CHAPTER 19
Vaughn
Air refuses to fill my lungs. Sound wants to escape my mouth, but I’m too worked up. I have never laughed this hard in my life, and if I suffocate from excessive laughter, I’ll be fine with it.
The Tweedle Twins called and invited us to Midnight Cowboy for drinks. It’s rare that we all have the same night off and somehow, they’ve become close with Eli. They’re secretly feeding him information about me. They deny it, but I know it’s true.
So, here we sit. The three of us. Jax, Marshall, and myself.
Marshall has his head thrown back with his clenched fist covering his mouth.
Jax is face down on the table and clutching his stomach in pain.
Meanwhile, I’m genuinely struggling to breathe, and tears are pouring from my eyes.
Eli...well, Eli is on the bar...singing, “Bohemian Rhapsody” with his whole heart.
This is gentle Eli. Hilarious Eli. Couldn’t imagine he would tie a girl to a sink and rail her within an inch of her life Eli.
This is the Eli who everyone wants to be close to.
He just has that thing. That something that draws people in.
The dimples are definitely a factor, but it’s more than that.
People notice him, and not just because he’s the human equivalent of Mount Everest. He sparks joy and comfort when he smiles, and he’s always smiling.
He’s someone you instinctively know you can trust. I can trust him.
I do trust him, and not only that. Because of him, I have learned to trust myself again.
Even after seeing another layer of his personality, it doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t shake my faith in him. He’s still Eli. He’s my Eli, and I crave every complex layer of him.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” comes to its inevitable end, and the lives of everyone in this bar have been enriched by witnessing the epic rendition.
It’s important to understand that Midnight Cowboy is not a karaoke bar.
Eli is on the bar because there is no stage.
He sang into a half full bottle of Jim Beam because there is no microphone.
No one is sad about it, and Eli receives a standing ovation.
The three of us clamor to fawn at Eli’s feet as he gracefully leaps from the bar. As a group of women walk through the door, Eli turns to greet them. He’s smiling with full dimples.
A pretty, middle-aged woman in the group quickly grabs her abdomen as though she’s in pain. “Oh, damn it!”
“Hey, are you okay?” Her face doesn’t look pained, but she’s clutching her stomach in a way that concerns me.
“Fuck no, I’m not okay. My post-menopausal ovaries just fired back up. That man is the human equivalent of a Greek God. The genetic next step. Thor with dimples. Two cups Zeus, three ounces Hades, and a sprinkle of Jesus. He’s- “
“Yeah. I got it. Thanks.”
Eli winks at her as if that will help this situation. She’s cackling alongside her group of oglers as I push the genetic next step back to our table.
The table is vibrating. Eli’s phone. He left it sitting on the table when he went to order the drinks from the bar that swiftly turned into Coyote Ugly.
He never leaves his phone out. It’s always in his pocket, but he’s consumed an unconscionable number of double whiskey and Cokes so he must be getting lax with it.
It’s not intentional...it’s just a reflex but, I see the screen.
Abigail Washington is calling Eli Washington.
The sister? It can’t be his mom. If it were his mom, it would just say mom. Right?
His presence is unmistakable, and I feel him looming over me before I turn and see him.
He’s looking down at his phone. He sees who’s calling, and then his gaze meets mine.
He knows that I also see who’s calling. Will he explain?
That’s the natural thing to do, right? My gaze darts down to his left hand, that I’ve already seen so many times before.
His ring finger, more specifically. Nothing.
No ring. No tan line. Nothing. Of course, there’s nothing.
This is Eli. He isn’t the kind of man who keeps a wife at home and a girlfriend on the weekend.
Plus, it’s been months. I would’ve noticed something by now.
Our eyes meet again, and his is questioning, so I smile, relieving whatever doubt lingered there. Dimples. Those are some really nice dimples.
He sits in the chair beside mine and lifts me from my seat, placing me snugly on his lap. This guy. I mean, I’m not upset about it, but who does stuff like this in public?
“Dude. Epic performance, my man.” Fanboy Jax sounds like a groupie. He looks like one, too, with that swoony eye thing he’s doing.
“Yeah, for real. I mean, what inspires you? There’s so much heart in your production. That’s got to come from somewhere deep.” Now I’m staring at Marshall with a half dumbfounded and half ‘are you serious,’ expression. Are these guys for real?
Eli uses the back of his fingers to rub the scruff of his jaw before responding.
“Inspiration? This little devil.”
The twins look at one another dubiously and then both look to me. They’re studying me, fully unconvinced, as though they don’t see how Eli could possibly find inspiration in me.
“Hey, guys. I forgot I have a gift for you.”
A simultaneous “You do?” Comes from both men.
“Yeah!” I pretend to dig in my nonexistent pocket. “Ah. Here it is.” Out of my pocket, I fly the middle finger in their direction.
Finally, they give a perfectly timed dual “humph” as though I just solidified the point they were trying to make before shouting an equally well timed “Jinx” and falling silent, glaring at one another.
