Chapter 26
26
Elliot Crane
Will you come over tonight?
You don’t have to.
Seth Mays
I need to do laundry and get groceries.
Okay.
Despite Elliot asking me to, I hadn’t gone to his house the night before—I’d desperately needed a little time to think. Which meant that I hadn’t done the laundry I needed to do equally desperately, and I was now out of clean underwear.
What Elliot had said to me last night sounded good—but while I didn’t think I needed to forgive him for having established personal boundaries, I was still reeling a little bit from the fact that he had switched so suddenly from not speaking to me to telling me that he didn’t want to live without me.
And yes, I was fully aware of my own hypocrisy.
I just couldn’t help it.
The only person I felt like I could trust completely was Noah, and even Noah I hadn’t told everything to.
I wondered if maybe someday I would trust Elliot that much. What it would take for me to trust him that much.
I sighed, then tried to refocus my attention on the sets of sand and dirt particulates spread out on slides in front of me. It was hard to concentrate on the comparisons when I kept getting distracted by thinking about Elliot, or, more specifically, about us . What I wanted. What I thought he wanted. Whether or not we had a chance of lasting.
My phone buzzed, and I jumped a little, cursing under my breath as I hit my eye socket on the microscope’s eyepiece. “Shit!”
I picked up my phone, ignoring the look Roger shot me from across our tiny lab. “Mays,” I answered it, having seen that it was Smith calling. I walked out into the hallway so I wouldn’t irritate Roger with the conversation.
“How much do you remember from the Crane murder last year?” Smith asked me, not bothering with a more formal greeting.
I felt my stomach drop like a rock. “Not all that much,” I told him. “Unless you’re going to ask me about dried spit.” I remembered there had been four killers, that Gregory Crane had been hanged with a belt, and that Elliot had been attacked, but that Hart and Taavi had saved him. But I hadn’t paid attention to much else, since I knew they’d caught the killers.
Smith let out a sound that might have been either a huff or a grunt. “One of the men responsible for Gregory Crane’s death is named Wess Dopfer,” he said. “And his sister recently became engaged to Charles Buettner.”
I felt my whole body go very still. “Charles Lee Buettner?” I repeated. “As in, the source of the DNA on the dead dog?”
“The same,” Smith replied, but he didn’t sound triumphant about it.
“So what does that mean ?” I asked him, fear for Elliot pulsing in my ears.
Smith let out a long breath. “It means,” he said, his voice serious, “that my theory about Elliot Crane being the target of a revenge plot just got more likely.”
“Revenge for not dying ?” I demanded.
Smith didn’t answer, and I swallowed.
“Shit,” is what I said out loud.
“We don’t know that’s the case,” he said, his tone cautious. “It could just be blowing off steam.”
“And committing animal cruelty?” I was getting angrier by the second.
We both knew that most killers started with animals before they progressed to people. “The dog belonged to Buettner’s neighbors, by the way,” he said.
“So?”
“He admitted that he hit it, panicked, and dumped it.”
“In Elliot’s driveway?” I knew I sounded incredulous.
“He claims to not know anything about how it ended up skinned,” Smith said.
“Bullshit.”
“Nevertheless, while I might be able to charge him with illegal disposal of roadkill?—”
“ Roadkill ?!”
“Which is how the law terms an animal struck by a vehicle,” he pointed out, annoyingly reasonably, although I could tell he was on edge, too. “I can’t actually tie him in any way to the Crane property. Not definitively.”
“Shit,” I said again.
Now I was really worried. Because if Buettner had been interviewed—or, worse, interrogated—then it might push him to do something more drastic than what he’d already done, which could mean that Elliot was in more immediate danger.
“Do you still have people patrolling near the house?” I asked Smith.
“I’ve put in that order, yes,” he replied. “But I’m going to be honest here, it doesn’t seem like highway is taking it all that seriously, and Crane doesn’t want there to be a patrol car on his property.”
Of course he didn’t. Not when some of his father’s killers had connections to the police. I couldn’t say that I blamed him, although I suppose that also meant that the attempt to use the police to keep an eye on things was probably not as effective as I might have hoped.
“Is that your way of suggesting that I stay there again?” I asked him. Not that I really needed an excuse to go over to Elliot’s house.
“I’m not going to tell you to do that,” he said. “But I also wouldn’t be upset if I thought Elliot Crane won’t be alone for a few days while we work this out.” He paused. “Unless he wanted to stay somewhere that wasn’t his house.”
