CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
“You’re staring,” she says.
“You’re beautiful.” I trail one knuckle over the swell of a small, but perky breast.
She flushes. Looks away.
I catch her chin. Make her look at me. “Hey. I mean it. You’re fucking gorgeous.”
“Jordie—”
I kiss her. Slow this time. Reverent.
She melts into it. Into me.
We take our time. Hands exploring. Mouths learning. Finding out what makes the other gasp.
She’s responsive. Vocal. Tells me what she wants. What feels good.
I love it. Love that she knows her body. Knows what she likes.
Her hand slides down between us, slipping past my waistband and into my boxers, and when her fingers wrap around me, her eyes go wide.
“Holy shit, Jordie,” she breathes, and there’s this delighted surprise in her voice that makes me grin against her skin. “Well. That’s… that’s really not fair.”
“Complaining?” I manage, even though her hand on me is making coherent thought difficult.
“Absolutely not.” She strokes once, experimentally, and I have to close my eyes and count to ten because I’m not finishing before we even start. “Just appreciating the situation.”
I kiss down her neck. Her collarbone. Between her breasts.
She arches. Threads her fingers through my hair.
I keep going. Lower. Until I’m between her thighs and she’s looking at me with heat in her eyes.
“Is this okay?” I ask.
“Yes. God, yes.”
My thumb traces her clit while I plant hot open-mouthed kisses on her inner thigh. Elise twitches and gazes down at me.
Using my tongue, I make lazy sweeping passes over her clit again and again. Elise gasps and threads her fingers through my hair.
She grinds her hips against my face, wanting more. I chuckle, all too happy to oblige. I suck on her clit and press the heel of my palm to my leaking cock. Later, I promise.
Pressing one finger deep, I keep up the fast sucking rhythm on her swollen clit until Elise is panting, unable to stop the low sounds escaping her.
“Fuck. Yes, Jordie. Yes.” Her hips twitch and she fists my hair.
Damn she feels good—snug and tight on my fingers, and her pussy tastes so good. I could lick her all night.
Thirty seconds later, she’s bucking against my face and I have to physically hold her thighs open for me as she comes. I lick her a few more times, loving the sight of her flushed and wet and satisfied for me, her tight opening clenching.
I kiss back up her body. She’s boneless. Sated. Beautiful.
“Condom,” she breathes. “Please tell me you have a condom.”
Footsteps outside in the hall make us both freeze.
Heavy footsteps. Angry.
A knock. Sharp. Impatient. “Elise?”
Grant’s voice, and the sound of it sends ice through my veins. Her eyes go wide, panic flooding those hazel depths. She mouths oh my god and I can feel her whole body tensing beneath me, every muscle coiled tight.
I roll off her as quietly as possible, grab my jeans and pull them on while she scrambles for her clothes. Shoving my very hard, very unhappy dick back inside the confines of my jeans is a specific kind of torture I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
Another knock, harder this time. “Elise, you in there?”
“Yeah, just a second,” she calls out, and her voice only shakes a little. She’s pulling on her jeans with frantic movements, looking around for her shirt. She finds it, yanks it on, then looks at me with wide eyes that say hide.
I point to her closet and she nods. I slip inside, pulling the door almost closed, leaving just enough crack to see through while I try to control my breathing.
She takes a breath. Smooths her hair. Opens the door maybe six inches, blocking the view into her room with her body.
“Hey.” Her voice is steadier now, carefully casual. “What’s up?”
“Have you seen Jordie?” Grant’s standing in her doorway, and even from here I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw is set. He sounds pissed. “He throws this party and now he’s fucking disappeared.”
“No, haven’t seen him.” The lie comes smoothly, believably. She’s leaning against the doorframe, casual as anything. “Why?”
“Because half the team is trashed downstairs, someone broke a lamp, and the guy who decided we needed a party is nowhere to be found.” There’s an edge to Grant’s voice that has nothing to do with broken lamps and everything to do with suspicion. “You sure you haven’t seen him?”
“I’ve been up here for like an hour, Grant. Needed to get away from the noise.” She crosses her arms, and I can see the defensive posture even from my hiding spot. “Did you check his room?”
“Yeah, it’s empty. No one’s seen him for a while.”
Elise just shrugs.
I wait to hear Grant’s footsteps retreat down the hall. When I’m sure he’s gone, I step out slowly, my heart still racing.
Elise looks at me, and something shifts in her expression. The fear bleeds away, replaced by something darker, hungrier.
