Chapter Eleven
Eleanor knew she was staring as Will walked up to her front porch. Over six feet of muscle. The man was more than a foot taller than her, and seeing him stalk forward like this made her heart pound fast, like she was prey. His dark blue eyes were zeroed in on her face. She was the subject of his focus and even if she wanted to escape it, she didn’t think she’d be able to.
If she was honest with herself, though, she didn’t want to escape his focus. She felt more alive, and more her when she was around Will.
In four years, the essentials hadn’t changed.
“Do you have a few minutes?” he asked.
She couldn’t speak. If she could get to her phone, she’d look it up. Missing voice box, she’d type into the symptom checker. And the Dr. Bridges app would suggest that she get to the hospital immediately because her heart was surely broken.
He stopped at the bottom step and stared up at her. His face, so dear to her. The strong jaw that she’d once smoothed her hands over as she kissed him. Now it was covered in stubble. Those deep blue eyes that used to remind her of the ocean at night. They were haunted now. You used to be mine, she thought. When he’d finally broken her down, taken away the last of her defenses, when he’d finally gotten her to trust in someone other than herself—he’d gone away.
She was reminded of the French book, The Little Prince. It had been an assignment for one of her college classes. In the story, a fox asked the prince to tame him. And once the fox was tamed, the prince had to go away. She’d thought it was the saddest, stupidest thing she’d ever read, that part of the story. But knowing about the fox and the prince hadn’t changed her own story at all. She’d still fallen for it like that stupid fox. And like that stupid fox, she’d wanted to be tamed.
If he wasn’t here right now, she’d be teaching piano or reading ILC for the fifteen hundredth time or binge-watching whatever Netflix recommended. Quiet, geeky pursuits for a quiet, geeky girl. But he was here, standing right before her, with a helpless, haunted look on his face, and she wanted to crumple to the floor mat in front of her door.
“Ellie?” he asked.
She shook her head, trying to clear it, and stepped aside so he could come in. “Yeah, I have a few minutes. There are some make-up lessons a little later, an hour from now.”
He walked up the porch steps and came inside. Fido came out from under the couch, took one look at the hulking man, and scampered off to Ellie’s bedroom.
Ellie wouldn’t mind hiding under the bed, herself.
Will stared down at her, and shut the door without looking behind him. He looked the same, but different. Haunted. It wasn’t just the way he carried himself; it was the dark look in his eyes. The man had been in pain for some time now.
“What happened to you?” Ellie whispered.
He opened his mouth, closed it, then rubbed his left thigh roughly. “I got hurt that night of the fire.”
“Oh.” The sound came out on an exhale. He thought she’d been asking about his limp, but that was only a small part of what she needed to know.
The big questions still remained, jangling around in her head like loose piano keys. Why didn’t you say goodbye? Why didn’t you let me mourn with you when your parents died? Why did you disappear, and where did you go? Why aren’t you mine?
“Did you get my texts last night?” he asked. “Or did I have the wrong number and they went to some poor stranger?”
She gave a wry little laugh. “I got them. I didn’t think you deserved a response.”
“I don’t,” he said, taking another step toward her.
He was so close. He smelled clean, like pine trees and mountain air. He smelled like he belonged here.
“Ellie, are you with Nathan?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, I’m not.”
“Good. That creep never smelled right.”
“He’s not a creep anymore,” she said. Nathan never smelled right? Eleanor had forgotten the strange phrases Will sometimes used.
“Okay.” He raised his hand so slowly it seemed in slow-motion. He tilted her chin up at the same time he bent forward, lowering his mouth to hers.
And she kissed him. Her body betrayed her in every possible way, and Dr. Bridges’s app might have an explanation for it, but as delicious lust coursed through her body, igniting nerve endings she’d pretended she no longer had, Eleanor didn’t care.
Before she could throw her arms around his neck to deepen the kiss, though, she stopped. This was too much. Too soon. No explanations. She took a step back, out of his reach. “Why didn’t you take me with you?”
He paused, his eyes half-closed like he was still kissing her. That sleepy, sexy look would be her undoing. Will’s existence would be her undoing. It was like Dirk Magnage coming back to Joona Carpence in Interstellar Love Connection—was the returned Dirk a phantom, or a foe? Or her true love? Either way, nothing would be the same again.
He cleared his throat. “You’d just gotten into grad school. I couldn’t settle anywhere, Ellie, and I didn’t want to stifle your dreams.”
“Don’t call me that,” she whispered.
“Ellie?”
She closed her eyes, trying to keep the tears in. “Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”
He made a pained sound in his throat. “Okay.”
“What are you doing here, Will?” she asked. “Really. What are you doing here?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know anymore.”
That clean scent of him—fresh snow, pine needles. His muscular form right in front of her, his arms hanging at his sides, palms forward, like he’d offer her anything. Irresistible. Taking the one step to close the space between them, Eleanor stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to Will’s again.
