Chapter 23
He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me to him, kissing me with so much recklessness I gasp. He pulls back at the sound, his hesitation from earlier coming back into full force.
“No, keep going,” I murmur, and he crashes back into me.
I’m consumed with want. It’s as though all that chemistry that’s been slowly bubbling between us has finally erupted in a stream of lava after weeks of lingering below, pressurized and then gradually causing the surface to fissure, breaking in an instant.
He tastes like the sugar of a cookie, sweet and delectable, and I can’t quite get enough. He pushes me up against the kitchen counter and lifts me from below until I’m sitting, his hands still under me, gripping like he’s never letting go. My hands are in his hair, pulling off his shirt, scraping across his back—going everywhere they can get. But his are the opposite. Even as we kiss like there’s no tomorrow, his hands move up slowly, softly. He runs them along my side, delicately against my collarbone, and back up to my lips to touch where he traced them before.
I’m burning everywhere as he keeps up the dichotomy—the fevered kisses and the gentle touches. I feel starved—like I never get to take what I want, and suddenly I’m being allowed. Against better judgment, against what would be prudent, against what would be responsible. I want it all.
He squeezes the inside of my thigh tightly, and I can’t stop the moan that escapes my throat. He pulls away from our kiss to watch, and I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks again. The way he’s looking at me is hazy and has the same level of need I can feel in myself. It’s intoxicating to be looked at like that.
He brings his mouth to my throat and kisses, slowly. “I want that sound again,” he purrs against my skin. His teeth scrape down my neck, and he gets his wish.
He undoes the top button of my shirt. “If I rip off one of these buttons right now, will you be impressed if I find it?”
I’m so turned on I can’t help but lean my head back and close my eyes as a small laugh huffs out of me. “I think I’ll just be impressed if you can get them undone, because I couldn’t do anything requiring dexterity right now.”
“Hmm, a challenge,” he says, and I can imagine his crooked smile from the tone of his voice. He undoes each button, torturously and leisurely, planting a kiss on the bare skin he uncovers with each. With every intake of breath he coaxes out of me, I can feel his grin against my body, like he’s taking each button as a victory and savoring it. Until he’s kneeling on the floor in front of me, the last button undone, and I tilt myself back to sitting and look down, because I want to see the expression on his face.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, almost in disbelief, and his reverence makes my heart skip a beat. I’m not sure why it’s affecting me so much to feel so lusted over. But maybe that attention is what Eli has always done to me, like he sees pieces of me that no one else does. All his charisma and surety beam right into me. Even when we were at odds, it was powerful—being an adversary instead of always the solver; a rule breaker instead of a person who toes the line; surprising and seductive instead of dependable.
His hand smooths across my thigh, and I shiver. His eyes drink in the movement, and he kisses me in the spot right where his hand was. Then he stands up, tall and imposing now, gently removing my undone shirt and sliding it off my shoulders. He comes closer, bracketing me in, his mouth next to my ear.
“I need to admit something,” he hums quietly.
“You’re secretly married to the cats?”
He snorts out a laugh. And it makes me want to keep going.
I continue. “The accent is a ruse to pick up women?”
“I wish I’d known Americans were that easily won over years ago,” he muses.
“You didn’t actually bake the cookies?”
“A sacrilege. I would never.”
“Esther’s still alive but faked her own death for the insurance money?”
I adore the mischievous smile that bursts out of him at that thought, as though nothing would be more delightful. “I wish,” he says with a sigh.
“Okay, I give up,” I declare, now hungry to know what secrets he’s holding.
“I think about you too much,” he finally says, planting a kiss behind my earlobe and making me shiver even more. “Even when I was mad at you, I wanted you.”
We’re so close, his hands on either side of me on the counter, his words a whisper, since his mouth is still next to my ear. And since I can feel him even without seeing him, it makes me want to admit things too.
“You threw me off the first time we met in person,” I concede. “I didn’t understand how I could be so attracted to someone I disliked so strongly.”