I wasn’t sure he’d want to stay in my tiny apartment, but it was something I could offer. Especially since I had to go back there anyway to get clothes, because I didn’t want to spend more than one day in the exact same outfit. There should also be some food in my apartment, and raw flour and some baking supplies didn’t count because you couldn’t make much of them without at least some oil and eggs.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told Smith.
“That, and get me the reports on everything you still have. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“I’m on it,” I told him, and then hung up.
You could come to my place?
Then I could do laundry and see you.
Text me when you leave work.
I’ll come over.
Should I bring dinner?
I needed to get groceries. Badly. I had nothing for even a casual, light breakfast. No almond milk. No cereal. No bananas. No bread.
I need groceries.
I have nothing for dinner or breakfast.
So I can text you when I’m done with that.
Or I can bring you groceries.
You don’t need to do that.
But I would rather do that and see you sooner.
Okay, but I’m going to pay you back.
If you insist.
He’d already paid for enough of my food.
I went back to my particulates, but concentrating was proving even more difficult, which really wasn’t a good thing, given how distracted I’d already been. But now in addition to worrying about my relationship with Elliot, I was also worried about someone wanting to kill Elliot. Possibly.
I didn’t think Smith would appreciate it if I started bothering him again, but I wanted to know more about the case. About what had happened last winter. And I didn’t want to ask Elliot, in case he wasn’t okay talking about it.
It took me way too long to remember that I was at least somewhat friends with someone else who knew every detail of that case like the back of his hand.
I called Hart.
“What did the stripey dumbass do this time?” was how he answered his phone.
“Nothing!” I answered. “Or, rather, nothing bad.” I took a deep, shaky breath, steeling my nerves.
“What’s going on, Mays?” Hart asked sharply, and I realized that I probably hadn’t been as quiet as I’d thought. Elves have really good hearing, too. Maybe not as good as mine or Elliot’s, but a far sight better than a human’s.
“Do you know about the dog?” I asked him.
“What fucking dog?” His voice was tight.
Shit . I was about to unintentionally start a fight between Hart and Elliot, and I didn’t want to do that. But I wanted to know enough to hopefully help keep Elliot safe—and Hart might have some ideas about how to do that.
So I told him about the badger and the dog.
And then waited for Hart to work his way through an extremely impressive blue streak of curses that contained several new ones I’d never heard before. My personal favorite was absolute turnip-brained shitbird , directed at Elliot for not telling Hart what was going on, not allowing Smith to station uniforms at his house, and trying to stay in the house by himself.
“I got him to agree to come over to my place tonight,” I said at the end of the tirade.
“Is he bringing clothes and a toothbrush?” Hart wanted to know.
“I—don’t know?”
“Well, fucking tell him he’d better.” A pause. “Or I fucking will, and that is going to make your little date night much more awkward.”
“I’m going to tell him I told you,” I said. I wasn’t going to start off this relationship by lying, since it was only about seventy-seven hours old.
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t happy about it, but I was sure.
“Your funeral.”
He had a good point. Elliot was not going to be happy with me for telling Hart. But that was my problem. I wasn’t going to lie to him.
“Donate to Hands and Paws in lieu of flowers,” I told him.
“Jesus, Mays. You’ve got a set of brass balls, you know that? Or a hole in the fucking head. One of the two.”
“Would you lie to Taavi about something like that?” I asked him pointedly.
He was quiet for a moment. “Fuck. No. No, I wouldn’t.” He let out a sigh. “Now I can’t even be mad about it, because he ’s going to be mad at you because he thinks I ’m going to be mad at him , so I can’t be, because then he can’t be.”
I blinked, not entirely certain how to parse that sentence. “Um.”
“Fuck. Don’t worry about it. Tell him, don’t tell him.” He sighed. “But you didn’t call just to tell me all that shit, did you?”
“I found DNA on the dog,” I said. “And it matched the brother-in-law of one of Gregory Crane’s killers.”
“ What?! ” More swearing. “And he still fucking wants to stay by himself in that fucking house?”
“He doesn’t know that part yet.” Unless Smith had told him. “Unless Smith told him, but I don’t think he was planning on it.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because he knows I know,” I replied. “And I’m not going to let him stay by himself.”
“You’re damn fucking right, you’re not.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him. “But I want to know what you know about them. What they did. Last winter, I mean. Because I want to at least know what I’m up against. What kind of people they are.”
Hart was quiet again. “Fucking scum of the earth,” he half-snarled. “They fucking knocked him out, then dragged him inside and… hung him. With a belt they bought at a fucking Target or Wal-mart or some place.” His voice broke, and I swallowed. I’d never heard Hart this emotional. “And then the fuckers came back for El. He’d gone out to shift, they grabbed him, still in fur. He got one of the bastards good, but there were four of them.”