Heat. Affection. Love. She wanted it all. He was here now, and for now, at least, he was hers. It was what she’d dreamed of and what she’d yearned for, and she knew he would not deny her. She took his hand and guided it to one of her breasts, squeezing herself through her long-sleeved t-shirt. He groaned into her mouth and kissed her harder, his tongue tasting her lips until she opened for him.
She took a step back, then another, but she locked her arms around his neck, holding him to her. He followed where she led for a few steps, then let out a growl of frustration. “Where’s your bedroom?” he asked.
“Down the hall,” she said.
The walls of her living room seemed to spin as Will picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He took long, but uneven, strides to the hallway. He threw open the first door, but it was the bathroom.
“Next one,” she said, unable to stop her smile.
“Don’t want to wait for the bedroom,” he said, pressing her up against the wall.
“Fine by me.”
He helped lift her shirt off, then leaned into her again. She could feel his cock, hard through his jeans. It pressed against her stomach. They were the wrong height for this.
Before she could say so, he knelt down and let her go long enough to pull down her jeans. She kicked off her underwear—plain, sensible black cotton. He kissed her bare hip, then moved his lips across her lower belly to kiss the other hip.
“So beautiful,” he said, before pressing his face against her curls. “And you smell so good.”
Eleanor looked down at him, on his knees before her. He glanced up, those deep blue eyes swirling with lust. Slowly, so slowly, he dragged his hand up from her ankle to her knee, to her upper thigh. Her breath was ragged. Nothing existed except for his touch on her skin. When he reached her folds, he moved his finger across them, collecting some of her moisture.
With a sexy smile on his face, he put his finger into his mouth. Then he pulled it out of his mouth and leaned forward on his knees, and gave her one long lick along her folds.
A wordless, needy sound escaped from Eleanor’s lips.
He did it again, keeping his tongue flat. Eleanor writhed, unable to keep still. He brought one hand to her hip, holding her in place, and used his other hand to spread her folds slightly, giving him better access to—
“Ohmygosh,” she said, biting back a squeak.
Chuckling against her, he plunged a finger inside her as he licked. His tongue found her clit and lapped at it lazily.
“Will,” she said. “Will—I’m going to—but I want your cock—”
He stilled his finger inside her and stopped licking. “I don’t have a condom. Do you?”
“No,” she panted. “But I haven’t been with anyone. I’m safe.”
“There’s been no one else since you,” he said. Maybe another guy would have felt self-conscious to have gone four years without sex, but Will’s heated gaze was entirely serious and unashamed. “But I don’t want to get you pregnant—”
“No danger there,” she said. She’d been on the pill for the past two years for irregular periods, so she wasn’t worried. And if he said he hadn’t been with anyone else, she believed him. Maybe she didn’t understand why he’d left, but she still trusted him.
Heaven help her.
He kissed her again, his mouth scorching, alighting every sensation she possessed. She heard the clinking of his belt buckle, the shifting of fabric as his jeans fell. Reaching toward him, she lifted the edge of his thermal and he pulled it off, exposing his chest and abs. She ran her hands over his muscles, over his pecs and down those pronounced abs to his hard cock, which was already twitching for her. He groaned again, and it sounded animalistic, powerful.
He lifted her up by her ass until she was off the ground, her breasts at the same level as his face. Eleanor gasped as he pressed his lips to one of her nipples, swirling his tongue around the tip, sucking gently. She ground herself against him as the pleasure shot from her nipple to her clit. But he wasn’t done with her, yet. He lavished the same attention on her other nipple, kissing and sucking, until Eleanor couldn’t stop the whimpering noises coming from her throat.
Then he slowly lowered her down. She felt his hard tip at the side of her entrance, so she reached down and guided his cock while Will lowered her onto it. Delicious agony. He stretched her almost to the point of discomfort, so she held in place, unable to move right away.
“You all right?” he murmured into her neck.
“Uh…yeah,” she said. It was a struggle to breathe. Her entire being was focused on the point where the two of them joined.
He pressed a sucking kiss to her neck, causing her to shiver. “You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
He moved within her, creating a warm, wet friction that made Eleanor want to wriggle in pleasure. The heat built within her, until his pace seemed too slow. He held her in place between him and the wall, one of his arms beneath her, cupping her bottom. The other hand he brought around and used to send feather-light touches over her breasts. He pinched one of her nipples delicately at first, so lightly Eleanor could barely feel it. Then he increased the pressure, bringing her to near-pain, and she hissed, “Yes, Will. Yes.”
She was climbing higher and higher, helping their speed by bracing her thighs on his hips to propel herself up and down even faster. Will’s breathing turned to ragged gasps and he kissed and licked her neck. He bit her skin gently, and she arched into him, wanting more. She wanted to be closer to him, as close as possible.
She could feel her clit dragging back and forth over his pelvis, the friction matching their now frenzied thrusts, and the repeated pressure he put on her nipple, his biting kisses. She cried out when she came. “Will!”
He pumped within her and she felt his release, hot and wet. His arms were like thick bands around her, pressing her even closer to his chest. “Ellie—Eleanor,” he said.
Eleanor didn’t sound quite right. “Ellie,” she whispered, leaning her head on his shoulder. “You can call me Ellie.”