hands twitch against the chair, then rise and I bury my fingers in his curls. Twisting into the wet strands, holding on like they’re the only thing keeping me grounded as my thighs twitch and my mouth falls open on a ragged gasp.
He moans again. Fucking hell.
His finger slides deeper, his mouth gets hungrier and then he finds the spot.
That fucking spot and it’s a full-body snap of sensation that turns my spine to lightning and rips a sound out of my throat I don’t recognize.
My fingers tighten in his hair, hard, knuckles white as I jerk and grind up into his mouth without meaning to.
“Fuck—pup—don’t—don’t you fucking stop—”
Of course he doesn’t. That little shit smirks around my cock, mouth stretched wide and wet and perfect, like he planned this. Like he knew I’d give it up eventually and now he’s collecting his reward like the filthy little altar boy he was never meant to be.