by Nikki Winter
They reopened, revealing the person on the other side. Who could it have possibly been aside from Eli? Jesus? Machiavelli? A cast member from Downtown Abbey? No. Just him. In those shorts. With those curls.
He stepped on and took up a position on the wall to the left of her. Carmen could feel his eyes sweeping over every inch on her skin. She swallowed, focused on the loose string hanging from her suitcase. “What?”
“Oh are we pretending that your letting me stay in your room isn’t completely out of the ordinary?”
She chewed her lip. “Honesty train coming.”
Eli swept a hand out. “Ready.”
“I had a conversation with you that lasted almost four hours today and somewhere along the way it shifted from leering and sexual innuendos to interests that don’t include the size of my nipples or my ass to waist ratio.” Carmen looked up. “The minute you started talking about all the Mario memorabilia you’d collected over the years because of one game you received on your seventh birthday from your Papa, I saw the slightest glimpse of all that sweet boyish innocence you try so hard to hide. And then, you said something that would’ve seemed strange to anyone else but to me, it was probably the most adorable thing that could’ve ever left your mouth.”
He quirked a brow.
Carmen smiled and repeated his words. “I was supposed to be Super Mario this year for Comic Con but Dwayne Johnson’s illegitimate son needed my help.”
“Me calling my friend a milk man’s baby is… adorable?” he questioned slowly.
She shook her head. “No, it was the brief moment of disappointment on your face. You really looked like you regretted not being able to go. And it made me realize two things.” Holding up her fingers, she ticked them off, “One—you’re not some thoughtless whore who lacks substance. Two—I really want to have sex with you now that I know under the scruffy appearance and the obscenely large arms lies a dork; an honest to God, banana sandwich eating, windowsill figurine owning, underoo wearing dork.”
“Am I being insulted?” he asked. “Because I have to tell you, I kind of like it.”
Laughing, she leaned backwards. “Sometimes I want to smack your face and sometimes I want to lick it. You confuse me but not so much that I can’t enjoy however long we decide to ride this out. I’m beginning to like you and it’s a strange and foreign feeling… like the first time I got a Brazilian wax.”
Eli’s eyes widened a bit, suddenly free of all levity. “How Brazilian are we talking?”
Her lips curved. “Brazilian enough that had I decided to sit on a bed of plantains, when I left, they would’ve been sliced and fried.”
He groped for the wall. “I think…I think I may be having palpitations.” Looking upwards, while clutching his chest, he called out. “Elizabeth? I–is that you?”
“There is something wrong with you.”
“Yeah,” Eli breathed. “There is.” He eyed her for a moment.
“What?”
The doors slid open as they reached their floor and he nodded towards the hallway. “You first.”
Carmen shot him a wary glance but walked ahead of him nonetheless. They reached the room within a minute and she slid the keycard through the door. The moment they stepped onto the plush sand colored carpet they felt the sea’s breeze blowing in from the open balcony doors. The suite itself was immaculately beautiful with walls the shade of cerulean, windows that went from the floor to the ceiling and of course the small terrace that gave way to the beautiful ocean view below. The bed was piled with pillows and a complimentary activity sheet along with a menu. The bathroom held a large sunken tub and grotto shower. The television rested a few feet away from a small sitting area. It was all so incredibly relaxing and after Carmen’s last few work weeks, it was exactly what she needed.
“This is—hey!” she yelped, suddenly finding herself flat on her back in the midst of all those pillows. Adjusting to the new position, she glared over at the reason she was currently like this. “If you’re going to manhandle me, I would at least appreciate a few Neanderthal grunts beforehand so I know what’s coming.”
His smile was sheepish as he stood there, appearing as though he had no idea what he should do next. “Sorry.”
“Is there a reason you decided to throw me around?”
Eli tilted his head. “Yes there is actually.”
“Which would be…?”
He smirked. “I had decided to ravish you in the filthiest of ways and now… Now I’m wondering if I should take a different approach.”
