Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ryder
I undress Elliot slowly in my bedroom, under the low, liquid gold light from the lamps and she’s so beautiful.
Taking my time, kissing her as I go, I worship every piece of flesh I expose. We don’t speak, not since she said yes to me in the car here, and the ride is a blur of heat and kisses and anticipation and need that still rocks me to my core.
But we don’t need words right now.
Her breasts react under my touch, the nipples beading and tiny goosebumps appear as I trace a path over her ribcage. Elliot makes a tiny sound that, in turn, gets me even harder than I am, but I ignore my physical reaction. I want to immerse myself in her, slowly, completely.
I kiss a path down her body, laving each nipple with my tongue. Her hands come out and grasp me and I keep moving down.
The dress is unzipped, at her hips, and I trail my fingers over the soft swell of her stomach, then I kiss and lick the skin, grazing with my teeth.
Her gardenia scent is twined with arousal and it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever had the privilege of inhaling.
I lift my head, looking up and her lip is half caught between her teeth, a blush spreading like blooming flowers over her flesh and her eyes are half shut. She’s an erotic painting, living art, and I drink it in, that image. I horde it deep for safekeeping. And then I rest back on my heels as I pull the dress over her hips.
That juncture, where her pussy lies beneath the scrap of lace and cotton, is damp, and I want it. But more, I want her to be so aroused she’s lost in the moment. I want to see the pleasure rise and I want to explore her taste and heat and wetness. Learn all there is to know about her.
I suspect that will take a lifetime, and right now, that lifetime is worth taking, worth giving, sharing.
Sliding my palm over her pubis, I move down and her thighs part. I push my fingers along each side of the edge of her panties there and oh, yeah, she’s wet. I feel that on my flesh and it makes my hard on almost painful.
But it’s a knife edge of pleasure and pain and anticipation and I remove my hand, pulling her panties down so I can see her. She’s so fucking gorgeous. Those private lips invite and taunt with their dusky color. The line of red downy hair that leads up from where the hood of her clitoris pokes out is sweet. I run my tongue over her there and she cries out, a wavery sound that heads straight south. I lick and kiss and taste, I push my tongue into her, and then I part those lips and slide my finger in, exploring slowly that tight, hot hole.
Her fingers bite hard into my shoulder and she starts to shake, her orgasm coming in, a roll of contractions and she’s gasping, saying my name and then I rise up and she wraps about me, her eyes unfocused, and we kiss, sharing her taste.
I let her strip me, her fingers shaking as she touches and explores. And she sinks down, fingertips dancing along my cock.
“Oh, fuck me.”
My entire body jerks with electric pleasure as her mouth closes over the head of my cock and she sucks me in, down deep to the back of her throat. I want to tell her to stop, I want to fuck her mouth hard. It takes every single drop of willpower I have not to do a damn thing and let her explore me.
She sucks and uses her hand, wrapping it at the base and pulling me back and forth, going so deep with her mouth she’s at her hand, and the base of my cock, and then she’s back, teasing the head, her hand working me and—
“I’m gonna come, you need to stop.”
She doesn’t. Elliot, that evil, wonderful woman that she is, keeps going and as the need pushes me, I come as she takes me all the way in and I almost black out from the hard waves of pleasure that hit me.
Then I have her, pulling her into my arms and I’m kissing her so hard, mouths open, tongues mating in a wild dance.
The kiss slows, morphing back down into slow seduction then back up into urgent need, and I take her to the bed.
I cover her body with mine, her thighs wide, her hips rising up, her sex on offer, and I can’t believe I’m hard already. All over again.
I slowly enter her and we make love. It’s the only way to describe that coming together. It’s not sex. It’s something more. Soft gasps and low moans. A merging of flesh and emotion and I could do this forever, too.
It’s just pure pleasure, building and rebuilding of the urgency, almost reaching the peak until one of us backs down. A tease, a not wanting this to stop.
I don’t know how long we do this, but sometimes she’s riding me, sometimes I’m rocking into her, and finally, finally there’s no way back down, only up and over that edge into pure, intense orgasmic bliss that seems to never end.
After we lay there, just breathing, sprawled and tangled together.
“That was,” she says, “wow.”
“I think it might have been all capital letters kind of wow.” I kiss her nose, then her lips. “And I don’t want to stop. I just need a few.”
She laughs and draws patterns on my chest. “It’s one for the books.”
“It’s a three-volume novel.”
Later, we have sex again and finally fall asleep. I’m too exhausted to go again.
I wake to soft fingers tracing the tattoo on my back.
“I’ve created a monster,” I mutter.
