Текст книги "Song of the Fireflies"

Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski

Соавторы: J. A. Redmerski
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Bray

It’s the hardest thing in the world for me to describe, but when Elias held me in his arms like that, I literally felt whole again. Or maybe for the first time. Because things were different this time around. I knew that I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life. I knew I couldn’t walk out that door without him. I knew that going forward, no matter what I did, I wanted Elias to be right there with me. Not just as best friends. But as lovers, girlfriend and boyfriend, husband and wife. I didn’t care, as long as we were together and in love the way we were meant to be.

His lips covered mine and he kissed me deeply, passionately, stealing my breath away. My stomach fluttered and spun and did things it had never done before, not even the first time we had sex. And before I knew it, I was pulling his T-shirt over his raised arms and tossing it somewhere on the floor. He practically tore my shirt off me. We stood up and I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he carried me into his bedroom and threw me down on the bed.

He didn’t wait even a minute before stripping off the rest of my clothes. And then his. I watched the muscles flex in his arms and in his chest as he crawled on top of me. He was so damn gorgeous to me, every muscle, every line, every curve in his sculpted, tanned body. His mouth hungry for mine, searching my breasts and my neck and the underside of my chin until he found my lips and kissed me ravenously. I speared my hands through his wavy, chin-length dark hair, and when I reached down and took his hard length into my hand he moaned against my mouth.

“I want you inside me, Elias,” I said breathily against his mouth. “I’ve wanted this for so goddamn long.” This time it felt real. It felt right. It felt the way it should have felt our first time. And I wanted to savor it as if it were.

His powerful hips rocked against mine before he reached down with me, and his strong fingers splayed around my hand as it held his cock firmly. He guided my hand, and I gasped and threw my head back against the pillow as I felt the head of his cock enter me. My eyelids fluttered and fell helplessly over my eyes. My lips parted and a sharp gasp escaped as he slid the rest of his length slowly into my wetness. I moaned with pleasure.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered hotly against my lips, and then slipped his tongue into my mouth, his hips thrusting relentlessly against mine. “I never want you to leave me again.” He bit down on my bottom lip.

I wanted to cry hearing his words. And deep inside myself, I did. But they were tears of bliss. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pushed myself farther toward him, wanting him deeper.

“I’ll never leave you again,” I said, as those tears deep inside began to seep from the corners of my eyes.

I could hardly catch my breath.

“Promise me,” he said, thrusting harder.

I looked up into his eyes and saw that they were as tearful as mine; the intensity in his face much greater. I knew in that moment that if I ever left him again, it would kill him. It would kill me.

“I promise. I’ll never leave you.”

“Swear it on your life,” he said and rammed his cock into me so hard it took away what little breath I had left. My thighs trembled. My stomach flip-flopped with pleasure and excitement. Elias stared down into my eyes.

“I fucking swear on my life,” I said and meant every word. “I’ll never leave you again.”

His lips devoured mine and he fucked me harder than I had ever been fucked, until my fingers hurt from digging into the wooden headboard behind me and my legs were so weak I could hardly lift them. And when he came, he came hard on my stomach, his entire body trembling. I wrapped my arms around him, kissing the sweat from his temples and from his lips.

He rested only a few minutes before he was hard again, and then he made love to me slowly until I came.

We stayed in bed all day, tangled in the sheets, our arms and legs entwined. For a long time we didn’t speak. We just stared up at the ceiling, his fingers combing through my hair, my head resting against his warm, hard chest.

“You promised,” he whispered.

I raised my head and looked at him. “I did,” I said and leaned over to kiss his lips.

He kissed me in return, but a worried look lingered in his eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured him. “I’ve lived for far too long away from you, Elias. I just wish that I had figured it out sooner.”

His eyes smiled faintly and he moved a piece of hair away from my face with the tip of his finger.

“I’m glad you kicked me in the hip that night,” he said and kissed my nose.

“Well, if you hadn’t have called me ugly, I probably wouldn’t have.”

Elias smiled and pulled me back down, laying my head against his chest again.

“You’ve always been beautiful to me,” he said, and then I felt his lips press against the top of my hair.

I was in heaven.

We were in heaven.

Chapter Six Elias

It took us seventeen years to truly find each other. But now that we were together, neither of us was letting go.

