He doesn’t answer. We both know the answer to that.
“We were done long before he left,” I say. “I didn’t even want him to touch me if I wasn’t ovulating.”
“Why?”
“It felt… I don’t know, useless?” It should feel awkward to talk about sex with someone else with him, but somehow, it doesn’t. I don’t remember the last time Eli has made me feel uncomfortable. “Sex was always a reminder of what I couldn’t give him. Like, my body was worthless, so what was the point?”
Eli shifts so abruptly, I barely have time to move away so my head doesn’t bob to the ground. He sits upright, looking down at me. “There is nothing worthless about your body.” He shakes his head, and even though his gaze doesn’t move anywhere other than my face, it feels as if he’s mapped my entire body in his mind. “Nothing.”
A year ago, I would’ve laughed. How could a body that couldn’t give me the one thing I truly wanted not be worthless? I would sometimes dream of unzipping my skin, of being able to walk out of it and find another. I didn’t want anything else. Didn’t need the long hair or the dimples at the small of my back. I would’ve walked into any other, so long as those masses of endometrial tissues weren’t there. I would sometimes dream of it for so long, I’d start to feel numb, like I could truly detach from myself. But here, with the sincerity painting Eli’s profile, I can see that maybe, just maybe, he has a point. When he lifts a thumb to my right brow, tracing it, then the other, I feel every single point of contact, feel like my body is thoroughly inhabited and not simply lived in.
His finger goes down my face, caressing the long line of my nose, the tight edge of my jaw, the plumpness of my bottom lip. I part for him, and when he slides his finger further up my mouth, I kiss it, top lip covering the tip of his thumb. A low groan emanates from his throat as he continues his teasing, pressing the finger an inch inside. I lick the pad.
It feels as if we’re at a standstill, at the edge of a line we won’t be able to come back from if we cross it.
I’m not sure who moves first; if it’s his knee that climbs between my thighs, or if it’s my hands grasping at his shirt and pulling him down to me. He tastes like marshmallows and the whiskey he’d been sipping, like sin and desire wrapped in a kiss. A moan slips out when he brushes his tongue with mine, and the kiss moves from sweet to possessive. Claiming. He breathes heavily as he brings his thigh higher, so it creates pressure against my core, making me gasp.
“Do you know how crazy you make me with those small noises you make?” He drags kisses down my throat, making me arch against him. His teeth tease the soft skin below my ear. “How often I’ve dreamed of seeing you like this after you moaned while eating?” A hand lands on the underside of my breast, and while I want him to move up, to push my bra away and finally touch me, he gives me the lightest of touches. “You’re a fucking walking daydream.”
I squirm so his finger finally touches me, and finally, through my shirt, he palms my breast, toying with the peaked nipple. It’s been so long since I’ve felt a carnal craving like this, like I want to betouched just for the sake of the high. I feel like I just got a hit of some potent drug after being away for years.
“You feel so good in my hands,” he says, his other one now under my shirt, palming me with a vigor I wouldn’t have expected from him. He’s finally letting all his restraint go. His lips are back on mine, kissing and sucking and licking. My mind is only filled with his name, repeated over and over like a mantra.
“Say it again,” he groans against my lips, which makes me realize it wasn’t only in my head.
“Eli,” I gasp. I don’t recognize the urgency in my voice, the unapologetic way I’m making a mess of his leg. And when he lets go of my breast and his fingers tease the button of my jean shorts, I feel like I’m about to burst.
“Can I?” he asks through heavy breaths.
“Is this considered public indecency?” I ask, even though every part of my body is screaming at me to stop joking and finally get him where I need him.
“I’ll take my chances.” His fingers continue tracing the line of my shorts, but he won’t breach it unless I ask him to.
“Touch me,” I whisper.
He wastes no time, slipping past my shorts, then my panties. I gasp at the first graze of his digit against my middle, but the moment his lips find mine again, I’m lost. I forget about why this might be a bad idea. No wrong decision could feel this good.
“Do you know what you do to me?” he says as his fingers move in tight circles, already lifting me toward an edge I haven’t reached with someone else in a long time.
“I have an idea,” I say, both because if what he feels is only a hundredth of what I do, it is still a tremendous amount, and because the hard length of him pressed against my hip isn’t lying. He seems to move almost involuntarily, looking for friction at the rhythm he’s offering it to me.
How long haveIlonged for this? My teenage years were spent dreaming of having him like this. I never had the chance to feel his hands on my body before I left, and the real thing is so much better than anything I could’ve imagined.
His mouth remains against my ear, whispering all the ways I’m driving him crazy as he listens to the sounds I make to find the perfect rhythm against my clit. I’m grasping at whatever part I can find—his back and then his ear, my legs shaking. It’s too much but also exactly what I need.
I nip at his jaw, at his ear, but at one point, I can’t move anymore, my body coiled too tight.
“I-I’m going to come.”
“Good,” he says, and that does it. I explode like an overblown balloon, spasming over his hand, my mouth parted against his neck as I hold on to him like I’ll fly away if he doesn’t keep me tethered.
My blood roars in my ears as I slowly come down from my high, feeling the loss the second Eli pulls his hand away from my panties. My hands are still buried in his hair, our eyes locked. I don’t know how I could ever look anywhere when he’s in front of me.
Slowly, he brings his thumb to his lips and licks it, and I’m immediately ready for more.
Softness blooms after the fire he’s just shown as he leans to kiss my nose, then my lips. “Worth every fucking thing in the world.”
Chapter 28
