CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Addison
Former Mayoral Aide, Preston Hobbs, Left out of the Fold.
Hobbs the Very Picture of Displeasure While Watching Inauguration from Police Barricade.
—Charleston Courier
Sources Close to Mayor Laugh off Rumors of a Preston Hobbs/Getaway Girl Romance.
Source asked to be named as Lydia. L-Y-D-I-A.
—Charleston Post
My head is numb, but everywhere else is alive.
So I give myself over to the rush, whimpering at the firm press of Elijah’s fingers on my clit. How they circle me with precision born of practice. Of paying attention. We’ve only been lovers such a short time, but he already knows how to make my body purr. How to make it tighten in some places and loosen in others. Throbthrobthrob.
I know the man behind me so well, too. His voice betrayed his doubts about what transpired today and why. But I won’t confirm those doubts for him. I won’t make someone he loves into a villain. Or weaken his ability to trust—it’s one of the more beautiful things about him. And God, he might be clueless over how I feel, but there are so many beautiful things about him. I’m so aware of each and every one that I can’t help but turn malleable in his hands and drop my head forward against the file cabinet.
Some might consider this giving in—and they might be right. But I’m not just giving in to Elijah. I’m giving in to myself, too. I’m taking as much of him as I can get. Greedy. Greedy. If what we have is only physical, I will exult in rocking his world. Giving him something he’ll never get anywhere else. But I heard his words. You are mine. She knows how I feel about you. I hear those words and hope keeps me afloat. There’s more here than sex and friendship. So I’m not giving in. I’m fighting in my own way.
I don’t want to lie anymore. Not even by omission.
The decision comes with lightness…and a hint of nerves. Okay, more than a hint. So I give myself permission to touch now and talk later. My body rejoices in response, clamoring for what it considers the ultimate reward. Elijah’s pleasure. Mine. Reaching that place together without a single reservation or apology.
“You’ve wanted me like this, Captain?” Drugging euphoria races through my blood, making my eyelids sag, my breath come faster. “Pinned underneath you on my belly so I can’t get away?”
“Yes.” His fingers leave me to lower my panties with a rough yank. Then they’re back. Flesh to flesh. Parting and worshipping me with thorough strokes. “I want to start you on your hands and spread knees, though. Your belly is where you’ll end up when I get ready to come. I’ll want to press down hard. Let myself go where it’s tight and deep.”
I wish more than anything that we were in bed right now. Away from the memory of what happened today and the endless responsibilities to follow. But every time Elijah rubs my clit, every time he grinds his thickness against my bottom, our surroundings blur a little more. “You’re already so huge when you’re inside me, Captain,” I murmur, a thrill racing over my skin when he groans and starts to hump me in earnest, my knees bumping into the metal file cabinet every other second. “Do you think I can handle you from behind?”
“Dammit, sugar. Stop talking to me like that…” His words emerge hoarse. “I’m not even inside you yet and that bratty little whimper is tightening my balls up.”
I brace my hands on the cabinet and glance back at him through my lashes. “Better get inside me fast, then,” I say, dropping my voice to a whisper. “I want every drop for myself.”
His hips ram into me with such force, I cry out…and the cry turns into a scream when his middle and index finger hook inside me and his teeth clamp down around my ear. “I haven’t had my cock inside you in days,” he grits, the pad of his middle finger jiggling my G-spot. “I try to be gentle with this pussy because she stays so sweet and wet for me. But if the taunting continues, I’ll fuck her to hell.”
My lungs are depleted of air. This is what I live for. Wrecking this man. Tempting the beast beneath his suit to the surface. “I needed you so bad last night. I slept with your pillow between my legs…and when I woke up—”
“Don’t.”
“I rubbed myself all over it. I called it by your name.”
Excitement blares through me at an earsplitting level. It’s threaded through with the sound of Elijah’s zipper being ripped down behind me, his belt clanging. And I can do nothing more than wait, braced against the cabinet for what I earned. What I tempted. A wingtip shoves in between my ankles and kicks my feet wide. I angle my hips with a murmur of his name.
Hard, hot flesh finds my entrance, sinks in a mere inch—but a thick one. I watch through the haze as one of Elijah’s hands plants beside mine, the other arm anchoring me at the waist. I’m impaled in one filthy, grunting, nasty upthrust, my upper body forced against the cabinet, cheek pressed to the cool metal. The muscles in my upper thighs and loins wail in delight, my nerve endings invigorated with power. Need. Love.
With that love comes the responsibility to appease Elijah’s hunger and I do it. I do it while my own simmers, simmers, begins to boil with every cursing pound of his flesh into my body. “You’re so deep this way, baby.” I squeeze my inner walls around him, sending myself closer to the beckoning crest. “Does that feel good?”
“Yes. Oh God, yes.”
“I bet you need to finish so bad.”
“Stop.” The arm around my waist jerks me higher on Elijah’s lap, leaving the toes of my high heels to scrape back and forth on the ground, my right shoe finally falling off. “Goddamn, sugar, it’s tight. It’s so tight.”
“No, Elijah,” I gasp. “You’re just big.”
His forehead lands in the crook of my neck with a groan, his hips moving at a wild pace behind me, his abdomen rebounding off my backside with every savage pump. I’ve left the ground at this point, literally and figuratively, ticklish, restless pleasure beginning to attack me between the legs, making me sob and work my hips like a concubine.
“Addison, I’m going to fill you up. I’m going to fill you the fuck up, because you’re mine. Head to toe. Morning and night. I don’t share and I don’t…I can’t have you drifting away from me.” The heel of his hand slams into the cabinet, rocking it back on its base. “Mine.”