She swallowed. “Erm, different? Why do we have to go with different? I find myself pretty attached to the first idea.”
The curve of his lips broadened as he leaned forward and placed his palms on the bed. “You may find yourself pretty attached to different also.”
He prowled forward on his hands and knees until he hovered just a hair’s breath away from her. His arms then bracketed her on either side as he gazed down into her face. “Hi.”
Someone this position was more intimate than any other they’d ever been; including the minutes that his oral fixation had taken hold. Carmen’s grin was slow and shy. “Hi.”
“You don’t mind this do you?” he asked as he used a thigh to nudge her legs apart, placing the strong muscle between them. “The different approach I mean?” He moved his leg in a way that made her arch upwards, her hands coming down on his shoulders. Eli leaned forwards, rubbing the tip of his nose against her own. “Fucking you senseless holds its merits but making you ache,” he placed a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Listening to you purr,” one arm found its way around her waist, pulling him deeper into the curve of her body. “Watching your eyes glaze over and your chest shudder with the inability to breathe,” he trailed the fingers of his free hand up her torso. “Well the appeal of that is greater.”
Yeah. Yeah it was. They hadn’t be alone five minutes and already the seat of her little cotton briefs were soaked. She’d gone for comfort rather than general allure and almost wished she’d chosen another pair seeing as how these were printed with the Looney Tunes. Carmen stopped considering the design of her underwear the moment Eli licked the seam of her lips. She also stopped breathing.
He repeated the motion and she opened her mouth, groaning at the wet lash of his tongue as it tunneled inside, tangling with hers frantically. Eli moved her legs so that he now rested between them and those lovely jersey shorts revealed every steel inch of the thick length that rested between his thighs. Overtly large he was not, but big enough to make her eyes roll back when he bumped the apex of her thighs? Yes.
She clutched at his back, writhing beneath him as his hips pumped against hers. With fabric between the two of them, the desperate gasp that left her throat shouldn’t have manifested but, the absence of pleasure for so long had left her needy and Eli was obviously more than willing to put salve on that particular wound. Her legs spread further, her ankles locking at the base of his spine while they ground into one another in greedy, ridiculously obscene motions.
“I’ve been hard for you all week,” he rasped against her throat after releasing her mouth. “Remembering the way you tasted. The way you screamed.”
A whimper rumbled out of her.
“Thought about the way you clutched my head, how your nails skimmed my scalp,” he continued. “Thought about the way your thighs tensed when I wrapped my lips around your clit.”
Carmen bit the bottom rim of her mouth to keep the small sob resting on her tongue at bay.
“Look at me,” Eli demanded. “Look at what you have me doing.” He moved against her faster. “Acting like a fucking kid. Coming in my pants because you feel just that good.”
She jerked his head down, sure that if he kept talking she’d black out. He sucked on her tongue and the sensation swept across her skin, awakening every sensitive part of her. If this wasn’t him fucking her senseless, then God only knew what would happen when they finally got undressed.
“E-Eli,” Car
men breathed. “I’m—”
“Coming?” he prodded, rolling his hips against her in a slow counter clockwise motion that made an orgasm tear up her spine hard, relentlessly hard. “Fucking. Good.”
Her eyes slammed shut as the climax took hold and didn’t release her until it wrung her dry. When they finally stopped moving, Eli simply rolled to the side, chest heaving.
She waited for him to say something, anything. And then he did.
“Do you want to use the shower first or should I?”
Nine
He didn’t want to break her, didn’t want her to stop calling him on his shit but he did want her hungry. Hunger led to confessions, confessions led to action and, action led to gratification in some way or another. Eli had a goal. By the end of this week, Carmen wouldn’t be able to walk away from him like he was a simple itch that she needed relief from. No, she’d feel the same uncompromising obsession that he had the first time he kissed her. It made him selfish, it made him irrational, it made him a complete bastard but he couldn’t be the only one utterly fixated between the two of them. She had to want it too. She had to be as preoccupied with him as he was her.