The first two weeks of our newfound relationship was as I had always imagined it. We went everywhere together. I introduced her as my girlfriend to my new friends and she introduced us as a couple to our old friends. And it didn’t seem to bother Bray when we’d run into an old girlfriend of mine—or a one-night stand. It didn’t bother her much anyway. Bray took it all in stride.

“Elias Kline,” Jana said, coming up behind me as I sat in a booth at the Denny’s restaurant one day. Her blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her eyes were painted with heavy, dark makeup that made her look somewhat like a raccoon to me.

“Hey, Jana,” I said, setting my fork down. I looked at Bray and then back up at Jana, hovering beside our table, and said, “This is my girlfriend, Bray. Bray, this is Jana.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bray said with a smile at first I couldn’t be sure was genuine or just for show.

Jana’s darkly lined eyes skirted Bray, and I noticed their smiles seemed to match. I wondered if Bray could tell right off that I had slept with this girl before.

“Girlfriend, huh?” Jana said.

“Yes.” Bray straightened her back and stretched her arms across the table in front of her. “And you are?” she said with a smirk.

OK, their matching smiles were definitely just for show. Suddenly I felt like a bear cub dangling between mother bear and an intruder.

“I’m just a friend of Elias and Mitchell,” Jana said, and I felt a little relieved that was all she said. “There’s a party goin’ on Friday night on the river. Everybody’ll be there. You two should come.”

Bray looked over at me and relaxed her back against the cushioned booth seat again. She pursed her lips contemplatively.

“You want to go?” she asked me.

It felt like a dangerously loaded question that I wasn’t sure I should answer, but Bray really seemed interested.

“Oh come on,” Jana said, propping a hand on her hip. “We plan to spend the weekend out there. Bring a tent. Oh and it’s BYOB. Allan will be there, too, so you know what that means.” She glanced at me once, and Bray definitely noticed.

“We’ll be there,” Bray announced.

I just stayed quiet. Seemed like Bray had this secret duel going on with Jana and could handle herself. Besides, it felt safer to just stay quiet.

Women really do scare the shit out of me sometimes.

Jana smiled with teeth showing, and I briefly thought about my dick being in her mouth not long ago. I flinched inwardly as if Bray could read my mind or something.

“Awesome! I’ll see you then.” Jana smirked at me as she left our table.

“You definitely fucked her,” Bray said and took a bite of her mashed potatoes.

I felt my face stiffen.

She wasn’t angry or jealous, but she wasn’t going to hold back, either. This was Bray, after all, and I’d be worried if she didn’t say exactly what was on her mind.

I let out a small breath of laughter and picked my fork back up. “Yeah, though that’s all it was.”

“I know,” she said, smiled at me, and washed her food down with a drink of tea.

“How would you know that?” I was truly baffled, but didn’t doubt her for a second.

“Because that one was oozing fuck-me,” she said and took another small bite. She added with her mouth full, pointing her fork at me, “Nothing wrong with that if that’s what she wants to do. As long as she keeps her lips off you, we have no issue.”

“I think we’re good,” I said. “She’s kind of into Mitchell now, though I think it has more to do with him supplying her with drugs than with sex.”

Bray cocked an eyebrow. “Mitchell’s selling drugs?”

“Well, not exactly,” I said, lowering my voice because of the topic. “He started doing meth about a month ago. The two of them have been spending a lot of time together since…” I hesitated because I didn’t exactly want to bring up the fact that I’d slept with Jana the same day Bray came home. “Well, it’s been about two weeks now.”

“Why is this my first time seeing her?”

Bray was living with me in my apartment now. It took her five days to even let her family know she was back in Georgia. But that didn’t surprise me. I would never say it to Bray, but I knew her parents wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to bring her home to them.

“I kind of asked Mitchell to meet up with her somewhere other than my place.”

“Because of me?” Bray smiled knowingly.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” she said, moving her hand underneath the table and rubbing it across my thigh. “I’m not going to freak out on you over old girlfriends or whatever. I never expected you to be celibate.”

Was this her way of clearing a path for me before I found out who she had slept with since we had been apart? In a way it felt like that, but at the same time, I knew she was being sincere about it, too. I can’t deny that I started wondering heavily about her sex life in that moment. Not that it would ever have made me love her less, but I still wanted to know.

“Who is Allan?” she asked.

Instinctively, I looked up and all around me to make sure no one was listening.

“He’s the drug dealer,” I whispered.

“Oh…” Bray looked at me warily. “And you know him how?”

