Chapter 12
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Air flooded into Mackenzie’s lungs in a desperate gasp as she sat upright in the dark. Her eyes opened wide, and they darted back and forth as they struggled to see.
She couldn’t figure out where she was. All she knew was that her heart was beating a million miles a minute.
As she struggled to bring her breathing and heart rate under control, pieces of reality started filtering into her mind, replacing the flashes of the nightmare that still clung to her consciousness.
Where was she? At Eli’s house. Specifically? In Eli’s bed. Where was he? Out on the couch.
As her brain was able to answer each question with a concrete detail, she felt a calm descend over her body.
The residual effect of the night terror still held on, though, as well as the overriding sense of dread that had followed her from the dream state into wakefulness.
Just then Eli’s voice traveled the distance of the room, hitting her ears and bringing her the last little bit of calm that she’d been searching for.
“Kenzie? Are you okay?”
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw him standing in the doorway of his bedroom. He was shirtless and wearing sweats, just like when he’d opened the door the first night she’d shown up.
She cleared her throat and responded, “Bad dream.”
That was all she could manage to croak out in her raspy voice.
She’d said it as a shorthand way of telling him it was no big deal. There was no real danger.
However, that wasn’t the way he took it. In a flash, he was across the room and sitting next to her on the bed, he wrapped his arms around her as he stroked her hair and down her back.
“You’re still having those?” he murmured, and she felt the vibration through his chest.
“They just started again.” She closed her eyes and melted against his strength, accepting without question the peace that only his touch and only his words had ever brought. It was like a time machine, transporting her back to a time before they’d become complicated. Back to a time when he’d just been her everything and nothing else.
Heat spread through her as he rubbed her back. At first, it was the warmth of safety and comfort, reminding her that she was no longer in the frightening, surreal world of terror.
Before long, however, the tingle in her belly took on a sharper edge. It caused her breath to race and grow increasingly shallow.
Just like her breath, his touch started to affect her heartbeat. When he’d first wrapped her up in his arms, serenity had descended over her in a marshmallow haze, her heart had slowed to a manageable thump-thump, thump-thump rhythm. Now that his touch was heating her up like he had lava in his fingertips, her heart started beating at a hummingbird pace that more closely resembled a th-th-th-th-th-th-ump.
His breaths mirrored hers and the energy flowing between them shifted. It was slight, but it was everything.
She pulled her head back from where it had been buried in his shoulder and looked into his face. She could barely make out his features in the small sliver of brightness that made its way through the blinds, but she did see a hungry glint in his eye that had nothing to do with the moonlight.
“Kenzie.” Eli’s voice held a gravelly quality, setting off fireworks in her core that exploded through her entire being.
At that moment, she knew that whatever the consequences may be, she wanted him. She wanted to be with him again. She didn’t want to think about the past. She had no desire to worry about the future. She wanted the present. The now.
Mackenzie had been in denial about the two of them, but even she couldn’t deny this any longer—it was inevitable.
Besides, she reasoned, this was the one thing she’d never had. Closure. One last time. Goodbye sex.
In the back of her mind, she knew that might be grasping at straws, but she didn’t care. If there was a straw there for her to grasp at, she was going to grab it and hold on with both hands, because she needed this.
“Eli, I want…No, I need one night. With you. Nothing more. Just this. Just you and me. I don’t want to think. I just want to feel. Please, just make me feel.” Maybe at a later date and time, she would feel embarrassed that she’d begged, but she’d deal with that then. Right now she wanted to take comfort any way she could get it.
Eli leaned back, his voice desperate and rough when he asked, “Are you sure? Are you really sure?”
She was surprised she didn’t get whiplash from the speed at which she nodded.
Immediately, he dipped his head and pressed his lips to her neck. She’d expected him to kiss her mouth, but that was the thing about Eli, he never did what she expected, he did more. He took his time kissing his way passionately down her neck to the spot that had always sent her into another atmosphere, the spot no other man had ever found. Feeling his lips touch her skin, feeling the mastery that he still had over her body cemented the fact that she was doing the right thing and sent a delicious shudder rolling from her head to her feet and back up again.
