11. Odette
— ? —
Odette
We don’t leave the kitchen.
Not right away.
Elliott’s hands slide from my face to my shoulders to my waist, pulling me closer, eliminating the space between us. My back hits the edge of the counter and he presses against me, his body warm and solid, and I can feel how much he wants this. How much he wants me.
The thought is dizzying. After all those years of feeling invisible, of being touched like an obligation, of wondering if I was even capable of inspiring desire, here’s proof. Undeniable, physical proof.
He breaks the kiss long enough to look at me, his eyes dark, his breathing ragged. I can feel him hard against my hip, can feel exactly what I do to him, and after a whole marriage of feeling like a chore it goes to my head like wine.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, “and I stop. Right now, no matter where we are.”
“I’m not going to tell you to stop.” I put my hand on his chest, feel his heart slamming under my palm, then drag it lower, over his stomach, to the front of his jeans, and press. He hisses. “I’ve been waiting a very long time to feel wanted. So want me. Properly.”
Something shifts in his expression. The last of the hesitation burns off, replaced by something darker, hungrier, and it makes my knees go weak.
He kisses me again, but this time it’s different. This time there’s intent behind it. His mouth moves from my lips to my jaw to the sensitive spot below my ear, and I tilt my head back to give him access.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says against my skin. “Do you know that? Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to tell you that?”
“How long?”
“Years.” He kisses my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat. “Every family dinner. Every charity gala. Every time I saw you across a room and couldn’t touch you.”
His hands find the hem of my shirt and he lifts, a question in the pause, and I raise my arms to answer it.
He pulls the shirt over my head in one smooth motion and drops it on the floor.
I’m not wearing a bra. I haven’t been wearing bras much lately because my breasts are sore and swollen and none of my old ones fit right anymore.
I feel exposed, vulnerable, suddenly very aware of the way pregnancy has changed my body.
Elliott doesn’t seem to notice anything except the fact that I’m standing in front of him in nothing but underwear.
“Jesus,” he breathes. “Look at you.”
His hands skim up my sides, barely touching, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He traces the curve of my waist, the swell of my hips, the soft roundness of my belly where the baby is growing.
He pauses there. His palm rests flat against my stomach, warm and steady, and he looks up at me like the moment is holy.
“I’ll be careful with you,” he says. “With both of you. But I’m going to take my time, and I’m going to make you feel every second of it.”
“You’re the only one who ever even wanted to.”
He kisses me again, softer this time. Tender. His hand stays on my belly for a moment longer before it starts to move, sliding up to cup my breast, his thumb brushing across my nipple.
I gasp. The sensation is sharper than I expected, almost too intense, my body more sensitive than it’s ever been.
“Good girl,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Let me hear you.”
The praise lights me up from the inside. Heat floods through my veins and pools low in my belly, and I arch into his touch.
He takes his time. Every touch is deliberate, unhurried. He traces the shape of my body like he’s memorizing it, like he wants to know every curve and plane and hollow. His mouth follows his hands, kissing wherever they’ve been, and I’m trembling by the time he drops to his knees in front of me.
The kitchen floor must be cold against his knees. He doesn’t seem to care.
His lips brush my belly, gentle, reverent. He presses a kiss just below my navel, then another, then another, working his way across the small swell of my pregnancy with a tenderness that makes my eyes sting.
“So perfect,” he says against my skin. “Both of you.”
My hands find his hair. I thread my fingers through it and hold on as his mouth moves lower, his fingers hooking into the waistband of my underwear. He looks up at me, waits for my nod, and drags them down.
I step out of the fabric, kick it aside, and then I’m naked in my own kitchen with Elliott Fairbanks on his knees in front of me, his hands spanning my hips, his mouth an inch from where I’m aching for it.
I should feel self-conscious. I should be worried about the fluorescent lighting and the slight pudge of my thighs and all the ways my body has changed in the last four months.
But Elliott is looking at me like I’m something precious, something worth worshiping, and I can’t find room in my head for insecurity.
His mouth finds my hip. My thigh. The sensitive skin of my inner leg.
“Bedroom,” I manage to say. “We should...”
“In a minute.” His breath is hot against my skin. “First I’m going to put my mouth on you until you forget his name.”
