11. Elena #2
His hands come up to cup my face, and for a moment he’s careful, tender, treating me like I might break. But I don’t want careful. I don’t want tender. I want to feel something that isn’t loss.
I push him backward, and he goes, his back hitting the door with a thud that sends vibrations through the floor. I follow, pressing my body against his, and the sound he makes, low and rough and desperate, ignites something in my chest.
“Elena.” His voice is wrecked. “Are you sure?”
“I haven’t been sure of anything in months.” I pull back just far enough to see his face in the candlelight. “But I want this. I want you. Even though I shouldn’t, even though it’s probably a mistake…”
“It’s not a mistake.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that I love you.” His hands slide down my back, pulling me closer. “I know that I’ve loved you since that rooftop bar. I know that every night you’ve been gone, I’ve fallen asleep thinking about this, about you, about whether I’d ever get to touch you again.”
“Then touch me.”
He does.
His mouth finds my neck, and I arch into him, my fingers tangling in his hair. He’s still wearing his wet coat, and I push at it blindly until he shrugs it off, until there’s one less layer between us.
“I thought about this,” he murmurs against my throat. “Every night. Lying in our bed alone, thinking about your body, your sounds, the way you taste…”
“Show me.”
He spins us, and now it’s my back against the door, and the wood is cold through my shirt but I don’t care because his hands are sliding under the hem, finding skin, and everything else disappears.
“God, I missed this.” He pulls my shirt over my head, and the cold air makes me gasp, but then his mouth is on my collarbone, trailing down, and the cold doesn’t matter anymore. “Missed you. Missed your body. Missed the way you react when I…”
He finds that spot below my ear, the one that always undoes me, and I moan before I can stop myself.
“That’s it.” His hands are at the button of my jeans, working it open with a practiced ease that makes me ache. “That’s my girl. Let me hear you.”
The jeans come off, I don’t remember kicking them away, but suddenly they’re gone, and I’m standing in the doorway of my apartment in nothing but my underwear while my husband kneels in front of me.
“Adrian…”
“Shh.” He presses a kiss to my hip, my thigh, the inside of my knee. “Let me do this. Let me show you how much I missed you.”
His mouth moves higher, and I grip his shoulders for balance because my legs are already shaking. He hooks his fingers in the waistband of my underwear and pulls them down, slowly, torturously slowly, and I can feel his breath against my center.
“So wet already.” His voice is reverent, almost awed. “Is this for me?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl.”
The first touch of his tongue makes me cry out, head falling back against the door with a thud. He starts slow, long, lazy strokes that build heat without satisfying it, and I squirm against him, seeking more.
“Please.” The word comes out broken. “Adrian, please…”
“Please what?”
“More. I need…”
He gives me more. His mouth works against me with a dedication that borders on worship, and I feel the pressure building, coiling tight in my belly. His hands grip my thighs, holding me steady, and I’m climbing, climbing…
And then he pulls back.
“Not yet.” His voice is rough, wrecked, but he’s smiling. “Not until I’m inside you.”
“That’s cruel.”
“That’s patience.” He stands, and now we’re face to face, and I can see how affected he is, the flush on his cheeks, the darkness in his eyes, the visible strain in his body. “I want to feel you come apart around me. It’s been too long.”
“Then stop talking and…”
He kisses me, and I taste myself on his lips, and something about that, the intimacy of it, the raw honesty, makes me desperate in a way I haven’t felt in years.
I pull at his shirt, his belt, anything I can reach. He helps, stripping off layers between kisses, until finally there’s nothing between us but skin and candlelight and a month of wanting.
“Bedroom?” he asks.
“Too far.”
We don’t make it to the bedroom.
We barely make it to the floor.
He lowers me onto the blanket he spread earlier, he planned this, I realize dimly, planned for this possibility, and settles between my thighs. The head of him presses against me, and I arch up, seeking friction, seeking connection.
“Look at me.” His voice is gentle despite the tension in his body. “I want to see you.”
I open my eyes.
He slides into me.
The sound I make isn’t a moan, it’s something deeper, a release of tension I didn’t know I was holding. He fills me completely, stretching me in a way that’s almost too much but exactly right, and for a moment neither of us moves.
“Okay?” he breathes.
“More than okay.”
He starts to move.
Slow at first, long, deep strokes that make me feel every inch of him. I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, and the angle changes in a way that makes stars burst behind my eyes.
“That’s it.” His forehead presses against mine. “That’s so good. You feel so good.”
“Faster.”
“Not yet. I want to feel you. I want…” He pulls almost all the way out, then slides back in with excruciating slowness. “I want this to last.”
“I don’t want it to last.” I roll my hips, and he groans. “I want to come. I want you to make me come.”
“Greedy.”
“You made me wait.”
He laughs, actually laughs, breathless and genuine, and the sound breaks something open in my chest. This is what I missed. Not just the sex, but the laughter. The ease. The feeling of being known.
“Okay.” He shifts his weight, angles his hips. “Okay, my perfect girl. Let me give you what you need.”
He moves faster now, harder, each thrust hitting exactly where I need it. The pressure builds again, sharper this time, more urgent, and I can feel myself teetering on the edge.
“That’s it.” His hand slides between us, finds my clit, rubs in tight circles. “Come for me. I want to feel you…”
I shatter.
It rips through me like lightning, my whole body arching off the floor. I hear myself cry out, his name, maybe, or just sound, and he fucks me through it, drawing out every wave until I’m trembling and oversensitive.
“Good girl.” He’s panting now, close himself. “So beautiful. My perfect…”
“Come.” I dig my nails into his back. “Come inside me. I want to feel it.”
He groans, his rhythm stuttering, and then he’s there, pulsing inside me, his face buried in my neck, his whole body shaking with release. I hold him through it, stroking his hair, feeling his heart pound against my chest.
We stay like that for a long time. Long enough for our breathing to slow, for the sweat to cool on our skin, for the candles to flicker and dance shadows across the ceiling.
“I love you,” he says finally, muffled against my shoulder.
“I know.”
“I’m going to be better. I’m going to be the husband you deserve.”
“I know that too.”
He lifts his head, and his eyes are soft in the candlelight, vulnerable in a way I’ve rarely seen. “I was so afraid I’d never get to do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Touch you. Hold you. Make you come.” He smiles, and it’s shaky at the edges. “I used to lie awake at night reading our old texts. From when we first started dating.”
“Why?”
“I keep trying to figure out where I went wrong.” His voice cracks slightly. “At what point did I stop being the man you fell in love with?”
I reach up and touch his face.
“You didn’t stop being that man,” I say quietly. “You just… forgot how.”
“I won’t forget again.” He turns his head, presses a kiss to my palm. “I swear to you, Elena. I won’t forget again.”
The candles flicker. The space heater hums. Outside, the storm continues to rage.
And somewhere in the darkness, tangled together on a blanket on the floor of my terrible apartment, I start to believe him.