10. Elizabeth
— ? —
Elizabeth
I can’t sleep.
It’s becoming a pattern now - the restless hours, the ceiling I’ve memorized in the dark, the endless replay of moments I can’t change and can’t forget. The portrait sits in my studio, hidden under its drop cloth, but I can feel it there. A confession I never meant to make.
He was out again tonight.
I heard him leave, dressed in something dark and expensive, the car pulling around to the front. I didn’t ask where he was going. I didn’t have to. Victoria’s charity board meets on evenings like this, and somehow Jarec always finds a reason to attend.
By one in the morning, I’m beyond restless. Beyond tired. Beyond the careful control I’ve been clinging to like a life raft.
I slip out of bed and make my way to the massive bathroom that connects our suites.
I’ve been avoiding it. Too intimate, too close to his space, too full of the memory of that night in the kitchen when he bandaged my finger with such unexpected tenderness. But tonight I need the distraction. The hot water. The steam that might fill my lungs and drive out some of the ache.
The bathroom is all marble and chrome, a freestanding tub large enough for two, a rainfall shower with a wide tiled bench. A wall of mirrors that make everything feel too exposed, too seen.
I strip out of my nightgown and step under the spray.
***
The water is scalding.
I turn my face up to it, letting it beat against my skin, wash away the tension in my shoulders, the knots in my back. The steam rises around me, thick and white, and I breathe it in until my lungs burn.
I try to empty my mind. Try to think about nothing. But his face keeps appearing behind my closed eyelids - the way he looked in the hallway at the gala, dark-eyed and desperate. The way he felt against me, hard and wanting, even as he pushed me away.
I can smell how wet you are.
My hand drifts lower without conscious thought.
I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. But my body is aching with weeks of unfulfilled need, and he’s made it perfectly clear that he won’t give me what I want. So if I have to take the edge off myself, in the privacy of a bathroom at one in the morning, that’s no one’s business but mine.
I sink down onto the wide tiled bench, my back against the warm stone, and let my knees fall apart.
The first touch makes me gasp.
I’m already slick, already swollen, my body primed by weeks of almost-encounters. I circle my clit slowly, teasing, imagining it’s his hand instead of mine. His fingers that know exactly where to press, exactly how to move.
My head falls back. My eyes close. I touch myself the way I’ve been doing every night since the storm, chasing the release he keeps denying me.
I’m close. I can feel it building, that familiar tightening, my toes curling against the wet tile, my breath coming in short sharp gasps-
The bathroom door opens.
***
Jarec stands in the doorway.
Still in the black shirt and slacks he wore to Victoria’s event, sleeves rolled, tie gone. His hair is slightly disheveled, like he’s been running his hands through it. And his eyes-
His eyes take in everything.
Me. Naked under the spray. Thighs spread on the bench. Fingers still buried between my legs because I’m too shocked to move them. Nipples tight from the contrast of hot water and cool air. Face flushed with guilt and need and the desperate hope that he’ll turn around and leave.
He doesn’t leave.
He steps inside and closes the door behind him.
The click of the latch echoes off the marble.
I should cover myself. Should stand up, turn away, preserve some shred of dignity. But his gaze has me pinned in place, dark and hungry, and my fingers move on instinct, circling despite my best intentions.
“Don’t stop on my account.” His voice is low, rough with something I can’t name. “Looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
“I thought you were out.”
“I came back early.” He moves closer, stopping just outside the shower’s reach, water droplets catching on his shirt. “Victoria’s board ran long. I was bored.”
The mention of her name cuts through the haze of arousal. My hand stills.
“So you came home to what? Watch me?”
“I came home to shower.” His eyes drop to my fingers, still pressed against my clit. “Finding you here was… unexpected.”
“Then leave.” My voice comes out shakier than I’d like. “Give me some privacy.”
“Privacy.” He says the word like he’s tasting it, testing its weight. “You’re in the shared bathroom, Elizabeth. The one that connects to my room. If you wanted privacy, you should have used your own.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But I didn’t think - I didn’t expect-
“Are you going to stand there all night?”
“That depends.” He takes another step closer. Water from the shower catches his shoes, darkens the cuffs of his slacks. “Are you going to finish what you started?”
The words hit me like a slap, crude and challenging. I feel my face flush hotter.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Maybe.” His eyes haven’t left my body. “But you’re the one touching yourself in my bathroom at one in the morning. So what does that make you?”
***
I should tell him to get out.
Should stand up, wrap myself in a towel, preserve whatever dignity I have left. But something in his voice has shifted - something raw and dangerous - and I find myself frozen in place, my heart pounding, my body still aching with unfulfilled need.
“Were you thinking about me?”
The question is quiet, almost gentle. A strange contrast to the intensity of his gaze.
“No.”
“Liar.” He moves into the shower proper now, water immediately darkening his shirt, plastering it to his chest. “You were thinking about me the whole time. Pretending these were my fingers.”
“I wasn’t-”
“Yes, you were.” He reaches down and takes my wrist in his grip, pulls my hand away from where I’ve been unconsciously circling. His fingers are warm, firm, unyielding. “You were imagining me touching you. Imagining what it would feel like if I did this.”
He guides my hand back to my clit, but this time he’s controlling the movement. Pressing my own fingers against myself, making me touch exactly where he wants.
I whimper.
“That’s it.” His voice has dropped to a murmur, barely audible over the spray. “Show me how you like it. Show me what you were doing before I interrupted.”
I should resist. Should fight back, assert some kind of control over this situation. But his hand is wrapped around mine, guiding my movements, and the sensation is overwhelming - my touch, his control, the impossible intimacy of the moment.