A moan escaped from the back of her throat. It had been so long since she’d felt that heavenly heat. Then, just when she was lulled into the ecstasy that he was taking her to, his mouth moved up and claimed hers and the moment that they were lip to lip, something broke open in her. That incredible pressure of his mouth moving over hers, devouring her with an urgency that mirrored her own had her entire body trembling with unreleased need. Her hands grasped at his back in desperation and his muscles flexed beneath her touch.
His touch, his kiss, his body felt new again, but at the same time so familiar and so right. “Please,” she begged again.
In one smooth, swift motion Eli broke their kiss and whipped off the T-shirt she was wearing with a speed that made her head spin. She tried to catch her breath as her hair tumbled back down over her shoulders. She hadn’t even thought about the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra or underwear, but as his hungry gaze devoured her, she grew very aware of her nakedness.
She made herself still, giving him time to drink her in with his eyes. She’d always loved the way that he looked at her. Even as an insecure teen, she’d never felt shy around Eli. He’d always looked at her with such awe and wonder that there was no room for any self-doubt.
She smiled at the dumbstruck look on his face as his eyes raked over her breasts. “Touch me,” she whispered.
He looked up to meet her eyes, and she saw the raw vulnerability there.
“I’m scared to,” he admitted with a grin as he lifted a shaking hand. His voice was teasing, but there was a hint of heartbreaking seriousness behind it. “I’m scared that if I do, my hand will go right through you. I’m scared that this is just a dream and if I move I’ll wake up, and it’ll be over. That you’ll be gone.”
Everything inside her urged her to cry, I’m here, and I’m never leaving! Her throat tightened with the effort to hold back the exclamation. It would’ve been so sweet to give in to that temptation, to tell him that this was real and that she was never leaving. But she knew that wasn’t a promise she could be sure that she could keep. There was too much between them left unanswered, too much still left unsaid.
So, she responded in the only way she could think of. She moved closer to him, lifting her leg and straddling him as her arms snaked around his neck, pulling him close to her. It was intoxicating, the heat of his bare chest against her breasts. She felt her nipples harden against his steel-strong pecs.
Mackenzie felt the rumble in her body when he groaned, and his hands found her hips. She realized how much she’d missed being pressed up against him late at night, in the dark. How much she’d missed the feel of his arms and his skin. And his hair, his breath, his heartbeat, and his musky, masculine scent.
There’d been times in her life where just the thought of his smell made her lightheaded, and now she was actually here, pressed up against him, free to breathe him in to her heart’s content. It was almost too good to be true.
She turned her head so that her mouth was against his ear. Her tongue slipped out and flicked the lobe of his ear before sucking it in between her lips. His fingers flexed into her hips as she did. His chest rose and fell against hers, and she could feel the steel-hard mass of his erection pressing against the heat of her core. The only thing separating their bodies was the cotton of his sweats
Rolling her hips against his steel shaft, she tangled her hands in his hair as she pressed feather-light kisses the rest of the way up to his ear. When she had reached the top, she whispered, “I’m real. This isn’t a dream.”
“Fuck,” he rasped.
“Yes, please,” she breathed.
Eli pulled his head back and then crushed his lips to hers, entering her mouth with his demanding tongue, exploring every inch of its hot, wet recesses. She groaned immediately, the fire that his kiss ignited in her belly sent flames shooting through her.
She knew it could burn her up entirely if she weren’t careful, but at that moment, she didn’t care.
As his lips moved with increasing desperation against hers, he managed to grunt out, “I need you. Right now. More than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire life.”
With that, he planted his strong hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed her back on the bed, her head softly landing among the nest of pillows that rested there. Her arms shot up above her head and pressed against the headrest. Using the leverage she found there she arched as his tongue trailed a hot, wet path down her neck and her chest.