Oh.
I haven’t had this in years. Laurence never liked it, said it was too intimate, too messy, not worth the effort. I stopped expecting it. Stopped hoping for it.
The first stroke of Elliott’s tongue makes me cry out and grab the counter.
He doesn’t rush and he doesn’t tease. He licks into me slow and filthy, learning me, finding the spot that makes my hips buck and then staying there, working me with his tongue and then two fingers curling deep while my knees threaten to fold.
His hands grip my hips to hold me up, to hold me open, and he groans against me like he’s the one being given something.
“That’s it,” he says, wet against my skin. “Soaking my face just like that. Don’t go quiet on me now.”
The tension winds tighter and tighter, and this time he doesn’t back off, doesn’t make me wait. He drives me straight up and over.
He stands and lifts me like I weigh nothing, my legs wrapping around his waist, my arms around his neck. I kiss him as he carries me down the hall, tasting myself on his lips, feeling his hardness press against me through his jeans.
The bedroom is dark. He lowers me onto the bed and stands back to pull off his shirt, and I drink in the sight of him. Lean muscle, a scattering of dark hair across his chest, the V of his hips disappearing into his waistband.
He’s beautiful. I never let myself notice before. Now I can’t stop noticing.
“Wait,” I say.
He freezes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I reach up and unclasp the pearls from around my neck. The ones I bought myself. The ones I wore to my vow renewal. I set them on the nightstand, careful, deliberate. “I just needed to take these off.”
He understands. I see it in his face, the way his expression softens.
“Come here,” I say.
He finishes undressing and joins me on the bed, stretching out beside me, his hand coming up to cup my face.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m perfect.”
“Yes.” He kisses me gently. “You are.”
His hand slides down my body, picking up where he left off in the kitchen. I’m so close already, so wound up, that it only takes a few strokes before I’m begging again.
“Please,” I whisper. “I need you inside me. Now.”
He settles between my thighs, careful of my belly, and I feel him at my entrance, hot and hard and thick, and my whole body clenches on nothing.
“Look at me,” he says.
I open my eyes. Meet his gaze.
He pushes inside slowly, one long stretch that has me gasping, watching my face the whole way. There’s no discomfort. There’s only fullness, only connection, only the feeling of finally, finally being seen.
For a moment he just holds there, buried, breathing hard.
“You feel like you were made for me,” he says against my mouth.
He starts to move. The pace is slow at first, careful, and part of me loves it, but another part of me needs more.
“Harder,” I say. “I won’t break.”
He shifts his angle, hooks my leg over his hip, and the next thrust makes me see stars. Something in him lets go with it, the last of the careful reverence burning off.
“Is that what you want,” he growls against my jaw, all the tenderness gone rough. “You want me to quit being careful and just fuck you the way I’ve wanted to for years?”
“Yes.” I’m past shame, past everything. “God, yes. Please.”
“Like that,” I gasp as he gives it to me. “Just like that.”
He finds a rhythm that makes the tension build again, that coiling heat in my belly growing tighter with every stroke. His thumb finds my clit and rubs in slow circles, and I’m climbing again, higher and higher.
“That’s it,” he breathes. “So close. I can feel you. Come for me, darling. Let go.”
I break.
The orgasm rolls through me like a wave, slow and deep and endless. I clench around him and cry out his name, my hands gripping his shoulders, my whole body shaking with the force of it.
He follows me over the edge, his hips stuttering, his face buried in my neck, my name on his lips.
We lie there after, tangled together, breathing hard. His weight is warm on top of me, his heartbeat pounding against my chest. I run my fingers through his hair and feel tears prick at my eyes.
I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m not sad. I’m not scared. I’m just overwhelmed, cracked open, feeling everything at once after so many years of feeling nothing.
Elliott lifts his head and sees my tears. His expression goes worried.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I just... it’s been so long since anyone touched me like that. Like I mattered.”
He rolls off me, pulling me against his side, his arms wrapping around me.
“You matter,” he says fiercely. “You’ve always mattered. And I’m going to spend however long you let me proving that to you.”
I press my face into his chest and breathe him in. Sandalwood and sweat and something that’s just him.
“Stay,” I tell him.
He tightens his arms around me.
“Stay.”