by Qwillia Rain
Too many thoughts had crowded his mind as he’d waited on the hospital bed watching the other occupants of the open treatment area.
A woman, heavily pregnant, leaned on the man beside her as they watched a nurse and doctor examine a child on the bed in front of them. Images of Elf, her belly round with their baby slipped past his guard. His heart clenched thinking of her face bearing the same pain and worry as the young mother’s across the room. Protecting his Elf was going to be a difficult habit to break.
If he wanted to break it at all, a part of him observed.
You need to, demanded the nervous voice that had driven him to deride his woman in front of his employees. Staying safe is important, it reminded him. No one can be trusted to stay. They all go away.
Elf hadn’t. He remembered all the nights he’d dropped into bed after dragging himself from Charlie’s hospital room. Snuggled beneath the covers, his Elf would pull him close, warming his body with hers, holding him before he could voice his need for it.
The more he recalled, the more the other voice in his head demanded he not count on his Elf’s remaining with him. The more it protested, the more he recognized it as his own voice.
The same intonation he’d used to beg his parents not to leave him when he was eight.
Sitting on that hospital bed, watching the stitches march down his palm, Dayton realized what an ass he’d been. All the barriers he’d erected over the years had done nothing to protect him.
Watching Charlie slowly fade away, he’d known the pain of losing him. Though not as keen as the hurt he’d experienced at the loss of his parents, seeing a friend, and the man who’d taught him the artistry in woodworking, die was just as hard to bear.
His Elf’s presence had helped ease the ache. Holding her, feeling her against him, even without the intensity of their lovemaking, Dayton knew his need for her was unique. Different than any other lover he’d had. She belonged to him. As the last stitch had settled into place, he’d determined walking away from his Elf was the last thing he wanted.
* * * * *
Helping her mom on with her coat, Elf waited for her to settle the long strap of her purse over her shoulder, before escorting her to the door. A heavy knocking sounded as she reached for the knob. Pulling it open, her heart stopped then resumed pounding in double time as she met Dayton’s dark blue gaze.
“Can I come in?” His voice was gruff, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket.
“Give me a moment, honey,” Eleanor warned stepping around her, and pulling the door closed, leaving Elf inside, and her mother and lover on the porch.
Dayton wasn’t sure how to react to the cold glare his Elf’s mother was raking over him. He now understood where his Elf’s intensity came from, as well as her lack of height. Eleanor Jeffries-Lincoln stood an inch or two taller than her daughter, but even with her low heels, her head barely reached his chin. Her narrowed gaze, however, could strip dozens of layers of finish from an antique desk without marring the wood.
Clearing his throat, he tried for a pleasant tone. “Good evening, Mrs. Jeffries-Lincoln.”
“We’ll see about that, young man.” Stepping closer, she dropped her voice, so no one besides him could hear her. “I’ll only give you this one warning. You hurt my little girl and I’ll cut your balls off and feed you my own special recipe of Rocky Mountain Oysters. Is that clear?”
Dayton fought the urge to laugh. He didn’t doubt for one second his Elf’s mother wouldn’t make good on her threat. But the very fact she was making it, reassured him his chances in reclaiming her were good.
Nodding politely, he instilled a sufficient amount of respect in his voice. “As crystal, Mrs. Jeffries-Lincoln.”
Eleanor’s shrewd gaze seemed to probe for confirmation her warning had been taken seriously. “Good.”
Reaching back, she opened the door. “Call if you need anything.” She smiled at her daughter.
His Elf stepped out on the porch and hugged her mother tight. “I will, Mom. Love you.”
Returning the hug, Eleanor replied, “Love you, too.” Her eyes met his again as she stepped around him and headed down the stairs to the parking lot.
“May I come in?” he asked again.
“Why? You said all you needed to say at work, I thought.”
Crowding closer, he hid his grin at the scent of her arousal. His own attraction was impossible to control or subdue. “Not enough, I think.”
“Plenty in my opinion.” Elf groused, but she held the door open for him.
As he moved past her, he deliberately let his arm brush the peaked nipples beneath her T-shirt. The low-rise jeans hugging her curves, and the sight of her bare feet had him erect and desperate to claim her as his again.
Her gasp was quickly stifled as she shut the door and followed him into the living room.
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior today,” he began.
When she would have cut him off, he forestalled her with a shake of his head. “No, let me.” Dayton moved close, shedding and tossing his coat onto the back of the sofa. He settled his hands at her hips and drew her closer. “I should never have taken my frustration and confusion out on you.”
She stayed still under his touch. Through the thin green T-shirt he could discern the distended nipples of her breasts.
Her hand smoothed over his bandaged one. “You were in pain. I understand that.” Then she stepped out of his hold.
Wanting to curse her retreat, Dayton stilled his tongue and tried another tack. “We need to talk.”
Nodding in agreement, she motioned to the sofa.
He didn’t protest her taking a seat in the chair rather than on the cushion beside him. Instead, he studied her face, noting the faint redness around her eyes that had to have come from tears. Again he castigated himself for his outburst at the factory. “I want you.” Putting his needs into words was difficult, so he stuck with the easiest path.
