Chapter 7
7
ELLIOT CRANE
You awake?
SETH MAYS
I’m a morning person, so yeah. :)
Freak.
Get me in a half hour or so?
You got it. You want something from Starbucks?
Wait and stop with me.
My treat for helping.
I sent him a thumb’s up, grinning like a fool. Because Elliot was going to buy me coffee. Because you’re helping him build a table, dumbass , I told myself. Rule Two .
Goddamn Rule Two.
I had definitely learned that I was not the sort of person who could remain detached from sex. Or maybe it was just Elliot I couldn’t remain detached from. I’d had one-night stands before, and I certainly wasn’t pining over any of them. Just this one.
Of course I had to actually fall for the guy who lived half a damn country away.
I sighed, then left the apartment, running down the flight of stairs from Noah’s door to the entrance that opened onto the shared parking lot. I put down the back seat, making as much space as I could for the pieces of Elliot’s table, a little worried that a massive table-top wasn’t going to fit. I tried to reassure myself that Elliot had been in my car and knew how big it was.
I pulled up to the hotel, then reached for my phone to text Elliot—except before I could hit send, he was coming out through the glass doors. I deleted the message I was typing, shoving my phone back in my pocket.
Elliot had on ripped jeans and a grey t-shirt with slightly-faded red letters reading ‘Wisconsin’ spread across his pecs. Today’s earrings were tiny silver hoops—no beads or bangles. Annoyingly, he still looked good.
“Hey,” I greeted him when he opened the door.
“Morning,” he half-grunted, then yawned. It was nine—I like to wake up with the sun, so the fact that Elliot was so clearly not awake yet was kind of adorable.
Rule Two, Seth.
“Where to?” I asked him.
He passed me his phone, on which he’d pulled up an address. I tucked it into the phone holder attached to my vent. “Thanks.”
Elliot grunted.
We passed a Starbucks on the way, and I decided that caffeine first was probably a good idea, given the tired scowl that had settled onto Elliot’s well-defined features. I pulled into the drive through, and managed to get Elliot to grunt out something about chocolate, so I got him a mocha and myself a hazelnut latte. He did dig out his wallet and shove cash at me before I got to the second window, which I exchanged for the coffee—Elliot ignored my offer of change, clutching the coffee cup like a lifeline.
“Really not a morning person, are you?” I asked.
Another grunt. Then he took a long pull from his mocha.
Don’t ask me why I found this strangely attractive. I couldn’t explain it—and I really shouldn’t have been feeling it. Because Rule Two.
I decided that I was going to stop trying to start a conversation with a man who was huddling around a paper cup of coffee like it was the last ember of a dying fire in the frozen tundra, and I instead focused on following the directions on the phone. Although that only killed an additional three minutes.
“Which unit?” I asked him as I pulled into the driveway of the storage facility.
Elliot stirred. “Seventeen.”
We made our way down the first aisle of drive-up units, one side counting up from one, the other side down from forty. Seventeen was in the fourth aisle. I stopped the Cruiser in front of the door, pulling up close so that any other cars that happened to come through could get past us.
I slid out of my side of the Cruiser, wincing a little as my bad leg hit first. It wasn’t a good pain day—my knee was alternating between a deep ache and a sharp, stabbing sort of pain, my back felt sore, my wrist felt like it needed to crack, and one elbow ached when I straightened it out. Not a good day to be moving heavy furniture, but here I was. When you have Lyme, you don’t get to decide which days are good and which days are bad. But I couldn’t very well just not do things on the bad days. People didn’t stop dying just because my knee hurt more.
One benefit of Noah having odd hours was that he was usually asleep when I left so I didn’t have to have the same old argument with him about how I shouldn’t go out when I was in pain. The point I always made was that if I didn’t go out when I was in pain, I wouldn’t ever go out.
So I went out anyway, pain or no pain.
I took a sip of my latte, forcing myself to not limp as I rounded the back of the Cruiser. Limping just threw everything else out of balance and would make my other hip hurt, or my other knee… Point is, limping wasn’t worth it.
