Chapter 22 #2
“Feel okay?” he asks. He looks up at me from beneath dark lashes, and my mind is flooded with filthy thoughts that have nothing to do with hiking and everything to do with the heat between my legs. I’m dizzy with arousal, and it isn’t until Elliot clears his throat that I remember myself.
“Um, yes. Sorry. Yes.”
“You sure?” he asks. He has a lace in either hand but waits before tightening them. “I have plenty of tricks in my bag.”
“I’m sure,” I say, smiling despite myself. “You’re good at this.”
“I am a healer, you know,” he says. He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too. “I happen to do this for a living. You didn’t think I’d go on a quest without medicine, did you?”
“I’m sorry for underestimating you,” I say. I try but fail to wipe the smile from my face. Then, after staring at him for entirely too long, I finally sober. Say something I’ve wanted since the day he was dragged into Sebastian’s manor. “I’m glad you went into healing. I always worried…”
I trail off, unsure how to finish. Or rather, unsure what he would think if I was honest.
“Worried what?” he presses. He’s still knelt in front of me, and his large hand rests carefully on my knee. I memorize the way it looks, his long fingers stretching up my thigh.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I always worried you’d end up in politics.”
He nods. When I glance at him, he’s staring at his own hand. He’s mesmerized too, I think, by the way his touch looks on me.
“I thought about it,” he admits. “Mama always wanted me to follow in her footsteps. I just…I like helping people. Not that the council doesn’t…”
It’s his turn to leave the sentence hanging, and I get the feeling it’s because he doesn’t want to lie. All too often, the council doesn’t help people. They drag them through the mud, only tending to them if it’s mutually beneficial.
“I’m glad,” I say, filling the silence. “It seems like a good fit.”
“I enjoy it,” he says. He’s still looking at his hand.
He stretches his fingers over my knee and thigh, rubbing slow, smooth circles against my leg with his thumb.
It’s not sexual—or at least, it shouldn’t be.
His thumb is barely above my knee. And yet, there’s something indescribably erotic about it.
About the way he’s touching me. Reverent. Fascinated. Smitten.
I force myself to breathe, but it comes out as a shaky exhale. Elliot’s eyes snap up to mine, and his pupils widen. He swallows, and I watch the way his throat moves, feel the way his hand tightens, just slightly.
“We should keep walking,” he says, but he doesn’t move.
I do.
Not to continue the hike. I lean forward, grabbing him by the shoulders and pressing my lips against his.
He takes a surprised breath, but that’s it.
Then he’s kissing me back with as much—no, more—desperation than I am.
He moves with swift, urgent movements, surging to his feet and easily bringing me with him.
He stands with me in his arms, hands cupped under my ass.
My back meets the rough edge of bark. A tree. He’s pressed us against a tree, our chests so close I can barely breathe. Elliot readjusts his hands, slipping one beneath my skirt. The heat of his palm scorches through my tights, and without permission, my body bucks against his touch.
“Can I—”
“Please,” I say, too eager to let him finish the question. “Touch me.”
He grunts against my mouth, and were I not so desperate for relief, I might laugh. As it is, I wind my legs around his back and tighten my hold on his shoulders, helping him as he yanks at my tights. When a sudden ripping sounds through the quiet forest, I gasp, and he pulls back.
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he says. His dark gaze sweeps over me, and his free hand comes up to trace my lower lip. “Fuck, Secora. You’re so pretty. Do you even realize it?”
He doesn’t give me time to answer. His mouth is back on mine, hungrier than before. He kisses me like he’s studying my taste, like he’s memorizing my flavor and the feel of my tongue against his.
Maybe I’ll bottle this memory one day too, not to hide it from myself, but to memorialize it. To watch it every night and every morning in vivid, undisturbed detail. Without time blurring the reality of this moment, the perfection of it.
And then, Elliot’s thumb brushes the wet fabric of my underwear, and I forget everything else.
Nothing exists but this moment. I cry out as he shoves my underwear to the side, thumb pressing against my clit.
He’s rougher than I’ve ever been with myself.
I don’t know if he’s just so eager he can’t help it, or if he somehow knows this is what I need.
His unrelenting touch and the scrape of his unshaved face against mine.
“Okay?” he asks. He doesn’t pull all the way back as he asks. His lips are still on mine, hand still pressed between my legs.
“Yes,” I say. Then, “Please.”
He groans against my mouth before trailing kisses across my cheek, down my throat. He’s sucking hard enough against my skin that he’ll likely leave a mark.
