Chapter 32
Cillian
As Electra fiddles with the radio dial, trying to land on music instead of commercials, Dorian’s warning not to hurt her clips my eardrums.
I kept expecting him to say again, but he didn’t. Electra mustn’t have told him that a few days ago, I caused her to weep.
“Success,” she says, smiling.
The song that she drags out of the speaker is unfamiliar to me, but I like the raspy quality of the woman’s voice. Makes me think of Electra’s.
“So what did my big bad brother have to say?”
My eyes flick her way—first to her face, then to her lap. “Just said that if I hurt you, he’d hurt me.”
“Better not hurt me, then.”
My throat bobs. She, too, doesn’t say again. Was the disaster all in my head?
Instead of making her a promise I can’t keep, I say, “I’m sorry.”
Electra tilts her head.
“For hurting you. For reacting the way I did.” I spear my fingers through my hair, wishing I had a cap to hide the mess.
“How did you react?”
I lower my hand back to the steering wheel. “Like an insensitive asshole.”
She slides her elbow onto the armrest built into the car door and props her head on her fingertips. “You didn’t act or react like an insensitive asshole. But I have wondered why tearing into a useless piece of flesh is such a big deal to you.”
I blink. “Because it was your first time. Because I got to be your first.”
“It’s funny. You talk about it like it’s some sort of honor, yet you look just as appalled as you did back in the camper.”
“I wasn’t—I’m not appalled, Electra.” The words flog the air with a force that all but blows back the dark strands framing her unreadable face. “What I was, was shocked. I don’t know why I assumed you’d have experience, but I did.”
She tenses. Even her pupils seem to contract. “Is that a turnoff?”
I snort. “Nothing about you is a turnoff.”
Even though I don’t say it to stroke her ego, my comment seems to soften the tension in her shoulders. If only I, too, could get rid of all my tension.
“I’ve been torturing myself with this, but I need to know: Did anything happen between you and Malachi when you got back to your place?”
Electra’s pupils dilate, then shrink like miniature hearts. “Yeah. We fought. He told me not to trust you. I told him to kindly fuck off.”
An odd warmth spreads through my chest. “You chose me?”
“I chose to make my own decisions.”
Why would I have preferred her to say she chose me when I’ve already got her in my car, and we’re already heading home together? Why do I need her to admit she wants me as much as I want her?
My fingers cramp from how hard I squeeze my steering wheel.
“Like going out dancing tonight,” she says. “Like inviting you back to my place. Like wearing your hat.”
I glare at the sea of cars in front of us.
“What’s with the frown?” she asks, almost playfully, like she’s trying to get a rise out of me.
I almost grit out: “I chose you, so it’d be nice if you chose me back,” but wouldn’t that be a lie? Trenton picked Electra for me. I just went along with it because one glance at her file had me wanting to get close.
It dawns on me that I could’ve selected someone else, but I didn’t. And not because I was lazy. Guess I did choose her.
“I left with you, not with Malachi.” Her tone is no longer playful. “What more do you need from me, Cillian?”
Access to the mine… “I need you to tell me I’ve got a real chance with you, Electra.”
She tosses her hands in the air. “You’ve got a real fucking chance! There. I said it. Happy?”
My surprise makes me hit the brake pedal a little hard. Makes me stare at her a little harder.
Silence pools between us until it’s so thick it smothers the music.
“So I get a complete do-over?” I ask, still stunned.
Her cheeks hollow. “A partial one since hymens don’t regenerate.”
“Thank God for that. Making you bleed and weep aren’t my objectives.”
“I didn’t weep.”
A placating smile hits my lips. “Like you didn’t keep me in the dark for four days?”
“Exactly,” she says, but her tone lacks bite.
I focus on the road again, imagining I’m blocking traffic, but the car in front of me hasn’t moved more than an inch forward. “By the way, you look fucking stunning in that dress.”
“I’m glad you like it, since I wore it for you.”
“For me?” I blink so hard my contact lenses almost pop out.
Although she purses her lips, a blush tints her cheeks. “I knew I’d be competing for your attention tonight, so I came prepared.”