Elliot had pulled out a keyring, and was trying to open the padlock while not dropping his coffee. It wasn’t working terribly well, so I went over and took the mocha from him.
He looked up at me. “Thanks,” he grunted, then easily undid the lock, leaving it hanging as he lifted up the door, muscles bunching in his arms and across his back.
Rule Two might be in effect, but I could still enjoy the view.
He reached out a hand, and it took me a second or so to realize that he undoubtedly wanted his coffee back. I passed it over, and he immediately took another long drink.
Inside the storage unit, there were several stacks of boxes, mostly pushed to the walls, leaving an open space in the center that currently contained several large pieces of wood balanced on sawhorses. There was also a table saw.
“Is that yours?” I asked Elliot, nodding toward the saw.
“Nah,” he replied. “It’s Taavi’s.” He gestured around the storage space. “Most of this is Taavi’s,” he said.
I suppose I don’t know all that much about Taavi, when you get right down to it. I know he’s a Xoloitzcuintli shifter, and that he must have the ability to tolerate excessive swearing and not be too overly sensitive to live with Hart. Don’t get me wrong—I like Hart. I enjoy teasing him, and I like to think that some of the crap he gives me in return is because he likes me, too. He must, since it was me he’d called to ask questions about evidence collection from Wisconsin. I just wouldn’t want to spend all day, every day with him.
“From… Arizona?” I thought I remembered that was where Taavi was from.
“Yuma, yeah,” Elliot replied. “He used to work contracting, and he’s done some basic carpentry.” He gestured at one of the long pieces of wood that looked like a quarter of the tabletop. “He’s been helping with the surface and leaves.”
I felt a tiny little surge of something that might have been jealousy, which was ridiculous on multiple levels—first, because I didn’t really know the least thing about carpentry, so why would Elliot ask me? And second, because of Rule Two. And third , because normal people have friendships and working relationships with all sorts of people that have nothing to do with sex or romance. To say nothing of the fact that Taavi was—by all accounts—happily taken.
It honestly freaked me out a little, because I’m not really a jealous guy by nature. I haven’t ever been particularly possessive about any of my previous boyfriends—although, I suppose, look where that got me. Maybe I should have been a little more jealous about Devin’s nights out, since I was fairly certain the blowjob I’d walked in on hadn’t been the first. I didn’t ask, though. Nobody ever wants to hear the full extent to which they’ve been deceived by someone they thought loved them.
But that still didn’t mean it was a good idea to get jealous of Elliot building a table with Taavi. Because Taavi was definitely spoken for, and I had no claim whatsoever on Elliot .
“You think these will all fit in your SUV?” Elliot asked me, and I dragged myself out of my own head to think about his question.
There were four good-sized pieces that made up the tabletop, but they looked like they’d fit—and the legs weren’t an issue. “Yeah, they should.” I frowned. “You have moving blankets or something?” The last thing I wanted to be responsible for was scratching up the really nice-looking tabletop because I cornered too fast.
“Yeah,” Elliot answered, walking over to an open box and pulling out one of the blue quilted blankets. “Should keep them from getting scratched.” He smirked, clearly waking up as the caffeine kicked in. “Assuming you don’t hit anything.”
“I’ll try not to,” I promised. As though I hadn’t already been mildly concerned about that, unlikely as it was.
We loaded up the Cruiser, layering the top pieces first, then the legs, then the equipment and materials Elliot would need in order to do the inlay. And then I helped him clean up the storage space—sweeping up sawdust and bagging it, then packing up the tools he’d borrowed from Taavi before we locked up again and headed to BTV.
I pulled into the back without incident, although every time I hit a pothole on Broad Street I winced. Elliot had laughed at me.
We carried everything into the currently-empty conference room, and Elliot started setting up. My stomach growled, and I remembered that I hadn’t actually eaten breakfast, just coffee. It must have been pretty loud—either that, or Elliot’s badger-shifter hearing was better than most, because he looked over at me with a smirk on his face. “Somebody didn’t get breakfast.”
