Chapter 2
2
ELLIOT CRANE
May I ask a favor?
SETH MAYS
Ask away.
Can I beg a ride to the hardware store?
I know there’s a little one not far from here, but I’d rather go somewhere else.
And that requires a car.
When do you need to go?
Anytime today would be great.
I can come get you at 5:30.
Perfect. I’m at BTV.
Taking Elliot Crane to a hardware store wasn’t something I’d been expecting to do today after work, but it wasn’t like I had any other plans. I didn’t really have much of a social life these days, and I kinda didn’t want one. Something about most of your supposed friends still being friends with your ex makes you not terribly inclined to want to hang out with them. Which I suppose means that they were never actually my friends.
Usually if I had something social on my calendar it was either work people or Noah, and I see them all the time.
A trip to a hardware store was peak excitement for a Thursday night.
I left work right at five, oddly excited to be able to do anything other than go back to an empty apartment that wasn’t even mine. It clearly had nothing to do with the fact that I found Elliot physically attractive. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, and he didn’t even live here. Nothing was going to come of that.
He was a friend of Hart’s—that was all. I liked Hart, so I was willing to do Elliot a favor.
I was also assuming that Elliot would have asked Hart to take him to a hardware store if Hart hadn’t been up to his eyeballs in media and dead senator’s wives. I wasn’t sure what Taavi was doing, but I figured if he’d been free, Elliot would have asked him.
I pulled up in front of Beyond the Veil, and there was actually a spot that I could park in on the street for once. They had a little parking pass inside the back door for those of us who were semi-frequent visitors to snag and hang from our rearviews, but if I didn’t have to go around back, all the better.
Through the front window, I could see Elliot inside, talking to Mason. The giant orc was explaining something, and Elliot’s expression was thoughtful and attentive. He had on a different flannel from yesterday, this one a light blue and dark green, and a navy t-shirt, along with a pair of jeans.
I found myself—annoyingly—staring at the chiseled lines of Elliot’s face, his strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, wide nose…
Goddamnit, I was not going to go all swoony over this guy. Not because he wasn’t swoon-worthy, but because there was no point . He lived in Wisconsin, I lived in Virginia. I also had no idea whether or not he was even into guys at all, much less an overgrown Southern country boy like me. Non-starter.
I texted him. Here when you’re done .
I saw him reach into his back pocket and pull out his phone, then glance over at the window, a small, slightly lopsided smile shooting across his lips for a half-second.
I told myself very firmly that I was not going to let myself be swayed by a crooked smile, no matter how adorable it was. Not again. Devin had flashed such a smile when he’d first sauntered over to the high top table I’d been sitting at in Gwar Bar the night we’d met.
The night he’d first taken me home with him.
We’d dated for a month before he’d convinced me to move in with him. Fast-forward four years, and it had been some other blond guy he’d picked up in that same bar that had moved me out of his house. I guess he had a pattern. I tried not to think too hard about how often he’d probably done it during those four years that I hadn’t found out about.
I kept telling myself I was over that asshole.
I clearly wasn’t, since Elliot kept reminding me about Devin. Not that they were at all similar—Devin had been GQ -poster-boy hot, which was one of the reasons I’d fallen for him and was a very good reason I should have questioned his commitment to me , since I am not that. Elliot was striking—attractive, yes, but not in a conventional sense. Devin built his physique with weights and protein powder and fad diets. Elliot clearly didn’t.
The passenger door opened, interrupting my sour reminisces. Elliot flashed me that half-smile as he climbed in, and I noticed his earrings were studs with silver feathers dangling down. They suited him.
“Thanks for this,” he said, his voice still rough, but not in an unpleasant sort of way. At least in that he didn’t remind me of Devin, who’d had a smooth, cultivated voice. The kind you’d expect to hear on the radio introducing jazz. Elliot’s voice sounded like he was as likely to growl or grunt as speak.
I told myself to stop it.