He fell silent, but it was the kind of silence that was pregnant—the kind he needed to collect himself, so I waited.
“I don’t know what happened between then and when Taavi found them,” he said, and his voice rasped and trembled. “But they’d already strung him up. Taavi and I chased them off, and I held him up until Smith got there.” I heard him swallow. “He almost—” He broke off. “It was pretty bad,” he said softly. “Rope burns down to the muscle. Swelling. Bruising. He sounded awful for weeks.” Hart cleared his throat. “What else do you want to know?”
“Who were they?” I asked him. “The four men.”
“Lance Hasenfuss, who was on the Shawano PD. Leon Reynolds, the ME. Keith Baker, a contractor who was Reynolds’s brother-in-law. And Dopfer, former Green Bay PD.”
“And they were all friends?”
“Friends-ish,” came the answer. “Baker and Reynolds were family. Hasenfuss’s wife and Baker’s wife were friends. But this Buettner guy didn’t surface on anything I ever saw.”
“His fiancée is Dopfer’s sister,” I supplied.
“So he certainly knows Dopfer, and might be friendly with the rest. Fuck. Mays, this is too big a deal for you to handle.”
I was worried about the same thing, but I didn’t know what to do about it, since Smith hadn’t offered any additional protection. “So what do I do about that?” I asked him.
“Smith knows?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“So what the fuck’s he doing?”
“Highway is patrolling the area, but Elliot refused having anyone posted at the house.”
“He—fuck. Why the fuck —” I knew the moment he figured out the answer. “Because of fucking Hasenfuss and Dopfer, is fucking why,” he answered his own question. “ Fuck .”
“Tell me what I should do, other than not leave him alone.”
Hart blew out a breath. “Tell Smith to call the FBI. Fuck, I’ll tell the rumbly bastard to call the FBI. They worked this case, too.” Another pause. “Do you trust the current ME?”
“I don’t think he’s a bigoted asshole,” I answered honestly. “But he’s a complete douche.”
Hart snorted. “So probably not a good option for help.”
“Not even a little,” I confirmed. “But I’ll ask Smith about the FBI.”
There was a pause, and I wasn’t sure what to say, but then Hart spoke again. “Take care of him, Seth,” he said, and I could tell from the fact that he’d used my first name that he was absolutely serious.
“I’ll do my best,” I told him, although now I was even more terrified than I had been before.
As promised, I’d texted Elliot when I left work. I’d contemplated telling him to pick up take-out, but then I’d have to tell him why I no longer wanted groceries… and, besides, I was pretty sure that nobody was going to try to kill him in a grocery store. It wasn’t a guarantee, of course, but public places very much frequented by people buying food for dinner or a party on a Friday night around five really weren’t high likelihood sites for murder.
That was the argument I was using to keep my anxiety levels from being catastrophically high, anyway.
Let’s just say I was incredibly relieved when I heard his familiar tread on the outside stairs, and I met him at the door.
And then remembered that I’d told Hart all the details about the ongoing threats against him, which he hadn’t told Hart, and he might not actually be terribly pleased with me.
The expression on his face when I opened the door told me he wasn’t happy , exactly, but he also didn’t look angry, which was better than I was expecting.
“Hi,” was all I managed to actually say, since I couldn’t come up with anything either pithy or romantic, and I also didn’t want to make anything worse. I followed that eloquence with a wince at my own inanity.
Elliot frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Fine!” It came out way too forced and cheerful, and I winced again.
Elliot sighed, his expression shifting into something I couldn’t quite read. “Seth, I’m not mad,” he said, which I guess meant that he could read my face just fine.
“No?” I stepped out of the way to let him come inside.
“Nope,” he replied, pausing just inside the door to kick off his shoes. His lips twisted wryly. “Val says I’m not allowed to be mad at you, anyway.”
“Does that usually stop you?” I asked, still a little wary.
He barked out a laugh as he padded into the kitchen in a thick pair of wool socks the color of lemons so that he could set down the six tote bags of groceries he’d somehow managed to carry all at once. “Of course not,” came his response. “But I should have told him and was avoiding it.”
I helped him take off his parka, which he’d been wearing unzipped. Underneath, he had on a thick flannel in brown, red, and orange, with a yellow t-shirt underneath that matched his socks. Today’s earrings were beaded—red, yellow, white, and black. I took the coat back out to the rack by the door and hung it up while Elliot began unpacking the groceries.
“You didn’t need to buy this much food,” I told him.