“You hungry?” I asked him, feeling my neck heat up. “I could go grab us something.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted breakfast or early lunch, since it was almost eleven.
“You like donuts?” he asked.
Sugar Shack wasn’t far, although it would be faster to drive there. The lab always got Sugar Shack once they found out that was the only normal-ish donut place I could eat—they have vegan donuts.
“I love donuts,” I replied. “Although I feel like we should both eat something that isn’t sugar and coffee today.”
“We could order—” he cut himself off with a little frown. “Not pizza, I guess,” he finished.
I felt my lips twist a little bitterly. “I mean, you can,” I said. I still resent my inability to eat real cheese, even though it wasn’t Elliot’s fault. I knew full well how awesome pizza was, and the vegan frozen kind was just sad and pathetic, so I didn’t bother.
Elliot’s mouth quirked downwards. “I’m not that much of a dick,” he said, sounding mildly offended.
I blinked. “I can always eat something else,” I protested, now feeling bad that I’d offended him, the heat on my neck creeping higher.
“Don’t be stupid,” Elliot retorted, a little sharply. “I’m not going to order from somewhere you can’t eat—so no pizza. What about… burritos? Chips and salsa?”
“Yeah, I can just get chicken and no cheese.”
“Then let’s do that—donuts and cheap-ass Mexican. You okay getting it?”
“Yeah, of course.” I was. Both because I didn’t know how much help I was actually going to be and because I felt like I needed to not be breathing the same air as Elliot Crane—not because I didn’t like breathing the same air, but because I’d basically run down Rule Two and was in the process of backing over it for the second or third time .
It wasn’t good for me. Noah may have been getting after me about getting out more, starting to date again, but I really don’t think this was what he meant. Noah’s not judgy about the just-sex part, but he’d be judgy as hell about the fact that while that’s what I’d agreed to, I was falling for this guy who was going to be a thousand miles away in a handful of days.
I sighed as I settled in the driver’s seat, cash from Elliot for the food in my pocket, then backed out of my parking spot to fetch the requested fast-food fat-and-sugar-and-salt delicacies.
We’d dragged one of the little side tables—normally employed holding a very nice plant—from the lobby area to hold the salsa, guac, and queso, as well as a mountain of chips in a very large communal bowl that we’d taken from the kitchen. Nobody else was at BTV, so I was going mask-free, nibbling on chips and dips as I helped hold table pieces, helping Elliot fit together the fine dove-tails that linked each one together. The table would have not a single nail or screw—which I found particularly impressive.
Elliot was currently sitting on the floor, half a donut next to him, carefully sanding between the little teeth of a dove-tail so that the leg piece he was holding would slide into its partner on the table, but would still be snug enough that it wasn’t going to come out.
We’d already done this with three of them, me mostly just trying desperately to hold the table side still while Elliot pressed the joint together using raw strength. I was trying very hard not to watch too closely, because it made the muscles of his arms and back bunch, the tendons standing out in his neck. A few strands of black hair and one small piece of white had escaped their ponytail, and they hung loosely around his face, making me want to tuck them back behind his ears.
Which of course would have—and should have—gotten me smacked.
As it was, I’d had a semi all afternoon.
“Okay, last one,” Elliot said from the floor, oblivious to my pants-related problems.
This one went the same way as the last three, muscle and sweat damn near driving me up the wall with how close Elliot was to me and what I knew he could do to me with that strength and those rough hands.
He was pretty good with wood, too.
The rest of the table was pretty much assembled, with the sliding wooden frame on the bottom there to allow for the addition or removal of up to three leaves—which would allow for larger séances… or whatever. I’d asked how that would work with the carving, and Elliot had shown me one of the most complicated folding diagrams I’d ever seen—he, Mason, and Ward had come up with a design that would be functional with any number of leaves—it was damn impressive.
