Chapter 35 Keep Your Eyes Open
Keep Your Eyes Open
Emily's Search History: psychological reasons for why it's hot to watch yourself have sex?
Emily
I just had sex with a man who kidnapped me.
A murderer.
My stalker.
And I fucking loved it.
The way he made me feel? The reassurance?
Damn him. Damn him to hell and back again.
Fuck.
He’s still inside me, even though he’s already softened. I get the feeling he’s reluctant to move.
Eli stares down at me with an almost reverent expression, his face softer than I’ve ever seen it.
I reach up and cup his cheek. “I need to pee,” I say.
He blinks.
Then, with a pout, he finally pulls out of me.
Before I can stand, he lifts me into his arms and carries me to the bathroom, setting me down on the toilet like I’m something fragile.
He starts running the bath while I sit there in stunned silence.
“Eli,” I call gently.
His head snaps toward me. “Angel?”
“Can I have some privacy?”
His eyes widen—like a deer caught in headlights. Then he nods quickly and scuttles from the room.
I finish, flush, and he’s back immediately, turning the taps again as if he never left.
“What are you doing?”
He rolls his eyes—can’t see his face, but I know he does. “Aftercare, Angel. You need a bath.”
My heart melts.
“That’s very thoughtful of you.”
His gaze drags over my still-naked body and I freeze. I try to cover myself, but he growls—low, annoyed. I let my hands fall to my sides, trembling.
He shakes his head, almost moaning. “So sexy.”
I can barely breathe while we wait for the tub to fill, his eyes never leaving me—like I’m perfection personified—as the room steams around us.
Then he’s helping me in and climbing in behind me so my back rests against his chest.
“I love you,” he murmurs, so softly I almost think I imagined it.
“What?”
“I love you, Em.”
Em. He called me Em again.
“I—”
His chest rumbles under my spine. “I know you don’t feel the same. Not yet anyway. I’m not that delusional.” Good to know. “I just need you to understand. You’re it for me, Angel. There is no one else. There never will be.”
Tears prick behind my eyes. I don’t speak—I don’t know how. I let the warm water and Eli’s skin against mine soothe me until my eyes grow heavy and drift closed.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Argh,” I mumble, flinging my arm out to silence the offending alarm.
Instead of hitting my phone, I smack into a solid block of muscle.
Eli’s body is wrapped around me, cocooning me like he’s shielding me from the world. His skin is hot against mine.
Skin.
We’re naked.
I jolt, ready to scream—
Then it floods back in. The naked press of his skin against mine. The sweat that dripped between us. The tenderness with which he brought me to the brink of pleasure and back down to earth again.
Eli grumbles sleepily, reaching over to shut off my alarm. “Five more minutes,” he groans, pressing a kiss to my head.
I wiggle out of his grip. “I have to get ready for work.”
Work.
God.
After last night it’s the last thing I want to do. And not because I was intimate with Eli. But because I watched a man die. Liam. My patient.
Oh fuck.
My chest seizes.
In an instant Eli is at my side, rubbing a hand over my back. “Breathe. Tell me what’s wrong.”
My vision blurs and my legs wobble.
Eli guides me back onto the bed, forcing me to sit. He crouches in front of me. Even through the blur, I can see the worry etched into his features.
“Liam’s dead,” I whimper, choking on the words.
“He was going to hurt you, Angel.”
Trying to breathe through my clogged throat, I whisper a broken, “I know.”
Eli rears back. “Do you regret—” he swallows thickly “—do you regret sleeping with me?”
Surprisingly, no.
The panic eases just enough for me to speak clearly. “No. I just don’t know how to go about my day like normal knowing that my patient is dead.”
Eli’s expression softens with understanding. “Why not take the day off?”
“I can’t. I have patients booked in.”
He nods solemnly. “Then think about them. You want to help them. That’s how you get through the day.”
For a man who is clinically insane, he makes a surprising amount of sense.
His words are enough to push me to get up and get ready.
By the time I’m ready to leave, so is he. And that’s how I end up with my arms wrapped around his waist as we careen toward the practice on the back of his bike—less than twelve hours after I let him inside me.
And not just physically.
He’s in my head. And maybe, just a little, in my heart too.