“I wanted to,” came the reply.
“How much do I owe you?”
He paused, then looked over at me, and I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t going to let me pay him back.
“Elliot.”
“Seth,” he replied, going back to unpacking.
I sighed. “I already basically owe you half a year’s salary or something,” I muttered.
“How about a kiss?” he suggested.
I raised my eyebrows. “So you’re saying you want me to be a food whore?”
“Don’t disparage sex work,” he told me, coming over and putting his hands on my hips.
“Just clarifying my role here,” I replied mildly. “But that doesn’t work if Rule One is in play.”
He blinked, frowned, then laughed. You can kiss me any time you want to. The new Rule One. “Okay, fine. How about your first-born, then?”
“I wasn’t planning on personally birthing anything,” I told him.
“And I wasn’t planning on taking up kidnapping,” came the reply as he cozied up closer. I brushed my hands over his hair, held back in a short braid.
“That’s probably good, given the fact that the police are currently paying extra attention to you.”
Elliot grimaced. “He has them patrolling by the house, doesn’t he?”
“Of course he does,” I replied. “He wants to catch this guy.”
Elliot sighed, then leaned out of my hands and into my chest, and I held him against me, his face tucked into the side of my neck. “You know it’s probably more than one, right?”
I echoed his sigh. “Yes.”
“Do you know how many?” he asked me, and his voice was more vulnerable than I’d heard him.
“Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“At least two, but probably three.”
“Could it be more?”
“It… could.”
His hands tightened on my hips.
“Elliot—”
“It’s okay,” he said stepping back, the smile on his face a little weak. “It’s nothing I didn’t consider.”
It was my turn to frown at him. “What do you mean, nothing you didn’t consider ?”
He went back to the groceries, and I felt a little chilled and a lot bereft. “When I moved back here. To Dad’s house. By myself.”
“Elliot, you should have?—”
“What?” he asked me, pausing with a box of Honey-Nut Cheerios in his hand. “Begged the police to protect me? When one of the men who tried to fucking kill me was a cop ?” His voice rose as he spoke, and the box of Cheerios shook a little in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, knowing my eyes were wide. I had known that—I’d thought it. But what I hadn’t thought about was the fact that he’d been thinking about this since he’d been attacked. “I—” I swallowed. “Then why did you move here?”
He put the Cheerios into the cabinet. “Was I going to let these fucking assholes take away the house I grew up in?” he asked me. “Let them tell me where I’m allowed to live? What I can do with my life? Fuck that.”
I saw his point, but at the same time—I didn’t know if I would be able to make that choice. To live knowing that someone might try to kill me because their friends had failed to do so.
When I looked up from studying the floor, trying to figure out what to say, I found him looking at me, something that might almost have been a smile on his lips.
“What?” I asked.
“You did the same thing, you know,” he said.
I frowned again. “What? No, I didn’t. When did I do anything even remotely like that?”
“When you kept going to work even though you knew someone was trying to infect people with Arcana,” he replied.
“That’s not even remotely the same thing,” I objected.
“No?” He leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “Continuing to live your life in spite of the potential threat against it?”
I gaped at him.
“It’s exactly the same thing.”
“But—”
His expression softened. “And I would have tried to stop you from going if I’d known about it before you got sick,” he said quietly.
“Wait, what?”
He shrugged, his cheeks darkening. “Seth, I… started caring about you a while ago. I just—I’m not a very good friend. Or boyfriend.” He rolled his eyes. “Clearly.”
“El—”
He stepped forward and kissed me. I kissed him back, my hands sliding around his back, pulling him as close as I could get him. Then I broke the kiss, but still held him close. “I’m scared, Elliot,” I whispered.
He rested warm hands on my shoulders. “Me, too,” he admitted. “But I have you to look out for me.”
“How?” I wanted to know.
He smiled. “Because I know you’ll be there—here—when I need you.”
“I can’t protect you from murderers, though,” I told him honestly. “I mean, I’ll try , but I don’t know how to fight or do pretty much anything.”
Elliot brushed a lock of blond hair out off my forehead. “Just being here is enough,” he said softly.
“But—”
He leaned forward until his lips hovered over mine. “Seth?”
“Y-yeah?”
“Stop talking.”
Elliot had been smart enough to buy frozen pizzas—including dairy-free pizzas for me. Six of them, because the diary-free ones are much smaller than normal pizzas. They actually weren’t nearly as bad as I’d expected them to be, either. Not something I wanted super often, but it kinda helped to scratch the pizza itch I hadn’t been able to touch since I’d contracted alpha-gal.
