Chapter 9
Elliot's apartment is not what I expected.
I expected expensive minimalism. A leather sofa chosen by a woman who bills by the hour. Art better than the blue horse, though that is not a high bar.
Instead, his place has books stacked on the coffee table, a chipped green bowl full of keys, an old wool blanket over the arm of the couch, and a kitchen with actual lemons in a ceramic dish.
It looks lived in by one person who knows where everything goes and occasionally drops the mail on a chair.
I like it too much.
"This is dangerous," I say from the doorway.
Elliot turns from the kitchen. "The apartment?"
"The lemons."
He glances at the dish.
"I can move them."
"Don't you dare."
Maxine drove behind me to Elliot's building and waited downstairs until I texted her from inside. Not because I cannot drive. Because Grant knows my house, my office, and Maxine's address, and I am done making myself easy to find.
It is bossy, inconvenient love, and I'm too tired to pretend I don't need it.
The divorce petition is filed. Grant has been served. Geneva has the threat documented. The old relationship is not emotionally tidy, but it is over on paper and out loud.
Elliot knows it too.
So he stands six feet away with his hands flat on the counter, waiting for me to tell him what is allowed.
"You don't have to be here tonight," he says.
"I know."
"I don't want to be the place you land because everything else is on fire."
"You aren't."
"Audra."
"Elliot."
I set my bag on the chair. "I filed. I told him. I locked the door. I'm not confused about who ended my marriage."
His eyes hold mine.
"And what do you want?"
It's a better question than do you want me.
Cleaner.
Harder.
"I want you to stop standing there waiting for written permission to touch me."
His mouth shifts.
"That's specific."
"I'm a specific woman."
"I've noticed."
His hands come off the counter.
My pulse kicks. My fingers uncurl at my sides.
I'm tired of being careful for people who used my care against me.
I cross the kitchen.
He doesn't meet me halfway.
He lets me come to him.
I notice.
I stop close enough to smell soap and rain on his sweater.
"I want to be touched by someone who pays attention," I say.
His breath leaves slowly.
"I can do that."
"I know."
His hand lifts to my face, not fast, not claiming. His thumb brushes my cheek once, and the restraint in it makes my throat tighten.
Then he kisses me.
The diner kiss was anger and escape.
This is choice.
His mouth is warm and patient until I am not patient at all.
I pull him closer by the front of his sweater.
He makes a low sound, and the sound goes straight through me.
It is not polished, not measured, not careful.
It is a man who has been holding back and is done pretending the effort cost him nothing.
He turns us away from the counter before my hip hits the drawer handle.
I notice because Grant never noticed.
Elliot notices everything.
"Bedroom?" he asks.
"Yes."
One word. No ceremony required.
His bedroom is simple. Gray sheets. A lamp low on the dresser. A stack of legal thrillers on the nightstand that I will mock later if we both survive me being this naked with him.
He stops beside the bed and looks at me.
"If anything changes, tell me."
"It won't."
"Tell me anyway."
I nod.
He undresses me slowly enough to make patience feel filthy.
Jacket first. Blouse. The hook at my waist. Each pause asks without turning the question into a speech.
I answer with my hands, his shoulders, the buttons of his shirt, the belt I fumble because my fingers have lost interest in taxes, ethics, and fine motor skills.
When his shirt comes off, I forget the joke I was going to make.
Elliot is broad through the chest, solid at the waist, warm under my palms. Not sculpted for display. Built, lived in, real. A man who carries groceries and remembers where he put the lemons.
"You are looking very seriously at me," he says.
"I'm doing an assessment."
"Should I be concerned?"
"Only if you object to favorable findings."
He laughs against my mouth, and then we are on the bed.
He doesn't rush to prove anything. That is the first proof.
His hand slides along my ribs, waits when my breath catches, then follows the place my body leans toward instead of the script another man might have memorized. He kisses my throat, my shoulder, the inside of my wrist. He does not make me smaller before he wants me.
By the time he gets my bra open, I am already breathing like I had to take stairs.
"You are very pleased with yourself," I say.
"I'm pleased with you."
Terrible answer. Excellent answer. I have no defense against it.