“No problem,” I replied, trying not to wince at the level of cheerfulness in my tone. Hart often gave me crap about being too cheerful, especially in the mornings. Unlike a certain elven detective, I am definitely a morning person. I wondered—before I had a chance to stop myself—whether or not Elliot was a morning person. Not that it mattered.
“I hope I’m not ruining any plans,” Elliot continued. “But I’d like to get this started tomorrow, and while I had the raw wood for the table shipped in, I’ll need some basics I didn’t bring with me.”
“No, no plans.” I suppressed a wince. At least it wasn’t a Friday, and I could plausibly argue that not having plans on a weeknight wasn’t particularly pathetic. Not that Elliot probably cared either way. “Did you have a preferred hardware store?”
“Woodcraft—there’s one here somewhere.”
“Yeah, out in Short Pump.” Short Pump was not one of my favorite places to go. It was almost always crowded, the on- and off-ramps to 64 were usually a disaster, and there was something about massive sprawling malls that just puts me on edge. Maybe because I’m a small-town guy at heart, and Short Pump just makes me think about suburban bloat.
“Is that okay?” Elliot asked. “Not too far?”
“It’s fine,” I replied, a little surprised to find that I actually didn’t mind as much as I normally would have. “There will likely be traffic out there, though, so I hope you don’t have any other plans tonight, either.”
“If it’s too much trouble?—”
“No! No,” I cleared my throat, feeling heat at the base of my neck as it flushed out of embarrassment at having cut him off a bit more enthusiastically than I’d intended. “It’s no problem. Like I said, I don’t have any other plans.” I offered a smile, then busied myself by pulling out onto the Main Street traffic that would take us toward the highway.
“Well, these were my plans,” Elliot replied. “I’d expected that my hosts would be more… available, though, so thank you.”
“Yeah, poor Hart. This case is going to eat him,” I remarked. “A senator’s wife is a big deal, and since she’s a shifter, I guess they’re all hands on deck—while we’re most decidedly off deck.” That had sounded better in my head than coming out of my mouth. I decided to try again. “Is Taavi working?”
“I didn’t want to ask him,” Elliot admitted. “He’s got midterms this week, and I’d feel guilty if he wasn’t able to study.”
That made sense. “Ah,” is what I said out loud.
“Will you let me buy you a burger? As thanks for driving?” he asked, then.
I told myself very firmly that this was not a date. People don’t go on dates to hardware stores. And buying someone a burger—probably a fast-food one, not a gourmet one—was not an offer of a date when you were doing them a favor. “ You don’t have to do that,” I said, feeling the flush creeping a little higher on my neck.
“Sure I do,” Elliot replied, sounding satisfied about something. “You have Five Guys around here?”
“We do.” Five Guys was also one of Noah’s favorites, since you could get several pounds of fries and milkshakes with a big, multilayered burger for fairly cheap—and it was actually pretty good, too.
“You like Five Guys?” he asked, then.
“Oh, yeah.” I smiled. “Which is good, since it’s one of my brother’s go-to places.”
Elliot frowned a little at that. “If you don’t want to?—”
“No, no, I like Five Guys!” I insisted. “I just—my brother’s a shifter,” I explained. “He’s into the whole more-calorie-bang-for-the-buck thing. But I do genuinely love their fries.” My neck felt like the splotches were working their way up toward my face, and I hoped they weren’t super visible in the failing light. They probably were, with my luck.
Not that it mattered. Because it didn’t matter if Elliot thought I was a total dork.
I guided the Cruiser onto the highway, immediately moving to the middle lane so that I wasn’t too far away from the right exit, but also so that I could avoid all the merging cars as everybody and their uncle got onto the main artery of Richmond to head to their dinner dates, suburban houses, or mall-adjacent luxury apartments. Those last ones I totally didn’t get. Why anyone would want to live next to a mall, I did not understand, but I’m also still a rural boy at heart.
