Chapter 17 A Retainer and My Sluttiest Pair of Shorts #4
“Do not fall for the big-box propaganda machine. They’ve got us so distracted, pointing our fingers at each other, we’ve forgotten that they are the ones choosing to pass their own losses on to the consumer.
It’s not our fault corporate America can’t figure out how to close the tagging gun loophole.
We’ve already allowed fast fashion to destroy the planet, but once we let them turn us against each other, that’s when they’ve really won. ”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
She shrugged. “Billionaires. Corporations. If I’m being honest, I lost the thread a while back and just kept saying things,” she explained, analyzing the stain in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.
He sat on the foot of the bed and took her hips in his hands, pulling her backward until his thighs straddled hers. “Sometimes you say things with such confidence, I can’t tell if you’ve made a good point or if I just like you too much.”
She stared at her reflection in the mirror, her cheeks flushed and her hair untamed. Aside from his bent legs around her and his big hands splayed at her waist, Elliot was hidden from view. “Two things can be true, Hodges,” she responded, her own legs wobbling.
“I want to be all the things to you,” he whispered into her back. The heat of his breath on her pulled her spine taut. “All the husband things people vow to be. Someone who cares for you and protects you and cherishes you. I’m kicking myself for not saying those things back when I had the chance.”
Lainey’s mouth went bone dry. “Vows like that wouldn’t have meant anything back then.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice gravel. He let his fingers slip under the hem of her shirt, lifting it just enough to place a gentle kiss at her back. “It was always going to mean something for me.”
But it couldn’t have, she thought. Vows were forever.
Vows were until death and through sickness and all the things they would never face together, because their marriage would end in a few short months.
They’d built it that way. They couldn’t have everything.
They had the summer, and that was it. That’d always been the plan.
But he hadn’t said everything. He’d said something.
Maybe they didn’t need to promise each other forever, and maybe that was okay.
They were happy for now, and there was a safety in knowing the bounds of what they had.
That it wouldn’t be ripped away, because she’d let it go when the time was right.
He turned her around to face him. She wondered if Elliot could hear her heart pounding in her chest. There was no way he couldn’t feel it as his lips met the space between her ribs.
He gathered her onto his lap, his back flopping to the mattress as he watched her remove her shirt. Quickly, she lowered her mouth to his, only to feel a gentle press of his hand at her sternum.
“I want to look at you,” he breathed out, his voice thick. “Can I look at you?”
She sat back up. The request was so vulnerable and adoring. He adored her. She could feel it in the way his thumbs reverently brushed at the high planes of her cheeks and his eyes took her in like she was art. Like the sight of her like this, messy and flushed, moved him.
She nodded. Her skin tingled at every inch where his eyes trailed over her, as if his gaze were accompanied by a gentle sweep of his thumb. She hadn’t known how much she’d needed him until he was underneath her, staring up at her body like a masterpiece.
“Are you still looking, or can I kiss you?” she teased.
He feigned a wince, then seemed to relent. “If you must.” He yanked her down to the bed. His smile curved against her mouth, then he was kissing her, slow and hot, like he was content to have her exactly like this all night long—soft and pliant and desperate for him.
“I want to take my time,” he said.
But suddenly it all felt so urgent. The summer had only just begun, and she was already dreading its end. What they had meant something, and she wanted to experience every bit of it while she still could.
She shook her head. She was done holding back. “I want to be all those things to you, too,” she said. While I still get to be, she thought
“Lainey.” He said her name like it meant everything that was unspoken between them. And maybe it did, she thought, as they shed the rest of their clothes and let their five-star meal go cold.
“Hey.”
It was a whisper early in the morning. Part of her dream, she imagined. Her body curled into the mass of pillows and the warm, perfect shape to which she was beginning to become familiar.
“You’re going to miss it,” the voice repeated. Elliot’s voice, she realized. Of course it was Elliot’s.
That was when the jostling started. “Elainnneeee.”
“Stop, you tyrant!” she groaned, but the pillow muffled most of it.
“You’re missing it.”
She covered her head with a sheet. An expensive, high-thread-count sheet, which tipped her off that she might not be in her bed. The Groff Retreat, she remembered.
“Did I oversleep? Are they kicking us out?” she asked through a yawn.
“No, we have plenty of time, and we can go back to sleep after this, but look.” He pointed to the windows on the other side of their bed.
“See how the window is slightly curved?” She nodded.
“That’s so the building follows the movement of the sun throughout the day.
The natural light will spread and expand, warming up the whole room.
It’s one of his earliest forms of sustainable design. ”
From the moment she’d met him, she’d been stealing pieces of him she wasn’t sure she’d get to keep. Sweet Elliot. Feisty Elliot. Generous Elliot. But this one, curious and passionate Elliot, was one of her favorites.
He looked over at her, bare chested and smudged lenses, like he’d pushed his glasses up his nose haphazardly seconds before waking her. A blush spread from his neck into his cheeks. “Sorry.” He rubbed a knot in his shoulder self-consciously. “You probably wanted to sleep.”
“No. Not at all.” She sat up and leaned the back of her head to his chest so they were both facing the window. “Tell me more,” she egged on, giving him the same curiosity about his interests he’d always given her.
“The clerestory—the carvings at the very top. Right now, they’re crisp, but during the course of the day, it will give off a stippling effect that’ll look like light poking through leaves. It’s supposed to make the interior feel more harmonious with the exterior.”
“Interesting.” She nodded the back of her head into him. “What else you got?”
“On the windows? Not much else.” He kissed the crown of her head. “You can go back to sleep…” His lips drifted down to the top of her shoulder as his fingers played with the strap of her tank top. “If you want.” His other hand slipped under the sheet.
She squirmed beside him. “You are sending a very mixed message, sir.”
“Am I?” he asked, the portrait of innocence.
She flipped over and slung a thigh over his hips so she was straddling him. No confusion there.
She could feel his smile against her lips and taste herself on his tongue from only hours before. “It’s never been like this for me. I’ve never felt…I can’t imagine…” He didn’t finish, becoming preoccupied with removing her camisole. “I don’t know how I’ll let you go.”
Ask me to stay, she thought. But her mouth couldn’t form the words.
It was better this way. If he asked her to stay, she probably would.
She’d give up everything. Every dream for herself that had started to take shape in her heart.
She’d empty herself out until she was nothing but a clear vessel of only his smile and his laugh and the crease between his eyebrows.
Right then, she’d let herself disappear into him if he asked, and she didn’t want that for herself anymore.
“I’m not sure how I’ll go,” she whispered, too quiet for him to hear.