Chapter 10 Elias
TEN
Elias
I get hard off and on all day, even when I’m not directly thinking about what happened.
The memory is in my body. In the soreness, yes, because I feel the tenderness of my bruised knees when I kneel to check inventory on a bottom shelf.
But it’s when I reach to the back of it, when I find myself unconsciously arching, that I shudder.
That doesn’t mean I’m not still depressed. I know that it’s over. I know that my life, once again, is dull and easy and safe. I know that it was never real, even if it felt like it. That’s what I paid for.
I can’t afford to pay for it again. Even with the new pet sitting assignment I just got, it will take months for me to save up enough for a new fantasy.
It’s a depressing thought. It’s hard to live in this dull reality again. And yet, though I do feel kind of depressed, I don’t feel like I’ve returned to this reality quite the same as I was before.
When we get busy at five, Emmy tells me to help Saul in the deli. Usually, Saul gives me one-word orders when I step back here, but today he says nothing, just stares at me.
There was a time when that would have made me self-conscious, but tonight I just ask, “Onions?” Saul always needs onions chopped.
He ignores the line of customers. “You seem …” He trails off, clears his throat. “Yeah. Onions. And teriyaki chicken.”
“M’kay.”
As we work through the rush, he keeps looking at me. Usually, when the rush is over, Saul goes outside to smoke while I clean up the counters, but tonight he starts brewing fresh coffee. He’s still watching me. Can he tell that I got fucked last night?
Does he even know that I’m gay? I’ve never said, but maybe it’s obvious. Maybe he’s homophobic.
But when I’m done with the counters, he hands me a cup of coffee. His fingers brush mine. Settling his ass against the counter, Saul crosses his arms over the slight paunch of his belly. It’s not a bad paunch, pretty normal for 45 or whatever he is. His sips his coffee.
“You seem different,” he tells me, like he’s finishing what he’d started to say an hour ago.
On another day, that would embarrass me, but today I’m immune. Besides, he’s right. I am different.
Last night, I got chased through the woods. I got caught and thrown down and fucked so primally, so perfectly that I came handsfree for the first time in my life. Then he kept fucking me, and I kept coming, again and again.
Last night, I learned that I was right about myself: that is what I need. The problem is, I need it again. I need it now.
“You wanna smoke?”
I blink Saul and the deli into focus. “I don’t smoke.”
“Don’t wanna try it?”
“No, thanks. But thanks for the coffee.”
Saul makes one of those faces that combines acknowledgement with disapproval, but it doesn’t reach me, not tonight. He pushes away from the counter and walks out of the deli, heading to the patio.
That’s when I see … him.
The way his searing blue eyes meet mine the instant I spot him between the aisles makes me feel like he was watching me. Of course, that’s what I want to feel, but I let myself believe it. I need the fantasy.
He’s wearing a tailored three-piece black suit, a very expensive one, minus the jacket.
His vest skims a lean but obviously powerful torso.
He’s big and really well built, but there’s still a grace to him.
His sleeves and pants, which follow the lines of his body without being tight, are slightly rumpled, as though this is the end of what’s been a long day.
His dark brown hair, wavy and so damn sexy, is combed back as usual, baring that perfect, chiseled face.
“How’s the coffee tonight?” he asks.
“Eh, it’s okay,” I answer with automatic honesty then try to correct, “I mean—”
“It’s weak. It always is.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
His lips quirk. “I’ll take a cup anyway.”
“Oh. Sure. Great.”
I hurry over to the machine kind of ridiculously. I don’t know why I’m so flustered when I was pretty damn chill a minute ago. (I do know why. Obviously. But still, it’s ridiculous, and I’m acutely aware of the fact.)
I fill a cup and slide it to him. He pays with cash, like always, so I don’t get to learn his name from a credit card. I don’t know how to ask for it, and he’s never offered.
But he’s used my name several times. It always makes my heart skip, then it makes me feel kind of dumb because, yeah, duh, it’s on my name tag.
He puts a lid on the cup. “So you like strong coffee and dark chocolate. I see a pattern.”
He leaves a gap of time for me to reply, but I’m silent. I’m not good at banter, and I’d rather hear his voice than my own.
“You like intensity,” he concludes.
My face heats as though somehow it’s obvious what happened to me last night—and how I responded to it.
He waits again, so I try to reply. “I … um … yeah. I guess so.”
He smiles slightly. “Goodnight, Elias.”
I forget to answer as I watch him walk away.
I’m too busy drinking in the sight of him, his broad shoulders and tight waist accentuated by the vest, the curve of his ass hinted at with each step, the shape of his strong legs a barely-there tease.
My eyes snag on his feet, glossy black shoes—and a trailing shoelace.
“Wait!”
Most people would wheel around at such a call, surprised and hunting for the reason, but he just stops at the endcap of an aisle. Then, slowly, he turns.
I can’t explain what makes me leave the deli counter and walk toward him. It’s not planned or purposeful. I just … do it. Like he’s drawing me to him.
There’s no question in his intense gaze, only a mild curiosity.
I stop a few feet away. “Your, um, shoe.”
Then I do another thing I can’t explain, this one even stranger than chasing after him, even more out of character. And yet, it feels entirely right and natural when I crouch at his feet, so right that my hands are steady as I reach for his laces.
“Mmm,” he hums. With any other person, I would take the sound to mean, Oh, I see. My shoelace is untied. But from him, it feels like, Oh, good boy.
I tie his shoe, keenly aware of the solidity of his foot under my fingers. They linger there when I’m done. I look up, gazing along the length of his body to his tilted-down face. I shiver. My cock hardens.
There are other people in the store, but it feels like it’s just us.
“Thank you, Elias,” he rasps in a low voice that makes my eyelashes flutter. Does he notice? Does he know what I’m half imagining right now?
His hand reaches down. I take it, reveling in his strong, warm grip as he pulls me up. We’re standing close now. I’m pretty average height, but he’s tall, so I’m still looking up.
“I’ll see you later.” It’s a normal phrase, but the way he says it, softly, like it’s just for me, makes it feel like it means more than goodbye.
Of course, that’s just another fantasy.
* * *
At nine, when Emmy has long since gone home and I’m running the register, Saul closes the deli. He comes to the register with a six-pack of cheap beer, interrupting my creative reimagining of the shoe incident.
“How old are you?” Saul asks as I ring him up.
“Uh, 23.”
He hands me his card to run. “Huh. I thought you were younger.”
“Oh. Nope.”
I’ve heard that before, and I know what it really means: you seem shy and inexperienced. Is that why Saul has never really talked to me? Why is he talking to me now? I’ve worked here for almost a year.
“You’re good help,” Saul tells me as he snags his six-pack from the counter. “Last kid was shit.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Maybe tomorrow you’ll smoke with me.”
“Oh. Hm. Maybe.”
Saul’s eyes flick to mine like he’s checking for something, but I have no idea what.
“See ya tomorrow,” he says and heads for the door.
“Yeah. See ya.”
My mind quickly returns to my fantasy, where the hand that reaches down for me grips not my hand but my jaw. He pulls me forward to where his cock juts, stiff and huge, from the open front of his suit pants.
He rumbles in satisfaction when I take him in my mouth.
Good boy, he tells me as he grips the back of my head and starts fucking my mouth. What a good, good boy.
I know that when I’m home in bed, alone in the dark, this fantasy will twist up with others and with what happened last night. I know that he’ll fuck me in my mind, that it’ll be rough and a little cruel. I know I’ll come. I also know that it will be a mere shadow of what I felt last night.
I know I’ll end up lonely and cold and empty. But that doesn’t mean I can stop the fantasy. Or that I even want to.