He bends his head and takes my nipple into his mouth, and the thought I was trying to form drops straight through me. His tongue circles once, slow, then firmer when my fingers tighten in his hair. He notices that too. His hand closes over my other breast, thumb working until I arch up into him.
"There?" he asks against my skin.
"There."
He does it again.
Grant used to touch me like he was trying to unlock a familiar appliance. Elliot changes when I change.
My skirt is gone. My underwear follows. I should feel exposed, but Elliot looks at me like I'm not a problem to solve or a body to hurry through. His gaze moves over my face first, then lower, and the hunger in him is not polite enough to pretend.
I am sick to death of polite.
He kisses down my stomach, open-mouthed and unhurried. When his shoulders settle between my thighs, my whole body goes tight.
"Elliot."
He looks up.
"Tell me."
"Don't make me wait."
His eyes darken. "I wasn't planning to."
Then his mouth is on me.
Not near me. Not teasing the idea of me while I do the work in my head. On me.
His tongue slides through me, slow enough to make me swear, then presses against my clit with exactly the kind of pressure that makes my knees open wider. I grab the sheet with one hand and his hair with the other. He groans when I pull, and the sound goes straight into my skin.
"Again," I say.
He does it again.
Better.
Harder when I lift toward him. Softer when my thighs tremble. He learns me in real time, mouth and hands and the rough scrape of his jaw on the inside of my thigh. One finger slides into me, then stops.
"Yes," I say before he can ask.
His finger pushes deeper, and I nearly come off the bed.
"Audra."
"Don't stop."
He adds a second finger and curls them while his mouth stays on my clit, and that is it. No graceful build. No pretty little gasp. I come hard, hips lifting into his face, a sound breaking out of me in a voice I barely recognize.
He holds me through it. Not pinning me. Keeping me there while the pleasure rolls through my whole body and leaves me shaking under his mouth.
When he lifts his head, his mouth is wet and his eyes are dark enough to make me forget why I ever settled for less.
"You look smug," I say.
"I'm trying very hard not to."
"Try less."
His laugh is low, and then he kisses me. I taste myself on him and should maybe be embarrassed, but apparently my shame left with Grant's keypad code.
I reach for him, finding the hard length of him through his trousers. His breath catches. Small, sharp, honest.
"Protection?" I ask.
"Top drawer."
"Very lawyerly."
"I like prepared evidence."
I laugh, and the laugh turns into a kiss.
He gets the condom and I watch him put it on because I have spent too many years looking away from what I wanted. I'm done with that too. His hand is steady until I touch his stomach. Then it is not.
"You are enjoying this," he says.
"Deeply."
He comes over me, braced on one arm, and kisses me once before he lines himself up. The head of his cock presses against me, thick and hot even through the condom, and my body opens like it has been waiting for someone who asked and then listened.
"Look at me," he says.
I do.
He pushes in slowly.
Not careful like he's afraid of me. Careful like he doesn't want to miss a single second of my face changing.
The stretch steals my breath. My nails dig into his shoulder.
"Too much?" he asks.
"No. More."
His breath goes rough. His arm tightens beside my head before he gives me another inch.
I have had sex while thinking about grocery lists. I have had sex while waiting for it to become worth the effort. I have had sex with a husband who mistook my patience for satisfaction and my silence for consent to be ignored.
This is not that.
Elliot fills me slowly, then all the way, and stops when he is buried deep enough that my eyes sting.
"Still with me?"
"Annoyingly."
"That's it."
Then he moves.
The first thrust is slow. The second is deeper.
The third makes my head tip back because he changes the angle when I gasp, and yes, there, exactly there.
His mouth finds my throat. His hand slides between us, thumb circling my clit while he keeps moving inside me, and I almost hate him for being this good at listening.
"Do that again," I say.
He does.
My body clenches around him.
"Again."
He does.
I stop being clever. I stop being composed. I stop being the woman who can sit across from betrayal with a legal pad and neat columns. I wrap my legs around his waist and take what he gives me because it is mine and because I want it and because he is not somewhere else in his head.
He is here.
With me.
Only me.
My orgasm hits harder than the first one. Messier. My mouth opens against his shoulder, and I bite down before the neighbors learn my business. Elliot curses against my hair and loses the pretty rhythm. I want that too. The loss of his control. The trust in mine.