This is why my head is all over the place when it comes to her. Because I’d imagined Electra killed like she fucked and took what she wanted without hesitation and without qualms. But the Atlantean beside me is full of qualms and hesitation.
“You’re all I ever see, Electra. All I ever think about.” Neither is a lie.
Electra has become the axis around which my world revolves, which only deepens my certainty about how this mission will end, for what becomes of a globe after the loss of their axis?
“Even though you have no one to compete against, I fucking love that you dressed for me.” I trail my gaze down her dress that’s so short and tight, it’s riding up her thighs.
I’m struck by how aggressively I want to reach over, push her legs apart, and slide my fingers over her panties to see how damp they are.
She shifts on her seat and flashes me white lace. Jesus fucking Christ. My half-hard dick rises to full mast before my next heartbeat.
I glance at the road to gauge how far out we are. Two blocks. I need to hold on for two more blocks. I inhale slowly, let the breath out slower. What’s meant to calm draws her scent in deep and fuels my erection.
This time, I’m the one who needs to shift in my seat.
The light turns green, but I go nowhere because both lanes are jammed. By the time the light switches to orange, I’ve crept forward one miserable foot.
Fuck it. I’m not waiting two blocks.
I lift my hand off the steering wheel and reach over. Her breath snags as my fingers land on her warm, silken thigh, before skating inward, toward warmer, silkier skin.
When I brush wet lace, my balls draw tight, and my pulse races up the back of my throat. “Jesus…you’re drenched.”
I graze her mound, pressing the soaked lace between her slit before pulling it to the side so my fingers can play.
Her lips part around a moan I can’t hear over the thumping bass, but that I can feel on my fingers because it rolls through the whole of her.
I put the car in park, then use my other hand to cradle her cheek. As I lean over and catch her mouth in a kiss, I hunt down her clit and begin to tease it with sharp, targeted circles.
I’m not trying to draw her orgasm out. No…I want it to crash over her and overwhelm her, fry up all her nerve endings and bow her spine. I want her to smear her pleasure all over my seat, so that every time I enter my car, I get a hit of her.
A few more flicks of my finger, and she’s coming, gasping into my mouth. I lick the sound, lick her teeth, her tongue, then jam mine deep. She moans, the sound growing harsher when I bring my middle finger to her entrance and ease it in. I go slow but deep.
Her thighs clench around my hand. I pull back—not completely, just enough that only one knuckle invades her tight channel instead of two. I bring my thumb back to her clit and move it slowly.
“Does it hurt?” I breathe against the corner of her jaw before dropping featherlight kisses there.
“No,” she rasps.
I draw her earlobe into my mouth and give it a suck before releasing it to murmur, “Then be a good girl and spread your legs wide for me.”
Her skin breaks out in goosebumps. I realize turning a woman on isn’t a superpower, yet with Electra, it feels like one.
I glide my fingers against her, dip them inside, swirl, caress until her hot, satiny walls throttle my digit. “That’s it, baby.”
Her climax rolls through her, cresting before spilling out as a husky scream. It fills me with masculine delight to know that everyone on this road must’ve heard my pretty Atlantean cream my fingers.
I draw my hand out of her underwear and hold it up. “Look at that.”
My skin shines almost as brightly as the taillights of the car ahead. I put the car in drive, then ease back into traffic, sucking on my fingers until her sweet taste has fully transferred to my mouth.
I’m still licking my fingers when hers brush against my dick.
“Looks painful,” she murmurs, eyes affixed to my groin.
“Zippers are instruments of the devil.”
The corners of her mouth hook up. “Want me to slide it open?”
“Fuck yeah.” My heart slams so hard against the seatbelt that it feels like the strip of fabric is the only thing keeping the organ in.
She flicks the button, then my fly. My dick doesn’t just poke out, it spills, tenting my black briefs.
As she begins to stimulate me over the cotton, she murmurs. “You got me to dance tonight.”
“You were amazing. A natural,” I rasp.
“Do you realize what an accomplishment that was?”
She closes her fingers around me, and I fucking see stars. Hear them, too. They clink as they twinkle.
“Eyes on the road, Cillian,” she purrs.