I circle my clit the way I was before, but it’s different now. More intense. Every brush of my fingers magnified by his presence, by the knowledge that he’s watching, that he’s directing.
“That’s it,” he murmurs again. “Good girl.”
The praise undoes something in me. A moan escapes my throat, broken and needy, and I feel him inhale sharply.
“You like that? Being told you’re good?”
I can’t answer. Can’t form words. I can only nod, my eyes squeezed shut, my hips starting to roll against my own hand.
“Look at me.”
It’s not a request. My eyes fly open, meeting his through the steam and spray.
He’s watching me with an expression I can’t read. Hunger, yes. But something else too. Something almost pained.
“You’ve been driving me insane,” he says quietly. “Do you know that? Every night I hear you moving around, imagine you in your bed, wonder if you’re doing this. If you’re touching yourself and thinking of me the way I-”
He stops. His jaw tightens.
“The way you what?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he releases my wrist and replaces my fingers with his own.
***
The first touch of his hand is electric.
His fingers are longer than mine, rougher, calloused in a way that creates delicious friction. He slides them through my folds, gathering slickness, and I cry out at the sensation.
“So wet,” he murmurs. “Just from touching yourself? Or from knowing I was watching?”
“Both,” I manage. “I don’t know. Both.”
He circles my clit once, twice, finding the rhythm I’d been using, and my head falls back against the tile. My hips buck up to meet his touch, desperate for more pressure, more friction, more.
“Greedy.” But there’s no judgment in the word. Only heat. He gives me what I’m wordlessly begging for, pressing harder, moving faster. “You were this close when I walked in. Weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.” Two of his fingers slide inside me without warning, thick and rough, and I gasp at the sudden fullness. “Show me how close you were.”
He fucks me with his fingers, slow and deep, his thumb still working my clit. The dual sensation is overwhelming - I’ve never felt anything like this, my own exploration nothing compared to the way he knows exactly how to move, exactly where to press.
“That’s it.” His voice is rough now, strained. “Let me feel you. Let me feel how much you want this.”
I’m beyond words. Beyond thought. There’s only sensation - his fingers inside me, his thumb on my clit, the hot water pounding down on both of us, the steam that makes everything dreamlike and unreal.
The orgasm builds like a wave, like a storm, like something inevitable and unstoppable. I feel it cresting, feel myself tightening around his fingers, feel the sounds escaping my throat that I couldn’t stop if I tried.
“That’s it.” He adds a third finger, stretching me, and the pleasure borders on pain. “Come for me, Elizabeth. Let me see it.”
I shatter.
The orgasm tears through me, overwhelming, all-consuming. I cry out his name - or something like his name, some broken syllable - and my whole body shakes with the force of it. His fingers keep moving, working me through it, wringing every last tremor from my oversensitive flesh.
When I finally come down, gasping, trembling, I find him watching me with dark, hungry eyes.
***
He pulls his fingers free slowly.
I watch, dazed, as he brings them to his mouth. He watches me watch him as he tastes me, licking his fingers clean with deliberate, obscene attention.
“I’ve been wondering,” he says quietly, “what you taste like.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can only stare at him - water soaking through his ruined clothes, his eyes black with want, his erection straining against his slacks with obvious, painful need.
He’s hard. So hard. And he’s still fully dressed while I’m naked and exposed and trembling from the orgasm he just gave me.
“Jarec-”
“Don’t.” The word is sharp, strained. “Don’t say anything.”
“But you-” I reach for him, for the obvious bulge in his pants, wanting to reciprocate, wanting to feel him the way he felt me.
He catches my wrist before I can make contact.
“No.”
“Why?” I don’t understand. Don’t understand any of this - why he touched me, why he made me come, why he’s now pushing me away again when he obviously wants more. “You’re - I can see how much you-”
“I know.” His voice is ragged. “But I can’t. I won’t.”
“Why not?”
He releases my wrist and steps back, out of the shower’s spray. Water drips from his ruined clothes, pools on the marble floor.
“Because if I start, I won’t be able to stop.” The words come out raw, almost angry. “And I promised to protect you. Not use you. Not take what I want just because you’re wet and willing and looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
His jaw works. “Like you want me to wreck you.”
The same words from the night of the storm. The same impossible contradiction - wanting and denying, claiming and rejecting.
“Maybe I do,” I whisper. “Maybe I want you to wreck me. Have you considered that?”
Something cracks in his expression. For one heartbeat, I think he’s going to give in. Going to strip off those soaked clothes and join me under the spray and finally, finally give us both what we want.
Instead, he grabs a towel from the rack and tosses it to me without looking.
“Get some sleep, Elizabeth.”
Then he’s gone, dripping wet, still painfully hard, leaving nothing behind but the steam and the echo of my own racing heart.
***
I sit on the shower bench for a long time after he leaves.
The water has gone lukewarm, then cool, but I don’t move to adjust it. My body is still pulsing with aftershocks, still sensitive everywhere he touched, and my mind is spinning with questions I can’t answer.
He touched me. Made me come. Tasted me.
And he still walked away.
What does he want from me? What am I to him - a temptation he’s trying to resist? A responsibility he refuses to let himself enjoy? Something he wants but won’t let himself have?
I don’t know. I don’t think he knows either.
All I know is that this can’t continue. Something has to break. Either he stops touching me entirely - stops the hallway pins, the possessive comments, the fingers between my thighs - or he gives in completely.
This halfway existence is killing me.
Eventually I turn off the water, wrap myself in the towel he threw, and pad back to my room on shaking legs.
Sleep, when it finally comes, is full of shadows and steam and hands that know exactly how to touch me.