Chapter Twelve

Nina

I liquefied in Eli’s arms, I was so passive. I wanted him to do everything for me. He leaned back and tugged his T-shirt over his head, letting me see all those colorful tattoos etched into his arms and chest. They looked beautiful. Hell, their canvas was a mountain of muscle in the moonlight. I fucking quivered. My pupils enlarged. I was ready for him.

Eli hunkered between my thighs, reaching up my torn skirt and shoving the tweed away. He peeled down my tights and pressed my thighs flush against the mattress. My pussy tingled in the open air, soaked and throbbing. As soon as he touched me, I was there, even though I’d never thought he’d bring me back again.

His right hand crept up my torso and rubbed over my nipple. I whimpered. Not now, not now, I wanted to whimper. Eat me out.

“I’m going to help you feel better.” His breath tickled over my mound. My clit hummed in anticipation. “I’m going to help you relax.”

His lips locked over my clit and gave her a quick, hard, soulful suck. I gasped and bucked my hips, but his hands slammed down on them and pinned them to the mattress. “Yes,” he murmured, lapping at me harder. My mouth fell open. I squirmed. “God, you taste good.” He sucked, and I worked against his mouth as hard as I could, fighting the way his hands pressed me to the bed. It felt good to push back against his resistance, though.

Orgasm coiled and unraveled in the bottom of my belly, spreading down my limbs, and I moaned, spilling against his bristly beard.

“Fuck yeah,” was all that Eli said before he came up for oxygen again.

“That was amazing,” I panted, already tossing my cashmere sweater overhead. I fumbled with my jewelry, shucking it off as quickly as possible. I wanted to be naked with him. Animal. Feral. “Let me do you now, Eli.”

I didn’t wait for him to give me confirmation. My skin was sizzling for him. I popped up onto my knees and straddled him. It was his turn to recline on the pillows.

My lips whispered like feathers over his chiseled abdomen, my hands roving his body with pure lust. His cock bulged like a metal pipe in his pants, but I pretended like I didn’t feel that. I was too busy loving him.

“Nina,” Eli moaned down to me, softly bucking his hips. He sounded like he was in pain, and I leaned up toward him.

“What?” One of my hands slithered past his waistband and into his jeans. My fingers wrapped around his thick dick and gave it a little teasing squeeze.

“I need you,” he breathed, his amber eyes boring into mine with so much sincerity. He pumped into my hand and pressed his head back against the pillow. His dick slid up and down in my hand as he thrust. “I need you now.”

With a smirk, I worked my way to his zipper, peeling it down. His cock sprang out, waving in the air. I gripped it at the base and ran my tongue from the bottom to the tip.

“Oh, god,” Eli’s voice came from above me. “Oh, fuck.”

When I reached his tip, there was a salty droplet of pre-cum waiting for me, and I grinned. Then I wrapped my lips around his full head and tried to work my way down. He was too well-endowed to fit in my mouth, but I pumped my hand at his base and opened up the back of my throat to take as much of him as I could.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Fuck yeah.”

I giggled, enjoying how much he was emoting, and he surprised me by propping himself up on his side and groping at my ass and between my legs.

“Mm mm mm mm mm?” I asked him. What are you doing?

“I need you,” he mumbled, gripping my hips and lifting them into the air. My knees left the mattress behind and he twisted me 180 degrees, collapsing back onto his pillows with my cunt in his face. “That’s better,” he panted, lapping and sucking at me again.

I moaned down on his cock as I went up and down, motivated by both his pleasure and my own now.

His tongue twisted in a wicked pattern and forced my pussy into another brutal orgasm. My thighs buckled around his chin, and my cunt quivered, pressed hard to his mouth. My throat completely opened for the entire length of his cock. His head expanded and popped, shooting his hot cum into my mouth, and I swallowed, bedraggled and amazed.

We caught the elusive simultaneous orgasm during a sixty-nine.

I twisted to tangle myself up in his massive arms, against his solid chest, and I felt safe for the first time in a long time. God, I could smell my pussy on his beard, and I couldn’t wipe the satisfied grin off my face.

“I love you,” I purred as we were dropping off toward sleep. Then the smile disappeared. My eyes bulged open again in the darkness. “I mean, I don’t love you,” I corrected immediately. “I meant to say, thank you. You’re really sweet. I don’t love you.”

