Six Years Ago
ELLIE
“You sure you don’t want another bite of this?” I asked, gesturing to the piece of chocolate cake I’d almost completely devoured.
Sully shook his head, watching me with a hooded gaze that made me feel all warm and tingly inside, replacing the alcohol I hadn’t been able to drink tonight.
“I’ll have my dessert when we get home,” he said lowly, and the butterflies in my stomach officially took flight.
I squirmed in my seat, pressing my thighs together to get a hold on the ache that had begun to blossom between them, and Sully lifted a brow as he watched me.
“You excited for that, birthday girl?”
I was, in fact, very excited for that. Sully was taking me home to Maple Street tonight, where an empty house awaited us since his mom was out of town and his dad was working his usual overnight shift.
He told his parents that we planned to stay there because it was closer to the lakeside restaurant where we had reservations for my birthday, but in reality, it had more to do with privacy.
We both had too many roommates in our off-campus apartments to get much of that these days.
“Maybe,” I muttered, smirking at Sully as I slipped the last bite of chocolate cake between my lips and slowly slid the fork out, licking the chocolate off it.
A guttural noise emanated from Sully’s chest, audible from across the small dining table. A tealight sat in the middle of it, and it flickered, illuminating the lines of his handsome face—the clench of his jaw and the curve of his lips as he watched me.
I’d enjoyed my birthday dinner immensely.
We’d dined out of our tax bracket tonight, eating at this sensual, luxe spot on Lake Minnetonka, a place that was crowded with far more lakeside homeowners than college students.
But Sully had insisted. He’d wanted to make my twenty-first special since I couldn’t do what most people did on their twenty-first.
Some people drank on blood thinners, but I didn’t do things like test my luck—not anymore. I’d already been given a dosage of luck…and what happened when it ran out?
I didn’t want to find out, so I stayed vigilant about what I consumed these days, wanting to make sure that my INR—the blood test that measured how long it took my blood to clot—stayed as consistent as possible.
It needed to be thin enough to treat my embolism, but not so thin that other dangerous side effects could occur.
And since alcohol thinned blood, I certainly couldn’t spend my twenty-first birthday binge drinking.
I couldn’t do shots at the bars or get so wasted that someone would have to carry me home.
Instead, I’d picked out a singular cocktail to celebrate my first legal drink tonight, and honestly, I wasn’t upset about it.
Sully couldn’t get into the bars yet anyway, and I couldn’t imagine celebrating without him—not after he’d been here for so many birthdays already.
Not when he’d never wavered, not even in the last few months.
It was just the two of us, the way I liked it.
I’d picked out a new dress—a flimsy, flirty red thing that I could tell drove Sully wild.
His arms flexed in his crisp dress shirt as he crossed them over his chest, like he was trying to keep himself from reaching across the table and throwing me over his shoulder.
It made me feel alive again. Desirable. Happy. Things that had felt lost for a while.
My physical health had made a quick recovery, but something about my brain chemistry had changed that day in the hospital. Every day, I woke up and rode this seemingly ongoing wave of anxiety I felt ashamed about because I was fine. I was lucky.
But tonight, for the first time in a long time, I felt lucky.
I cocked my head to the side. “Sawyer?”
His eyes glowed in the dim lighting. “Yeah, baby?”
“Will you take me home?”
Thank God we’d already paid. Sully moved like a man on a mission, tugging me out of my chair and leading me through the restaurant, eager to leave.
Just as eager as me.
As soon as we got in the car, his hand found my inner thigh.
“Can I?” he rasped, eyes darting to mine as he used his other hand to back out of the parking spot. “Fuck, can I touch you? I don’t think I can wait until we get home to feel how wet you are. I saw you squirming, Eleanor.”
“Yes,” I breathed—the only syllable I could manage at the moment.
But Sully didn’t seem to mind, slipping his hand beneath the hem of my dress.
I parted my thighs, giving him better access, and he took advantage of it, hooking a single finger beneath my soaked underwear and yanking it to the side.
I watched his wrist rotate and then felt his knuckle drag through my center before it found my clit.
“Sawyer,” I gasped, grabbing onto the door handle as liquid heat spread from my head to my toes.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and then a finger dove inside me, making my jaw drop. “Oh my God, Ellie baby.”
I closed my eyes, letting bliss wash over me, letting his touch bring me back to life.