I’ve never hoped for anything more.
When he sinks his finger into me, the sound I make is so obscene I should be horrified. Maybe I would be, were it not for Elliot’s echoing groan, for the filthy praises he whispers in response. He adds a second finger, and it’s almost too much. I bow against him, tightening my legs around him.
“You’re so fucking sweet,” he says against my neck.
I’m too mindless to respond. I’m grinding against his hand, head slanted to the side, nonsensical words falling from my lips. The heat builds and builds inside me, until I’m certain I can’t bear another second. Before long, I’m begging, pleading for him to touch me where I need it.
A brush of his thumb against my clit is all it takes. I come and come and come, breaking apart while he holds me against him. I sag against the tree, hands limp on his shoulders. He still has his hand between my thighs, in the mess of my arousal and ripped tights.
His eyes are dark enough to look black, and they’re roaming over me, cataloguing every tiny detail.
When he moves to put me down, my legs tighten on instinct.
Not yet, I want to scream. I’m not ready.
I expect him to speak, but he doesn’t. He only readjusts his hold and presses his free hand to the hollow of my throat. His thumb trails over my skin, settling right above my sternum.
“Our first kiss was under a tree,” I tell him. I tilt my head back, looking at the layered branches above us, filtering out the daylight.
“Yeah,” he says gruffly.
I’m looking up, and I’m glad I can’t see his face. I’m not sure I’d have the nerve to continue if I was.
“I always wanted you to be my first,” I say, talking to the clouds. “For a long time, I was sad I’d lost my virginity to a monster. But eventually, I decided I didn’t. Rape isn’t sex. It’s rape. Sex…sex is between two people. Two people who want it.”
I can feel Elliot’s hitched breathing, can tell he’s desperate to say something. I’m worried it will be about Harrison, that he’ll think I want to talk about our past and what his friend stole. I make myself look down now, let myself study the colors in his eyes.
I don’t lose my nerve. I find patience, love, encouragement.
“I want it now, Elliot,” I say. My voice is strained. “I want it with you.”
His lips part. He moves his hand from between my thighs, balancing one on my hip and the other under my butt. He swallows, and I follow the movement in his throat.
“It’s okay if you need to think about it,” I say. “I know this is all new, and if you’re not interested or ready—”
“In the tent?” he rasps. His fingers dig against my hipbones. “I can have it set up in a few minutes. Or back at the manor? We could do it at my house. I’ve got a nice bed. I could—”
“Here,” I interrupt. “Right here.”
Elliot presses closer, forcing my legs wider. I relax against him, letting him spread me with his hips.
“Here,” he repeats. His attention lowers to my messed skirt and his straining erection.
“If you want,” I say. I’m tempted to offer him other options, to make it clear it doesn’t have to be against this tree, if he doesn’t want it to be. But he already knows.
He lowers my feet to the forest floor, but he’s moving fast enough I don’t have time to feel disappointment.
His hands are already on my tights, ripping them down my legs and pulling my boots off with them.
My underwear is next, and I don’t miss the way he tucks them into his pants pocket, rather than tossing them to the dirt.
I try to keep his pace, but I’m trembling too hard. I’ve barely got the button of his pants undone when I’m being lifted again.
“You’re so sweet,” he groans against my ear. His warm hands cup my ass, one trailing down my thigh, then back up, all the way into the wetness between my legs.
“I’m already wet,” I inform him, even though he obviously knows. I’m not sure if it’s more or less than I should be, but I can’t help the flare of self-consciousness that works through me. “Is it—”
“Perfect,” he interrupts. Presses two fingers into my cunt, curling them and groaning against my neck. “You’re the most perfect thing in the whole fucking world.”
I buck against him, moaning against the side of his neck.
“I need you to tell me,” he says. He shifts to hold me with one hand and uses the other to unbutton his pants. “If you want it harder. Softer. Slower. Faster. If you want me to stop. Okay?”
I’m nodding. I’m trembling so hard it should be humiliating. I’m too needy to care. I clench my thighs, dig my heels into his back to try to bring him closer. He pulls his cock out in a smooth motion, and I can’t hold back my whimper.
He’s long and hard and ready for me. Me. After all these years, he’s looking at me like he used to. Like there’s nowhere he’d rather be. No one he’d rather be doing this with.
“Say it, Secora,” he says.
“Do it however you like,” I say. I arch against him, only to whine when he leans back, denying me.