Both men turn slowly in their seats until they’re facing us and again speak at the same time, saying, “hitting the head”.
They jerk back to face one another again and yell “drain the lizard”.
Flustered noises then, “releasing the floodgates”.
More huffs and scowls, “seeing a man about a horse”.
Their eyes widen, and they flip each other off with both hands before finally saying in perfect synchrony, “fuck it. Let’s go”.
Eli stares in stunned silence at their empty seats. It’s weird the first dozen or so times that you see them do stuff like this, but it’s just the norm for me now, so I’m unfazed.
“Will you take your adoring fans on tour with you?”
Eli’s smile is wicked, and that’s hard to do with dimples.
“Care to make a wager?”
His voice is smooth, and there’s a promise of something indecent in it. I’ve had just enough alcohol to take him up on his offer.
“Sure thing, soldier.”
His smile falters for a moment before he recovers and speaks again.
“Mmmm...good girl.” He buries his face into my hair and groans while his large hand trails from my ankle up my calf.
“I bet I can get you off before Dee and Dum get back. If I win, you take these lace things off and hand them to me. They become my property.”
Get me off? Here?
“Uhh. Where? How?”
“What do you want if you win?”
“I just need to know the specifics of the deal first?”
The parameters of his deal have me spinning so far out that I don’t realize his hand has continued its ascent. It’s now under my skirt at the lace edge of my panties.
My heart is racing, and my breaths are heavy. The desire to push his hand away is weak in the face of the rapture I already know his hands are capable of achieving.
“I want to see where you live.”
His rough fingers that had started sliding their way beneath the lace, falter and pause. Really? Has he really had no intention of taking me to his home this entire time?
“Deal.”
My mind is racing with questions until his fingers reach my soaking wet clit. Now all I can think, is how incredible this feels, and can anyone see? Would he allow anyone to see? No. He wouldn’t. The answer is clear in my mind the moment the question manifests.
“Eli.”
“Shhhh, Little Devil. See all these eyes in here?”
My own eyes are trying to roll back in my head as Eli applies that exact right amount of pressure and my hips are moving of their own accord.
Eli’s question has me scanning the room.
My mouth is open, and I can’t stop the soft gasps that escape my lips as my body begins to tense and pleasure coils between my legs.
His fingers move faster, and one slips inside me.
“Uh huh. I see them.” My words are barely audible. Almost desperate.
“Mmm, such a good little devil.” Whyyyyy does the sound of his voice curl my toes and make me press harder into him?
“Unless you want to see those eyes plucked from their skulls, you should be as quiet as a little mouse. No man hears these sounds but me. No one sees this face when it cums but me. Understood?”
My vagina just caught fire. Don’t ask me why, or how, or if I’m seeing a therapist. Nobody knows why these things happen. They just happen.
Quickly, before his name can escape my lips again, I turn my face into him and bite down on his shoulder as my climax reaches a crescendo. His already hard cock swells beneath me, and I’m left wondering if he likes the pain.
“My prize, if you please.”
That took an embarrassingly short amount of time. I folded like a Costco lawn chair. Jax and Marshall are out of the bathroom but still haven’t made it back to the table. They’re standing at the bar talking to the bartender.
“Panties, Vaughn.”
My nervous giggle is muffled against his shirt, and I start to stand. Eli’s hands clamp down on my thigh and hip, keeping me firmly in place.
“You said you want my panties.”
“Mmmhmm. Take them off.”
“I will. I just need to go to the bathroom so I can.”
“That wasn’t the deal. The deal was that when I win, you take these lace things off and hand them to me.”
“Here? You want me to take my panties off at the table?” My mind can’t comprehend what he’s saying. People will see. We already used our one miracle on the fingering that just occurred under the table, going unnoticed.
“Mmhmm. Now. Hand them to me.”
Holy shit on a biscuit. There are layers to this man. All that sweet stuff is just the surface layer. The more I dig, the darker he gets. Why do I like it? Definitely learning some things about Vaughn that Vaughn was previously unaware of.
Running my hand up my skirt on the side most shielded by Eli’s body, I lift up just enough so that I can slip the panties off my ass.
From there, it’s a pretty simple glide to the floor.
Before I can bend down to get them, Eli leans in to kiss my arm and slips the panties off my heel.
He wads them up in his fist, bringing them to his face while he slips the fingers he used to finger fuck me into his mouth.
He’s tasting me on his fingers and smelling me on the panties.
The fuck....do I feel about this? Well, I have a strong desire to drop to my knees and see if that steel rod in his pants will fit in my mouth, so that’s a pretty decent indicator of how I feel about this.
Cool the hell down, Vaughn. I’m readying to climb this man and that just can’t happen.
Clearing my throat, I attempt speech. “Bathroom.” The word is barely even a word as I say it.
“Hmmm?”
Try this again. Clearing my throat a second time, “Bathroom. I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Good idea.”
Uhh okay. His hands give my hip and thigh one good squeeze before releasing me so I can stand.
Something about the moment still feels charged as I walk on unsteady legs toward the bathroom.