They were also pretty quick, which was good, because it was a good hour before we got around to actually cooking them, both of us wearing pairs of my sweatpants and lounging in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor of my tiny living room because there was no way both of us fit in my papasan. Elliot’s chest was bare, his tattooed arm wrapped around my chest as I leaned against him, my head resting on his solar plexus. I had a long-sleeve t-shirt on, because my Southern self was not used to the cold, and I couldn’t afford to make my shitty apartment as warm as I wanted it.
I was fine at the moment, since Elliot was keeping me warm.
“How come you’re still warmer than I am?” I asked him, absently tracing over the roses on his arm.
“Because you’re from the South, baby, and your blood isn’t nearly hot enough for Northern winters.”
“You’d melt in Virginia in the summer,” I told him, and he laughed.
“Probably,” he agreed. “Good thing you live here, now.”
“Good for you ,” I retorted.
“Exactly.” He nuzzled the back of my head.
The buzzer in the kitchen went off, but when I moved to get up, Elliot wriggled out from behind me. “Stay, baby. I’ll get it.”
I couldn’t see into the kitchen from where I reclined on the floor, but I could hear the sounds of cupboards, pans, the oven, and the pizza cutter—I sat up.
“Elliot?”
“I’m cutting yours first,” he called back.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks.” It was nice, for once, to be the person somebody put first. To have someone automatically think about the fact that if they cut cheese first, they could make me sick or potentially kill me, assuming the Epipen failed or something catastrophic like that. To be important enough to another person that I wasn’t an afterthought, but a first -thought.
He brought me a plate with an entire pizza on it—cut—which should tell you more about the size of the pizza than the enormity of my appetite. Although that was true, too, I supposed, now that I had a shifter’s metabolism.
Elliot went back to the kitchen, and this time I heard him using a knife. “What are you cutting?”
“My pizza,” came the answer. “There’s more than one of each, and I don’t trust myself to wash the cutter well enough in between.”
First-thought .
He came back with what looked like an entire pizza stacked precariously on his plate—his was normal-sized, so it took a bit more creativity than my sad tiny pizza.
It wasn’t terrible. My pizza, that is. Not what I remembered real pizza being like, but I supposed you couldn’t get too picky when you were working with vegan cheese.
Elliot set his plate to the side, then went about fiddling with his laptop so that we could watch a movie. He hadn’t told me which one.
“What are we watching?” I asked him.
“ Hound of the Baskervilles ,” came the reply. “It’s a good cold-and-stormy movie.”
It had started raining, and Elliot had made me promise we weren’t going to go anywhere tomorrow, since the roads were likely to ice over at some point during the night. He’d gotten breakfast food, and lunch food, and apparently also things he could make for dinner for the entire weekend, so he said nobody had to go anywhere until Monday morning.
I didn’t point out that was assuming nothing happened that required my attention over the weekend. Given that I’d had to work straight through the last one and had training the weekend before that , I was really hoping I wasn’t going to have to work this one.
Also, Elliot was half-naked in my apartment.
This time, he snuggled his way in front of me, pushing my legs apart with his butt so that he could lean back into my chest—shoving his way in so that I had to move my plate or risk losing it. “Watch the pizza!” I told him.
“I’ll get you more,” came his response, as he wiggled his butt again.
“Keep doing that and you’ll need to get yourself more pizza, too,” I warned him.
He tipped his head back—against my sternum—and looked up at me. “Is that a promise?”
Between us, my stomach growled. “Eat your pizza, you tease,” I said.
He gave one more wiggle—because of course he did—and then hit the touch screen on his laptop with one toe, starting the movie.
I pushed myself up, feeling enough guilt about Elliot also doing the dishes that I wasn’t going to stay in our cozy blanket-and-pillow nest any longer. My tiny apartment did not have a dishwasher, so he was standing at the sink, scrubbing at the burned-on not-cheese on one of the pans.
“I can do that,” I told him.
“You could also dry,” he said mildly, picking at a stubborn bit with one fingernail.
I gave in and picked up a dish towel. Elliot smirked. “Judy Hart strikes again, I see,” he remarked.
“You have them, too,” I pointed out.
“So does at least half of Shawano and several people in Richmond,” he said, laughing. Then his expression grew serious. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I replied, wondering what had caused the sudden mood change. “Why did you call Val today?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“All he said was that you’d told him about the… dead animals.” He glanced over at me, his hazel gaze sharp. “But you wouldn’t just call him to tell him, so why did you call him?”
I suppressed a sigh. “I had questions about what happened. Last year.”