“Everybody knows him,” I said. “But don’t get the wrong idea. I’ve only met him a few times.”

“Met as in bought from?” She grinned.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Nothing too bad, just some weed here and there.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I don’t deal with that meth stuff. Would hate to have to haul you off to the nearest rehab.”

“Hell no,” I said. “I’m with ya on that. I’m worried about Mitchell, though. I’ve tried to steer him clear of that shit, but he won’t listen to me.”

“I hate to say this, Elias, but if he doesn’t get help now, you’ll have to kick him out of your apartment. He’ll end up blowing up your kitchen, or taking you down with him when he gets busted.” She took a quick drink and set her glass back on the table. “Lissa’s brother’s friend in South Carolina was on meth pretty bad. They busted him before he blew his house up, but he was cooking that shit in his kitchen. It scares me.”

She was right. I hadn’t thought about it before, because Mitchell was my good friend and I never considered kicking him out. But when it comes to stuff like this, there are many more reasons not to have him living with me than there are to let him stay.

And I would never want to put Bray in any danger, either.

“I’ll talk to him tonight,” I said.

“Give him a chance, though,” she said. “Don’t just send him packing. He’ll probably blame it on me if you do that.”

And that was exactly what happened.

Later that night when Mitchell came home from wherever—I think he lost his job because of his habit, so I had no idea where he was spending his time during the day anymore—I tried talking to him.

“Mitch,” I said, hitting the Power button on the television remote. “I need to talk to you about something.”

His light-brown hair was dirty, thick with oil that kept his bangs from falling around his eyes like they naturally did. He was wearing the same Georgia Bulldogs T-shirt he had on yesterday. And the day before that.

I set the remote down on the coffee table and leaned forward in the recliner.

“Yeah, what’s up?” He plopped down on the sofa, stretching his legs across the cushions and crossing his ankles.

“I think you need to get some help, man. You’re really starting to worry me. You never sleep, and when you do it’s for two days straight. Did you lose your job?”

He wasn’t taking what I was saying seriously at first, or maybe he was just trying to brush it off, make it appear that it wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. His head fell to the side so that he could see me and he reached out his hand. “Can you pass me the remote?”

I sighed, frustrated with him already. “No, Mitch, listen, I’m being serious here. You need to get some help. I’ll do whatever I can to help you, just name it. I’ll call around for a good rehab center, take you back and forth if you ever need me to. Whatever you need.”

“Rehab?” Mitchell spun around on the sofa and sat upright in an instant. His expression distorted with insult. “What the fuck are you talking about, rehab? You can’t be serious.”

I put up both hands in a surrendering fashion, trying to defuse the situation before it started. “I’m just trying to help you. If not rehab, then—”

“I don’t need your fucking help.” He stood up. “I’m not addicted to meth,” he lashed out, slashing his hand in the air in front of him. “I just do it every now and then. I can’t believe you’re even saying this shit to me. You’re no fucking angel.”

“I never claimed to be,” I said, getting pissed but keeping it contained. “But Mitch, your ‘every now and then’ is every day.”

I stood up then, too. “Look, if you won’t at least try to get some help, or get off that shit completely—drop it cold turkey if you’re not addicted—then I’m sorry, man, but you’re gonna have to find another place to live.”

His eyes grew as wide as plates.

Bray walked in the front door at that very moment.

“Hi, baby,” she said moving through the living room toward me and having no idea what was going on. She pushed up on her toes and pecked me on the lips.

Mitchell was glaring at us from behind her.

“Oh, I get it now,” he said, and Bray turned upon hearing the anger in his voice. “This is because of her.” He pointed at Bray once. “Little Miss Fucking Sunshine comes back to Georgia, moves in, and suddenly three’s a crowd.” His face contorted pathetically for a moment. “Seriously, man? You’re picking a piece of ass over your best friend? The pussy way out, man, that’s fucked up!”

I went toward him, both hands clenched into fists at my sides. Bray stepped in front of me and I stopped.

“Don’t talk about her like that, Mitch.” My jaw was clenched painfully and the blood rushed to my head. “You fucking know better. And besides, she’s always been my best friend. Not you.”

Mitchell smiled fiendishly and shook his head. He glanced back and forth between me and Bray. I was ready to knock him over the back of that sofa. One wrong word or syllable was all it was going to take. Bray knew it, too. She kept both hands pressed against my chest and her little body in my way, hoping it would be enough.