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“Eyes on the road or I stop touching you.”
I slam my gaze on the damn road, teeth gritted, jaw clenched.
“Drive. I really want to get home.”
As though my car was fitted with an ambulance siren, the cars in front of me merge into the lane beside ours, freeing up our path. I can only imagine I have her magic to thank.
She tugs on me, and I jerk the steering wheel, diving into a new constellation. Electra must right the station wagon using more magic, because we miraculously don’t crash.
“What is it you want to do once we get home?” I ask as I swerve onto the final stretch of road.
“Hmm. I don’t know. Got any ideas?” Her words warm the tendons in my neck.
“Oh, I’ve got a shit-ton of ideas, Miss Serran.”
“Yeah? Tell me.”
I book it down the parking ramp, muttering when I find the roll-up door closed. I don’t want her to stop what she’s doing, but the device to open her garage is in my gym bag, which is in the backseat, which—
Metal clanks as the door rolls. I don’t hate her magic tonight.
“You were about to share some ideas…” she prompts me.
Right. I look at my lap, at her pretty fingers wrapped around my fabric-cloaked dick.
What I wouldn’t give for her to slide me out of it.
“I think I’m going to start by spreading you out on your kitchen island until you make it so filthy it’ll leave a mark on the stone that I’ll get to look at when I make you breakfast tomorrow. ”
As I jet the car down the parking ramp, she murmurs in that throaty pitch of hers, “Presumptuous that you think I’ll let you spend the night.”
My lids flinch. The instant I slam into one of her parking spots, I twist my key in the ignition, snap off her seat belt, then mine, and shove my seat as far back as it’ll go. Then I grab her around the waist and resituate her on my lap.
A soft yelp slips through her teeth when our centers collide.
“Baby, you left me on fucking read for four days,” I growl. “I started to think I lost you. I’m not fucking losing you again, and yeah, that means I’m spending the night in your bed. Probably with my head or dick buried between your thighs.”
A sharp intake of air swells her chest, making her taut nipples dig into the supple suede.
I set my thumbs on them and rub. “How’s your pussy?”
“Hmm? What?”
“Still sore?”
Her lashes flutter. “Sore? What?”
“From our first time.” I lean forward to press a kiss to her bobbing throat.
“It’s been four days. I’m fully recovered.”
Though she holds my shoulder with one hand, the other has returned to my erection and freed it. I don’t dare to hope that her objective is a quickie in the car, so I don’t suggest she grab a condom from my bag. But God, I wouldn’t object.
Her touch suddenly grows bolder, her strokes quicker. My thumbs hold still, and then they skid right off her nipples, because she’s just used my crown to draw aside her underwear.
I brace my hands on her ass, my heart pounding so hard I can barely breathe. My eyes drop closed as a dark groan escapes me.
“Electra,” I croak.
“Yes, Cillian?”
As she bastes me in her slick heat, I whisper, “I wanted this to be good for you…to take it slow.” I don’t pretend to understand why.
I just know it matters to me, for the same reason her virginity did.
“If you sink down on my dick right now, I’m going to blow like a shotgun before I can get you off. ”
“You are sleeping over, aren’t you?”
My fingers tremble from the strain of holding her up when all I want is to slam her low.
“Were you planning on taking me just once tonight?” she asks, all sweetness and innocence.
This woman…
Blood pounds through my body, hitting hard enough to unbalance me. Thank fuck I’m sitting.
“I think you should let go,” she hums, teeth grazing her lower lip as she glances down our bodies.
My eyes follow suit and carve this moment into my brain so I can fantasize about it in the afterlife. If I even get one.
“Let go, Cillian.” She slants her head and nuzzles my neck.
“Baby, if I let go”—I am panting now—“you get impaled.”
Her hot, little breaths pepper my skin. “I know, baby.”
My fingers spasm with the need to follow her command, but my heart keeps kicking up the memory of her wet eyes.
Antonia, Lars, Maddie, and Hugo.
I repeat the names of our dead to remember that the woman on my lap isn’t some porcelain doll I might break, but a person with blood on her hands who will, without a doubt, break me.