“Don’t get too worked up about it,” Eli murmured, turning to press a casual kiss to the side of my head. “I’m not even sweet.”

“Yes, you are. You totally are.”

“Shh.” Eli slid his palm between my thighs and kept it there, as if for warmth. Or maybe it was for comfort. For intimacy with me. “I’m not,” he whispered. His beard tickled my back, and I felt his lips spread on my skin. I knew that he was smiling.

Early the next morning, I ran a length of safety pins down the rip in my tweed skirt, and I fished my cashmere sweater from Eli’s floor. I found my pearls behind the bedframe and looped them around my neck out of sheer habit. I couldn’t imagine being without them anymore. Eli snored softly in the bed as I piled my hair on top of my head and wrapped it with a hairband. I paused in front of his stove and considered what I was wearing. I knew I looked like hell. But I didn’t have time to go home and fix myself up, and I didn’t care, either. I didn’t care if I looked like hell. I needed to talk to Will, and I needed to talk to him now. “Pretty” would have to wait for me to start giving a shit again.

I left Eli a short, sweet note, thanking him for the night before and leaving him my number. I didn’t let myself worry too much about how a man who didn’t even know my phone number was buried between my legs while he came down my throat. But fuck it! I didn’t have anyone to impress anymore. My whole world was a lie.

I crept out of Eli’s apartment and froze, wide-eyed, in the hallway above the bar.

Two older women—one of them elderly, and one of them in the twilight of middle-age—stood across the hall from me and blinked, unabashedly staring. They both wore robes and pajamas, and held teacups in their hands.

“Hello,” I peeped, scurrying past them, hugging those two log books to my chest. “Excuse me.”

“Are you friends with Eli?” the elderly woman asked. I automatically assumed that she didn’t even remember what sex was.

“Um, yes,” I told her, already blushing hard. I wanted to make it down the damn stairs to the bar. I wanted to let myself out through any door at all.

“Good. He doesn’t have many friends. At least, he doesn’t have many girl friends,” she called after me. “I’m Bethel.”

“Nina,” I replied, trying to open the bar door from the stairwell, but it was locked from the other side. Fuck.

“The bar is still locked, sweetie,” the other woman added. “You can try that side door. I’m Margot. Eli saved my life once. Where are you goin’ in such a hurry now?”

“Work,” I answered shortly.

“Are you going to see him again, you think?” Margot asked.

“Yep,” I said, cheeks burning. “Nice to meet you, Margot! Nice to meet you, Bethel!”

I shoved out into the gray morning and stalked toward Paper Treasure, the two books clutched to my chest, telling myself again and again that I could do this.

Will and I made eye contact through the glass on the front door of Paper Treasure. I knew as soon as he looked into my eyes that he knew what I knew. There was fear behind those glasses, and knowing that he feared me gave me enough strength to propel through those doors and face him. I had been psyching myself up the entire way here, but he didn’t know that.

“I need you to explain these two separate accounting records for me,” I told him flatly, slamming both of them down onto the counter. “Because I can’t make any fucking sense of the numbers you put in here.”

Will blinked at me and said nothing.

“Well?” I pushed, primed with adrenaline for something, anything. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“You kn-kn-know what th-this i-i-i-is,” Will spat.

Now it was my turn to blink. I leaned away from him, and my shoulders relaxed, like he hit me with a poison that could disarm my senses. I didn’t expect him to be honest. Dad wasn’t.

I swallowed. Now what?

“Get out,” I forced myself to say.

Will scoffed.

“I said, get out!” I commanded, slamming down the leather-bound record on the desk again to do it. A deep bang resonated, and I glared fire at Will. “This is my store,” I whispered. “And I will find a way to make it honest.”

Will scoffed again, climbing off his stool behind the register and shaking his head as he came around to my side of the desk.

“Y-y-y-you call this s-s-store y-yours,” Will said. “B-b-but you kn-know that’s n-not t-t-true. Y-y-you have n-n-no i-i-idea what it’s like to own a s-s-store in M-M-Montclair, N-N-Nina.” Will strode to one of the bookshelves and gave it a hard shove, sending it creaking and toppling backward, crashing into the next bookcase. Four of them went down like dominos, all the books spilling off the shelves and onto the ground. “B-B-But you’ll see,” Will sneered, shoving through the front door and letting the cold air knife into the store. Pages fluttered as the books on the floor fell open. “Y-you’ll see wh-wh-what it’s r-r-really l-like.”