7. Eliza
Chapter seven
Eliza
M aybe I didn’t exactly get a confession out of Corvan, but it wasn’t nothing , either. I know his full name now. I know that he has an ex out there somewhere, Jade, who ruined his reputation. She’s the reason he spent years alone, isolated in the woods.
But she’s also the reason I met Corvan. She’s the reason he’s on this cruise in the first place, trying to find himself a place among people once more. She’s the reason that I’m wondering more and more if, maybe, I wasn’t supposed to end up with Adam—but with Cor.
I knew when Adam proposed that he and I didn’t have the kind of storybook romance that all little girls hope to find. That they expect. But I knew that what we had was stable and comfortable and that I did love him, in a soft and quiet way, and I believed that he loved me in his own way, as well.
Just not enough.
“Eliza?” Corvan’s voice brings me out of my thoughts, his tone curious, maybe a little worried. “You alright?”
I nod, smiling up at him. “I was just thinking. ”
“About?” he prompts.
About you. About how good you could be for me and about how much I wish you could be for me. I was thinking about how much stronger my emotions are for you than they ever were for Adam and how I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to life before I knew you and pretend we’d never met at all . “About making sure I don’t trip and eat shit in front of you for the third time.”
He laughs, knuckles brushing mine as we walk. Would he let me hold his hand if I tried?
“Second and a half, really,” he says. “I caught you last time, remember?”
“Do I remember that you literally saved my life on our last hike? Yes, that does ring a bell.”
One of his shining grins. The kind I’ve only seen directed at me, the kind that I wish was meant for me to keep forever. And then he’s grabbing my hand. Twining our fingers together despite how clammy both of our palms are from sweating our way through this gorgeous, temperate forest. “No need to worry now,” Corvan says, winking.
I swear my heart orgasms.
I snort out a laugh but tuck in a little closer to him, breathing in his scent, drowning in the way it feels to be this close to him. It’s not normal . It can’t be. Feeling this deeply for someone after knowing them for a handful of days is… scary. It’s so fucking scary because I can’t imagine how he might possibly feel the same way, especially when we’re never going to see each other after this cruise.
And yet.
And yet there’s hope. Which I cling to just as desperately as I cling to his hand .
His thumb brushes against the back of my hand as we walk. He says, “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“With what?” I ask.
“With… with not knowing. I don’t want you to feel like it’s your only option. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. I just…”
“Cor, of course I want to know. But not when you still feel the need to say ‘I just.’”
His dark eyes latch onto mine. There is only vulnerable honesty when he says, “I just don’t want to lose you before I have to.”
I feel my body warm under his gaze. “You won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know what I feel.” My words are strong, unguarded. I didn’t have the chance to reel them in before they’d spiraled out of me, into the air around us. I feel them as if they are physical weights pressing down on my chest.
Corvan stares at me as my cheeks heat. Reading emotions on my face that I don’t know how to hide. Unlike Corvan, who is good at hiding his every thought from me.
He glances ahead at the rest of the tourists and pulls me to a stop. “Eliza.”
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “Forget I said anything.”
“If you think I could ever forget a word out of your mouth, then you and I have a lot to talk about.”
“I thought that was already established.”
He gives me a flat look. “Hilarious.” But there’s amusement curling at the corners of his lips. He tugs me away from the trail and into the trees. “Come on.”
“Corvan?” I try to struggle against his grip, but it’s useless. His hold on me is just as gentle as it is firm. “Where are we going? We’re supposed to stay with the group. ”
“We can’t talk if we’re with the group, can we?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“A sentiment you and I do not share, unfortunately.”
“We’re going to get lost.”
“We won’t. Trust me, I’m good with directions.”
I’m scrambling now. Anything to not be alone with Corvan and my embarrassing confession to him. “And what if we miss the boat?”
“You mean the boat that leaves in five hours? I think we’ll make it, Eliza.”
God, my name on his lips is… it’s an aphrodisiac.
He tucks us behind a large, moss covered rock, my back to it as he looks down at me with that same unreadable expression from before. Our hands are still linked together. His face glows from so much time spent in the sun, his hair falling forward. I want to brush it back, but I force myself to clench my free hand into a fist.
“You said you know what you feel.”
“Did we come all the way out here just so you could prove that you don’t forget what I say? Feels a little dramatic, Cor.” The joke falls flat. He’s never stood so close to me. We’ve never been so close, with our hands knotted together, all alone.
“ I don’t know what you feel, Eliza. And I want to.”
“I don’t know what you feel, either.”
He lets out a low laugh. “I find that surprising.”
“I don’t know how to read you,” I continue, shaking my head. I can’t pull my eyes away from his. “Nobody has ever looked at me the way you do. I don’t know what it means. ”
“It means that nobody has ever felt for you what I do, Eliza.” His voice is low, almost pained. As if he can’t believe that he has to explain this to me. “And I’m so fucking lucky for that.”
