What I’ve just experienced with this man.
One minute, I’m sure he’s pushing me out of his life with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. And the next, he’s buried deep inside me, holding me like he’s scared I’ll disappear.
And he’s still inside me.
His lips brush against my shoulder. Soft now, as he begins to move again.
“Is this okay?” he asks, voice low, warm against my skin. “Are you okay?”
It’s jarring, the contrast.
The man who just ravaged me now moves like he’s afraid of breaking something precious. Like he’s suddenly aware of how much force he carries.
“I’m…yes. It’s fine,” I manage, the words barely holding together.
As he rocks in and out of me, he never looks away. Not once. His eyes stay locked on mine, reading every expression, every gasp, every tremor he pulls from my body like he needs to catalog it. Like it matters.
In.
Out.
The pace builds, slow at first, then deeper, stronger. My breaths fracture, come and go, but no matter how much he gives me, it’s never enough. The stretch. The burn. The way he fills me until I feel unearthed by it.
This man doesn’t just fuck.
He frees you.
Every glide of him feels intentional, like he’s giving something instead of taking it. Like it’s a gift he doesn’t offer lightly.
When he finally releases that gift inside me, he finds my mouth and kisses me again, unhurried and certain, sealing something between us.
A week, Max.
A fucking week?
What did I just agree to?
My brain is screaming at me to run—to put distance between myself and whatever this man is pulling out of me. But instead of letting me sit with my spiraling thoughts, Eli just stands and holds his hand out.
I take it.
And once I’m upright, not entirely convinced my feet are touching solid ground, he scoops me up.
“You don’t have to carry me, you know,” I say, my cheek pressed to his shoulder.
“But I want to,” he says simply.
He keeps unraveling me with…him.
The silent want. The gentleness beneath all that brute force.
This man is a paradox wrapped in flannel and timber.
He’s quiet again, and my head’s swirling with a thousand questions I know better than to ask right now.
What was that?
Why now?