But that part Elliot was going to do with Ward, Mason, and Beck present so that he didn’t mess anything up.
We just had to flip the table, put the leaves in, and then we’d be done.
It probably also meant that I’d then be done with Elliot, because I’d have no reason left to see him. Other than sex, anyway, but just texting him for that seemed… desperate? Like I was breaking Rule Two?
Both those things would be true.
Elliot stood, and together we flipped the table, then pulled apart the two halves, and I passed him the leaves to set into the middle. Even without having been carved, inlaid, and stained, it was beautiful. I could imagine what it would look like stained, and I decided that whatever Ward was paying him couldn’t possibly be enough.
“You’re staring at it,” Elliot remarked, and there was something in his voice that I couldn’t identify.
“It’s stunning,” I told him.
He laughed. “It’s not finished yet.”
“It’s still stunning.”
“Are you trying to flatter me, Seth?” That tone I recognized. Flirty. A little husky. The voice he’d used when he started laying down the ground rules.
“N-no,” I answered, stammering because one of his rough, hot hands had suddenly slid up the front of my t-shirt and was spread against my belly.
“No?” He sounded amused.
I shook my head as his other hand joined the first, this one wandering its way up my torso to rub one nipple. I’d been slightly hard all day, and this sent me straight into a full erection.
He pushed me forward, and the top of my thighs hit the edge of the table as he stepped into my back, Elliot’s answering arousal pushing against my ass.
I knew where he was going, planning to fuck me up against the table he’d just made, and the idea was unbelievably hot except for a few very important details.
“Elliot,” I managed.
“Mmm?” His hum was a growl against my back.
“You met Rayn, right?”
“Yes?” His hands stilled.
“He’s a contact psychic.”
A beat of silence, then, “And if he touches this table?— ”
“Exactly. Also ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“Sylvia and Archie. I can’t see or feel them, but they could be here, and, well… I’m not really into exhibitionism.”
He slid his hands out of my shirt, and even though that’s what I was asking him to do, I nevertheless felt a slight pang of disappointment.
“So then we’d better pack up and go somewhere else,” he said, his voice still low and gravely.
He didn’t bother pushing me down on the bed, or even next to the bed, shoving me up against the desk just inside his hotel room, his hands already shoving my shirt off over my head. They ran down my back, rough and warm, his breath hot on my skin as he breathed against my spine.
He left his cheek there, against my back, air brushing my skin from his shallow, rasping breaths. Hands roamed lower, seeking and finding the fly of my jeans, undoing the button, lowering the zipper. Calloused fingers rubbed against my straining cock, the rough skin catching a little on the knit fabric keeping me constrained.
Elliot let out a small growl, shoving his hands inside my shorts and pushing them and my jeans out of his way before grinding against my ass, the hardness of his erection pressing against me even through his jeans as one hand gripped my cock and the other ran up my chest to find a nipple and pinch it between two fingers.
I gasped, rocking my hips backward to try to get closer, chasing what I knew both of us desperately wanted. Me maybe more desperately. Elliot growled again, deeper and lower, the vibrations sliding through my bones from where his chest pressed against my back.
“Don’t move,” he half-snarled, then left me, my knees a little shaky.
I heard him open a drawer, then, a breath later, felt him pushing against me again. A tube and a wrapped condom appeared on the desk beside my splayed fingers. And then his hands were back on my hips, gripping, massaging. His rough palms made circles on my ass cheeks, pressing into the muscle, gently spreading and then releasing, the motion only adding to my arousal.
“Elliot,” I managed to gasp out.
His hands pushed my ass cheeks apart, then he stood pushing himself up against the sensitive skin he’d exposed, the coarse fabric of his jeans rubbing against me as his hands slid up my back so that he could half-whisper, half-growl “What?” at me.
“Please,” I moaned as he ground against me.
“Please what ?”
“I need you.” Rule Two , I reminded myself. Rule Two, Rule Two, Rule — I groaned as one lubed finger rubbed against the puckered muscle.
