Chapter 26 Molly
Molly
Elijah stands before me unbuttoning his jeans, and I swear it’s like a striptease watching him pull those jeans down his long legs. He takes his underwear down next, leaving only his long hard cock, standing to attention and jutting towards me. My mouth goes dry.
I don’t often want to suck a cock, but the sight of his has me wanting to open my lips.
He doesn’t stand there and let me stare at him for long before crawling back onto the couch between my legs. His arms come down on either side of me and he kisses me intensely.
‘You like watching me, Molly?’ he asks, and the only sound I can manage is a whimper.
He’s turned me into this mess of a woman who responds only with porny noises.
It’s not my fault he looks like he does and knows how to use his hands after four centuries of practice–and that tongue… oh holy shit, that tongue.
His dick brushes against my thigh and the goosebumps return, racing up my body as I grab impatiently for him.
He lets me and hisses when I get his dick in my palm, squeezing and then stroking three long strokes up his uncut length.
‘Don’t let this go to your head, but I’ve never had sex with someone as big as you,’ I tell him honestly.
‘How can you say something like that and ask that it not go to my head?’
I squeeze the head of his cock and he lets out a whimpering sound to rival the ones he elicited from me.
I grin against his mouth, pumping his cock with my hand while my other hand scrapes across his scalp.
He is usually so cold, but in this moment, he is the perfect temperature–soft everywhere, nothing frigid about him. I want him all over me, I want—
‘Do it, Elijah,’ I tell him. ‘Fuck me.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
He lines himself up and presses in, just an inch, then out slowly, before thrusting further.
‘Oh, fuck, Molly.’ The friction is heady and perfect, making me groan in a way that I would have been completely embarrassed about if this wasn’t Elijah, who looks at me like there’s not an embarrassing thing I could do in this world. ‘What are you doing to me?’
The eye contact is intense. I wish I could look away, but he’s got me captured here, beneath his gaze, beneath his body, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.
Elijah pulls out suddenly, and I make a noise that he shushes.
He taps my hips. ‘Up.’
I do as he says, lifting my hips off the couch, and he slips one of my throw pillows under them before plunging back into me. I squeak at the new angle, my eyes closing as he finds his rhythm in me.
‘You’re perfect. I haven’t dreamed in centuries, but I am now. Look at me, darling,’ he commands and I do. His eyes are like infernos, flaming with desire and heat as he thrusts into me.
‘You’re not—’ I gasp as he thrusts deeper ‘—supposed to call me darling.’
‘Bossy Molly, always coming up with new rules,’ he says. ‘Can you come from this?’
I swallow and shake my head. I haven’t come from penetration alone before, but this feels insanely good. He’s pressing into a spot inside of me that feels like a secret, one that might just make me come all over his stupidly gorgeous dick if he keeps at it. ‘Maybe,’ I say.
‘Hm.’ Elijah lowers himself onto one elbow, bringing his face just above mine, and uses his other hand to reach between us. He rubs the pads of his fingers over my clit in firm circles and I groan. Elijah grins. ‘That’s my girl.’
‘Not your girl,’ I groan, but let him kiss me, because I’m too boneless to actually refuse him anything–his pet names, his endearments, his sloppy kisses licking into my mouth while he fucks me into the couch like it’s his favourite activity.
The climb towards my climax isn’t slow, but heady and quick, a sudden rush towards freefall, and suddenly I’m moaning loudly into his mouth, my calf lightly cramping as I shake around his cock.
‘That’s it, darling, keep going for me, just like that,’ he murmurs against my mouth, but his voice is strained. When he reaches his peak moments later, hips jutting wildly, his words become gibberish, mindless praise for my body, my mouth, my tits, my cunt.
I have a light layer of sweat cooling over my whole body when we’ve both come down from our climaxes, and Elijah licks the side of my neck like I taste delectable. He sucks on my skin until I lightly swat at his back. ‘You’re going to leave a hickey,’ I complain, laughing breathlessly.
‘That’s the point,’ he mutters before resuming his task.
I’m pretty sure if we were any good at the whole friends-with-benefits thing, I’d make him go home after what we just did. Instead, I let him shower with me and then pull him into my bed.
Cuddling with a hookup is a bad habit that I ought to nip in the bud now, but with his breath on the back of my neck, his hands on my stomach, his knees tucked into the backs of mine–I don’t want him to go anywhere.
Elijah isn’t wrapped around me when I wake up two mornings later, and I blink, sitting up in bed to look for him.
One perk of a studio apartment is that he really can’t go anywhere that I wouldn’t see him, other than the bathroom, and sure enough, he’s sitting at my little two-person table, one leg bent on the seat while he hunches over something in the pale blue morning light.
I rub my eyes and squint, thinking it must be one of the books from my shelf, but then he picks up a sheet of printer paper and passes it onto a second stack. My gut lurches at the sight.
‘What are you reading?’ I croak, startling him. I know the answer, but I don’t want to be right.
I stand up too quickly, making myself a little dizzy. He bolts to my side, supernaturally fast, and steadies me.
‘I found it in the credenza when I was putting away the puzzle and, well, I read the first page and then couldn’t stop reading.’
I approach the table warily, my mouth pulled into a frown. Sure enough, my abandoned novel manuscript sits in two piles–one the pages he’s already read, the other the pages he has left. He’s more than halfway done.
Every Now and Then by Molly Mason.
