4. Deirdre #2
Once out of the closet, I hustle over to my bed. I’m about to drop gratefully into it when Elio’s words freeze me.
“Not that one.”
My stomach does a strange swooping thing, and I can’t decide if it’s good or bad. I hide my confusion behind irritation. Anger is always easier.
“What do you mean, ‘not that one?’” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
“I mean that you’re not sleeping in that bed tonight. Or any other night. You wanna take a nap or something when I’m not here? Fine, you can use that bed. But from now on you’re going to spend your nights in mine.”
My blood seems to run hot and cold at the same time.
“Like hell, I will,” I snap.
“You will,” he echoes. “And if I have to take a hammer to this bedframe the way I did the doors just to take away your other options then I’ll do it.”
“I’ll just sleep on the floor then.”
“Then I’ll sleep on the floor beside you.” There’s a smoky tinge of amusement in his voice, but it vanishes when he adds, “You’re not getting out of this, Deirdre. You’re not getting away from me. And all jokes aside, I’ll be fucking damned if I let my wife sleep on the floor.”
“I’m not your wife!”
“Not yet. But I wouldn’t let my fiancée sleep on the floor, either.”
Fuming, and apparently completely tongue-tied by his use of words like wife and fiancée , I plop down on my bed and cross my arms, glaring mutinously up at him.
He doesn’t say a single word. Doesn’t even hesitate.
He just bends down, fastens his strong hands around my waist, then slings me up against his chest the way he did outside earlier.
Before I can even try to wriggle out of his grasp, he’s crossed into his dark bedroom.
He bends down and then drops me onto the mattress.
Instantly, I’m scrambling out of the bed.
And just as instantly, he’s in front of me, blocking my way, one of his feet between mine on the floor.
He bends his knee and shoves his shin against the bed, turning his leg into a bar that locks me in.
I try to stand up anyway, but the press of his leg ruins my balance, and when I halfway straighten up, all it takes is the poke of a single leather finger against my forehead to send me sprawling backwards, arms akimbo.
“You’re sleeping here, Songbird. We’re not negotiating this.”
I lie on my back, breathing hard, watching as the velvet shadow of him starts undoing the buttons on his shirt before shrugging out of it.
His hands go to his belt, and my heart leaps rebelliously into my throat when the clink of metal lets me know that he’s unfastened it.
He lets his clothing fall to the floor and kicks it away.
I know without being able to see him well enough in the darkness that he’s taken everything off.
Everything except the gloves, I suppose, because when he grabs my wrist beneath the silk sleeve of my pyjama top, it’s not his skin on mine.
He pulls my wrist so I’m forced to roll onto my side. Now that I’m out of the way, he pulls back the covers I was on top of with a firmly decisive yank. He forcefully rolls me back into the spot before dropping the covers on top of me.
Then he slides in beneath them on the other side.
I’m so tense beside him that my teeth begin to chatter all over again.
I can’t help it. I’ve never shared a bed with him like this.
Earlier tonight we were in the other bed together, sure, but we weren’t really in it.
More like… on it. Somehow, having sex on top of the blankets feels way less vulnerable than sleeping with Elio in a literal sense this way.
Elio must feel my trembling, or hear the teeth chattering, because he draws me closer, one of his gloved hands sliding against my lower back.
“Shh,” he murmurs against my forehead, and the sound is so soft and gentle it’s entirely unnatural and frankly, kind of alarming. “Shh, Songbird. None of that now.”
“I can’t help it,” I stammer. “If you can’t sleep beside me then let me go back to the other bed.”
His lips skim across my forehead, and I can’t tell if it’s a feather-light kiss or just a coincidence of motion as he prepares to speak.
“I’d rather stay awake all night beside you,” he says, tracing an exquisitely tingly line up and down my spine with his fingertips, “than sleep like a baby in another room without you.”
“And what about what I want?” I whisper against his throat.
“I don’t think you actually know what that is.
” He doesn’t give me a chance to argue back or get offended.
“Think about it,” he says. “Think about it fucking properly. Do you really, truly want to go to another room alone tonight? After everything that’s happened?
Because that wasn’t what you seemed to want earlier, and shit has only gotten more intense since then. ”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer.
Because I’m afraid that he’s absolutely right.
In the silence, I try to slow my breathing. Elio’s lips press to my forehead once more, and this time I’m sure it’s an intentional kiss, sweet and oddly chaste for somebody like him. Maybe it’s some kind of peace offering. A way to tell me that this might actually be alright if I could only let it.
He’s so freaking warm. Like a furnace in the shape of a man, and without even meaning to I’m nudging closer to him.