Don’t get me wrong—I like Richmond. But I do sometimes miss the stark beauty of a night sky studded with a million stars, the heavy smell of wet earth, and the wide palette of green offered by trees and vines and shrubs and all sorts of growing things. And flowers. It might seem incongruous to a lot of people for a big hulking guy like me to like flowers, but I do. Roses, especially, but also daisies and irises and violets… I try not to talk about it too much, since pretty much everybody either gives me weird looks or laughs at me when I talk about flowers.
Richmond had plenty of tree-lined boulevards and flower boxes and little offset emeralds of parks, but it wasn’t the same as being able to walk out your door and find yourself surrounded by nature. Where Noah and I lived—well, where Noah lived and I squatted—was near a cemetery, so I had access to green space, but I still missed having nature right there. Noah would humor me once every month or two if we managed to both have a day off at the same time, and we’d go out to Pocahontas or Powhatan State Park and let me get my nature fix.
I wondered whether Elliot thought of himself as a nature guy or a city guy, then told myself to stop wondering, because it didn’t matter what Elliot thought.
I got myself over to exit, then joined the slow-moving twisting ramp that would put us out at the right part of Broad Street to go to the store Elliot had requested. Once I pulled into the parking lot, it occurred to me that I might need to move some stuff in the back of the Cruiser to make space for whatever Elliot was going to buy.
“Are you going to need a lot of space?” I asked him, as we climbed out of the SUV.
“Not really,” came the response. “The back seat will be fine, if that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah, of course.” My back seat was empty, and I wasn’t one of those people who had pristine upholstery. I wanted to have a car that was always clean, but I mostly just managed to not have trash in my car—but mud, dirt, leaves, probably some crumbs from chips and the occasional lost peanut didn’t count as trash, and those I definitely had.
In the far back, I kept a big Rubbermaid tote with blankets, jumper cables, a first aid kit—what I thought of as car necessities. And beside it was a crime scene kit bag. Since I never knew when someone might call and ask me to come in, I didn’t want to get caught out somewhere without it. I guess it was good Elliot didn’t think he’d need that space.
We put on our masks, and I followed him into the store, a big blond shadow that didn’t know the least thing about woodworking. Elliot stopped one of the employees to ask about the availability and location of several things, and pretty soon they were chatting about their favorite this-thing or that-thing—I had no idea what any of them were—for carving and turning and whatever-else-ing carpenters did.
I tried not to look bored. I knew it would probably be the same situation in reverse if we’d gone to a crime scene, so it didn’t bother me, I just didn’t have anything to add to the conversation.
I was useful when it came time to carry the bags out to the car, at least.
“So what’s so special about this table that means they need you to come all the way out here to make it?” I asked, dragging a cajun-spiced fry through the ketchup before sticking it in my mouth. It was pleasantly warm for an early March evening, so we were sitting outside at a patio table eating our dinner. “I mean, I’m sure you’ll do a good job with it—” I broke off, neck flushing, as Elliot laughed, his lips quirking unevenly. I deliberately looked down at my small mountain of fries next to a grilled mushroom, pepper, and onion sandwich, no meat, no cheese.
Lucky me, I have chronic Lyme disease, thanks to a deer tick that bit me back when I was twelve. Because my parents believed more in the power of prayer than they did modern medicine, they didn’t bother taking me in when the bull’s-eye rash appeared when I was a kid, so I’m stuck with chronic pain and early-onset arthritis.
And, because apparently I am tasty and delicious to ticks, I also have alpha-gal syndrome from a lone star tick that bit me last November. Alpha-gal is an autoimmune condition in which your body utterly fails to process a certain mammal protein. I’ve gotten several new tick-bites over the years, and I’d done to this one what I always did—pull the little fucker out with a tweezers, just like you’re supposed to. But two weeks after that, Noah and I went out for cheeseburgers, and I went into anaphylaxis.
Alpha-gal is this fun condition in which you have severe allergic reactions to anything mammal-based. So no beef, no pork, no dairy. Chicken, sure. Fish, sure. But I have to eat cashew-milk ice cream—which isn’t actually that bad—and plant-based meat and sad soy cheese if I want to pretend that I’m having a cheeseburger. The pea-protein meat is actually pretty decent, but I usually just forgo the fake cheese because it really isn’t good.
