That Thing Between Eli and Gwen (19 page)

“You have me in the palm of your hand, Guinevere.”

I moaned, feeling another of his fingers slip inside me.

“And I can’t have that.”

“Do your worst,” I told him.

He let go of me, raising his hand to my lips and, as I knew he wanted, I licked up slowly. Grabbing my waist, he spun me around.

I braced myself against the wet tiles, feeling him press up against my ass.

He kissed the water on my back up to my shoulder where he bit softly.

Tilting my neck, I welcomed each one of his kisses and love bites, grinding myself against the length of him.

He bit the top of my ear. “You have a way with words, Guinevere, has anyone told you that?”

“No.” My lids felt heavy and when he grabbed one of my breasts, I couldn't help but close my eyes and just give in to him. “Eli.”

“God, I want to fuck you so hard your knees give out right here, right now,” he whispered into my ear, squeezing both of my breasts.

“Eli—”

“Can you feel how hard I am for you? Only you?” To prove his point, he took my hand and made me hold him. “That is because you have to be the sexiest woman I have ever met.”

He is torturing me with words.
“Eli, please…” I said when he let my hand go.

“Please what?” He put one hand on my breast, the other moving back between my legs. “Please screw you? No, that’s not what you said last night. Fuck you, right? Fuck you until I scream only your name.”

“You aren’t playing fair.” I bit my own finger when he massaged me slowly.

“Why would I play fair when I can feel how
wet
you are, how much you enjoy it like this?”

He’s right. Damn it.
“Eli, I need—”

“You need what? My head between your legs? You tasted so good on my tongue.” He bit my ear again, his hand working faster.

Between that and his words, I had to clench my legs closed.

“That won’t help you, baby. I feel you. Beg me, I want to hear you beg for me to fuck you the way you need…the way you deserve.”

“Eli, please. I’ll do anything, please, fuck me,” I begged him, almost screaming. “Fuck me hard!”

“As you wish,” he said, grabbing my ass as he, in one powerful thrust, entered me.

My mouth dropped open in the sheer pleasure of it, and I rested against the wall in front of me. “Oh god!” My voice shook with each thrust, deeper and harder into me.

“I like the way you sound when I fuck you like this, Guinevere. Hear yourself?” He kissed my shoulder.

I could barely hear anything, because my ears were ringing.

“God, and I thought you were tight last night,” he moaned behind me and slapped my ass, pinching my nipple.

“Yes! Eli! More, please,” I begged.

“As you wish.” He slapped my ass over and over again as he buried himself deeply inside of me.

“Eli!” I screamed as I came. I couldn’t hold back any more.

Holding my hips, his pace quickened. “Gwen…Guinevere!” he cried out as he came, holding me still in front of him, the shower water now running cold against our hot skin.

“You almost called me Gwen,” I managed to say.

He kissed my back. “You are my Guinevere; Gwen is for everyone else.”

I could live with that.

He moved from behind me, and I realized it had only been only him holding me up. My legs gave out.

“Guinevere!” he called, turning off the shower.

I laughed, trying to cover my mouth. “You really did fuck me 'til my knees went weak. You're amazing.”

He snickered, reaching out of the shower enclosure to grab two towels, one for my hair and the other to wrap around my body when I stood again. Only when I was taken care of did he grab one for himself, tying it around his waist.

“I was watching that,” I said.

He laughed. “Careful, Ms. Poe, or we will never leave this bathroom.” He gave me his hand, helping me out of the shower and back toward his bedroom.

“Are my clothes still in the living room?”

“Over there.” He pointed to the dresser by his closet. He had folded everything nicely. “But your shirt is damaged beyond repair. Have this.”

“Thank you.” I took his shirt. “I’ll head back and bring it with—”

“Don’t go yet,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s only 2 AM. Stay, sleep here for now. I can make breakfast when we wake up in the morning.”

