Prologue #3
His hands come to my waist, careful, enormous, thumbs stroking the soft skin above my waistband. He unhooks my bra like he’s solving a puzzle he’s terrified of breaking. When it falls, he makes a sound I’ve never heard from a human throat, low and wrecked.
“Fuck. Az. You’re-”
“If you say beautiful in a reverent voice right now I will die.”
“I was going to say perfect, but okay, noted.” His palms cup my breasts, gentle enough that it almost undoes me. “Tell me if I squeeze too hard. My hands are-”
“Huge. I noticed. I like them.” I cover his hands with mine and press them firmer. “Harder. I’m not glass. I want to feel the calluses.”
He exhales like I’ve given him permission to breathe. His mouth finds my throat, then the slope of my breast, and when he takes my nipple between his lips I fist my hands in his hair and make a noise I’m not proud of.
“That,” he murmurs against my skin. “That sound. Do that again.”
“Make me.”
He laughs into my chest, delighted and filthy, and sucks harder while his other hand works my jeans open. I shimmy them down with his help, kick them off, and then I’m in nothing but underwear and he’s looking at me like he’s forgotten how language works.
“Quit staring,” I say.
“I’m cataloging. Sue me.” He kisses the inside of my knee. “Can I taste you?”
The question lands hot and soft at once. “Yes. Please. Ask me everything. I like when you ask.”
“Good. Because I’m going to ask before I do a single filthy thing to you, and then I’m going to do all of them.” He settles between my thighs, huge shoulders spreading me open, and the first drag of his tongue makes my hips jerk. “Okay?”
“More than okay… Eli… right there-”
He learns me like a song. Slow at first, mapping what makes me gasp, then surer, two fingers sliding into me when I beg for it, crooked just right.
He hums against my clit like he’s found a chord he wants to play forever.
I come apart with my fist in my mouth because the walls are thin and Priya might be home and I refuse to explain why I invited a giant with a guitar case into my bed on a Thursday.
He climbs back up my body looking smug and wrecked, mouth shiny. “Was that-”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
He does. I taste myself on his mouth and it shouldn’t be as hot as it is. I shove at his boxers. “Off. Now. Can I touch you?”
“Please. Christ, Az, please. I’ve been hard since the hallway and it’s getting personally insulting.”
He’s thick and heavy in my hand, and he drops his forehead to my shoulder with a broken laugh when I stroke him from root to tip. “Your hands are small. That’s… fuck… that’s unfairly hot. Look at you wrapping around me like that.”
“You’re huge. That’s unfairly intimidating.”
“We can stop. We can just fool around. I don’t need-”
“If you offer to stop one more time I’m going to use my teeth on something sensitive.” I squeeze gently. He groans like I’ve punched the air out of him. “I want this. I want you inside me. Do you have a condom?”
He freezes. “Shit. I… wallet, jeans, one second. Don’t move. Actually move if you want. Just don’t disappear.”
He nearly falls off the bed retrieving it, knocks his knee on the nightstand, curses in a whisper. I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. He holds up the foil packet like a trophy, face pink, and I take it from him and roll it on myself while he watches with his mouth open.
“You’re going to kill me,” he says. “Death by competent hands. What a way to go.”
“Not before you fuck me.” I lie back. Spread my legs. “Come here. Slow. You’re a lot, and I want to feel every inch of it stretching me open.”
He braces over me on those ridiculous arms, the tip of him pressing against me, and he looks me in the eyes. “Still yes?”
“God, yes. Desperately yes. Put that thick cock in me before I start begging in complete sentences with footnotes.”
He pushes in careful and deep, and the stretch burns sweet, and I dig my nails into his shoulders and breathe through it while he whispers filthy soft nonsense against my temple, so tight, so wet, fuck you feel like you were built to take me, tell me if it’s too much, I’ll pull out, I’ll do anything, and when he’s fully seated we both go still.
“Hi,” I manage.
“Hi.” He’s shaking. “You okay? Am I crushing you? I can-”
“You’re filling me so deep I can feel you in my throat and you’re asking if I’m okay. Move. Please move. Fuck me like you mean the asking.”
He does. Slow strokes at first, learning the angle, then deeper when I hook my ankles behind his back and tell him harder, yes, just like that, don’t you dare be careful now.
The headboard knocks the wall in a dirty rhythm.
Whiskers yowls from the living room in protest. Eli laughs into my neck, helpless, and the vibration of it sends me climbing again.
“You’re laughing during sex,” I gasp.
“You’re laughing too… Az… fuck… your cunt is gripping me like it wants to keep me hostage-”
“It does. It’s a possessive cunt. Shut up and ruin me with that giant dick.”
He snaps his hips harder. The careful giant disappears into something hungrier, still checking my face every few thrusts, still murmuring okay?
still good? still want this? between the filth, and I come with his name mashed against my teeth and my heels digging into his ass.
He follows with a groan that sounds like surrender, burying himself deep, laughing breathlessly into my throat as he shudders through it.
We stay locked together while our heartbeats try to remember how to be separate. He kisses my forehead, my cheek, the corner of my mouth, then the tip of my nose like he can’t stop inventing places to put his mouth.
“That was-” He exhales. “I’ve never… I mean I’ve had sex, obviously, but not like… not where someone told me to ruin them and then made fun of me for laughing about the cat.”
“High bar for future encounters.”
“There won’t be future encounters with anyone else.” He says it too fast, then looks panicked. “I mean… I’m not proposing. I’m just… I don’t want to leave this bed and pretend this was casual. Is that insane?”
“A little insane. I like it.” I push sweaty hair off his forehead. “You’re kind of intense.”
“You like that too?”
“I’m starting to.”
He pulls out carefully, deals with the condom, and collapses beside me. The mattress dips so hard I roll into him. He tugs me against his chest until I’m draped half on top of him, one leg hooked over his thigh. His heartbeat is a drum under my ear.
“Stay awake for a second,” he murmurs. “I want to remember what your hair smells like.”
“That’s weird.”
“You just let me fuck you senseless on a mattress that sounds like a dying accordion. Weird is relative.”
I smile into his skin. “Fair.”