Chapter 11 #3
With shaking legs, I put my palms on the bar, smudging against the prior handprint, wishing I could fucking imprint on the wood, leaving proof that I was there. That Elliot was mine, even if only for the night.
I pushed my hips upward, presenting myself to him. His rough palm caressed my ass before lifting it and coming down with a hard slap.
The sting against my skin vibrated with the aftershocks of pleasure I was still experiencing, sensation racing through every corner of my body.
Spanking… Another kink I hadn’t thought was my thing. At all. Who would be turned-on by being ‘punished’ by a man with some serious Freudian shit attached to it?
Me.
It turned out I was immensely turned-on by that. By the authority Elliot wielded with the simple slap, breaking down my prior beliefs about what I was in the world.
His finger dipped down, teasing at my back entrance, causing another full-body shiver before it left. I wondered if he was into ass play. The thought excited me, my mind desperate for Elliot to make his mark on as many places on my body as possible.
Within moments that felt like lifetimes, his cock was pressing against my soaking entrance. My body tensed, and my eyes watered when he brutally seated himself to the hilt, seamlessly sliding in, as I was primed for him.
“Fuck,” his curse was curt, cutting through the filmy shadow of desire coating the air.
I turned to look at him in question.
He was frozen in place, hand at my hip, bare cock at my entrance. “Condom,” he groaned. “I don’t carry one around in my back pocket.”
“Neither do I.” Although I’d gone there with a purpose and a well-stocked purse, I’d acted on reckless impulse. “I’m clean. In that sense.” Heat crept up my cheeks. “And there is absolutely no chance of me trapping you in a pregnancy,” I added, blushing even hotter.
Reckless. Fucking reckless. Proposing that. An intimate act without barriers. Worse still if Elliot, rightly so, refused me.
But his cock flexed against my pussy, his eyes searching my face. When he opened his mouth to say something, I tensed. Slowly, he closed it, nodding. “Yeah, I’ll take you raw, Calliope. Now turn the fuck around.”
If my nails could’ve torn into the wood of the bar, they would’ve. My body strained against his size, against the angle, the orgasms that already had me spent.
Though I wasn’t sure I could handle more, there was no way I would have asked him to go slow, be gentle. No, I didn’t want that. I wanted Elliot Shaw to fucking ruin me.
As if he’d read my mind, he slammed into me again, no pause, no respite. Just hard, ruthless rutting that was animalistic.
My eyes watered as an impossible climax built inside me, one I didn’t know if I could handle. Surely, there was a limit to how much pleasure a human body could experience.
Elliot’s hand clutched my hair, pulling at it, giving me the glorious relief of pain to counteract the indescribable ecstasy.
Tears escaped the corners of my eyes, and a strangled scream erupted from my throat as Elliot rammed in harder than ever, stars exploding in my vision and melting the world around me.
I rode the wave, concentrating on surviving his storm, my legs shaking with the effort it took to stay upright, legs spread, bracing myself as much as I could on the surface of the bar.
Through a fog, I heard Elliot roar out a climax. It rattled the edges of my brain, warming it with the satisfaction of hearing such a primal sound come out of him, at being the one to bring that out in him.
His spurts of hot cum inside me lengthened my already world-shattering climax.
As his thrusts stilled, the world came back into focus, the bottles and glasses of the bar no longer blurry. I squinted at the mirror that was mounted behind them, seeing myself in it. Or someone who vaguely resembled me.
But she wasn’t me.
Her hair was wild around her shoulders, a mess of curls. Her lipstick was smudged against her lips, streaks of tears running down her unfathomably flushed cheeks. Well fucked, for sure. But something else too. I was without my constant barriers.
There was nothing there. My eyes were sparkling, glimmering. It must’ve been a trick of the light.
That might’ve scared the shit out of me had my gaze not darted to Elliot.
To his shirtless form, the contours of his shoulders, his own cheeks flushed red.
It could’ve made him look boyish, but coupled with the square jaw, the crooked nose, the absolutely wild, masculine look of unmitigated satisfaction in his eyes… It all served to make him sexier.
I catalogued every version of Elliot I’d come to glimpse, greedily hoarding them in my memory.
His eyes met mine in the mirror, a hungry smirk turning the side of his mouth as he clasped my hip and slowly pulled out of me.
My body sagged in relief but also in grief. I’d never felt more whole than when he was inside me. I already felt my body tensing, hastily building shields, albeit lazily as my body was still captured by the most powerful orgasms in my life.
“Stay there,” Elliot ordered, voice gruff but with a tender edge.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t have the ability to form words yet. If anyone walked in, they’d be in for a sight, me completely naked, sagging against the bar, cum leaking down my inner thighs.
I didn’t much care. I didn’t much care if the world fell down around my ears. I didn’t have the energy to do anything but inhale and exhale.
Elliot returned, the sound of his footfalls echoing in my brain.
His fingertips returned to my hips, softer than before, then something warm wiped at the liquid that had seeped down my thighs.
My entire body quivered as he cleaned me, tenderly, slowly.
I wanted to argue against it, but no one had used such a caretaking touch on me before.
No partner had ever done that. I’d always thought it was something invented by hopeful women who longed for men who didn’t exist—except in the pages of books.
Yet there was Elliot Shaw, tenderly cleaning his cum from me after he’d fucked me harder than I’d been fucked in my life.
My wits scrambled as I internally screamed at myself to stand and snatch the cloth to regain the autonomy I’d gladly given to him, as if it weren’t something women had been fighting for for years.
Yet I stayed still. And the weakness in my limbs couldn’t be entirely blamed.