My hands are balled into fists against his chest, and I force them to relax.
But then I don’t know what to do with them, so I clasp them tightly together beneath my chin, the gesture of someone in fervent prayer, or maybe someone begging.
I don’t like that either, and with something that feels like a wall inside me breaking, I release my hands from each other and slide them tentatively along his chest, feeling the dark heat of him, the hard muscle, the hair.
The beating of his heart.
It’s hammering almost as hard and fast as mine.
“Did you down a bunch of espresso when I was drinking tea or something?” I say, so surprised and confused that I press my hands harder against him, as if I’d somehow felt him wrong.
“Nope.”
“Adrenaline really is a hell of a drug,” I mutter.
He lets out a chuckle, and I feel the rumble of it under my hands.
“That’s not adrenaline,” he tells me, shifting slightly closer until I feel the unmistakable nudge of his hard cock against my hip.
“That’s you, Songbird. You’ve worked your way in between my fucking ribs, and I can’t tell if you’re tearing shit apart in there or putting it all back together.
” He rests his chin against the top of my head and murmurs, “Probably both.”
My heart is racing all the faster now, and it’s not because of what he’s saying but because of the unignorable, undeniable hardness at my hip.
He’s not moving, not grinding it against me, not doing anything at all to draw attention to it, and yet I can’t think about anything else.
His cock burns right through the silk of the pyjamas, like it’s somehow hotter than the rest of him.
And maybe it is. Because I remember the bright sting of that heat inside me earlier.
The effervescent stretch of his thick shaft invading my pussy.
The way he stroked and stabbed, demanding and giving all at the same time.
Jamming himself with hungry expertise against a deep place that made every cell in my body shudder and then explode.
He hasn’t cleaned himself off the way I have.
My blood is probably still on him. Dry now, but there all the same.
Why do I feel a sick throb of satisfaction at that thought? The thought that I’ve made my mark on him somehow. Or maybe it’s just because I know he likes it.
You’re claiming my cock with your blood the same way I’ve already stained you with mine. That first night, Songbird, do you remember? When I got shot and bled all over you.
That’s what he groaned, harsh and raw, when he broke me open. And then…
I would have fucking died for you that night.
My stomach drops, and my pussy squeezes so hard that it almost feels like a tiny orgasm. I hurt down there, and I can’t tell if it’s because of what happened tonight…
Or because I feel so strangely empty.
Elio adjusts his position slightly, forcing a thick thigh between mine, his cock jerking away from my hip until its underside is thrust flat against my belly, hooked beneath the pyjama top. Skin to skin.
It’s so quiet, barely a whisper, but in the dense stillness of the room there’s no mistaking Elio’s half-hissed inhale, “ Merda .”
I’m not sure my heart is located in my chest any longer, because I feel my pulse strongest in my head and in my clit. Elio must be in the same boat. Because his cock keeps doing these tight little throbs against my belly.
But he still doesn’t do anything about it. Doesn’t grip his shaft to jerk himself or try to make me touch him. He just lies against me, chest heaving with slightly unsteady breaths, cock twitching.
I feel like the tension is going to crack my skull in half. Finally, I blurt out, “You can’t possibly mean to sleep like that!”
“Like what?” is his maddening reply.
This man. This fucking man.
“Like… Like this! Like… How you are!”
“You mean so hard I’m on the verge of trying to fuck your goddamn belly button?”
My cheeks flame.
“Well, for lack of a more elegant way to say it, yes!”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Deirdre. You need sleep and I plan to let you get it. My blue balls are none of your concern tonight.”
There’s a certain slant to the word tonight that makes me think it is going to be my concern another time, and soon.
“Well, it’s not like I can sleep like this either,” I huff.
“No? Well, how about this?”
He grabs me and rolls me over so that my back is to him. He seals his molten chest to my spine, searing me through the silk.
Then he shoves his cock between my thighs.
I freeze, barely breathing, but he’s not inside me.
My pyjama pants are still on, after all.
No, he’s just thrust himself into the tight place at the apex of my thighs, the smooth tip of him jutting forward between my legs.
The pressure against my pounding pussy is crazy, and an involuntary tremor goes through me, tightening the muscles in my legs.
“Oh, fuck,” Elio rasps. “Yeah, squeeze down on me like that.”
My muscles leap to obey him before my brain can catch up. I squeeze him, and he groans.
“Perfect,” he says, voice thick. He grips my hip possessively, buries his face in the crook of my neck, and then impossibly, insanely , he mutters, “Now go to sleep.”