“Mitchell,” she said before he had a chance to say whatever it was he was smiling so cunningly about, “I don’t care if you stay here, and Elias knows this. This has nothing to do with me. We’re just worried. Meth is some bad shit.”

“You don’t know shit about me,” he said. “But I know about you. Ain’t that right?”

The tips of my fingers were digging into the palms of my hands. But I waited, hoping he wasn’t about to go the wrong way with this. I really didn’t want to hit him.

Mitchell smirked and went on, “See, she and I talked while she was living in South Carolina. Yeah. She told me all about that guy—” he snapped his fingers “—what was his name? Garrett? In fact, Bray called me several times. But she didn’t call you, did she? Not once. Some best friend.”

“I only called you to find out things about Elias!”

I still wanted to hit him, now more than before. But I also wanted to hear this.

Bray stepped away from me and started to go toward him, but I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her back before she got too far.

But that didn’t stop her from shouting.

“You’re such a prick!” she roared. “Don’t you ever try to make what I did out to be something that it wasn’t!”

Mitchell threw his head back and laughed.

“A game-playing little bitch,” he said and before he could get the rest out, I was pushing Bray to the side and going toward him.

“Elias, don’t hit him!” Bray shouted at me from behind. “You know it’s the drugs!”

I shoved the coffee table out of my way and grabbed him by the front of his shirt and started pushing him toward the front door; his heels were partially dragging the carpet. By this time, I did want to hit him, more than anything, but I knew Bray was right.

“I can’t even believe you took her back after what she did!” he screamed in my face, the smell of his meth-breath whirling cruelly up into my nostrils. “All that time, Elias! That hell she put you through! All those times I listened to you talk about her, all that childhood stuff, the stupid fucking firefly story! She’s got you whipped!”

I shoved him right out the front door. He fell on his ass, but stayed there on the concrete screaming up at me, his long bangs now disheveled around his face despite the oil.

“Unfuckingbelievable! I thought you were better than that, bro,” he said.

“Your shit will be on the sidewalk by tonight,” I said, glaring down at him. “Don’t ever fucking come in here again. You understand? After you get your shit, that’s it. Don’t come back here or I’ll beat the fuck out of you.”

“Whatever, man,” he said and pushed himself to his feet. “At least give me my car keys.”

I looked over my shoulder at Bray and she went into the living room, coming back seconds later with his keys in her hand. Mitchell reached out for them, but I took them from her instead and pushed her carefully behind me.

“Don’t go near her ever again. Not for anything.”

I dropped the keys in his hand.

“Yeah, fuck you,” he said casually and turned and walked toward his car.

“I’m so sorry,” Bray said after I shut the front door.

She stepped up to me, clasping her fingers gently around my hands at my sides.

“I did not expect it to go down like that,” I said, looking toward the wall, thinking about Mitchell.

“He’ll come around,” she said. “He’s just not right in the head.”

“I know.”

Bray helped me pack up all of Mitchell’s things, which wasn’t much, just boxes of his clothes and movies and CDs. Thankfully, the only furniture in the apartment that was his was a small TV stand and a bar stool from Dickey’s Bar and Grill that he bought at an auction after Dickey’s closed down. We carried everything outside and set it near the front door instead of on the sidewalk. I didn’t want anything to get stolen or rained on.

But two days came and went, and Mitchell never came back to get it.

Chapter Seven Bray

Elias took the falling-out with Mitchell really hard the first few days. It was only to be expected, since they had known each other even longer than we had known each other. Despite everything, Elias knew that it wasn’t his fault, and he wasn’t going to sit around and blame himself. Mitchell had brought this all on himself. Eventually, Elias went from feeling bad about what happened to indifferent.

He still had me, after all.

By Friday night, we were debating whether to go to the river or not, because Mitchell would almost definitely be there.

“I say we go, Elias. Don’t let him ruin our good time.”

Elias kissed me on the forehead and squeezed me around the waist as I sat straddled on his lap.

“OK. We’ll go. Just stay away from him, all right?”

I draped my arms around his neck and then kissed his lips. “I’ll be too busy with you to worry about him,” I said suggestively.

Elias smiled and squeezed my butt in his hands. “How did we get like this?” he asked, studying my face and my lips.