When the cloth left my leg, I squeezed my eyes shut with the childish wish for that gentle rhythm and sensation to go on forever.
Nothing lasted forever.
My skirt was placed on the bar beside my hands.
Somehow, the vision of the garment, one of the pieces of my armor, shocked me back into my body, into my mind.
I grabbed it, pushing myself off the bar to turn to Elliot.
He was standing close. Too close. But I couldn’t retreat. Had nowhere to go. I gritted my teeth, refusing to look for my panties.
“This is just sex,” I reminded him as I pulled my skirt over my hips, sans panties.
Before I could snag the zipper at my lower back, Elliot was there, one hand steadying my hip with the other going to the small of my back to work the zipper up.
I held my breath so that I didn’t react.
“This isn’t just anything.” His lips landed on my neck. “This was everything.”
I whirled around then, denying my instinct to sink backward into his body, into the promise of a different relationship dynamic.
He was grinning, hands on his hips as if he was expecting my reaction. “I don’t do relationships.” I tried to sound authoritative, despite the lace of my bra exposing my nipples that were pebbled against the thin fabric. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be with someone like you.”
His forehead wrinkled, but otherwise, his face didn’t change at the insult I thought he’d take as such. “What? A lowly fisherman? A bartender?” His voice still had a teasing edge, but there was also a sense of pride, a security in who he was.
He was not ashamed by the simplicity of his life, nor should he have been. It was hot as fuck to see a man with an appropriately sized and solid ego.
That would’ve been the easy, cruel way out to stick the knife in. Lie to him and say that it was because of those titles that I didn’t consider him worthy of me. It was an arrow on the tip of my tongue, tasting like the poison it was. Not once had I hesitated to sling such weapons at men.
But to Elliot, I couldn’t do it, even if it would eventually be for his own good.
“No,” I sighed. “Because you are a good man.”
The crinkles on his forehead deepened as he stepped forward with purpose. “The insinuation there is that you don’t consider yourself a good woman.”
I looked downward. Again, the first time I’d ever refused to hold my head up high.
Elliot wasn’t about to let that happen, his fingers reaching for my chin and lifting it so my gaze was level with his.
His slate gaze was unyielding, inescapable, and fuck, did it hold me in place. It quieted the static inside of my mind.
“I’m not a good woman, Elliot,” I admitted. “I never will be.”
Elliot stared at me for a handful of seconds instead of rushing to fill the silence with assurances that he knew me to be good or some such bullshit that I had assumed would be his knee-jerk reaction.
“I think I’ll be the judge of that.” He stroked my jaw with his thumb. “And even if you are, I’m a grown man. Think I can make the decision if I want something a little different for once. Because maybe I like bad women. Maybe I like you.”
The honesty of his feelings, the way he laid them out without adornment or agenda hit me square in the chest.
When was the last time a man said he liked me?
Ever? I didn’t think any man had said anything like that, truthfully or not.
I’d never let any man think that that was an appropriate thing to say, never let someone get close enough to say it.
Except Jasper. And he’d never verbalized something like that.
Never exposed that weakness. I couldn’t even be sure whether he truly liked me.
“I like you too.” My words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.
I was horrified, my body clamming up the second I said them, even though they tasted sweet and natural on my tongue.
When I stepped out of his grasp, he let me.
I immediately missed his fingertips. My gaze scanned the floor so I didn’t have to look at him.
Indeed, the buttons of my blouse were scattered like pebbles across the hardwood, the ruined fabric laying draped over a bar stool.
Before I could think better of it, I plucked Elliot’s tee from where it lay on the ground, hauling it over my head while not letting myself revel in the scent.
With businesslike efficiency, as if it were completely normal, I tucked the shirt into my skirt before slipping each of my heels on with ease.
Though I didn’t look up, I knew that Elliot was watching my every moment. He did it silently, the air in the bar impossibly heavy.
After fortifying my mental shields and placing my bitch mask back in place, I looked up at him.
It was lucky I’d had years of experience schooling my features so I didn’t display just how attractive I found him.
Standing shirtless, jeans unbuttoned to reveal his washboard abs, the sculpted V leading down to his cock.
The tanned arms with a smattering of freckles along his shoulders, every muscle defined.
His mussed curls brushed over his eyebrows, expression still easy, content, eyes playful and possessive at the same time as they focused on the shirt I’d stolen.
I rolled my lips together, still tasting him on me, still feeling him inside of me. “You won’t be seeing this shirt again.” I was unable to think of anything else to say. Until I straightened my shoulders, remembering who I was. “And you won’t be seeing me again.”
His lips quirked as he folded his arms across his impressive pecs. I forced myself not to watch the movement of his muscles as he did so.
“I will,” he said back. “I’ll be seeing both you and that shirt as I bend you over and fuck you in it in my bedroom. After which you’ll collapse on my bed, so sated, so exhausted you won’t have the energy to fight me, then you’ll sleep until I wake you with my cock again.”
The words were so completely at odds with his casual, easygoing stance and expression, my mouth momentarily went dry, lost for words as I imagined that very scenario.
My body warmed at the prospect of just that, my hands curling into my palms with the need to do it. Right that instance.
I steeled myself.
“Keep dreaming,” I remarked lamely before turning on my heel and walking out.
“Don’t need to dream when I’ve got the memory of you,” he called to my back.
And fuck me if my step stuttered just a little.
I pretended it didn’t.
I’d have to do a lot of pretending, a lot of lying to get myself free of Elliot Shaw. And it was becoming clear that I’d have to hurt both of us to make that happen.