“And you didn’t want to ask me?” His tone was flat, empty. Controlled.
“I didn’t want to upset you… or make you think about it any more than you probably already are,” I confessed.
“And you think I’m not already upset by the fact that some dickbag is leaving me dead animals?”
I felt my neck flush instantly. “I mean, of course you are. Which is why I didn’t want to ask.”
He turned and held out the now-clean pan, then leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his bare chest. I forced myself to look at his face. “I’m not stupid,” he said. “I know this is probably related to… Dad’s death.”
Neither one of us said anything about the fact that those same people had tried to kill him, too.
“You know they found a note in the barn?” he asked me, suddenly.
“What?”
“The barn where they took me. Where Val and Taavi found me. They left a note saying I just couldn’t handle everything with Dad gone.”
I stared at him, confused. Then it clicked. “They left a fake suicide note?” Hart hadn’t mentioned that.
Elliot nodded, and I tried not to look at the scar around his throat, but the tissue was mottled white and pink and brownish-purple, and without the collar of a shirt, it was hard not to see it for what it was—a line of scarring where someone had strapped a rope and hanged him from barn rafters. I could tell from the scarring alone that he was lucky to be alive. That I was lucky we had ever met.
“They did,” he said softly. “They didn’t do that for any of their other victims. Just me.”
“Because it was too close to… your father?” I suggested.
Elliot shrugged. “Presumably. I don’t know if they ever explained their reasoning, and to be honest, I really don’t give a shit.”
I nodded, biting my lip, uncertain of what to say.
Elliot studied me, his eyes stripping away my skin, my muscle, my bone, searching my soul. “So why did you want to know more about it?” he asked.
I swallowed. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to tell him.
Fuck it.
“DNA came back from the body of the dog positive for the brother-in-law of one of… them.”
Elliot went absolutely still. “One of Dad’s killers?”
“I don’t think I’m actually allowed to tell you that,” I mumbled, my neck flaming.
“But you just did,” he said softly.
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I’m worried,” I told him.
“And telling me that is going to help?”
“It might make you worried enough to ask me to stay with you,” I retorted.
“Seth, baby, I don’t need to be worried to ask you to stay with me,” he said, reaching out and taking the towel from where I’d been twisting it in my hands. “I told you months ago that you were always welcome in my house. That has always been true.”
I gave him a look that said there’s a big difference between staying and ‘staying.’
His lips twitched. “Fine. I’d like you to move in with me.”
I gaped at him.
His smile twisted wryly. “I suppose three days into a relationship might be a bit early for that, eh?”
I swallowed, knowing my eyes were wider than they should have been. “A little,” I said. “But since I was sort of living with you already, I guess it’s… less weird?”
“That’s still a ‘no,’ though,” he said, and although there was still that lopsided smile on his face, it seemed a little forced.
“Well, I did just re-up my lease for another month,” I told him, trying for a light tone. “So I’m here until at least the end of December.”
“Think about it?” he asked.
I nodded. Did I want to move in with Elliot? Yes—but I also did like the fact that I was on my own. I liked having him in my space as much as I liked being in his. I also really didn’t want the stress of death threats to be the reason why I moved in with him for entirely selfish emotional reasons.
Of course I was going to stay with him—or have him stay with me—for as long as this took to resolve. There wasn’t a question about that. What worried me was the idea that I would move in with him because of that and just stay because it was easier, not because it was what both of us actually wanted.
It also made me feel like the world’s worst hypocrite, since I’d always just jumped into relationships before—not that I hadn’t done that with Elliot, given the fact that I’d literally driven halfway across the country to be with him when I didn’t think he’d actually even want to be with me—but my former attitude of let’s see where it goes just seemed too laissez faire for how I felt about Elliot.
I desperately wanted to do this right—to do us right. But at the same time, it felt like I’d just gone ahead and done everything wrong from the get-go. Beginning with a casual multi-night stand and agreeing to the now-defunct Rules, keeping in contact even though I’d agreed not to, dropping everything to drive over a thousand miles to a tiny town in northern Wisconsin, our terrible first actual date, and now this .
It sure as shit wasn’t going to be the stuff of a romance novel, that was for damn sure.
More like a how-not-to-go-about-romance manual.
“You don’t have to.” Elliot’s voice broke into my had-gone-on-far-too-long reverie.
I blinked rapidly. “No! I mean. I was thinking.” My face and neck were both on fire.
“I didn’t mean you had to think about it immediately ,” he said, and I wasn’t sure which one of us felt more awkward. Like I said—how-not-to-go-about-romance.