Eli couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation with a woman that didn’t include a flash of thigh or a light squeeze to his bicep, nonsensical words spilling just for the sake of filling the air between them with niceties until the end goal of sex was met and completed. He wanted to know her favorite color, wanted to see her eyes light up when she talked about possibly expanding her restaurant again and he wanted to understand why in all fuck she was still single because right now he couldn’t grasp it. He wanted to but he really couldn’t and to outright ask may send the wrong impression.
Which would be what, asshole? That you may want more than to dirty up a few hotel surfaces with her? Isn’t that the point of all of this?
It would seem that way considering the thought of her with someone else, anyone else, made him want to hurt things. Eli sucked in a deep breath and tried to ignore the agony in his groin as he took a step out of the shower and snatched down a towel. A quick glance at the clock told him it was a little ways past 2 p.m. which meant there was a fully seven hours to go before the 70’s party tonight. Though he’d left Carmen to bathe without making another advance, he was in no ways opposed to making good of the time between now and the event they all planned to enjoy.
Eli wrapped a towel about his waist and padded to the door, steam from the previously used hot water rushing out. He had every intention of dropping that towel and making Carmen scream loud enough that the neighboring people on each side of them mistook her pleasure for a horror movie but she was gone. Narrowed eyes found the note she left on the bed.
Gone for the spa and a tour. –Carmen.
Involuntarily, he smirked, twirling the small piece of notepad paper through his fingers. Oh he didn’t mind the tour or the spa time. She needed all the relaxation she could handle before he got his hands on her later tonight.
His smirk turned into a leer as his gaze caught on her suitcases neatly tucked away in the open closet. Eli dropped the note. For once, he was glad that Carmen had left him alone.
***
Coward. She was such a coward. The moment the bathroom door had closed behind Eli and she could hear him humming Adele, Carmen had taken off with no more than a note and a backward glance. A few hours of being rubbed down, waxed and taken about the coast, had managed to muffle the echo of her own screams in her ears. Eli did things to her that weren’t plausible or natural and she liked it. She liked it entirely too much. In a moment of panic, sure that he’d come strolling out of the shower, smelling like clean soap and sex god, she’d run. And now with the never ending throb pulsing between her thighs because of what they’d done hours ago, she wished she hadn’t. Maybe then her lust could’ve been sated. Maikao and Addison had more than likely been breaking their bed in.
Bottom lip caught between her teeth, Carmen approached her room’s door and slid the keycard through. They only had a half an hour before the party began and she needed to get ready. The second the door swung open she stopped in her tracks, eyes blinking repeatedly in the hopes that she would understand what she was seeing.
“Eli?”
He swung around from the mirror he’d been standing in front of and his lips spread into a wolfish grin. “Well hello there, foxy.” Gliding towards her, he stopped. “How’s it hanging?”
Carmen bit the inside of her cheek and gave him a once over. “What… what happened to your hair?”
Frowning, he reached up and patted what she thought had to be a wig. “Don’t kill my vibes, sweetness. This here is what’s called a Jewfro.” The thick mass of curls had come from literally nowhere. “Usually I keep it tamed with a little product but tonight I figured I’d let it do its thing.” He materialized a pick and combed through it.
“Give me a moment. I’m attempting to process the anomaly before mine eyes.”
Combined with his “Jewfro” Eli had shaved the majority of his beard so that it was nothing but a cleanly cut goatee around his mouth now. Thankfully he’d left his side burns alone. His lightly haired chest was partially visible through the opening of his plaid leisure suit’s unbuttoned shirt and jacket; as was the thick gold Star of David medallion he wore. On his left pinky sat a class ring and when Carmen glanced down she saw something that made her brows touch her hairline.
“Sir… is that a sock?”
Running his thumbs on the inside of his waistband, he rocked back and forth on the leather ankle boots he wore, tsking, “Baby, baby, baby, why would I need a sock?” His grin was slow and wide. “When I have all this here?” He jerked the pants about.
