Chapter 35
35
Elliot Crane
Can you come back in here and help me take a bath?
Seth Mays
Do you want breakfast first?
Only if you count as breakfast.
I rolled my eyes, but my body reacted exactly the way he probably wanted it to. I’d kept things from getting too heated the night before—concerned about Elliot’s very recently post-surgical shoulder—and while he hadn’t said anything, I knew he had been disappointed.
I couldn’t tell if his text was teasing me in retaliation or if he was still trying to get in my pants. Not that I didn’t want him in my pants. I did. Quite badly, in fact. But I was more worried about hurting him than I was about the state of what I kept in my trousers. I took a couple deep breaths, quickly finished my first mug of coffee, and then walked back into the bedroom.
Elliot was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking up at me with a faux-innocent expression that I didn’t buy for a second.
“Elliot.”
“Seth,” he countered, his tone teasing.
I sighed, but couldn’t help the slight smile that tugged at my lips. “You aren’t going to behave even a little, are you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
He grinned at me, that lopsided smile I loved so much. “Not if I can help it.”
I shook my head. “If you can’t get yourself to the bathroom, you shouldn’t be doing that ,” I told him firmly.
He narrowed his hazel eyes at me. “Would you like to supervise my trip to the bathroom?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the door frame. “Go ahead,” I told him. I tried to look casual, but I was tense, ready to spring forward to catch him if he so much as wobbled.
He grabbed the cane from beside the bed with his good hand, then pushed himself up. With his sprained knee, walking was slow and painful, although he was much steadier with the cane than he had been when he’d come home from the hospital.
To my surprise—in a good way—he made it to the bathroom himself without losing his balance, and he turned to grin at me again when I followed him in. “See?”
“I see,” I replied.
“Help me in?”
“Don’t you need to take your pants off, first?” I asked him, and the minute it came out of my mouth I wondered when this had turned from him seducing me to me seducing him.
The sparkle in Elliot’s eyes told me he hadn’t missed it. “I only have one hand, and I need it to hold the cane…” He trailed off leadingly.
I gave in to the inevitable. I untied the drawstring on the sweat pants he’d been wearing when I’d half carried him to bed the night before, taking my time and enjoying the way his breath sped up as I undid the strings. The waist loosened, I slid my fingers around the inside of the gathered elastic, blood rushing south as my fingers brushed against the hot skin of his belly. He sucked in a breath, and the hand on the cane wavered a little.
“You should take them off me,” he told me.
“Should I?” I stepped closer, running my hands around to his back, pushing gently at the waistband.
“Fuck, yes.” The intensity in his voice sent tingles down my spine.
I pushed the knit fabric down, exposing the long lines of legs, the faint curve of his hip and thigh, the roundness of his ass, the half-erect thickness of his cock. He let out a soft whine.
I slowly began undoing the buttons on the flannel he was wearing, one sleeve hanging loose over the arm in its sling. I started at the bottom, working my way up, exposing belly, then sternum, then all the way up to where the sling held his arm immobile. I pushed the sleeve off the shoulder of his good arm, then pressed a kiss to the exposed skin in a place where there was neither scab nor bruise.
There weren’t a lot of them.
He must have seen the concern on my face. “Seth, stop worrying.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I objected. “You’re covered in scrapes and bruises.”
“I have a few places you can still touch,” he told me, his voice low.
I swallowed.
“But you should help me into the bathtub.”
“Okay,” I agreed, trying to figure out if he was taking advantage of the fact that my brain wasn’t working super well at the moment.
I helped him up and over the side of the tub, half-kneeling to lower him down to sitting.
“Okay?” I asked.
“I will be if you take off your clothes,” he replied.
“El—”
He shivered. “Turn on the hot water, and take your clothes off, Seth.”
I gave in again, turning on the water—making sure it was hot, but not scalding—before stripping off my shirt, then dropping my own sweatpants. “Promise me something,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“If anything hurts— anything —we stop. Okay?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you stop when something hurts?” he asked, and I felt my neck and chest flush.
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“I have chronic pain,” I retorted. “If I didn’t do things when I was in pain, I wouldn’t ever do anything .”
He frowned. “But?—”
“You have an acute injury. Injuries,” I corrected. “I don’t want you to pull stitches, break blood vessels, or do anything else that could make it take longer for you to heal, okay?”
He studied me. “Do I hurt you?” he asked me, his voice tight.
I sighed. “Not in the way you mean,” I replied. “ You don’t hurt me.”
“But…?”
I sat on the edge of the tub and leaned forward to turn the tap off, steam from the water beading on my skin. “My knees are shit,” I told him. “Kneeling makes them hurt. Standing too long makes them hurt.” He looked slightly stricken, so I rushed on. “Elliot, sleeping wrong makes them hurt. Or not moving them. Or moving them too much. Especially the left one.”