“Need me what ?” he hissed back.
I whimpered. “Inside,” I managed.
The teasing finger obeyed, pressing in, rubbing, toying with me. Making me need more.
Just like I needed more than just this—than sex that left me sore for days in the best possible way, than occasional shared smiles over a meal. It wasn’t just that I wanted more—I needed it. Even though I knew it was beyond stupid to fall for Elliot Crane, I was doing it anyway. And, worse, I wasn’t even really trying to fight it, despite all the times I reminded myself about Rule Two .
Elliot made me feel things I hadn’t thought I could—not anymore, not since Devin. He made me want to trust him, to make space for him in my life, to make him laugh, to hold him if anything ever made him cry.
But he’d also made it crystal clear that he didn’t want any of that.
I groaned, a second finger interrupting my thoughts. Making it so that I couldn’t think. I wasn’t going to resist, letting Elliot’s fingers pull every string I had.
“That’s it,” I both heard and felt him whisper, his lips on my skin, the slight feathering movement as he spoke sending electricity through my body. “Loosen up for me.”
I tried to do as he asked, to relax the muscles despite the fact that every push, every stroke was driving me closer to the edge. I was panting, leaned forward so that my elbows and forearms rested on the desk, my head hanging down.
“Fuck,” I heard him hiss, and he pulled his hand back, drawing a whimper out of me with it. I stood there, my body open and loose, sweat beaded on my forehead and neck, waiting.
And then his hands came back, spreading me, and then I felt him, hard and hot, pressing slowly, thick and slicked with lube, into me. I arched my back, pushing back against him, wanting more of him faster than he was giving it to me.
He let out a strangled growl and did exactly what I wanted—pushing his full length in as deep as he could, hard and fast.
I cried out, but not with pain, as the feel of him slamming into me drove me over the edge, my orgasm ripping through me and spilling out, dripping onto the floor.
“ Fuck, ” he gasped again.
“Don’t stop,” I managed, despite the tremors rushing through my body .
He didn’t stop. Instead, he slowly slid himself back until just the tip of him was still inside me, then surged forward again, slowly this time, letting my hypersensitized nerves feel every inch of him as he pressed inward until his hips met the curve of my ass. Then he did it again, the ridge of his head, even sheathed in latex, rubbing the inside of my body as he withdrew, then pushing forward again.
I lost myself in the feel of him, in the rhythm of his body, the stretch and pull, the ache of fullness followed by the ache of hollowness, one after the other, again and again. I wasn’t sure when the blood began to restore my spent cock, but it had, slowing growing harder, rising again between my legs, the stickiness of my cum still beaded on the tip.
That familiar, sweet heaviness returned to my balls, and I moaned softly, uncertain my legs would be able to hold me if he drove me to come again.
“That’s it,” Elliot panted, one rough-skinned hand pressing up my spine, drawing a shiver from me. “I want to feel you come for me again.” He sounded pleased with himself—as well he should be. I’d never felt so loose, his cock sliding in and out of me almost fluidly, each stroke increasing the speed of my pulse and stealing some of my breath.
He began to fuck me harder, faster, his hands coming to grip my hipbones, to pull me to him even as he pounded into me. It was punishing, the force of him pressing into the back of my throat and pulsing through my cock with every thrust.
I braced myself against the desk, dropping my head and closing my eyes, giving myself over to simply feeling him. Memorizing the sensation of his hands on my hips, his cock stretching my ass, the sound of his rasping breath and soft growls .
And then his rhythm faltered, his hips hitting mine hard enough that I could hear the slap of skin on skin, feel each thrust pushing breath from my lungs. And then he buried himself in me, his forehead pressing against my back, his moan and a faint pulsing inside my body telling me that he was coming, one rough hand reaching to grasp my cock and pull a second, shuddering orgasm from me with a few strokes, his own, still-twitching cock inside me.
I hadn’t broken Rule Two.
I’d obliterated it.