He barks out a laugh and puts his forehead to my shoulder, wrapping one arm around me to steady himself from the amusement of my own admittance.
“Yeah, I felt that way too,” he says with a sigh.
“So why did you keep antagonizing me?” I ask.
He pulls back, and I can see the glee written all over his face. “I was having too much fun goading you.”
I close my eyes and shake my head, trying not to laugh at what should’ve been so obvious. But he holds my chin and stops me from moving. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me intently again. “But only until I was having more fun just getting to be your friend.”
“Is that what we are?” I ask, unsure, wondering how much I’ve inadvertently let this antagonizer turn into a confidant.
He rests his forehead on mine, breathing me in, eyes closed and peaceful. I can’t tell if he’s considering the question or simply letting the obviousness of it pass by.
But then he starts talking again, quietly. “I think I told you about my one friend who I can tell everything to.”
I nod, moving us together, surprised that in the midst of all this, he’s suddenly getting serious. But I’m curious to know where he’s going with it.
“In the last few weeks, going on walks with you and hanging out ... you make me feel that way too. Like I can be myself. It’s just ... I feel freer when I’m with you. Does that sound crazy?”
“No,” I admit, thinking that, as much as I haven’t wanted to see it, he’s done the same for me.
I know I don’t owe J anything, but the realization makes me feel a little disloyal, since it’s almost the same exact language I used just tonight to describe him . How can I have felt unconnected to anyone for so many years, and now there are these dueling, different presences in my life, both somehow emerging at the same time?
But before I can question it, before I can let that confusion nestle its way in, Eli’s mouth is on mine again, and I can’t think about anything else. It’s immediately frantic, as though his words have removed the last burden from his mind, and now instinct is the only thing taking over.
He grabs my thigh and pulls one leg around his waist. Then the other, until I’m completely wrapped around him, and he’s got his hands under me again, lifting me up while I grip, unable to do anything but press myself into him, harder, needier, a tangle of limbs and mouths, the urge to get closer pulsing through me.
He walks away from the counter with me in his arms, and I hang on, the feel of him holding me so effortlessly only making me want him more. He kicks open his bedroom door and collapses both of us onto his bed, the weight of him on top of me a welcome tranquilizer to any other thoughts.
His hands go to the waistband of my skirt. “Is this okay?” he asks, featherlight touches skimming across my stomach, the promise of more making heat pool to my center.
“Yes,” I hiss, taking over and pulling my skirt down before he can ask again.
He sits up, drinking me in, watching me breathe, tracing the line from my bra to my underwear and hesitating, like he’s about to open a shaken-up soda can.
But I can’t think any more about whatever will come next. I can’t question whether this is a huge mistake or an inevitability we’ve been careening toward ever since I first knocked on his door. I can’t wonder about J or my feelings or what it all means .
I just need him. He’s heart pounding, warm skin, tousled hair, hazy eyes, and tangible touch in front of me, and I don’t want to think about anything else but me and him and the way our bodies fit together.
So for the rest of the night that’s what we do. He holds me and whispers in my ear, and we move together like we were always meant to be doing this.
I’m not going to pretend like I haven’t had a lot of great sex in my life—I’m not the kind of person who goes back twice for mediocrity. But there’s an irrefutable ease with Eli that I’ve never experienced before, and I find myself surprised by the emotion coursing through me because of it; surprised by how I’m able to let go in ways I never really knew I could before; surprised by how much he reflects me back—tender in all the places I want him to be, rough when I need it, playful instead of guarded. Point to counterpoint. Give and take.
The closer we are, the more it feels inescapable, undeniable. Like we’ve finally allowed our minds to catch up to what our bodies knew from the moment we saw each other: that it was always going to be this good and in sync and hot . It’s so damn hot.
And when we’re sweaty and spent and knotted up in each other and the twist of bedsheets, when his arm comes around me and pulls my body flush against his, I know I’m going to let sleep overtake me.