He drives into me harder, then rougher, still watching for the moment it becomes too much. It doesn't. I pull him down and tell him, "Yes," right against his mouth.
That breaks him.
He comes with his forehead pressed to mine, one hand gripping the sheet beside my hip, saying my name like it matters.
For a minute, neither of us moves.
Then he eases out of me carefully, ties off the condom, and disappears into the bathroom. Water runs. A drawer opens. He comes back with a warm washcloth and no smug little speech about being thoughtful.
"Don't look so competent," I say.
"I'll try to be worse at aftercare."
"Too late."
He cleans me gently, and somehow that almost does me in. Not the orgasm. Not his mouth. Not the fact that I can still feel him between my legs.
This. Being handled like I'm worth care after he already got what he wanted.
When he gets back into bed, he brings water and pulls the blanket over us.
"You okay?" he asks.
"No."
His hand stills on my back.
I turn my face toward him.
"But I am closer."
He kisses my forehead.
I let him.
For a while, neither of us talks.
This is new too.
Grant filled silence when he wanted credit and abandoned it when I needed company. He could charm an investor through a bad steak dinner, but at home he ignored my feelings until they stopped inconveniencing him.
Elliot stays.
His hand moves slowly along my back, not possessive, not absent-minded. Present. That word has been following him since I walked into his office, and I keep trying to make it less important. It refuses to cooperate.
"I keep thinking about the voice notes," I say.
His hand pauses.
"Grant's?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to talk about them?"
"No."
He waits.
I close my eyes. "Yes."
"Okay."
No sigh. No careful rearrangement of his face. No man bracing himself for female emotion like it is about to cost him time. He simply waits for the uglier sentence.
"He had a voice with her," I say. "Not literally. Obviously literally too, but that is not what I mean. He had this whole tone. Soft. Playful. Awake. I spent years thinking he was tired or just not built that way, and then I found out he was built that way. He just did not spend it at home."
Elliot's jaw shifts once.
"That was cruel."
The word is so plain I nearly cry.
Not complicated. Not unfortunate. Not a sign we had grown apart.
Cruel.
"Yes," I say.
"I'm sorry."
"You didn't do it."
"No. But I'm sorry it was done to you."
I turn toward him, the sheet pulled to my chest. "You are very hard to dislike."
"Is that the goal?"
"It would be convenient."
"I'm rarely convenient."
"That is a lie. You arrived with protein bars."
"Emergency supplies are different."
I laugh, and this time the laugh does not surprise me. It fits beside his water glass and the books and the stupid legal thrillers and the man who does not make me choose between grief and desire.
He touches my hair, then stops.
"Is this all right?"
"Yes."
"You don't have to explain anything to make it all right."
"I know."
And I do know. That is the part that makes my chest ache.
I roll onto him because I want him under me this time. I want to choose the pace from the top. I want to see his face when I decide he is allowed to touch me again.
His hands settle at my hips and wait.
"Audra," he says, voice rough.
"Still all right?"
"Very much."
"I wanted to check."
I reach between us and guide him back to me.
The second time is slower until I make it less slow. I sink onto his cock with his hands flexing at my waist and his eyes fixed on mine, and the pleasure comes differently. Less like rescue. More like coming back to myself.
I'm here.
I'm wanted.
I'm not the woman waiting at home while someone else gets his best.
I ride him until my thighs burn and his control starts to fray again. His thumb finds my clit because he remembers. Because when I say, "There," he stays there. Because when I go quiet, he watches my face instead of assuming silence means nothing.
When I come, he follows me with his mouth at my breast and his hands tight on my hips, giving me exactly the pressure I ask for without making me ask twice.
Afterward, I lie across his chest and feel his heart working under my cheek.
"I'm going to keep my house," I say. "I'm going to take back every dollar I can prove."
His hand covers mine. "I know all of that."
"You are not going to stop me or do it for me."
"No."
"You are going to be there because I asked."
"Yes."
I breathe until the sentence settles into my bones.
For once, being supported does not feel like being managed.
For once, being touched does not feel like being asked to settle for less.