I want to be mad at him for reading it, but I’m more curious to know what he thinks. The novel is a mess of a project–one that needs a lot of work before it can see the light of day–but I’m still proud of it.
‘You wrote this?’ he asks when I sink into the chair across from his. ‘I mean, I know you did, it has your name on it and, even if it didn’t, it just–it sounds like you. Molly, it’s excellent.’
I chew on my lower lip for a moment then nod. ‘I wrote it after grad school.’
‘I said it when I read your stories online, but you’re so talented, Molly. I haven’t stood up once since I started reading it a couple of hours ago.’
‘I haven’t edited it. I haven’t touched it in a couple years,’ I say. ‘It’s…’
I don’t finish the sentence, because I was going to say it’s nothing.
But it most certainly is not nothing. It’s months of work and heart poured into its pages, it’s a story I loved so much that I sometimes hated it while writing it for not living up to the vision in my head.
It’s both dear to me and the reminder that I’ve failed myself; failed every version of myself that’s dreamed of being a writer.
‘The story structure is brilliant, the way you’ve weaved in the past and present is propulsive, and withholding until the second act that the historical chapters are her mother–Molly, why have you stopped writing?’
I give a tight shrug, my hands clutched between my legs to keep from fidgeting. Elijah stands up and flips the Keurig open before putting in a fresh pod and a clean mug from the drying rack for me.
While it brews, I give a long sigh and meet his eyes. He is leaning back against my kitchen counter. He’s so sweet, his patient and kind eyes waiting for me to speak.
‘When I started at Drummond, it was just easier not to. I told myself I would get settled into my new routine and then I would start submitting again. But I didn’t.
When I was with Matt, we lived together in an apartment his dad owned, so our rent was insanely cheap for how nice it was.
Matt paid for most of it, because he had a high-paying job and I just worked part time doing IT at the library.
It was a fun job–I liked the work and the location.
The pay wasn’t great, but I didn’t care because I had all this time to write and I made enough, especially with our dual income.
Matt told me I could quit whenever, but like, why would I when I liked it so much? ’
‘Matt,’ Elijah mutters, like he should have expected my story to come back to him.
‘I was really sad when everything went down with him. It was such a shift: I had to find a place to live, I had to find a new job, and my fiancé who I thought I was going to be with forever was no longer my person. And I was the one who instigated the breakup; I was the one who insisted I keep living in the city, even though my parents were begging me to come home. Part of me really wanted to. I just felt lost and alone and so fucking tired.’
The coffee finishes brewing and Elijah puts a splash of my favourite pumpkin creamer in the mug before bringing it to me.
He stands behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders.
I rest my head against his forearm. It’s too intimate for what we are–I know, I know.
But I feel like I’m picking at a long-time scab that’s never healed and he is an undeniable comfort standing so near.
‘I stopped writing, other than the journals I write in at work, or a random poem on my phone now and then. I wrote this novel when I was so in love and happy and hopeful and blissfully oblivious to what was going on–what I almost bound myself to. Afterwards, I felt so betrayed.’
‘By him?’ Elijah asks.
‘By me, actually. Like, for not noticing? I think I should have noticed. I didn’t.’
His thumbs rub soothing circles into the fleshy part of my shoulders, working out knots that have probably been there for half a decade. I close my eyes and breathe while he does this for a couple of minutes, then take a sip of my coffee.
‘I want to write. I love it. I just don’t know.’
I slide off the chair and pad over to the credenza, steeling myself before opening it and pulling out three journals and a stack of Manilla envelopes.
There’s a short story collection, a mishmash of poems and half of another novella I was working on when it all went down.
I have all of my old writing on a flash drive, but Matt always asked me to print it for him to read.
He said that seeing it printed would make it feel more real, keep me moving towards getting it published.
He really, really believed in me, that son of a bitch.
I drop the stack on the table and nod at it. ‘Most of it’s unpublished.’
Elijah’s eyes sparkle like I’ve just unearthed a treasure on the wobbly table in front of him.
‘Can I read them?’ he asks.
I shift, tugging at the hem of the T-shirt I slept in.
It wouldn’t hurt anything to have him read them, other than my pride if he loathes them.
He’s been alive for a long ass time, long enough to read the best literature the world has to offer and form opinions.
He’s not like Matt, who read two and a half books a year (one of them a business self-improvement book) and thought everything I wrote was brilliant by merit of being written by me.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘I want to. Every story I read makes me feel like I know you better. Like a glimpse of your brain.’
This is too intimate, another line we’re crossing that my better judgement is begging me to steer clear of, but I nod and push the stack in his direction.
‘I need to shower,’ I say and take another long sip of coffee. He’s already flipping through the first folder, a finger tracing down the page and his mouth moving as he reads the words printed there. ‘Are you… going to join me?’
Elijah’s head snaps up from the stack, eyes bright. Instead of waiting for me to lead the way, he picks me up, throwing me over his shoulder, and takes me laughing into the bathroom.
Note left on Elijah’s desk on 30 November 2026
Elijah,
It’s no Arranged Bride to the Orc Billionaire, but these are a few of my favourite short story collections.
They are all pretty heavily annotated because I used them in grad school, either for my seminar classes or the one section of short stories I taught my last semester, so either sorry or you’re welcome for the chaos that is my margin notes.
If you hate them, do notttt tell me, it will probably make me never want to hook up with you again.
Enjoy
M