“I’m touching, that’s all.” But she sounds satisfied. “This whole tattoo, it’s to do with your arm, isn’t it? Definitely The Divine Comedy.”
“It’s life. That man in Dante’s epic visits hell, purgatory, and paradise. One without the rest isn’t living. To appreciate things, you need to know the others.”
“All this and you really do play guitar.”
“Boarding school. I think I took up guitar as a fuck you to the old man. I’d tell him I was going to join a band, not go into business.”
She laughs. “Did he like that?”
“Not really, but he knew I wouldn’t. Piano was one thing, but the guitar he saw as a waste of time.”
“And your mom?”
“Whatever made us happy, really. But they were empty words on my part. I’m definitely not good enough. It’s the hell of the pleasure, knowing you’ll never be as good as you want to be.”
“And here I thought it was all a way to impress girls.”
I pull her over me and roll us so I’m on my back and she’s on me. It’s a position I’m fast loving with her. Any position is one I’m fast loving with her. Any at all. “There was that.” I give her a long look. “Did I impress you, Perry?”
“You got me here, so yeah.”
She leans down and kisses me and I’m hard all over again. I take her hips, moving her so her pussy slides against me. And she shivers and moans. “More?”
“Yes, Ryder, I want more.”
And I push up into her and we start all over again.
It’s gray in the morning when I get up.
Elliot’s still asleep and I watch her for a long time, just standing there. Her red hair is tangled out over the pillows on my charcoal-colored bedding and her pale skin and one rosy nipple peek out and it’s all I can do not to get back in that bed.
Instead, I go down and make coffee.
I don’t know what happened. I really don’t. But even now I can’t shake the fact it wasn’t just sex.
Sipping my espresso, I check my phone. A message from my mother stating privately everyone’s impressed. And I know I’ll probably get everything I thought I wanted because of Elliot.
Except maybe Elliot.
The best sex of my life that keeps getting better, that’s what it is. And she’s the kind of woman on the surface who is perfection for the image she created for me. The Elliot below? Actually perfect for me how I am.
Perfect, that is, if I wasn’t a fuck up in the way she’s accused me of being. I’ve never had a girlfriend. A relationship that lasted beyond the bedroom and some good times out of it. And here I am, looking at a woman built for relationships, built for the forever thing.
This sex that’s more than sex, this sex that reaches down to the marrow, to cellular level, it changes everything and nothing.
If I go forward with this, if I pursue her the way I have been, after last night…I’m not going to just hurt me, I’ll hurt her. If we go further, it will be the kind of hurt that leaves deep scars.
I’ll fuck up, I know I will. Somehow, someway, I’ll stumble, sleep with someone else because, realistically, how long can this thing with me only wanting her last?
I’ll do something and I’ll lose her.
Better to lose her now.
Elliot chooses that moment to appear and she’s so soft and sleep fuzzed and wearing not much at all except a T-shirt she found in my room that leaves all kinds of interesting things hinted at, right there at the top of her thighs. I don’t think. I just take.
I fuck her on the bench and it’s hot. And after, we spend the morning laughing and talking and touching until finally she moves away when I reach for her.
“You have to go to work, Sinclair.”
We’re not talking about it, which is good. But we’re going to have to, and…shit.
“I don’t mind taking the day off.”
“After all the work I put in? You’re going. Do—do you want to hang out tonight?”
“Sure.”
And we make arrangements for a nice little upscale bar that’s nearby.
Maybe the talk can wait, maybe I can get another few days of Elliot to cram into my memories.
Elliot isn’t there when I arrive at the bar, and the doubts creep in as a beautiful woman comes up and flirts with me and it’s easy to flirt back because it doesn’t mean anything.
I could have her.
I know that.
But I don’t want her.
I want Elliot.
Yet…yet…everything from that morning is there in my head and Elliot deserves better than me.
Elliot enters the bar and I decide to just do it. Rip the band aid off. This isn’t love, right? It’s just lust getting all confused in the intimacy of friendship, of the sweetness and pull of Elliot herself.
One day, I’ll slip up. So I might as well pretend it’s today.
I’m such a fucking bastard, and I feel dirty and low and I turn up the flirt, all while Elliot approaches.
“Ryder.”
I turn to her. “You’re right. About me. I can’t change, so it’s best we forget last night.”
Elliot just stares at me. No shock. No nothing except contempt and dignity and something inside me breaks.
“You’re a fucking coward.”
She turns and walks out.
The woman next to me is, I think, talking, but she’s nothing more than a buzzing fly.
Everything hurts.
I’ve just made the biggest mistake in my life.