“It was inevitable,” I said in a quiet voice. My fingers touched the contours of his cheekbones and probed him as if he were a beautiful¸ delicate statue. He hadn’t shaved in a while, but I found the growing stubble sexy on him.

“Do you remember our first kiss?” he asked, smiling at me.

“Of course I do,” I said. “The first night we met.”

He shook his head and his hands slid up my back.

“No, I mean the first real kiss.”

I swallowed hard. On the inside I was screaming as another memory infected my thoughts in that moment, but on the outside, I looked as blissful as he did.

“Yes. I remember,” I said distantly.

Elias’ blue eyes softened, not sensing the turmoil going on inside of me. I was thankful for that.

“I’ve always wondered about that day,” he said. “When you asked me to kiss you, did you really just want to practice? Be honest.”

I swallowed again and my hands began to shake. I steadied them, interlacing my fingers around the back of his neck. The memory of our first kiss was one of my most cherished. I would never forget it. But the other, more solemn memory that always came with it nowadays was what I couldn’t bear.

“I did want to practice,” I answered, hiding the pain in my heart. “But it was just an excuse. I really just wanted you to kiss me.”

Elias’s smile widened. And then he touched his lips to mine, slowly brushing the tip of his tongue between them. I wilted in his arms.

He made love to me that morning before we packed the car and headed to the river. And I noticed—very hard not to—something about Elias that I never expected, but that drove me absolutely mad for him. Every time we would have sex, he was different, he would feel different. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes explorative, though it seemed like he was holding something back. I had been with several guys, but none of them had anything on Elias. Sex with him was never the same. He was focused, determined, meticulous, and experienced. And each time I went in, I found myself wondering what he was going to do to me this time. Just anticipating it was thrilling. And sometimes scary. In a good way.

For the first time in my life I didn’t feel wrong about the way I was inside. I didn’t feel ashamed. But instead, I felt like I could almost be myself completely with Elias. But only almost. I wasn’t ready yet to lay something like that on him. I was afraid of making him look at me differently, or lose respect for me.

Because the truth was, I was addicted to sex.

I wanted it all the time. In every way. On the outside I was a seemingly innocent girl by today’s standards. Before Elias, whenever I would have sex with guys, I always felt ashamed afterward. I didn’t want any of them, sexually or otherwise. I wanted Elias in every way imaginable.

Now that I had him and was picking up these familiar sexual vibes from him, my mind began to spin with the possibilities.

Were Elias and I more alike than we ever knew? Was that even possible? Was Elias just as addicted to sex as I was?

By this time, even without knowing the answers to those questions yet, I thought that life really couldn’t get any better. We were in complete and absolute love, finally living the dream with one another that we had always dreamed about. There was so much to do, so many things about ourselves and about life to explore together, and we had our whole lives ahead of us in which to do it.

But on the night of April 20, everything we knew would change, and that life together we had waited so long to have would come crashing down around us like some cruel fucking joke.

*     *     *

We made it to the secluded party spot on the river just after dark. It was getting slightly cooler as the night approached, but that never stopped anyone we knew from swimming. Summer in Georgia wasn’t officially here, but it might as well have been.

There were a lot of people at the river, some I knew, most I didn’t. Tents had been pitched throughout the woods, spaced far enough apart for privacy. Two separate campfires burned, and people sat around each of them talking and drinking. The smell of pot filled the air. Not even two minutes in, as Elias and I carried in our camping gear, a group of people offered us a joint. We stopped and took a hit before heading into the woods to stake our claim on a spot for the weekend.

“I haven’t seen him yet,” I said about Mitchell as I set our ice chest down beside a tree.

Elias unzipped the tent bag and started setting up. “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t show.”

“Hopefully,” I said.

After we were satisfied with our setup, we walked through the trees the short distance back to the main camp, where everyone was sitting. Music was playing from a portable radio, but the river was so close that it nearly drowned out the music coming from the tiny speakers.

We sat down next to a couple and immediately the guy passed a joint to Elias. Elias took a long hit and shotgunned it to me, exhaling it into my mouth. My eyes watered and burned a little, but at that point I didn’t care.

“I’m tellin’ ya, man,” another guy to our left said in a half-joking manner, “once you get married, it all goes to shit. Should jus’ keep things like they are.” The guy took a hit and let the smoke trickle out of his lips and funnel back through his nostrils.