By the time I get home I’m exhausted from keeping up the facade of normalcy, but it’s Tuesday, which means I have my session with Izzy.
At seven, I open my laptop while Eli potters around in the background making dinner.
Izzy’s face fills my screen moments later.
“Hi!” she chirps, her energy catching me off guard.
“You’re happy today,” I note, glad to see her doing better.
Izzy sighs. “I’m doing a lot better. There’s still sadness, and it comes and goes, but I’ve been learning a lot about Enzo’s operations and that distraction has been good.”
“That’s really encouraging. How’s the anger?”
Izzy’s brow furrows, her lips twisting. She wobbles her head. “It’s there. I don’t know if it’ll ever go away. But it’s more of an anger that it happened—not really directed at anyone anymore. I mean, they’re all dead so…”
“Okay. We can work on coping with some of that anger, but you’re right—it might never fully leave. It’s how you handle it that matters.”
We chat for a while about her recovery and everything she’s been through when suddenly—
“So, I hear you have a stalker,” she says, raising a brow.
I grimace. “Well… actually, I had two. But we’re not here to talk about me.”
Izzy rolls her eyes. “Tesoro!” she yells, craning her head back. “Come tell Doctor Morgan she has to tell me all about her stalker because it’s imperative to my healing.”
“That’s just evil.” I glare at her through the screen.
Izzy just grins.
Obviously, if she were a normal patient, I wouldn’t share anything. But her husband is one of Carina’s best friends, and Tess’s brother. Our lives are… tangled. It’s why I do these off-the-books sessions.
Just as I open my mouth, Eli appears behind me, waving at Izzy. “Hi, I’m stalker number one.”
I choke. He has to pat my back to get me breathing again. “What the fuck, Eli.”
He holds his hands up, wearing an expression of mock innocence. “What? She asked about your stalkers. And as your friend Carina pointed out the other day, I’m one of them.”
I press my head into my hands. “You didn’t have to introduce yourself that way.”
He shrugs and goes back to cooking.
I look up to see Izzy sitting there with her mouth open and Enzo standing behind her, arms crossed, mouth twisted into a frown.
“Are you safe, Emily?” Enzo asks, voice low.
I smile gratefully. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”
He nods.
Then Izzy launches into a tirade of questions, which I answer diligently.
When the hour session ends and Eli places a plate in front of me as I close the laptop, my head is pounding.
We eat together as usual.
It’s only when I’m getting ready for bed that it hits me—Eli hasn’t tried to kiss me all day. Not when he dropped me off, or brought me lunch, or when we got home.
I’m grateful in some ways. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing with him. But… I guess I thought after we had sex, he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off me. That it would’ve been a signal to him that I’d accepted the inevitable. Yet…
My heart clenches painfully.
Oh god.
Was I terrible in bed?
I don’t have much experience with men, but he seemed to enjoy himself.
Has he finally lost his obsession?
It would make sense. He enjoys the chase. That’s why he never engages. But he did with me. And now he’s gotten what he wanted.
I stare at my bare face in the mirror—my puffy cheeks and dull skin. Why did I ever expect a man like that to stay interested in me?
Arms brace on either side of me, making me jolt.
“What’s wrong, Angel?” Eli’s voice is a low purr, threaded with concern.
I plaster on a fake smile. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
Eli gently turns me to face him, holding my chin so I have no choice but to look into his eyes. “You’re lying.” He presses himself against me, and I feel exactly how attracted he still is. “Do I need to fuck the truth out of you?” he murmurs, his breath brushing my skin.
My mouth goes dry. My thighs clench.
Eli grins. “You like the sound of that, don’t you, Angel?”
I don’t dare breathe.
“I’ve been so good today. I kept my distance. Waiting for you to come to me.” He pouts, pulling back slightly. “But you didn’t.”
My mouth opens and closes. “You were waiting for me to make the first move?”
He groans, exasperated. “I want you to want me, Angel. I want you to choose me.”
“But… you’ve always been content to just take. You stalked me. You kidnapped me. Why not just take me?”
Eli’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “I tried that approach. You made it clear you want me to respect your boundaries. I haven’t touched you since you said that. I haven’t done anything you didn’t want since you told me I shouldn’t.”