“And I’m done now.” She turned on the heels of her feet and headed for the closet. “I’m getting ready for the party and avoiding your eyes for the rest of the night because I’m feeling rather disturbed.”
He chuckled. “You do that. I’m going to cool it out on the balcony.”
When he strode past her there was a slight dip to his walk that would’ve blended perfectly for the era he was imitating. “Dios mío, ¿quién es este hombre?”
She didn’t know what perturbed her more; the fact that he’d gone through so much trouble to stuff his broad ass into that suit or the fact that she liked it. Rolling her eyes towards the ceiling, Carmen rifled through her suitcase until she found the short pleated high-waisted skirt and bell sleeved blouse she’d been looking for. Her make-up kit already sat on the bathroom sink and without much trouble at all she slid everything into place. The skirt went on with ease, the shirt tied beneath her breasts and the thick headband she’d bought, pushed her hair back without an issue. She completed the look with knee high socks and stacked Mary-Janes. With a few finishing touches to her make-up, she was out the door and running into a hard wall of chest, covered in a polyester blend.
Eli stared down at her and gave a wolf whistle. “You look—”
She slapped a hand over his mouth. “If the words out of sight leave your lips, you will be buried in that suit.”
She felt his lips curve beneath his palm. Reaching upwards, he lightly gripped her wrist and tugged it down. “For your information, I was going to say you look incredible.”
Carmen nodded once. “Thank you.” She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Party starts in ten. We should probably go hose Mak and Addie down.” Moving to step past him, she was surprised to find herself facing the wall, her back pressed to Eli’s chest.
“Not so fast, sweetness. I’m curious about something.”
Swallowing as she felt Eli’s palms sliding against her torso and down her hips, she softly asked, “What?”
“Would you happen to be,”—he licked the shell of her ear, one hand veering to her left breast—“wearing panties?”
Her heart stopped momentarily before speeding up to a rapid pace that pounded in her ears. “Y-yes…”
Grunting, he flicked his thumb across her nipple and
said, “I want them.”
Carmen’s mouth went dry. “You want what?”
“Your. Panties.”
She didn’t move.
“I’m going to back away, you’re going to turn around, slide them down your legs and hand them to me. I’m then going to tuck them in my pocket and keep them for the rest of the night, well aware that at any moment I can place my fingers between your legs and touch you without any barriers. Now, let me ask you Carmen, do you have any objections to that?”
Breaths shuddering out, she shook her head jerkily.
Eli hummed. “Good.” He backed away from her.
Carmen turned slowly and kept her eyes on the carpet.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
She lifted her gaze and locked onto his, unable to keep her promise to avoid eye contact. With shaky hands, she slipped the hem of her skirt higher up her thighs and hooked a finger into the side of her thong.
He stood and watched as she slid the scrap of lace past her thighs, allowing it to pool about her ankles. Without a word, she dipped to pick them up and held them out. Irises smoldering, Eli took them, twirled them around one finger and then stuffed them into the breast pocket of his jacket.
Her shoulders hit the wall as she tried to draw in a normal inhale.
Clapping his hands together her said, “Now let’s go boogie, baby.”
Repeating the swagger heavy steps from earlier, he ambled to the door, tossing her a wink over his shoulder. He was trying to fucking kill her.
***
He was a goddamned masochist; had to be. That was the only explanation for why he would actually take Carmen’s underwear and carry them around all the while watching her across the club, knowing she’d probably gotten freshly waxed today. Yeah. Goddamn masochist. The skirt she’d chosen to wear…
“You don’t look relaxed at all,” Maikao pointed out, coming to stand next to him by the bar as Pink Floyd began to blare out of the speakers. Eli’s friend had chosen a full on flower child ensemble complete with bell-bottoms and a fringe vest. He’d had more than enough fun mocking him while complimenting Addison on her choice of a white maxi dress and wreath of flowers in her hair.