I scrubbed both hands over my face. “I’m just—tired and overwhelmed,” I said, finally. “It’s not you. Everything is just… a lot.”
“I’m not part of ‘everything’?” he asked, and I could tell he was trying to tease me.
“Everything else ,” I clarified. “Although you’re a lot in a different way.”
“Am I?”
I glanced down toward the a lot in question, then back up, and by the time I met his eyes, they were sparking with laughter again. And something else. “You are,” I told him, and this time I was the one to step forward and put my hands on the exposed skin of his waist. His arms reached up and wrapped around my neck.
“Too much for you?” he asked, amused.
“Not a chance,” I told him, pushing my hips against his.
Elliot let out a tiny growl, then pulled me down and kissed me.
I felt his body mold into mine, hard muscle and bone turning into putty in my hands. And I loved it. Not that I didn’t love it when Elliot was throwing me around—because I very definitely did. But this was new—and very exciting.
He broke off the kiss to run his tongue over my throat, sending a shudder through my whole body as electricity shivered through my nerve endings. I heard myself growl low in my chest, the sound surprising, as was Elliot’s reaction.
He ripped my shirt off me, then shoved at the waistband of my sweatpants, pushing them down over my hips, freeing the erection that had been straining against the knit fabric. Then he shed his own, leaving them on the kitchen floor as he grabbed my shoulders with both hands and threw himself into my arms.
I staggered—he wasn’t that much smaller than me—but managed to stay on my feet, although I hit my thigh against one corner of the kitchen table. I sucked in a breath at the pain, but was immediately distracted by Elliot’s lips and the feel of his hips and cock grinding against the skin of my belly.
I shifted his weight, putting my hands under his thighs.
He bit me, gently, his teeth grazing the side of my neck where it met my shoulder. “Fuck,” I gasped.
He squirmed a little, pushing the heat of his erection harder against my stomach.
“Keep doing that, and I’m going to drop you,” I hissed at him.
“Then take me to bed,” he rumbled back. “Unless you keep lube in your kitchen.”
I groaned. “Remind me to do that later,” I gasped out, but I hefted him as he tightened his legs around me and carefully navigated my tiny apartment until I could half-drop him onto the mattress. I expected him to let go—but he didn’t, instead pulling me with him.
I caught myself with both hands so that I didn’t crush him, and both of us gasped as his heels pulled my hips hard against his—although mine was as much to do with pain shooting through my knee as the delicious feeling of Elliot’s cock pushing against mine.
His fingers on the back of my head pulled my mouth down to his, kissing me deeply before tugging at my lower lip with his teeth.
I chased him down to the mattress, kissing behind his ear, around his jaw, across the scarring on his neck.
“Seth,” he rasped, fingers fisting in my hair.
I hummed against his skin, kissing back up toward his jaw.
“Would you—” He broke off, and I raised my head to look at him. Elliot had never been hesitant in the bedroom.
“Would I…?” I asked softly, letting my weight settle a little more into his hips, drawing a soft moan from his lips.
“Fuck me?” he breathed out, his voice low and rough, eyes closed as his hips rocked slightly against me.
Between us, my cock jumped, answering the question for me. Just to make myself clear, I bent, kissed beside his ear, and half-whispered, half-growled, “With pleasure.”
He writhed under me, and I caught the distinctive sharp-bitter-musky smell of precum. I growled again, unable to help myself, pushing against him.
I pulled open the small drawer of my thrifted bedside table to grab the lube and condoms, but Elliot put his fingers on my wrist.
“Do you have it?” he asked me, his cheeks flushed and eyes bright.
“What?” I asked him, feeling a frown slightly furrow my forehead.
“The dildo you used… on yourself.”
I swallowed. “Y-yes.”
“Would you…”
I’d already taken it out of the drawer.
Elliot’s breathing was fast, the skin of his face and chest flushed, pupils wide and eyes shining. “Show me,” he rasped. “Do to me what you did to yourself.”
I sat back on my heels, suppressing a wince as my knee protested—fuck my knee. I’d pay for it later, but right now I didn’t care. Right now, I had Elliot splayed out in front of me, his mouth slightly open as he panted, his eyes fixed on the toy I held in one hand and the bottle of lube held in the other.
I prepped it the way I always did—although this time instead of fantasizing about Elliot, he was here with me. And it was his body that was going to be stretched and opened instead of mine.
I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to get my libido under control as thoughts about Elliot thrashing as I pushed the toy inside him— Stop thinking about it and do it , I told myself.
I rubbed it between my palms, warming the rubber, then stroked lube onto it, noting the way the flickering of his pulse sped up under the skin on the side of his throat.