Before I can say anything, she crosses to me and pulls my mouth down to hers. The kiss is desperate, urgent, her hands already sliding under my shirt.
“Elise—” I manage between kisses, but she’s not listening, pressing against me like she needs this, needs me, and I’m only human.
I walk her backward until she hits the wall, my hands finding her hips, her thighs, pulling her leg up around my waist. She makes this sound against my mouth that goes straight to my dick, and I’m hard again instantly, pressing against her in a way that makes us both groan.
“We can’t,” she breathes, but her hands are contradicting her words, one sliding down to palm me through my jeans. “Grant’s right downstairs.”
“Then be quiet,” I murmur against her neck, and she laughs breathlessly, the sound turning into a gasp when I grind against her.
We make out against that wall like teenagers, all hands and heat and building friction, until I’m so hard it’s painful and she’s making these small desperate sounds that are driving me insane.
Then she pulls back, and we’re both breathing like we’ve run a marathon. Her lips are swollen, her hair wrecked, and there’s unmistakable heat in her eyes.
“You need to go,” she says, but there’s no conviction in it.
I gesture down at the obvious bulge in my jeans, painful and impossible to hide. “You’re really going to leave me like this?”
She bites her lip, and I watch her eyes track down, see the moment she registers exactly how hard I am. “Jordie—”
“I’m not asking for anything you don’t want to give.” I step closer, backing her against the wall again, letting her feel exactly what she does to me. “But if you send me down there like this, everyone’s going to know exactly what we were doing up here.”
She’s quiet for a moment, thinking, and I can see the war happening behind her eyes. Want versus fear versus practicality.
“Come to my room later,” she finally says, and the words send heat straight through me. “After everyone’s gone. After Grant goes to sleep.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She reaches up, fixes my hair where her hands messed it up. “But for now, you need to go get your party under control before Grant comes back up here.”
“You sure?” I’m giving her one more chance to change her mind, to tell me this is still just tonight.
She kisses me once more, soft and promising. “I’m sure. Now go.”
I check the hallway again—still clear—and slip out, my heart doing something complicated in my chest that has nothing to do with almost getting caught.
Downstairs, the party is exactly as messy as Grant described. Someone’s passed out on the couch. There’s beer spilled on the hardwood. The living room smells like a brewery and bad decisions.
Time to shut this down.
“Alright, everyone out!” I clap my hands, raising my voice over the music. “Party’s over. I got a hookup waiting and you all need to leave.”
The team starts razzing me immediately, exactly as expected.
“Dickson’s getting laid!”
“About time, you’ve been useless all night.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
I just grin and start herding people toward the door, playing into it because it’s easier than the truth. Let them think it’s some random girl from the party. Let them think whatever they want.
Within twenty minutes, the house is clear except for those us who live here.
Grant’s in the kitchen, watching me with those cold blue eyes as I clean up red cups and bottles. He doesn’t say anything, but I can feel the suspicion radiating off him like heat.
Wyatt’s on the couch, staring at nothing, and something about his expression makes me pause. He looks… wrong. Hollow in a way that sets off alarm bells.
I walk over, clap him on the shoulder. “You okay, man?”
“Fine.” But his voice is flat, empty, and his leg is bouncing with that nervous energy I’ve learned means he’s barely holding it together.
“You sure? You look—”
“I said I’m fine.” He stands abruptly, shaking off my hand. “Just tired. Going to bed.”
He’s up the stairs before I can say anything else, and I hear his door close. Not slam. Just close with careful, controlled precision that somehow feels worse.
I look at Grant, who’s still watching me with those calculating eyes.
“What?” I ask, defensive despite myself.
“Nothing.” But the way he says it, the way he’s looking at me, says everything.
He knows something happened. Can’t prove it. But he knows.
“I’m going to bed too,” I say, dumping the last of the bottles in the recycling. “Long night.”
“Yeah.” He takes a long drink of his beer. “I bet it was.”
I head upstairs, feeling his stare burn into my back. Pass Wyatt’s door where every light is blazing underneath, which means he’s having one of his nights. Pass Grant’s door. Stop at my own.
But I’m not going to my room. Not tonight.
I’m going to wait exactly long enough for Grant to go to sleep.
And then I’m going to Elise’s room to finish what we started.
Because she promised she’d come to me, but I know her well enough now to know that fear might talk her out of it. That she might convince herself this is too risky, too complicated, too much.
So I’ll go to her instead.
And this time, nothing’s going to interrupt us.