Point being, I couldn’t get a burger at Five Guys. Or even a grilled cheese. But I could have a mountain of fries, and I do really like their fries. The alpha-gal is annoying, and I’m still getting used to what I have to avoid, but I’m even less of a fan of the chronic Lyme, which comes with joint pain, occasional swollen joints, and an inability to actually get a solid night’s sleep. Not that I intended to go into all that with a nearly-complete stranger, although I’m sure Elliot was wondering if I was vegan.
“As I understand it,” Elliot answered my question about the table, “part of the idea is to have a permanent casting table—instead of someone having to draw out the summoning lines every time they want to talk to the dead, these would be a permanent part of the table’s surface.”
“And you can’t just use an existing table and carve that?” I asked, hoping that wasn’t an insulting question. I took a bite of my sandwich.
“I could,” came the response. “But I guess when magic is involved, there’s something better about having something made by hand and with particular intentions.”
I blinked. “Intentions?”
Elliot chewed a bite of his massive bacon double cheeseburger with a shrug. I was a little jealous of his burger, although I was used to that—Noah also had no compunctions about eating bacon cheeseburgers in front of me. I’d only had alpha-gal for the past four months, but while I really missed bacon cheeseburgers, I wasn’t going to be a jerk about it.
“I don’t totally understand, myself,” Elliot said, “although Mason tried to explain. But there’s something magically important about what the person who makes a thing thinks or feels about the person it’s made for . It’s not necessary , but I guess it makes the casting easier?” He shrugged.
I thought about that. “So a bought table wouldn’t have anything like that—because it was made by a machine or by someone who doesn’t know them.”
“That’s what I got from the conversation,” he replied with another shrug.
I supposed that made sense. I might work magical crime scenes, which meant that I knew more than the average bear about what particular magical symbols might mean—summoning circles, protective circles, things designed to keep people out, or things designed to cause harm. I’d seen all of them, some of them with more frequency than others. Protective wards over doorways were actually fairly common, and I felt like I could pretty much identify those on sight by now.
But while I was familiar with how something like a summoning circle might work and understood that the skill of the person drawing the symbols would impact the efficacy of the circle itself, it hadn’t occurred to me that what it was on might also matter. I’d seen Ward summon the dead without any circles at all, and I’d also seen him sketch symbols on walls and sidewalks and floors with chalk or charcoal—after we’d processed the scene, of course.
“Have you done this before?” I asked.
“The table part, yes, many times. Not the summoning circle.” He took another bite of his burger.
“I assume someone is going to draw it out for you?” I grabbed another fry.
He nodded, finished chewing, then swallowed. “I’ve asked them to give me a to-scale drawing, yes. Then I’ll carve it out and inlay it.”
“Inlaid? Nice.”
That crooked half-smile again. “Cedar in oak. Their choice for magical reasons, but it should look good.”
“And it doesn’t matter that you’re not a witch or warlock?”
Elliot shrugged. “Ward or Beck will do the initial chalk sketch on the table, as well as the actual laying of the inlay—I’ll carve it out, cut the stripping, but they’ll press it in. Hopefully that will be good enough. Mason seemed to think so, anyway.” Beck—Rebeckah Kwan—was the third wheel in the Beyond the Veil team. Hart used to be the fourth, but he’d left to join the FBI, so now it was the three of them plus Rayn-the-front-desk-touch-psychic. I wasn’t quite sure how he fit in, but it wasn’t my business.
I’d hate to be Ward and Beck if the inlay process didn’t work, but I wasn’t about to say that to Elliot. Not like he could do anything about it, anyway. “How long will all that take you?”
He shrugged again. “Building the table itself, about a week, give or take, to make sure it’s what I want it to be. I’m thinking another week to make sure the design is done correctly. I’m allowing myself a third, in the event that something is more complicated—or I accidentally break something.” Another lopsided smile. “Or cut off a finger.”
I choked on a fry. “Don’t even joke about that!”