For some reason, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t want to be that girl who never leaves, Eli—”

“I’m the one asking you to stay. Believe me, if I need space, I’ll let you know. But our relationship is more than sex. Or at least, that was my plan before last night,” he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Remember what I told you about Hannah and Sebastian?”

“We said a lot about them. You’re going to have to refresh my memory.” I took off the towel and put on his shirt.

Coming over to me, he helped brush back a few strands of my hair, which were starting to curl from the water. “I said that any two people with working organs can have a great screw, but that a relationship based only on sex won’t last. I was right. They didn’t. I don’t want to be like them.”

“I was going to tell you this during dinner, before everything happened last night.” I looked up at him. “You might not have noticed, but I’m a little weird. I have full conversations with my dog, and honestly sometimes I think he’s a secret mastermind. I make weird faces because I’m having a conversation in my head. I change into this super polite doll when I’m around adults, even though I am one. I’m still a little jaded from my ex and worry I’m going to ruin this because I suck at dating. Like you said, I snore…I still will never admit I drool though. There are times where I hate getting dressed up and just want to eat ice cream and watch Netflix until the sun comes up. Because I like you, I lie, and say crazy things like I run nine miles every morning, when in reality I think the fact that you do that every day is insane. Oh yeah, and I ramble…apparently.”

“So what you are saying is, you aren’t perfect and you're a handful?” he said slowly.

I nodded. “I will drive you crazy, which is why I wanted to warn you last night, before we went further.”

He laughed and kissed my forehead. “Maybe you forgot, but I knew all that from the beginning. It still didn’t stop me from liking you. Any other warnings you have for me?”

 “In the morning, my hair will look like a French poodle. Don’t worry, I will fix it. It’s the price I pay for shower sex.”

He just shook his head. “Do you want anything to eat before we go to bed? I'll bring it.”

“Anything is fine,” I told him, falling onto his bed…I was so sleepy.

 Eli

Safe to say she was by far the most unique girl I had ever been with in all my life. Her list of faults…I believed every one of them, and yet I didn’t seem to care. She made me happy. Next to her, because of her, I smiled and laughed more than I had in any other period of time. Even in the beginning, I got a kick out of her just getting worked up over my words. Now her rambling and mishaps just seemed to be part of her charm. Taking the tray, I headed back in to find her buried under my sheets, blissful, her eyes closed.

“That smells good,” she whispered, sitting up in the middle of the bed.

“Here.” I handed her the glass of orange juice, which she happily took, before setting the tray of sandwiches between us. “Turkey or ham?”

“Must I really choose?” She pouted.

“Both works, too.” I had made more than enough.

Smirking, she took the turkey first. “Thank you.”

“You know”—I grabbed a sandwich for myself—“I’m not perfect either, right? I’m a controlling neat freak who gets his kicks torturing young interns, and I only have one friend whom I’m an ass to, for the most part.”

“If I found out you were perfect, I would feel uncomfortable,” she replied, licking the mayo off the side of her lip.

I tried not to focus on it.

“Besides, after last night, I have a better understanding of what type of person you are.”

“And what type of person am I?”

“A rock,” she said.

I looked at her, completely confused.

“My dad always classifies people in terms of nature. People who are rocks, like you, are always at the base of people. Helping people, taking care of people, no matter the cost. You don’t realize it, but when Logan was saying how much he wished he could pay you back for always being there for him, I saw it. You are willing to sacrifice everything for the people you care about.”

“Isn’t that everyone?” I took another bite.

“Yeah, but not everyone plans their lives around their little brother and mother, where they go to school, where they start their careers. Not everyone calls their brother's professor just to check up on how he’s doing. You do it because you love them enough that worrying about yourself makes you feel selfish. Even when we first met again at the hospital, I was wrong; you weren’t telling me to leave because my presence bothered you, you really were worried that Logan was going to keep blaming himself. You are your family's rock. It’s not a bad thing, it’s amazing,” she said, eating as her brown eyes watched me carefully.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about her reading me so easily. “What does your father call you?”

