6. Elsie
Elsie
Jesse kisses me like he’s been waiting his whole life for permission.
Slow, at first, his mouth soft against mine, one hand cradling the back of my head like I’m something he’s afraid of breaking, even after years of thinking to himself he’s built for exactly the opposite of gentle.
I kiss him back with the fervor of the pent up need I suffered through the last five months.
“Elsie, sweetheart.”
My name sounds different in his mouth now. Lower. Wrecked, almost, like it costs him something to say it. And how many times have I dreamed of him calling me by such an endearing word.
“Tell me to stop if you need me to.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
He makes a sound against my throat that isn’t quite a laugh, low and rough.
Then his mouth is on my neck, my collarbone, tracing a path I remember with a thoroughness that tells me he remembers it too — every place that makes my breath catch, every spot he lingers a beat longer because he already knows what it does to me.
The morning light spills warm across the bed, and the width of his shoulders as he pulls his shirt over his head.
I let myself look this time, the way I never let myself linger back at the diner.
Scars mark him in a handful of places, silver-pale against skin gone deep bronze from years outdoors.
Now, I’ll have time to learn the story behind each of them.
My hands find the ink on his arm, tracing down over muscle that flexes under my palm, and he shudders like my touch is something he’s been starving for.
“I like you looking at me.”
His voice is rougher than his usually gravelly drawl. It makes me shiver.
“I’ve been looking at you for two years.”
“Not like this.” He settles his weight carefully over me, mindful of the bump between us in a way that makes my chest ache more than anything he’s said all morning.
He peels my sleep shirt over my head like he’s unwrapping something he intends to savor, pressing his mouth to the curve of my stomach before he moves any higher, murmuring something against my skin I don’t quite catch, something that sounds like a promise made to two people who can’t hear it yet.
“What did you say to them?” I ask, breathless already, threading my fingers through his hair.
“Told them their mother’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He glances up, something unguarded and half-shy in his expression. I’ve never seen that look. “Told them I’m not going anywhere.”
I don’t trust myself to answer that without crying again, so I pull him back up instead, kiss him hard enough that the words don’t matter as much as the way he groans into my mouth, hips rocking once against mine, already hard and unhurried about it, like he’s got nowhere else on earth to be.
“Jesse.”
“I’ve got you.” He says it the same way he said it two nights ago, kneeling behind me on the bathroom floor, and it means something entirely different now, lower and hungrier, though the care underneath it hasn’t changed at all.
His mouth finds my breast, tongue circling slow before he draws my engorged nipple into his hot mouth, and I arch up into him with a moan, one hand fisting in his hair while the other digs into the sheets.
He takes his time, making heat pool low and insistent between my thighs, switching to the other side only when I’m squirming beneath him, murmuring my name against my skin like it’s precious.
“You’re so beautiful like this,” he rasps, dragging his mouth back up to my throat. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
“Jesse.” His name comes out half plea, half warning, and he laughs against my collarbone, low and satisfied, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to me and has no intention of stopping.
By the time he finally moves lower, kissing a path down my ribs, over the curve of my stomach, along my hip, I’m already trembling, thighs falling open for him before he even asks.
“Please.”
“Please what?” There’s a wicked edge to his voice now, something almost playful under all that intensity, a side of him I don’t think anyone else gets to see. “Tell me what you want, sweetheart.”
“You. Now.”
He laughs, low and rough, and instead of giving me what I ask for, settles between my thighs and gives me something else entirely; his mouth against my pussy, slow and deliberate, until I’m gripping the sheets and saying his name like it’s the only word I remember.
He works me with a patience that should be unbearable and somehow isn’t, reading every shift of my hips, every catch in my breath, one hand splayed warm and steady against my stomach like he’s grounding both of us at once, until the pressure building low in my belly finally breaks and I come apart under his mouth, gasping his name into the quiet cabin air.
He doesn’t give me long to recover before he’s moving back up my body, kissing the inside of my knee, my thigh, the swell of my stomach, until his mouth finds mine again and I taste myself on his tongue, salt and heat and something that feels dangerously close to worship.
“I need you,” I whisper against his lips. “Now, Jesse.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He settles over me, weight braced on his forearms, and when he finally pushes inside me, slow and thorough, I feel the stretch of him everywhere, a fullness that has us both groaning into the small space between our mouths.
“Christ, Elsie.” His forehead drops to mine, voice ragged. “You feel like coming home.”
“Move. Please, move.”
He does, slow at first, savoring, one hand propped beside my head and the other trailing down to find where our bodies meet, thumb working slow circles that have my hips rising to meet every thrust.
“Look at me.”
The pleasure is so intense, forcing my eyelids to flutter shut. I pry them open.
His blue-green eyes have gone nearly black, pupils blown wide, every trace of the guarded, silent man I first fell for burned away. “I want you watching me when you come apart.”
I moan, turned on even more.
“Say my name again. You’re mine now.”
“Jesse. I’m yours.”
He groans, pounding into me, picking up speed.
I meet him thrust for thrust.
“Say you’re mine, too.”
“I’m yours. Elsie’s man.”
His voice is a raw, bruised thing he seems to have dragged up from the deepest part of his chest.
He shifts, rolling us gently onto our sides, and the new angle has him sinking somehow deeper, one of my legs hooked over his hip, his mouth finding mine again between broken, unsteady breaths.
“Better?” He grates, already knowing the answer from the way my nails dig into his shoulder.
“Don’t stop.”
He shifts his angle again, hitting a spot that has my whole body arching. I scream his name.
“Right there,” he growls, voice wrecked. “Fuck, you’re perfect right there. Strangling my cock.”
The pressure builds fast this time. I clutch at his shoulders, nails dragging over ink and scarred skin both, and when I break apart, I take him with me, his whole body going rigid, a low groan tearing out of him as he shouts my name.
We stay tangled together after, my back tucked against his chest. He rests a hand on the curve of my belly, warm, possessive and gentle all.
I listen to his heartbeat slow against my back, feel the occasional press of his lips against my shoulder, hair, the curve of my neck, like he can’t stop touching me.
“I meant what I said,” he murmurs eventually, mouth close to my ear. “I love you, Elsie.”
I turn in his arms until I’m facing him, tracing the line of his jaw with one finger, still catching my breath.
“I realized I love you last night.” I press my lips to his chest, right over the steady, still-racing beat of his heart. “But I’ve been obsessed with you for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Two years. Since the first day you trudged into the diner. I still remember hearing Colton, Tucker and Diego jokingly say they had a duty to make you less of a hermit. That’s how memorable seeing you was. You were, and still are, the most attractive man I’ve ever seen.”
He chuckles.
I prop myself up on one elbow to look at him properly. I’ve never heard him laugh. The warmth in his eyes and the dark, rich, rusty sound captivates me.
“What made you notice me?” I ask.
He traces slow circles against my hip. “You dropped a full pot of coffee trying to catch a kid’s cup before it hit the floor. Didn’t even think about yourself, just lunged for it. Scalded your hand pretty good doing it too, but you smiled when you handed him the cup.”
He shakes his head.
“Most people won’t do anything without calculating what it might cost them first. And there you were, burning yourself for a stranger’s kid.”
“Unless I see the scar, I don’t remember it.”
“I do.” He pulls me back down against his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Been watching you ever since, whether I meant to or not. Couldn’t keep my eyes away from your sweet ass and breasts.”
I’m not ashamed of being a big girl. Mom made sure that didn’t happen after I went home crying my first day at kindergarten because a child called me fat. However, there are plenty of men who don’t like curves like mine. I’m glad Jesse does.
I burrow into him, satisfied, and say a small prayer, hoping Andrei never finds us.