He laughed. “I work by hand,” he said. “So the likelihood of me actually removing any fingers is slim to none. I’ve cut myself more than a few times, but never badly.”
“Define ‘badly.’” If he was anything like Hart, his ‘badly’ and mine were probably very different.
Another laugh. “Requiring a trip to urgent care.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “By whose estimation?”
That curved half-smile was absolutely going to be my personal downfall. “Mine.”
“I’m assuming that your threshold is somewhere around the same place as Hart’s—meaning too low.”
“Undoubtedly. But all my fingers still work.” He wiggled them at me.
I shook my head and ate another fry. “Do you often get flown out places to do work?” I asked.
He laughed at that. “Would you pay to fly a carpenter out to build you a table?” he asked .
“Would it be cheaper than shipping the table?” I countered.
His face settled into a thoughtful expression. “You know, that’s a very good point. I mostly only do big commissioned work for locals—folks within four or five hours’ drive. I’ve done a carving here or there, smaller things that pack into a Priority Mail box that gets shipped cross-country, but for the most part, I’m working Wisconsin, Illinois, and the U.P.”
“U.P.?” I asked.
“Upper Peninsula. That weird bit of Michigan that Wisconsin wears like a hat.”
I barked a surprised laugh. I’d never thought about it that way. Of course, I hadn’t really thought about the geography of the upper Midwest pretty much at all, so that wasn’t saying much.
He gave me another lopsided smile.
“Does that mean that you’re going to start a fly-out business?” I asked, half-teasing.
“Well, I’m probably not going to advertise it, but if you know anybody in California or Hawaii who wants a table, I’m available.”
I grinned. “I don’t know anybody outside of Virginia.” After I said it, I realized just how pathetic that sounded. I mean, sure, I’d probably gone to college with people who weren’t from Virginia, but I don’t really make friends with people, so I wouldn’t have known where they were from and I certainly hadn’t kept in touch with any of them.
“You know me,” he pointed out.
“That doesn’t help to send you on a table-vacation,” I replied.
“True. But I have expanded your horizons.”
I pulled into the hotel parking lot so that I could help Elliot carry his purchases back up to his room, ignoring the twinge in my left wrist from carrying the bags. It wouldn’t take long and the pain wasn’t bad. Elliot led the way through the lobby, then down the hall from the elevator to a hotel room that looked like pretty much every other hotel room I’d ever seen.
He smiled as I handed over the four bags I’d been carrying, and electricity rushed through my hand as his fingers brushed mine. I swallowed, wondering if he’d felt the same thing.
“Thanks again for dinner,” I half-mumbled awkwardly.
“Seth,” he said, and I froze in place, the sound of my name on his lips weirdly alluring.
“Yeah?” I managed.
“First, thank you for driving. And for picking me up at the airport.”
I bobbed my head. “Of course.”
“Second—” He paused, those fractured-crystal green-brown-gold eyes studying my face. I felt my neck heating up. “If I’ve misread the situation, I apologize, and I won’t be offended if you say no, but—would you like to stay for a little longer?”
“Okay?” I wasn’t sure why that would necessitate an apology.
He continued to study me, the light from the hotel room lamp glinting off one dangling silver feather earring. “I’m only here for another two weeks, give or take,” he said, his voice steady. “So anything that might… happen would only be temporary. A good time.”
My whole neck was on fire, and I was fairly certain he could see the flush creeping up into my cheeks .
“If you’re interested,” Elliot continued, then flashed that absolutely disarming crooked smile again. “Because I am.”
I nodded, my mouth too dry to actually form words.
The crooked smile widened, evening out. “Ground rules, then.”
“Okay,” I managed, hoping I didn’t sound too desperate. It was honestly a little weird how strangely nervous this was making me. This wouldn’t be my first one-night stand, assuming that’s where this was going. I’d gone through a couple as a way of making myself feel better after I left Devin. To remind myself that I was, in fact, desirable. That men wanted me, even though I’m not a gallivanting twink.
Don’t get me wrong—the whole gallivanting twink thing can be really hot. But it really isn’t me.