“He would know,” the blonde-haired girl sitting next to him said. She took the joint from him and put it to her lips, pressed between the tips of her thumb and index finger. “My dear idiot brother here has been married twice.” Her voice strained and cracked as she held the smoke deep in her lungs. “Was with his ex for six years. Perfect together. Got married and—” she snapped her fingers “—poof! Instant destruction of a perfectly good relationship.”

Laughter ripped through the air.

Elias pulled me from beside him and over between his legs, wrapping his arms around me from behind. I could tell he wasn’t paying any attention to the conversations going on around us. Not the one about that guy’s bad luck with marriages, or the one on the other side of us about some girl’s recent endometriosis diagnosis. He was enjoying his high, and I was enjoying mine with him.

We zoned out for a while, me sitting between his legs, leaning against his chest. We listened mostly to the mix of the radio and the nearby river, which somehow blended harmoniously. Being high has many strange and unexpected perks. After a couple of hours, most of our company either went swimming, or drank too much then hit their tents to pass out.

Elias nuzzled his mouth at the back of my neck. My body folded forward, attacked by a tickling sensation that raced down my spine.

“Want to go for a swim?” he asked, then whispered hotly into my ear, “Or, you can go to the tent with me.”

I giggled and tilted my head to one side, exposing my neck to his mouth. He dragged his teeth across the skin, raising chill bumps all over my body.

“Why don’t we do both?” I suggested and licked his tongue playfully with the tip of mine.

He smiled and drew his head back. “You want to swim in the tent?”

I teasingly elbowed him in the ribs. “No,” I said and turned around on my knees to face him. I leaned inward toward his ear, bit his earlobe, and said, “You can fuck me in the water.”

And that was just what we were doing when Jana and Mitchell finally made their grand appearance.

Mitchell jumped off a rock several feet high into the water not far from us. It scared the crap out of me, but Elias was so close to getting off that he wasn’t about to let something like that stop him. It was always harder to get off when under water, so the thirty minutes we spent with my legs wrapped around his waist and him slowly thrusting in and out of me wasn’t going to be for nothing.

Elias grabbed me closer, one arm around my back, the other positioned partway in between my butt cheeks, and held me still when I startled.

“Ignore him,” he said, staring deeply into my eyes, his face just mere inches from mine, as he tried to stay focused.

He never took his eyes off mine. It made me insanely crazy for him. I pushed my bikini-covered breasts firmly against his rock-hard chest and kissed him. He devoured my mouth, pushing in and out of me beneath the water the whole time. Water dripped from his lips and his cheeks and I licked it off of him. The gesture made him thrust deeper, his fingers digging painfully into my back.

“Oh look,” I heard Mitchell say, “It’s my best friend. Who kicked me out for a girl.”

Elias’s concentration was unshaken. I, on the other hand, was getting pissed. And a little worried someone—mainly Mitchell—would notice what we were doing. He certainly didn’t need any more fuel for the fire he started.

Jana jumped into the water next, thankfully slightly farther away from us than Mitchell had.

“Come on, Mitchell,” I heard her say. I never looked away from Elias’s eyes. “Don’t do that shit here. You’ll ruin everyone’s night, not just theirs.”

The two of them swam away in the opposite direction and left us alone.

But apparently Mitchell’s presence and misplaced grudge against Elias, instead of the apology Elias had been hoping he’d get if he saw Mitchell tonight, was too much of a distraction. He pulled out of me without getting off and then hugged me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kissing the top of my head.

“What are you apologizing to me for?” I kissed his lips. “He’s a fucking asshole. Enough to kill anyone’s buzz or orgasm.” I brought my hand out of the water and flicked droplets at his face. “You can finish with me later. However you want it.”

For a second, it seemed Elias was just going to smile and join in with my impish gestures, but I saw something shift in his eyes when I said that last part. He looked at me with a deep curiosity.

“However I want it?” he asked, searching for further explanation.

I rested three of my fingers on his nose and then dragged them down his face and onto his lips, where he kissed each one individually.

“Yeah,” I responded coyly. “You know you can do anything you want to me, right?”

He still looked incredibly curious, that sidelong look in his darkening gaze, but I could sense that he was as afraid to come out and say what he was thinking as much as I was. We were still feeling each other out. Testing those boundaries. Hoping that there were no boundaries. But we were each afraid of scaring the other one off. We should’ve known that nothing could ever do that. It would’ve saved us a lot of pent-up sexual frustration a lot earlier on.