At the same time, his fingers traced flickering curlicues from her waist all the way along her belly. The movements sent tingles skittering off across the skin of her stomach, and that tingle spread rapidly through the rest of her body. They raced up and down her limbs, through her back, up and down her spine and back again. They were like zipping flickers of light in the dark, as soon as she thought she had a hold of one, it would zip away again.
There was only one place in her body that the electric sensations sped to and stayed, collecting and pooling in a deep well of arousal, and that was deep in her belly, down between her legs. There, the sensations were so intense that she almost felt like she was made of electricity, instead of it only zapping through her.
Between Eli’s tongue and his fingertips, she felt like he was touching every part of her at once. Every single cell in her body was acutely aware of his touch. She felt utterly enveloped by him. The gentle yet firm pressure from his hands, the demanding heat of his tongue—both of them moving inexorably closer to her rapidly hardening nipples—it all combined to create the illusion that Eli’s touch was everywhere.
Her brain swirled with colors and sounds. Lightheadedness threatened to overtake her, and she’d never been more willing to give in to a loss of control as she was at that moment.
In fact, willing would be too weak a word. She welcomed it. More than that. She desired it. She was desperate for it.
She writhed uncontrollably under his attentions, arching her back and moaning loudly. “God, it feels so good,” she gasped. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
Her hands flew to the back of his head, urging him downward. It was one thing to live in the moment and be content, enjoying what was happening without diluting it with the past or the future. That was an admirable goal, but that philosophy just didn’t apply right then.
No, what she needed was to give into her body’s demands—and those demands were very simple and very clear. She had to feel Eli’s hands cupping her breasts from below. She had to feel his hot, insistent tongue flicking her nipples. There was no substitute for that—nothing else would do.
To her immense relief, he complied with her unspoken wishes and sped his journey down to her hard, aching nipples. He took one of them in his mouth and then the other, applying the most maddeningly gentle suction, but then ramped up her arousal by flicking them inside his mouth with the hard tip of his tongue.
She cried out. She couldn’t help it. There wasn’t room in her brain to think about anything except the waves of mindless pleasure sweeping through her.
Her fingers moved through his hair as he swirled his tongue around and around each of her nipples in turn. Even the feel of his hair under her fingers gave her that unsettling so-new-yet-so-familiar feeling of déjà vu that she hadn’t been able to shake since the minute she’d seen him in the gym. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if she somehow were dropped directly into this moment without context, just the feeling of his hair entwined in her fingers would be enough to let her know that it was Eli.
He was imprinted on her muscles, in her nerves, on her heart and her soul. Her body knew him, inside and out. That wasn’t something that even a decade could shake loose.
They were connected on a soul level. They always had been. Nothing—not time, or distance, or heartbreak, or other people—had been able to sever that connection. She knew that nothing ever would.
Without breaking the suction that his mouth held on her nipple, Eli slid the flat of his palm down her belly, not stopping until his hand settled between her legs. She barely had time to register that it was coming before the sensations hit her—Eli sliding his fingers up and down her outer lips, spreading her juices along her pulsing seam, moving his fingertips in small circles around her sensitive opening.
And then, the icing on the cake—the thing that made her shudder and come apart—Eli pressing the pads of his fingers in a small, pulsing motion over her sensitive pleasure button.
White light exploded behind her eyes, and she lost control of her senses. She couldn’t believe that anything in the world could feel this good—although, of course, it could. It was Eli. Nothing was impossible.
Her body shuddered and that loss of control it had been aching for just moments before overtook her in a jarring rush. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed over her, and she lost herself in them.
She knew she didn’t have to worry, though. She didn’t have to be in control. Not with Eli. He was the one person she didn’t have to be strong with. Her logical brain hadn’t quite caught up with that idea yet. It threw up roadblocks, asking her, how will you survive if he hurts you again?
But right there, right then, in that moment of ultimate vulnerability and ultimate pleasure, she knew the truth, she’d managed to survive without him all this time. And at least now she’d have these memories to hold onto. And closure. Closure and orgasms. That was all she was expecting to get out of this, and she was already halfway there.