“For what? Sex?”
The mutinous look on her face and stiff way she held herself warned him it wasn’t going to be easy. He nodded, “Yes.”
“Not good enough.”
The fight in her, the fire, had always drawn him, tempted his need to dominate. Her response kicked his needs higher. “You want me.” He pushed.
“Not enough.”
Leaning forward, he held her gaze, watching the fire, the heat, the desire build as his words spilled out. “Yes, enough, my Elf.” His claiming of her made her blink, encouraging him further. “Your pretty little nipples are desperate for my attention. Your panties are soaked, and that bare pussy of yours is begging for a good swat or two before I fuck you.”
Swallowing convulsively to wet her dry mouth, Elf forced herself to remain in her seat. His every word was correct. Her breasts did ache for his touch. The bare swollen lips of her pussy yearned to be fucked by him, but she wasn’t going to let him deny his feelings for her again.
She couldn’t afford to.
Damn it, the man loved her, and she deserved to hear it. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you, I just said those weren’t good enough reasons for me to come back.” Elf kept her tone cool.
Having known him as long as she had, she could see a part of him shying away. In his eyes was the instinctive knowledge that what she’d ask for could be more than he was willing to give, but he voiced his question anyway. “What do you want from me?”
“You need to trust me.”
A simple thing. “I do trust you,” he assured her.
“No.” She pushed herself out of the chair, and paced the stretch of carpet between her living room and dining area. “You may trust me to work for you, but you don’t trust me enough for me to sleep with you again.”
“Sleep was the last thing I had in mind.” He tried to tease her.
“Don’t be an ass, Dayton.” Her hands gripped the back of her chair until her knuckles turned white. She glared over at him and said, “If you trusted me the way I trust you, you wouldn’t igno
re me when I ask you about your past.”
“I didn’t…” He tried to deny.
She could tell he was reluctant to admit she was right. His expression grew tight, almost austere. “I’ve asked you multiple times about your family. You ignore my questions. If I push, you shut down.”
“Why is that so important?”
Elf watched him. “Because they were important. To you. To the man you are. To the man you’ll become in the future.”
“They’re dead.” He shrugged, but the ease wasn’t there. She could still see discomfort in his eyes as he rose from the sofa to make his own circuit of her carpeted living room.
“And you still mourn them.” She shook her head when he would have protested. “You should mourn them, Dayton. They were your parents. But shutting them away as if they never existed, denying their presence in your life, that’s wrong. You hoard your feelings, your emotions, away like a surly dragon afraid someone is going to steal everything you have.”
“How does that have anything to do with us?” he demanded.
“It has everything to do with us, Dayton.” She sighed. “This emotional distance you demand isn’t what I want. It isn’t what I need, nor is it what I deserve.” Daring to bring up a subject that could explode in her face, she added, “And if we should ever have children? What then? Do you keep them at a distance, just out of arm’s reach? Will they constantly have to wonder why they aren’t good enough, special enough, for you to love?”
Shaking her head, her arms crossed over her stomach, she continued. “I love you, Dayton. But if you can’t let me in, if you can’t trust me with your feelings, all I see as a plus in our relationship is great sex. And even that gets old pretty quick when there are no feelings attached.”
His reaction wasn’t what she expected. Grabbing his coat from the back of the sofa, he stuffed his arms through the sleeves. In his eyes, she could see he was waging a battle of some sort, and she could only hope the winning side was one willing to negotiate with her.
After a long silence, he held his injured hand out to her. “If you really want to talk, you need to come with me.”
Chapter Twenty
In the dark, the path was harder to see. Having tread it so many times over the years, Dayton knew where every stone lay and how to avoid the spindly roots ready to trip the unwary. Beside him, his Elf remained silent, just as she had during the short drive from her apartment. Only the tight grip of her hand in his betrayed her nervousness.
When they reached the clearing, he stopped. The blanket he’d dragged from the back of his SUV was spread over the damp grass. The lights from downtown San Diablo cast a glow over the hill while the trees blocked the security lights surrounding the factory to the east of them. Clouds hid the stars and moon from sight, while the smell of rain hovered on the breeze.
“This was Mom’s favorite place.” His voice was quiet in the darkness. His Elf stayed quiet, seeming to sense his need to start slow. “You wanted to know about my family.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, legs curled to the side as she sat on the blanket. “This is where she made Dad bring us every Sunday afternoon. Rain or shine she’d drag us up here.”
Returning to the blanket, he stretched out beside his Elf and propped himself on his side, elbow holding him up. “When I was seven, Mom got pregnant. It’s all pretty vague, since I didn’t have anyone to discuss the memories with, but something happened and she lost the baby.
“There must have been medical bills, or something else going on, because the visits slowed down. My mom had to get a job, and there wasn’t time to come out here as often.”
He tried to read her face in the shadowed light, but all he could see was the shimmer of tears. Sitting up, he pulled her close. “Don’t cry, baby.”
“You must miss them terribly.” She whispered, tears making her voice rough. Her arms snaked around his waist, hugging him.
The stroke of her palm over his back sent a sharp pain through his chest. Answering her question, he nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“What happened to them?”
