70. This is Duress #3
The clanging of my dropped fork snaps her head up to mine.
I hold her gaze. My poised expression is gone.
I have no idea what it communicates to her, but it’s not carefully composed anymore.
“Elaborate please.” It’s all I can say. My mind is running ninety miles an hour, and mascarpone is souring in my gut.
“You told me you didn’t like me like that… that you think of me like a little sister.”
“When my cock was inside you, did you think I was thinking familial thoughts of you? When I was rubbing my cum on you, were you under the impression I was wishing we were siblings? When I was eating your pussy, did you think—”
“Stop.”
“Why should I stop? For months, I’ve laid out that I want you, that I’m attracted to you, that I can’t stop thinking about you, that I get hard imagining your face. And this whole time, you thought it was… what? A game?”
When she doesn’t respond, I go on. “Or did you think it was a lie? That I was using you to get off?” My voice rises. “How could you think that?”
“Because you said so. Because when I came to you, you said nothing could ever happen. You told me I was like a little sister to you and that you’d beat up anyone who hurt me just like my brothers.
” Her voice hitches, but her eyes are daggers.
“Because you told me so. And I believed you. Why should I believe any differently now?”
Brighton
“And that’s why you need to resist me?”
I nod.
“And that’s why you were crying before you ghosted me?”
God. I don’t even want to think about that night. I jerk my head once, avoiding his gaze. He pauses his questioning until I look up again.
“Is that why you kicked me out after our first night together?”
Obviously. But I don’t say that. I just bob my head once, pushing my cannelloni around my plate.
“So, a decade ago—and someday, darlin’, I’ll tell you about all that was going on then—I said no to your teenage advances, and I hurt you.”
My teenage advances. I don’t like the sound of that.
Though, I have to admit, even though I hate to do so, that if an eighteen-year-old showed up here to pledge undying love for me now, I would call it the same.
Recognizing that, I swallow past the ever-softening lump in my throat before nodding again.
“Look at me, Brighton.”
I lift my head, but struggle to meet his gaze. When I do, the tenderness in his face breaks me. He slides his chair back, and opens his arms for me. “Come here, baby.”
It takes all the courage I have to move my leaden legs toward his chair, but I do it anyway. Every dream I’ve ever had includes this man. And if he’s here, in my kitchen, laying it all out, he could crush me. But it would be the last time.
Either way, the risk is there. It always has been. And I’m brave so I jump, knowing I’m strong enough to catch myself if he doesn’t.
I climb onto his lap, feeling awkward.
He wraps both arms around me, cocooning me, and pulls me closer to him. I start to duck my head under his chin, but he pulls away, and I temper myself to avoid the sharp sting of his correction. Or worse, his rejection.
“Don’t hide from me right now.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to hear what I’ve said since that night however many years ago when I rejected you.”
I flinch, closing my eyes.
“Look at me, Bright.”
When I do, he rocks my world. “I told you you were every fantasy I have. I told you I was never leaving. I told you I get hard thinking of your face when you come. I told you you’ve tortured me for more than a decade. I told you you were every dream I have. I told you you were like coming home.”
He searches my face, and tears pool and stick in my bottom lashes.
“Baby, you gotta get this. Unless it’s one-sided…
Unless you don’t want me… If you’re in this, I need you to hear what I’ve said over and over, not just cling to something I said when I was drunk when I couldn’t have what I wanted most. I’m laying it out there, Brighton.
I want you. I choose you. But I have to know, darlin’... Am I in this alone?”
The moment that follows stretches in slow motion in front of me.
Everything I’ve ever wanted.
Everything I’ve ever wished he’d say.
Every single thing I’d beg for this man to put before me, all for my taking.
I can accept and risk it all. Risk having my wildest dreams come true. Or risk having everything I’ve ever wanted ripped away.
“I—” I pause, mustering up my courage, holding his gaze. “Elias, it’s always been you. It will always be you. I’m fucking terrified, but it’s not one sided. In fact—” I’m ramping myself up for an epic rant.
But I don’t get the chance to follow through.
His mouth is on mine.
When he stands, he takes me with him to my room, to my bed.
There’s nothing fast about his movements. Nothing desperate. Nothing in me fights or rushes to have this or to not let it evaporate like a mist before my eyes.
He pulls off my shorts, dragging them slowly down my body, before letting his clothes pool beneath him on the floor. He puts a knee to the bed, and I open my legs for him to slide between.
With one fluid move, he hooks my knees over his elbows, taking complete control, and, holding my eyes with fire in his, he slides inside me.
He drags out slowly, torturously slowly, before slamming back in, hitting me at that inner-most spot.
He looks where we’re joined, where I’m butterflied before him and growls. “Fucking perfect.” His focus flitters between my face and my pussy as he speaks, “Watching you take all of me, darlin’, seeing my dick disappear inside your perfect body, feeling that slick velvet squeeze my cock—”
I clench around him, and his face springs up to meet mine.
“Fuuuck.” It’s a growl. The shuddering from his chest vibrates against my nipples.
“Ah,” I moan, the sensation so overwhelming… my breasts, my pussy, deep inside my belly. I’m overcome and can barely take it. It’s too much and it’s everywhere.
“Do that again.” He slams back inside and I squeeze him as he withdraws, drawing another expletive from his lips. “That feels— It’s—”
I do it again as he tries to withdraw. My body is fighting all the sensations. I’m working to not just take the pleasure humming through my body, but give it away, and make it good for him.
His slow slides. His deep position. My being held wide and helpless to him.
He thrusts until he bottoms out, building an orgasm inside me that may split me in two.
“Had your sweet. Had your rough. Had… Fuck!” He cuts himself off as I squeeze him again. “But, fuck, this— I…” He never finishes that sentence.
The sensation inside me is building. My orgasm is coming, deep and big, and I know it will shatter me.
I can barely think of the pride of making Eli speechless in bed when the force of it barrels through me and I scream. “Eli, I— I’m… Ahhhhh.”
The pleasure that ripples through me doesn’t stop. Everything inside me pulses and vibrates with sensation. My core is throbbing. My clit is pulsing. My womb is aching and thudding with pleasure I’ve never felt before.
I gasp, fighting to suck in air.
“Fuck. Bright. Fuck!” I hear Eli’s chants, and he releases one of my knees and finds my clit, rubbing and playing my body like an instrument.
He recites my name, pumping furiously, finding a new rhythm, drawing out my orgasm until I can’t decide if it’s the longest one in the history of sex or if I’m on number three.
“Eli. Oh God, Eli, Oh…”
I’m wrung out. My body welcomes him for another thrust before he pushes, hitting me at my deepest, most intimate place, and he comes. I feel his heat scorch me.
His body falls on me, his mouth at my ear, and I wrap him up with my arms. Looping my calf over his ass, I urge him to rock as our breaths fight to return to normal. He kisses my neck, just under my ear.
“You’ve ruined me, Brighton.” It’s a whisper. A vow. He moves slowly inside me. “Absolutely fucking ruined me.”