So it wasn’t like I hadn’t been picked up by guys in bars and taken back to hotel rooms. I had. Exactly three times. Twice since Devin. Four times if you counted Devin, which I didn’t, because that turned into a long-term thing, even though it had started as a one-off thing.
“Rule one,” Elliot said, and I refocused on the here and now. “It’s cliché, but no kissing.”
I nodded. “Okay.” I liked kissing, but I wasn’t going to argue with somebody else’s boundaries. I was curious why, but his tone made it seem like something he wasn’t interested in talking about.
“Two,” Elliot continued, his eyes still holding mine captive. “This isn’t about feelings or emotions or romance. This is about sex.” He grinned at me. “Hopefully fun sex.”
I nodded again. That was a pretty fundamental rule for one-night stands. That’s why they were one-night , after all.
“Three, this can last as long as I’m here. But then it’s over. There isn’t an us. ”
Another nod. So maybe more than one night, but along the same lines. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, anyway, I reminded myself. Especially not a long-distance relationship with a guy who wasn’t interested in relationships.
“Any rules you want to put down?” he asked, then.
I swallowed. “I—uh. I’m not really into BDSM?” It wasn’t that I wouldn’t ever consider it, mind you, but I felt like that sort of thing belonged in a trusting relationship—and this wasn’t going to be that. See Rules Two and Three.
“Fair,” Elliot replied, and although I searched—quickly—for it, I didn’t detect any disappointment in his response. “I’m also going to take anything involving shit or piss off the table.”
“Definitely off the table,” I agreed. “Nowhere even near the table.”
One side of his lips quirked up again. “Glad we agree.” He stepped forward, those calloused fingers reaching up to rest on the top button of my shirt. “Anything else?” he asked, as he undid the little white button. I stared, fascinated by the contrast between his coppery skin tone, the pale blue of my shirt, and the white of the button.
I shook my head.
“You tested recently?” he asked, moving on to the button below that one.
I swallowed. I had. “Yeah,” I replied. “Last month.” After my last one-night stand, at Noah’s urging, even though I made a practice of always insisting on protection.
“Clean?” Elliot asked, on button three.
“Yeah.” I sucked in a breath as he undid the fourth button. “You?”
“Also clean,” he replied. “As of last week.”
“Great,” I said, feeling very stupid. “I, uh?—”
“Condoms and lube are in my bag,” he said, finishing with the buttons on my shirt and pulling it open to reveal my white undershirt. “You mind being on the receiving end?”
I didn’t. “No. That’s great.”
God, one-night stands were awkward.
In movies and tv shows, they’re passionate affairs in the backs of bathrooms or up against walls. While three—or four if you counted Devin, or five, now, with Elliot—wasn’t that long of an experience list, every single one I’d been involved in was almost unbearably awkward. Still fun, once things got going, but just so weird and clinical.
Or maybe it was me that was the reason they were all awkward. I was the only common denominator in them, after all.
And then Elliot pulled my undershirt out of my khakis and his hands were on my skin. His callouses were rough, but not unpleasantly so, and the feel of them—so not what I was used to from the guys I’d slept with before—sent little shivers through me.
The urge to grab his face and kiss him rushed through me, but I forced it down. Rule One, no kissing. I wasn’t going to wreck this by breaking the rules, especially not right out of the gate.
Well, okay. That rule. I was already well on my way to breaking Rule Two. My brain couldn’t help but think about an us , even though I tried telling it that such a thing was impossible. First, he lived a thousand miles away, and, second and more importantly, Elliot didn’t want there to be an us .
My brain would figure that out sooner or later. Probably when Elliot got on a plane and went back to Wisconsin. Maybe after.
Those rough hands pushed my shirt upward, then found the waistband of my khakis, pausing just a moment to give me time to protest before undoing them.
I didn’t.
The button slipped through its hole, the zipper made that soft tic-tic-tic-ticking sound that only zippers make. My heart pounded in my chest, the breath in my lungs shallow. I wanted to cup his face in my hands, to claim his lips.