His. This is the first time my heart and body have ever released at the same time. My sense of reality teeters and slips, my heart climbing into my throat. “I always have been. Always.” The confession leaves me in a choked rush, Elijah’s deep final thrust shooting me up into the atmosphere in a cloud of sparkling euphoria. My flesh quakes and tightens, milking him, coaxing his own climax and we meet in the middle, Elijah continuing to mutter epithets into my nape as he finishes, still going even as his release runs down the insides of my thighs.
There’s no rest for my heart, though. It’s still pounding as hard as it was mid-orgasm, still ricocheting off the glands of my throat. I told him. I said it out loud that I’ve always been his and now the dam is open. Closing it would be physically painful and…God, how many times did he say—out loud—that I’m his? Do I have anything to lose? He has to feel the same. He has to or I wouldn’t be floating up near the ceiling right now.
Still breathing heavily, Elijah plants a kiss on my shoulder and buckles up his pants behind me. He doesn’t move away, though, his heat still warming my back, his gaze sliding along the curve of my neck. I can feel it there.
I reach down and pull my panties back into place, letting my dress drop from where it has been rucked up around my waist. And when I turn around, Elijah smiles at me, his eyes searching mine…
“I love you,” I whisper in a shaky voice. “Elijah, I love you.”
Until that moment, I don’t realize I’ve been living with tension in my neck, my back, my chest, but the bolts loosen as soon as the truth slips free. I could fly.
“I saw you standing in the front of the church—a-and I had to leave, because I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand to watch you marry someone else. We hadn’t even met.” I lay my palms on my flaming cheeks. “When you got into my car, everything made sense, though. Not loving you would have been crazier than loving you at first sight. You’re my best friend…and I love you. I always have. Before I knew you and…so much more after. More every day.” I swipe at my damp eyes. “It has been really hard not to tell you.”
I’ve been so caught up in finally releasing my feelings out into the light, it hasn’t occurred to me until a heavy silence falls that Elijah hasn’t responded. Those chocolate eyes that only a moment ago scrutinized me, looking for lingering signs of our fight? They’re confused. Dark and troubled. Shocked. “Addison…”
Shocked?
Denial begins to creep into my stomach, but I beat it back. “Yes?”
His mouth opens and closes. He shoves a hand through his hair. “I want to say it back.” Dark eyebrows draw together, like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “I want to, but…”
All the world’s color melts away, sliding down the walls, leaving everything black and white. Leaving me stripped of my skin and trying not to wheeze. “Oh.”
He reaches for me, but I have the presence of mind to step back. Away from the man who is devastating me. Clipping the veins leading to my heart, one by one. “You and me…we make each other happy. I need you.” His hand drops, his big chest starting to lift and fall, fastfastfast. “Why can’t things stay exactly as they are? You say those words and now…”
“Now what?”
“Now I’m expected to say them back. And then we’re expected to do a million other things until we lose sight of us. Just us.”
Oh my God.
Oh my God. I’ve just bled myself dry in front of this man, told him I loved him…and he’s not going to say it back. He’s not. Going to say it back. Because he doesn’t feel that way about me. Here it is. Confirmation of my deepest, most awful fear. Oh my God.
I’m forcing him to let me down with these patented excuses, because he’s a good man. But we both know the truth. It’s lying on the floor between us like a hunted deer. He’s not over the past. He’s not over his ex, just as I’ve always suspected but apparently never accepted.
What happened with the wedding, Goose…I don’t know if I ever got over it, you know? When you’re always trying to do the right thing and something huge like that blows up in your face…I don’t know if I can explain it. Except to say, I haven’t worked my way through it yet. I’m trying.
Not hard enough, I guess. Or maybe he did try and I was just too impatient. Or their love is still too fresh. My knees wobble, trying to drop me to the floor, but I reach deep for the strength to stay standing. I reach further and find the willpower to swallow the scream. To lift my chin. What now? What now?
The plan.
When a person is adrift, they’ll cling to any life preserver, even if it’s half deflated and they’d rather just sink to the bottom of the ocean. But I’m a survivor, so I hold tight to the only route I can take, now that I’ve had my heart crushed on the rocks of a cliff.
My entire body jolts when Elijah frames my face with his hands. “Addison.”
How is he looking at me? Is that sympathy? Or is he haunted and suffering like me? I can’t tell anymore, but I can’t stand it. I just need a way out of this room. Out of this horrifying moment. “Elijah.” I pat his hands and step back. “I love a party, but I’m going to sit this one out.”
“No. You can’t leave like this.” Panic swells in his eyes, joining the denial already there. “Not with everything on the table and nothing worked out.” His chest is lifting and falling faster and faster. “Addison. We have to resolve this.”
“We’ll work it out at home.” I smile even though it must be pathetic. Even though I’m lying right to his face. “I’ll see you at home.”
In my utter desperation, my lie is the epitome of convincing, though, and he seems to buy it. He’s not happy, but with the music beginning to blare upstairs, both of us know the new mayor doesn’t have a choice but to leave. To talk and shake hands and receive congratulations for the next several hours. I’m banking on him living up to his responsibilities, as usual, because I have to get out of here and keep moving. I’ll drop otherwise.
A voice comes over a loudspeaker upstairs and his name—along with his new official title—is called to the sound of booming applause and whistles. When Elijah’s eyes slide closed, I start to step back, but at the last second, something compels me forward and I lift up, pressing a kiss to his mouth. With a broken sound, he tries to bury his fingers in my hair, tries to deepen the kiss, but I’m already on my way to the door.
“Looks like I’m the one all dressed up with nowhere to go this time.” Over my shoulder, I toss back the words from the day he climbed into my car, followed by a genuine smile. I can’t help it. He might have broken my heart, but I still love him. I’ve loved every second I’ve been given with him. “Later, Captain.”