My free hand unclenches. Slowly, waiting for him to pull back, I bring it to his other hand. Wind our fingers together. “What do you feel, Corvan?”
“I feel as if that’s the same question you avoided answering earlier.”
“You never asked. Not explicitly.”
A broad smile from him. “I feel like that is one of the reasons I like you so much, Eliza. The way you talk to me. The easy back and forth we have. The things you say, the way you say them, that soft look in your eyes when you’re eating something you enjoy. The gentle way you hold yourself and how unconcerned you are with what I am because you know who I am. I like you so much, Eliza, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to let you go when this cruise is over. I don’t know what I’ll do if you make me.” He swallows thickly, eyes searching mine. “And I don’t know what I’ll do if you tell me that you don’t feel the same way.”
“Corvan.” His name leaves my lips in a whisper. Like a prayer.
“Eliza.” Mine comes from him like he’s pleading with me.
“I do feel the same way.” I nod as I speak. My knees feel weak and I know my hands would be shaking if he wasn’t still holding them. “I’ve never felt like this for someone before. Not this strongly, Cor. And I don’t know what it means.”
“I do,” he says. Something like clarity shines in his eyes, but he shakes his head as he smiles again, the expression laced with relief. His fingers unlace from mine, and then his hands slide up my body, like he’s relishing the feel of me against his skin. I shudder, but don’t pull my gaze from his, even as his hands cup my face between them. Like I’m something precious. Something to protect.
The question in his eyes is underscored with vulnerability. He’s asking dozens of questions with one look.
And I nod.
And his lips are on mine. Molded to mine, as if we aren’t close enough. One of his hands slides to the small of my back and he arches my spine to press along his front. I feel his hardness there already, and I gasp, throwing my arms around his shoulders, trying to be closer, closer, closer.
We break away for breath. My eyes open, desperate to see the look on his face, to know how he’s feeling.
Corvan smiles at me.
Then he’s kissing me again. He’s kissing me with the echoes of that grin, and his tongue is sweeping across my lips and I’m opening my mouth to him, desperate to have the taste of him in my mouth.
“You have no idea,” Corvan says against my lips, “How fucking long I’ve been wanting to touch you like this.” His hands are, indeed, roaming all over my abdomen, barely skimming the bottom of my breasts, carefully teasing, taunting. “How long have I wanted to kiss you like this.” His tongue rolls against mine.
I’m panting when he pulls his mouth from mine, sliding it down to my jaw, my neck, and settling at the base of my shoulder, licking and nipping and sucking. His fingers dance along my waist and then slowly bunch up the pale yellow fabric of my sundress, giving me time to tell him to stop.
But I don’t.
He groans and slides his hands up my ribcage, gentle, calloused fingertips teasing my bare, heated skin until he slides them over my breasts, flicking my hardened, aroused nipples with his thumbs. He holds them with enough pressure to have my knees weakening and my core dampening. “You’re everything, Eliza,” Corvan whispers against my skin, and there’s such a truthfulness to his tone that I believe him.
One of his hands moves down my body, and I gasp when he crooks a finger inside my underwear, but I don’t pull away from him—I only pull him closer. A feral sound leaves his lips as he nips my skin once more, then kisses his way back up to my mouth before sliding his palm inside my underwear, fingers sliding between my folds. “Fuck,” Corvan whispers as he feels just how wet I am. He finds my clit with ease and flicks it just the right amount of pressure to have me arching my back. He has to press me harder against the mossy boulder behind us to keep me standing upright.
I moan against his lips when he flicks that finger again, and he tears his mouth from mine. “That’s right,” he murmurs. “Let me hear you.”
I’d be embarrassed if I had the capacity for anything other than pleasure right now.
Corvan works into a rhythm, fingers just gentle enough to tease, just hard enough to have whimpers leaving my mouth and my hips working against his hand.
He adjusts his hand so that it’s his heel scraping against my clit, and his fingers begin stretching at my entrance. But it might be too late. I can feel my climax ramping up quickly, my eyes becoming heavy lidded as my head tilts back and—
“Fuck!”
One second I’m on the verge of an orgasm, and the next I’m being pulled off the boulder and against Corvan’s body, his hands immediately at my waist.
A rock that must have been not-so-stable on top of the much larger boulder I’d been leaning on, drops to the ground right where I’d been standing. Leaning. Pressed against while Corvan had me writhing against his hand.
The large rock falls to the ground with a heavy thud. Where I had been standing.
We both stand there, chests panting.
Then I laugh. “Fucking hell. I’m determined to die, aren’t I?”
Corvan pulls me tighter against his chest and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Not. Fucking. Happening.”