She laughed. “I’m the rain because, as he would say, I’m vital to his life. The world would be a horrid place if it never rained. My mother says it’s because I can be a summer shower or a hurricane. And my brother…my brother used to say it was because I was a wonder. No matter how many times you see the rain, if you just sit and watch, it’s wondrous. As you can tell, they were all biased.”

I didn’t think so, but said nothing anyway.

“And what I told you about my brother.” She bit her lip, glancing back up at me. “Do you mind never talking about that with anyone? Besides you and Stevie, you're the only person outside of my family who knows.”

“You never told anyone else?” I wanted her to say she never told him.

She nodded. “It’s not something you can bring up in casual conversation.”

“I won't say a word. Thank you for telling me. I’m still not a hundred percent okay, but I’m going to try my best to support Logan. I guess part of me is annoyed because I can’t help him in any way. He has to do it on his own, and I have to let him. It’s a first for me.”

“He’s doing well already,” she said, taking her phone off the bedside table. “He already has a lot of followers on social media, and his song was in the iTunes top one hundred.”

“What?” I took the phone from her, and sure enough, there was Logan onstage at some concert. “When did he do all of this?”

“I don’t know. I remember Sebastian talking about his music career once, but I never followed it closely. I googled him after he left; as you can see, I’m a little nosy.”

“I had no idea he was already doing this,” I said, more to myself, scrolling up and down all the messages he had from fans, people he didn’t even know who supported him more than I did. Sighing, I gave her back the phone, resting against my pillows.

She took the tray off the bed and put it on the ground beside her. Wrapping her arm around me, she rested her head on my chest.

“I only wanted to make sure he was okay. When our father died, Logan was so little. I felt bad because I had all these memories, and he didn’t, so I’ve always tried to do what my father did for me: set a good example, make sure he was doing everything he was supposed to, going to all his games. I didn’t realize I was suffocating him.” It hurt to think about.

“You weren’t,” she said softly as my hands rubbed up and down her side. “I’m sure he’s happy he has all those memories, and besides you wanting him to be a doctor, he wouldn’t change anything.”

“I knew he liked music, but I never thought it could be his career. It’s just—”

“His life now depends on whether or not other people like what he does.” She looked up at me. “That’s the difference between your career and ours. Yours is by education and training. In many ways, it is in your own hands. But, like you said, for us, it all rides on whether or not we are popular. We can go to school and train too, but if, at the end of the day, no one buys anything… It was scary at first for me, but when you do make it, and you give someone a painting, and he looks at you like you created a miracle…it’s worth the risk.”

There was silence between us for a while and I remembered her painting. How it
was
a miracle. There were no family photos of us all together, and with her hands, she had created one on her own.

A smile spread across my face when I heard her soft snore.

Rolling her over onto her back, she then shifted onto her side, facing me.

Behind her, I saw the time and realized we had talked for another hour. She was just so easy to listen to and speak with.

“What are you doing to me, Guinevere?” I kissed her head, feeling myself drifting. I was pretty sure I was going to dream of her; she was slowly taking up a bigger part of my life.

Chapter Sixteen

Troublemakers

Eli

I held Taigi’s leash as we walked back to the apartment. Guinevere had to rush to meet a paint supplier since we’d both overslept, so I offered to take Taigi out. I could only get in a thirty-minute run, but I wasn’t bothered; I felt more than worked out, anyway. Before we could turn the corner, Taigi stopped, sitting his gray ass on the sidewalk.

“Come on,” I said, tugging on his leash.

When he got up, he tried to walk in the other direction.

Kneeling in front of him, I scratched behind his ear. “We can go for a good run tomorrow, but I've got to go to work.”

He barked, trying to walk back again.

“Taigi,” I said like I was talking to a naughty child.

He whined, but followed me.

The moment I turned the corner, I wished I had listened to him.

He hunched over, looking almost like a wolf, and growled at the man standing right in front of our building, holding a bouquet of red and white poppies. The fact that I knew what they were proved I had gone flower shopping with my mother one too many times
.
When we reached the man, Taigi's growls grew louder.