“I killed them.” The guilt twisted his belly, making him pull her closer, needing her warmth to fight off the pain of the memories.
“Dayton.”
“It was a week before Christmas and we hadn’t gotten our tree.” He answered her unspoken question, his voice spitting out words in a rush, trying to get his confession over with as quickly as possible. “Mom and Dad were tired, and the weather was miserable, cold and rainy, but I was so damned determined we had to have a Christmas tree, I just wouldn’t let up.”
Threading his fingers through her hair, he stroked the silky mane while images of his parents filled his head. “I loved Christmas, my Elf. The Christmas tree my mom decorated while my dad baked cookies. She was a great cook, but she always burned the cookies. But that year, everything was different.”
Leaning back, Dayton eased himself and his Elf down onto the blanket, still keeping her tucked in tight. “I think I just wanted things to go back to the way they’d been. And in my mind that meant a Christmas tree in the living room would make them happy. So I pushed and whined until they gave in.
“We should never have been on the road. The Christmas tree lot we usually went to was closed, but Dad said he knew of another one. It was like, once we were in the car, he started to understand how important that damned tree was. Mom was even smiling a bit.”
Shaking his head, he continued. “I don’t remember how it happened, but somehow, maybe because of the slick roads, another car slammed into ours.” Rolling onto his side, he rose up on his elbow beside her, his fingers tracing the curve of her cheek, absently running along the line of her jaw as he continued. “I woke up in the hospital and was told both my parents were gone. Dead. And I knew it was all my fault.”
“No.” Her chilled hands cupped his face as she gazed up at him. “No, Dayton, it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”
He was sure his expression must have soothed her, but his words helped ease the tension in the body beneath him even more. “I know, baby. It took some time, but I figured out I wasn’t to blame for them dying. But I did know I didn’t ever want to feel that much pain and be that out of control of my life ever again.”
“Your need to dominate.” She smiled.
“Exactly, my Elf.” He nodded down at her. “Then you completely fucked all my plans up the second you sat down in my office.”
In the dark it was easier to admit and give in to the truth he’d been fighting. Natural submissive that she was, his Elf completed him in a way no other woman ever had. She gave her body, her trust, and her heart so freely. Living without them would be impossible for him. Sliding her coat off, he made quick work of stripping off her T-shirt. Her bare breasts gleamed in the subdued light of the city below them.
Above, a three-quarter moon broke through the clouds, throwing its glow over them. “Three years.” His hands stroked her belly before unbuttoning and releasing the zipper of her jeans. “You twitched your sweet little ass in front of me until I couldn’t see straight.”
One palm eased beneath the denim to squeeze and stroke her bottom, before working the fabric off her hips and down around her ankles. The loafers she’d slipped on her feet were tossed to the edge of the blanket to be joined by her jeans.
“That was never my intention,” Elf protested, shivering as a breeze swept over her naked form.
“But you didn’t stop it either, did you?” Dayton demanded, spreading his coat to cover them. Using his forearms, settling his thighs between hers, he braced his weight over her, and lowered his lips to hers.
Wanting to reestablish his ownership, his uninjured hand cupped first one breast then the other. Reaching into the interior pocket of his coat, he pulled his collar out. Beneath him he felt her body tremble, with pleasure instead of cold if the smell of her arousal was any indication. “This should never have been removed without my permission, my Elf.”
Jade eyes held h
is gaze, never wavering. “You said we were over. That I should find another man to fuck me.” Her voice cracked as she recited his crass words.
“And eventually, I’ll find another man to fuck my Elf.” He informed her, his arousal growing at the mixture of fear and anticipation in her wide eyes. Lowering his lips to hers, his voice gentled. “Once, my Elf. I want you to experience the sensations of two men fucking you, at least once. Filling pussy and ass at the same time, and driving you insane with pleasure.”
“Will I have a choice?”
“Always, my Elf. Your trust is something I would never betray.” He again held the collar up. “This needs to return to its proper place.”
The question was hidden within the command. Just as every command and order he’d given held an unspoken query. And like every one that had come before, Elf submitted to this one as well. The look in her eyes and the way she lifted her head just enough for him to snake the gold and silver links beneath her neck had him fighting off climaxing in his jeans.
As he secured the collar at the base of her throat, Elf’s hands weren’t idle. Under his coat, she slipped buttons through their holes and tugged the shirt from the waistband of his jeans, before moving on to the five steel buttons restraining his arousal.
He gave her just enough time to release his cock from the confines of his boxer briefs, and then sucked one taut peak into his mouth. Throaty moans whispered into the darkness around them as he licked and nibbled the sensitive tip, released it to the cool air, and paid the same attention to its twin.
Leaving her breast, his hand skated over her undulating belly and dipped into the damp silk of her thong. “Hmmm.” He hummed his appreciation against her breast as he stroked the petal-smooth flesh of her mound. “Very good, my Elf.” He encouraged, parting the swollen folds, and teasing her clit. “You’ve kept yourself waxed for me.”
No response had been required, but her breathy sigh drifted across his ear as her hands flexed against his ass, “Yes, for you, Master.”