My brow furrows. He’s right. That morning, when I found out what he’d done to me in my sleep… when I asked him not to undress me, not to—
He hasn’t tried anything since. Not until I came to him.
I kissed him first. I took control.
That knowledge—that it’s my choice, that he’s letting me lead—is intoxicating. This man, this huge, intimidating man who doesn’t have a full grasp on reality, respects me enough to hold back. To wait.
For anyone else, that wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s the bare minimum, really.
But Gia would have taken from me. And Eli—given his past, his history—it shocks me.
I step forwards, closing the distance he created between us. Eli goes still, waiting for me.
My hand cups the back of his head, fingers sliding into the hair at his nape.
Then I crush my mouth to his.
His restraint shatters instantly. He kisses me back with a ferocity that steals my breath. His hands roam, caressing me through my clothes before he strips them off, leaving me naked under his stare.
His eyes burn with an intensity that shocks me.
He notices.
“You still don’t see yourself the way I do, do you?”
I gulp, insecurity sinking deep into my bones. He’s right. I don’t understand it. I can’t process his fixation. I’m boring. Plain. My body isn’t the kind men obsess over. None of it makes sense.
Eli spins me so I’m facing the mirror.
I shut my eyes when I catch the sight of my sagging boobs and the stretch marks scattered across them.
He nudges my legs apart with his foot. “Hands on the sink, Em.”
The nickname sends butterflies tumbling in my stomach.
I grip the porcelain like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“Now,” he murmurs behind me, “open your eyes.”
Slowly, I do. My gaze finds him in the mirror.
“I’m going to fuck you because I know you want it,” he says. I nod. “But only if you keep your eyes open.”
Anxiety spikes through me.
“I don’t—”
“If you close them, I stop.”
I swallow hard, breath trembling as it leaves me. “Okay.”
Our eyes lock as his hand smoothes down my spine. Every sensation feels heightened as I watch him through the mirror. When his finger trails over my ass, I jolt.
Eli grins. “I’m going to fuck you here one day.”
He doesn’t give me time to process his words before he’s pressing his finger into my pussy.
Eli groans behind me, his eyes rolling. “So fucking wet for me,” he moans, pushing another digit inside.
My legs tremble as I clutch the sink in an effort to remain standing.
A third finger joins the rest, and Eli curls them inside me. My eyes flutter closed.
The sensation stops.
I open my eyes back up.
“Good girl, I told you to keep them open.”
Then his fingers are back, his thumb circling my clit expertly.
“Watch yourself come, Angel,” Eli commands.
My cheeks flush, my muscles tighten, my back bows. I watch it all as waves of pleasure ripple under my skin, igniting at my core.
My vision blurs as I stare into my reflection.
Eli shoves his jeans off and rips his top over his head. “Now watch us,” he demands, before gripping his cock with one hand and tugging on it as he positions himself behind me.
The first thrust has me crying out. His hips hit my ass as he pulls out and drives back inside me. This isn’t like last night, where he was slow and gentle with me. He’s not holding back this time.
“Do you know how hot it is to see your ass shake every time I bottom out inside you?” Eli asks, staring down at where we’re joined.
He lifts his head as he fucks me so hard I almost lose my grip on the sink. “Those tits,” he says, watching them sway with each thrust. “So fucking sexy to see them jostle as I fuck you.”
His hands bruise my hips. “Look me in the eyes as you come, Angel.”
He’s not even touching my clit and yet, the pleasure builds just the same. I’ve never come from penetration alone. Never thought I could.
But the tingling in my arms and legs, the swirling pressure in my belly—it all builds until I’m screaming and shaking.
All the while, our eyes never deviate from each other.
Not when my orgasm tears through me so hard I think I might black out.
Not when he grunts through his own release.
We stay locked on each other as our breaths sharpen, panting in synchrony.
Only when he pulls out of me and cleans me with a warm, damp cloth do I let my eyes drift closed.
Eli lifts me into his arms. I don’t bother protesting; I’ve learned now that he’s more than strong enough to carry me. He brings me to the bed, laying me down before crawling under the duvet beside me.
His arms wrap around me once again, shielding me from the world in a way only he can.