I settled for grabbing the hem of his long-sleeved t-shirt, tugging it upward.
Leaving my fly open, he responded to my unspoken request by stripping off the shirt, exposing broad shoulders and a chest made wider by muscle. One bulging arm was covered in tattoos, lines of black and color I couldn’t quite make out swirling over his copper skin. I swallowed, knowing my eyes must have widened. Under clothes, he’d looked to be in decent shape, but without them it became very clear that the man didn’t have an ounce more fat on his body than was strictly necessary. Unlike yours truly.
“Question about Rule One,” I managed.
His eyebrows rose.
“Does that apply to any kissing, or just on the lips?”
His lips quirked. “What else were you planning on kissing?”
It wasn’t a no. Feeling bolder, I traced a finger across the ridge of his collarbone, tracing a line toward his tattooed shoulder. “I’d start here,” I told him.
The fine hairs on his skin rose under the gentle trace of my fingertip. “I could make an exception for that,” he breathed, his gaze so intense it seemed like the chips of green and gold in his irises burned.
“Yeah?”
“Mmhmm.”
So I stepped closer and bent down to press my lips against the heat of his skin, flicking my tongue to taste salt and slight musk, breathing in a rich, earthy scent that reminded me of soil after the rain.
God, I could get drunk on the scent of his skin alone.
My hands tightened on the taut muscle and skin of his waist. His pushed inside my khakis, his hands warm against my hips and thighs, the thick fabric catching a little on the erection that was growing inside my shorts.
I let my lips work their way up from his collarbone to the side of his neck, running my tongue up the column of his throat, then sucking under his ear, where a line of scar tissue curved around the side of his jaw. I remembered that he’d been attacked while Hart was back in Wisconsin, and this had likely been the result. I kissed the underside of his jaw again, tonging the scar and feeling muscle and tendon shift as he let out a soft sound of want. It went straight to my groin, tightening my balls against my body in a good way.
Elliot pushed my jeans down, then kneaded his hands against my knit-covered ass, pulling his hips against mine and forcing me to stop kissing his neck. It was my turn to groan at the feel of his erection pushing out against his jeans rubbing up against mine, still confined by my trunk-style underwear.
Rough-skinned hands pushed their way into my shorts, cupping my ass cheeks and squeezing. “My turn,” he growled, and then his tongue and teeth were on the side of my neck, scraping gently enough not to leave a mark, at least until he was past where my collar would have fallen. Then he nipped at my shoulder, drawing a gasp.
“Stop?” he asked me, his breath hot on my skin.
“God, no,” I blurted, and I felt more than heard him chuckle as he went back to what he’d been doing.
I ran my hands up the broad muscles of his back, breathless at the way his shoulders bunched as he squeezed my ass. Our hips ground together, and I decided I’d had enough of his jeans, working open the buttons—his jeans didn’t have a zipper—of his fly so that I could push his jeans down, exposing the stretched soft knit of the black cotton beneath desperately trying to hold back his straining cock. I wasn’t generally much for tighty-whities, but the little black number Elliot had on was definitely doing it for me.
I slid my hands along his hips, gasping again as he bit against my collarbone.
“Enough,” he growled, and I was about to ask enough what? when he shoved my shorts down and spun me. I barely managed to not trip over the damn things, kicking a foot to shed them and the pool of fabric that had been my khakis as he pushed me into the aisle between the beds. Then he spun me, one hand on my back and the other at my hip as he pushed me down so that I stood with my hands on the bed, my naked ass facing him. When I lifted my head, I noticed that he’d lined us up with the long mirror in the room—from where I was bent over, I could see both of us—the slight flush spread across his upper chest, the heat in my own cheeks.
Much as I normally don’t like to look at myself in mirrors, I had to admit that the idea of watching Elliot fuck me made my cock jump. Behind me, he was stripping off his little black underwear, and I wished I could see him, but my own body was in the way.
