Page 67 of Final Drive

“What?”

“Recalibrating.” The corner of his mouth moves. “Last time Jackson was here.”

He’s right. That night with him and Jackson was electric, the two of them moving around me with a coordination built over three years, and Jackson was the gravity in the room. This isn’t that.

“Does that make this harder?”

“Different.” He pulls his shirt over his head and I let myself look. He’s leaner than the others, built for distance rather than power. “With Jackson there I could work the margins. Read the room, adjust. Tonight it’s you and me.”

“Does that frighten you?”

“Enough that I nearly didn’t knock.” He kneels in front of me with his hands on my knees. “I know your body. I’ve had my mouth on you and watched you come apart between the two of us. I’ve never been the only one in the room with you.”

I run my fingers through his damp hair. “You’ve had my attention longer than you think.”

His eyes search mine. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leans up and kisses me slower this time, hands sliding up my thighs. He unzips my hoodie and pushes it off my shoulders, then finds the hem of my tank top. At every layer he pauses. Not asking, exactly. Leaving room for me to redirect him. Learning which touch makes me lean in and which makes me hold my breath.

When I’m bare to the waist he doesn’t reach for me. He looks, and without Jackson beside him the whole weight of that attention is on me.

“You’re staring.”

“Yeah.” He puts his mouth to the inside of my wrist where my pulse is going, and I feel his lips curve against my skin. He works up my forearm without hurrying. “Your breathing changed.”

“Because you’re kissing my arm.”

“Before I kissed it. When I leaned in.” He reaches my shoulder and traces my collarbone with his tongue, and my back comes off the bed. “There. You held it, then let it go.”

“Eli.”

“Just noticing.”

He eases me down onto the mattress and settles over me with his forearms braced on either side of my head, kissing me until I stop tracking what my body is doing and let it get on with it.

He works down my sternum and between my breasts, taking his time. When his mouth closes over my nipple there’s no bite in it. He sucks softly at first, then harder, holding the pressure until my hips come off the mattress. He pulls back and blows cool air over the wet skin, watching the goosebumps run down my stomach.

His hands take my leggings down while his mouth goes lower. A kiss below my navel. Another at the jut of my hip. When he finally settles between my thighs he doesn’t go straight in. He rests his cheek against my inner thigh and breathes me in.

“Already wet.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “How long?”

“Since you said you were doing the math.”

He laughs. An actual laugh, which Eli does about as often as it snows here. “Noted.”

When his mouth finds me there’s nothing tentative about it. He knows this from that night with Jackson, but there’s no choreography to share now. He licks a flat stripe through my center and settles onto my clit with a precision that tells me he catalogued every response I gave him and kept it. Steady rhythm. No variation. Just even, relentless pressure that climbs until I’m gripping the sheets and pushing up into his mouth.

“Don’t change anything,” I gasp.

“Wasn’t going to.”

He pins my hips with one forearm and holds the same rhythm, refusing to speed up even when my thighs start to shake. I come hard, bowing off the mattress, and he works me through it at that same patient pace until I’m pushing at his head because it’s gone past bearable.

He pulls back with his chin slick. “One.”

“Are you counting?”