Elliot bent his knees, placing his feet on the mattress on either side of my legs, so that he could move a pillow under himself, raising his hips. I took my lubed fingers and gently ran the tip of one over the highly sensitive flesh, watching as Elliot’s head dropped back, his chest rising and falling as he breathed through the sensations.
I ran my fingertip around the rim of his body, and he pushed his hips a little higher into my hand. I teased at the muscle, feeling it resist despite Elliot’s soft whimper and the press of his hips toward me. “Baby,” he gasped out as I teased him again. “Please.”
I swallowed the sound my throat tried to make and took away my hand, going instead to the toy he’d wanted me to use in the first place. I started with the narrower side, pressing the tip against him, feeling the resistance of his muscle increase slightly, then give in as it slid inside him. Elliot moaned, low and deep, a sound that I felt all the way into my balls.
I shifted my weight, leaning down on one elbow so I didn’t have to stop doing what I was doing, but I could also kiss him—I started with his shoulder, my lips brushing the wingtips of a long-legged bird at the top of his bicep, up over the crest of his deltoid, across his trapezius, and up the side of his throat, paying special attention to the puckered skin of his scar.
“More,” he gasped out, and I obeyed, pushing the dildo deeper. He let out a rush of breath, hands fisting in the bedsheets. I eased it back a little, and he made a soft, strangled sound, so I pushed it deeper again.
“Fuck,” he gasped. “More.”
I whimpered a little, but obeyed again, sliding it out a little before pushing harder.
“God. Fuck. More.”
I withdrew the toy, lubed the other side, then, gently pressed the wider end against him, earning a guttural sound that was part groan and part growl. His hips pushed up, his legs tensing, the lines and indentations of muscle clear on his coppery skin. I didn’t wait for him to ask for more—I kept it moving, sliding a little deeper each time, slow, but relentless.
Elliot was panting now, sweat forming a sheen on his smooth skin. “Seth,” he managed.
“Mmmm?” I wasn’t any less wound up, my stomach aching from clenching muscles to keep myself under control. My balls ached, and I was desperate to touch myself—but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand it for very long if I did.
“I want… you ,” he gasped out.
I tightened my jaw, struggling against the electric sensation rushing through my groin. “I won’t last,” I told him roughly.
His hazel eyes locked onto mine. “Neither… will I.”
It was my turn to let out a moan between clenched teeth.
I pushed myself back up, letting the toy slide out of Elliot’s body. It took every ounce of concentration I had to keep myself under control as I unrolled the condom and slicked myself with lube. I groaned loudly when I looked up and found Elliot, his legs spread wide, body still a little open, his hand closed around the dark, flushed skin of his cock.
“God, Elliot,” I gasped out, pinching the base of my erection to hold back the threatening tide.
“Fuck me,” he demanded, his voice rough and breathy.
Ignoring the distant pain of my knee, I knelt over him, and he gripped his legs under his thighs, pulling them back to give me room, opening himself even wider.
I made some sort of sound, although I couldn’t quite tell what it was, even though it came from my own throat. My skin prickled, my vision a little blurry, and I drew in a long, deep breath, pushing the surge of emotion down, keeping the shift at bay.
“Seth,” he gasped. “Please.”
Muscles shaking, I lined myself up, pressing the head of my aching cock against him, then pushing, feeling the tightness of the ring of muscle resist, then give way. I closed my eyes with a heavy moan as the heat and pressure of his body closed around me. Not wanting to hurt him, I pushed slowly—gently, but steadily—easing myself in deeper and deeper until our hips met, my cock fully sheathed inside his body.
Trembling, I opened my eyes.
Elliot’s chest heaved, his eyes locked on mine. “More,” he whispered.
Just as slowly as I’d entered him, I pulled back until I felt the tightness of his muscle on the ridge around the head of my cock, the nerves hypersensitive, my stomach tight with need and hot with want. And then I pushed back in, faster than before.
And again.
And again.
“El—” I gasped out.
“ Fuck .” He sucked in a breath, the air catching in his throat. “Yes. Fuck, yes.”
I drove myself into him, gasping out a “Fuck, Elliot,” as his body clenched around me, his orgasm pulling mine along with his as cum pumped out onto the planes of his stomach.
I let my head drop until my forehead touched his, the warmth of our breath mingling between us.
I felt him shift, and I began to ease back, but he stopped me—“Stay.”
His hands slid up my arms, and he pulled me down, bringing my lips to his and drawing my weight against his body. I ran my hands over his hair, his face. “Okay.”