He reached out a hand toward it, water dripping off his fingers from the tub, but pulled back before he touched me.
I caught his hand, then put it on my knee. “I’ll tell you if it’s bad,” I told him. “Or if I don’t want you to touch it. Or me. Okay?”
He looked up at me, eyes wide. “I?—”
I shifted, sliding off the side to sit on the bathmat, my right leg tucked under me. “Just like you’re going to tell me if anything hurts, right?” As I spoke, I reached one hand over the side of the tub and trailed my fingers lightly up the inside of his thigh, causing him to suck in a breath, the knuckles on his good hand white as he gripped the side of the tub.
“You what?” I asked him, my fingers finding the crease at the inside of his hip.
He expelled the breath he’d just drawn. “Shit.”
“I can stop?—”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled.
I couldn’t help the soft laugh that slipped from me, any more than he could help the soft moan that slid between his lips as I wrapped my hand around his cock, the water slicking my grip. “Any…” I said, squeezing. “Time…” A pull. “You…” He whimpered. “Want.”
He let his head fall back, steam and the rhythm of my hand making sweat pearl from his brow. Water sloshed a little around my arm as I worked him, watching the furrow form on his forehead between his closed eyes. In my hand, he was hard, thick and warm as the water. I could feel my own answering arousal rising between my legs, heavy and full.
“Seth,” he groaned.
“Mmm?”
Hazel eyes opened, found mine. “I need you.”
I squeezed tighter. “This or nothing,” I told him gently.
He made a soft grumbling noise. “Want you to come,” he managed, despite me picking up the pace slightly.
“I will,” I told him.
“Want to watch you come,” he gasped, and his good hand covered mine under the water. “Baby, please.”
I swallowed, feeling the flush spreading over my chest.
I let him take over touching himself, his eyes bright as he watched me push myself up until I could straddle the side of the built-in tub, leaning back a little so he could watch me wrap my fingers around the flushed pink of my cock. I let out a hissed breath as my wet fingers slid over the heat of my erection.
Elliot let out a soft mewling sound, and the sloshing increased as he stroked himself faster. I slid one foot under his thigh, spreading my legs wider.
“Oh, fuck,” Elliot breathed, “ Fuck .”
I didn’t have the breath to disagree—or agree, for that matter—panting in the wet heat as my balls drew up tight against my body. I wasn’t going to last—not watching Elliot fucking his own fist, color darkening his chest, his hair pulling loose from the short braid at the back of his neck.
“Come for me, baby,” he half-growled. “Fuck, God, come for me.”
I couldn’t help myself—his voice begging me to come, the sight of his fist working his flushed cock, his parted lips panting, eyes bright and hectic as they raked over my body. I whimpered, my belly almost aching as I struggled to control myself just a little longer. I gripped the base of my cock, watching him, watching moisture beading along his chest, a flush on his skin, his cock dark and thick in his fist.
I moaned, desperate, struggling to hold on.
“Come for me, baby. Fuck . Come for me.”
I grasped my cock in my fist, pumping myself hard, giving myself over to the throbbing pulse of my orgasm, the thick white creaminess of it spilling out over my fingers, dripping onto the molded tan plastic of the tub.
“ Fuck, ” Elliot hissed, his own hand speeding up as cum mixed with water, his breaths panting out in time to his strokes as it pumped out of him.
I leaned back against the wall, one leg in the water, the other still on the bathmat as I caught my breath. Elliot had his head on the back wall, slightly slumped in the water, which now very definitely needed to be changed out.
“This was a very counterproductive bath.”
I got Elliot settled on the couch, newly scrubbed, his hair washed, brushed, and braided, although not as neatly as he did it. It had been a long time since I’d braided Noah’s hair when we were little, and I’d cared more about what it had looked like than he ever did.
I was making brunch: English muffins, chicken sausage gravy, grits, turkey bacon, eggs, and rough-chopped home fries with peppers and onions. There was shredded cheese for Elliot, and the coffee maker was gurgling, brewing a fresh pot.
And then my phone rang.
Lacy.
I almost didn’t answer it. I’d been promised the day off.
“Mays,” I said into it.
“Positive ID on Elliot’s blood,” she said without preamble. “And a positive match on the dead badger.”
My heart hammered in my throat. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. The other DNA came back as a match on a missing timber wolf shifter from the Oneida reservation down near Green Bay.”
“Holy shit,” I said, softly. “Lacy…”
“I already called Smith,” she said. “He’ll get the warrant today.”
I let out a long, relieved breath. “Thank God.”
“Amen.”