“And they never let you live it down,” she blubbers, all red faced and tear streaked. It’s oddly endearing.
All I can do is agree. “Not yet, at least.”
“Did no one reach out...?” she starts to ask.
I don’t know that I can deal with the thought of her worrying about me. God, I can’t have her crying about feeling alone and thinking about me being alone.
I drop my gaze to the floor. I nod a little. “Aiden did a couple times. Logan, once. It hasn’t been that lonely.”
“Three times in eight years?”
“Well, when you put it like that,” I say, and attempt a smile, but her face starts to crumple a little more. She scrubs at her face with her sleeves, uselessly.
“I’m sorry you had to choose between us. I’m sorry I let you choose me,” she cries, sniffling into my shoulder, her tears and whatnot seeping through my T-shirt.
It cracks my chest open, and I’m doing everything I can to hold it closed. There’s too much about her that I’ve buried, and this week has been digging it all up.
I don’t have an answer. It shouldn’t have been a choice at all. And this whole facade we’re putting on is just more evidence that we could have had everything, if only she’d been allowed to know the family’s secrets. Or even just exist with the same level of knowledge as she does now. My mother’s insistence on keeping only werewolves within the family has always seemed overblown to me, but now more than ever.
Instead, I busy myself finding that spot under her bra line that always itches, that she can never reach right. My palmflattens against her back and my thumb strokes against the spot, and she lets out a little noise of contentment stretched out on a sigh.
Her sniffles start to abate, fewer and further between. It feels all too natural to have her in my arms.
If I do nothing at all, maybe this moment will last forever.
Her bra straps relax around her shoulders, and she realizes then that I unhooked it.
“Shawn,” she warns, but the way she says my name, it sounds like she wants more.
“Elise,” I breathe, as my hand returns to the spot that her bra has dug lines into her skin, scratching much easier with it out of the way. “Anywhere else?”
She shakes her head, and I can tell she’s trying not to sound too satisfied by my answering touch. But she’s never really been able to hide how much she likes it.
My fingers slide down her back, and she arches into my hands, her qualms about the bra slipping away with the tension in her muscles. Her head tilts up with a soft little moan.
Here she is, in my arms, the moment I never dreamed I would find again, and again I freeze.
I glance around, before leaning in and pressing my mouth to hers, not closing my eyes until I’m sure my mouth is next to hers—for a sudden and irrational moment, I fear I’ll be clumsy and miss.
I’ve done this before, of course I know how it works. But I’m also sure there’s no chance I can do this right. It needs to be perfect for her.
Her mouth is as soft as a sigh, and a tension I didn’t know I’d been carrying with me eases as she presses into it, a hum of pleasure caught between us as she snags my lower lip with her teeth.
When she pulls away from the kiss, our gazes linger a little too long. One of us needs to blink or breathe or step away. I don’t think I’ll be able to, and my heart might break if she does first.
“Stay,” she whispers, and that word alone sunders any possible protest I could make. She touches my cheek as she tilts her head to kiss me again, her mouth impossibly sweet.
Her caress is slow but firm, until I close my eyes and settle a little closer to her. The kiss was a careful, gentle sway, soft and sensual, with no pattern but the pull and slight retreat, the back and forth that rolled between our mouths against each other.
“You don’t want me here,” I remind her, because one of us is going to have to find the strength to walk away from this.
“I want to feel good for a minute, I don’t care what it takes,” she says, and I believe her.
All I can do is make things worse for you later, I want to tell her. But she takes my lower lip and worries her teeth into it. She threads a hand through my hair, the other hand tracing my jawline as she sucks harder on my lip. My hands pull her body closer to mine, and soon she’s out of her chair, straddling my lap.
“I know how to make you feel good,” I assure her, because I know I can manage that much. I can feel my cock hardening under her pillowy thigh, straining against my jeans. I trace the curve of her neck with my mouth down to her shoulder, inhaling her scent deeply. “I miss the way you taste. The scent of your underwear after you’ve been working all day.”
Elise whimpers in response, but I know what she likes to hear.