Maybe he saw where I was looking, I don’t know, but he pressed up against me, letting me feel heat and hardness against the sensitive skin behind my balls. I might have whimpered a little, closing my eyes.
Then he moved back, and I heard the drawer open and close, heard the telltale sound of a plastic cap, and felt that tingling electricity of anticipation as I opened my eyes again, watching him as he slicked up his fingers, his eyes glinting in the dimness of the bedside lamp. And then my eyes shut again as he began to tease me with one finger, running it around the rim of my body, almost tickling, but it was too erotic for it to feel ticklish.
I felt my back arch almost involuntarily as my hips tried desperately to get more sensation.
“That’s it,” I heard him breathe in that rough baritone. “Relax for me.”
As though relaxing were even remotely anywhere near possible. Not because I was nervous—but it felt like every muscle in my body was tight and trembling with anticipation. But I tried to relax the specific muscles he was gently stroking, letting him know that while I might be tightly wound, it wasn’t because I didn’t want him to do what he was doing.
“That’s right,” he murmured as one finger eased its way in, and I expelled a rush of air from my lungs at how unbelievably good it felt. He wasn’t rushed, wasn’t pushing me, wasn’t trying to get right to the ‘deed,’ so to speak. He was making sure I was ready, making sure that I got as much pleasure out of this as he did.
I moaned as he rubbed the inside of me just the right way.
“That’s it,” he repeated, and his already-slightly-rough voice was rougher and deeper. A glance in the mirror told me that his cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright. And then he added a second finger, pressing gently and deep in a way that felt like he was somehow trying to touch my soul.
I could feel my legs trembling as he pressed in, then withdrew, then pressed in again, shifting the angles of his fingers so that he wouldn’t hurt me, but also driving me nearly insane with want.
“You’re so ready,” he whispered, bending over my back, one hand running up my spine so that I arched into him like a cat. “Tell me what you want,” he ordered.
“Your cock,” I managed. “Please.”
He growled again, low and resonant.
I heard the unmistakable sound of a condom wrapper and the expulsion of breath as he rolled it on. In the mirror I could see him looking down, then watched as he stroked himself a few times—lube, I assumed—before raising his eyes to my body, open and aching.
For just a moment, he lifted those hazel-gold eyes to mine in the mirror and crooked that half-smile, then lined himself up. I watched, forcing myself to keep my eyes open as his cock pushed in, slowly and steadily, pressing past the ridge of muscle, stretching me farther than he had with his fingers, but not so much that it hurt. Enough that I could feel the stretch, feel the edge of the burn, and feel the fullness of him pushing deeper. His eyes closed as he breached me, powerful fingers tightening on my hips as his head fell back, strands of black and white hair having come loose from his ponytail hanging on either side of the sharp planes of his cheekbones.
I’d thought he was striking before—he was beautiful now, the way a god or demon must be, angles and power and strength. I moaned as he pushed himself in all the way to the hilt, his hips meeting the sensitive skin of my ass.
God, he felt good.
And then he started to pull back, and the sensation of friction became more powerful than the stretch and fullness of his girth. He’d used enough lube that he moved through and in me like silk, the feel of him all the thickness of his cock against the muscles of my body. My own erection ached, the feel almost like an itch, but I didn’t want to come too soon, so I wasn’t going to touch myself—not yet. I needed more of this, more of Elliot thrusting into me, more of the scent of his skin, the shine of sweat on his chest in the dim lamplight, more of the feel of his hands pulling my pelvis back onto his length as he pushed forward.
I wasn’t sure I would ever get enough, but the pressure was becoming unbearable, the breath coming out of me in little gasping pants as he thrust into me again and again.
“Are you close?” he gasped out.
“God, yes,” I groaned back.
He slammed into me two, three more times, hard, sending my heart into my throat. And then he pushed into me one last time with a low moan, bending over so that I could feel the heat of his chest against my back, and I whimpered when one of those rough hands closed around my cock, stroking me only a few times before I fell over the edge, feeling him buried deep inside me as I throbbed out my release into his calloused fingers.
I was so going to break Rule Two.