But then, to my dismay, he pulled away. I opened my eyes to find him with his fingers in his mouth, sucking them clean and then gripping the wheel with both hands again.
“Home,” he grunted. “Now.”
“You’re the one getting distracted,” I chastised, and his lips curved as he shook his head.
Luckily, we were only a few miles from Maple Street, and before I knew it, I was getting whisked out of his car and carried up the front steps and then, once inside, up the stairs, until we finally made it to his bedroom.
He kicked the door shut behind him despite no one else being home, and something about his desperate, gruff movements made my pulse tick faster. An undeniable urgency thrummed in the air, bouncing between us.
Things had been hard lately—the busyness of classes and exams, the roller coaster of my health, it had spread us thin. We needed this. We needed tonight. Honestly, I needed him in a way that I didn’t recognize—a new level of wanting, like I was desperate to cling to this and us.
Sully paused by his bed, ducking his head until his lips flirted with my ear.
“You look so fucking good in that dress, Eleanor.” He released my legs first, letting them slowly fall to the floor, tipping me down.
“You make me wish I was a fucking artist. There should be art created of you looking like this. It should be hung in museums and worshipped. Books should be written about it. And movies. Goddamn sculptures, baby. But the only one who gets to read and watch and look at them is me. Because I don’t really like the idea of sharing, not when it fucking comes to you. ”
“Sawyer,” I breathed, twisting to face him now that my feet were on the floor. I placed a finger to his rambling lips, outlining them. When I was sure he was done, I smiled. “Just please kiss me.”
He did. He kissed me like it was our first kiss. It was soul-capturing and deep and desperate, tongues twisting and lips clashing.
And then he kissed me everywhere else, too.
Down my neck and in the dip of my collarbone.
He kissed my shoulders and brushed away the straps of my dress, one at a time.
He kissed down my body, dragging the red fabric with him, until it pooled on the floor.
And then I was on the bed with my legs on his shoulders and his tongue buried deep inside me.
He kissed me between my legs until I was crying for more. And more and more, unafraid that anyone would hear us. Because no one else was here, something that never happened. Just Sully, me, and the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling.
His name left my lips as I shattered into pieces, drunk on pleasure alone.
I decided it was the best kind of drunk that a twenty-one-year-old could be.
“El,” he rasped as he crawled over me. “I love you. Fuck, I love you, baby. Do you want—”
“Yes.” I grabbed at his massive frame, pulling him down toward me, needing to feel his weight, his comfort. I wanted him in my bones, wanted him to be a part of me, wanted him to be inside me.
But Sully drew back, his gaze meeting mine steadily even as his body shook. “Are you sure?”
Sex had been off the table for a while. Despite what Sully had said that day while administering my medication, he agreed we should be careful while I wasn’t on birth control, and it took me a bit before finally deciding on an IUD as an alternative, which had been more of a hellish experience than I’d ever anticipated.
And then we’d been busy, and there’d been roommates and life and everything in it.
But now we were here. And I wanted it—him.
“Yes,” I assured him. “Yes, but can we—condom, maybe?”
“Of course,” Sully said, dropping a hard kiss to my mouth before yanking open his bedside table and finding what he was looking for. I watched, mouth watering, as he unzipped his pants, tore open the foil, and rolled the rubber over his hard length. “Whatever you want, El.”
He didn’t ask me to explain, which was a saving grace.
I didn’t want to get pulled out of the moment—didn’t want to shift the tone of tonight, which felt like a celebration and for more reasons than one.
More than just a birthday or a night alone.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, on why it felt that way.
But I was okay with that. Sometimes, there was magic in mystery.
“I love you,” I whispered, and Sully’s eyes softened.
“I love you, too.” He dropped back over me, and I groaned as I felt his erection drag through my pussy, teasing me. “And I’m going to love fucking this tight little cunt until you’re screaming my name again.”
“Please,” I moaned, and I felt the curve of his lips against mine.
“How many times do you think I can make you come, birthday girl?” he breathed, and my eyes fluttered shut as he began to press into me. “Twenty-one is probably far-reaching, but I like a challenge.”
“Sullivan,” I laughed, and then I said his name again on a moan as he thrust inside me.
“Eleanor,” he breathed, his eyes fluttering shut. “Oh, fuck, El.”
We let our bodies do the talking after that.