I wanted Elliot.
Elliot looked into my eyes, and when I slid my arms around the back of his neck and tugged his face down to mine, he didn’t offer me any resistance. I crushed my mouth against his and all thoughts of him rejecting me fled when he groaned into my mouth and plunged his tongue inside. He hands tugged me into a standing position so my body was fully pressed against his. I gasped when his hands moved to my behind, and he palmed my flesh like he’d never get the chance again.
With one arm supporting me, he moved one hand around to my front and slipped it under my top. I gasped against his lips when his large, warm hand cupped my right breast. He made a sound dangerously close to a growl in the back of his throat, and it awakened my body as desire rippled through me. I kissed him harder, bit his lower lip, and gripped the bulge of his cock in his jeans.
“Sasanach,” he snarled against my mouth. “If ye don’t stop, I won’t stop at just tastin’ these lips.”
I gripped his arm, my knees suddenly going weak.
“Yes,” I panted. “Yes, please. I want you so much.”
“How much?” he teased, licking my lower lip. “Tell me how much ye want me, gorgeous.”
“I want you more than my next breath,” I groaned as his thumb circled my pebbled nipple. “I want to feel your hands all over me while you suck on my cli—”
The handle of the door jiggled, and Elliot sprung away from me like I was scalding-hot coal. I lost my balance and fell back on to the bed.
“Noah?” a voice called. “I’m just checking that everything went okay with your shower. Are you in any pain?”
The nurse. With my eyes on Elliot I breathlessly shouted, “I’m fine, just getting dressed.”
“Okay. I’ll stop back again later with your medication.”
Elliot had his hands on his hips, his eyes on me as he breathed heavily.
“Are you mad at me?”
He shook his head. “I want to touch ye, to kiss ye . . .”
“But you wanna make sure I’m in the right headspace because of Anderson?”
“Because of him, and other things.”
I swallowed. “Sit. Talk to me.”
He sighed, then helped me into bed and made quick work of covering me with my blanket. After that, he sat on the chair next to my bed, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“What d’ye want to know about first?”
“Us,” I answered. “Tell me what happened between us.”
He exhaled a deep breath and started talking.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ELLIOT
Twenty-five years old . . .
“Irish, are you crying?”
I cut AJ a glare as he fell on to the sofa next to me with a wry grin on his face.
“Don’t start,” I warned. “I’m wound up tighter than a slag in a confessional.”
AJ laughed. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer.
“Let me guess,” he said, stroking his imaginary goatee. “Your parents’ divorce is eating at you again?”
I glanced at him. “How’d ye know?”
“Because you haven’t been yourself since they told you and Bailey about it. I’m more than a pretty face – I tend to see what’s right in front of me.”
I sighed. “The whole thing has fucked with me head big-time. I want me ma and da to be happy, I do . . . but I never thought that them bein’ apart would be their solution to findin’ that happiness. I can’t imagine either of them bein’ with other people. I knew they were havin’ problems but divorce? It’s caught me off guard. I’m kind of bitter about it.”
I was more than “kind of” bitter, I was a whole fucking lot bitter. For as long as I could remember, I had idolised my parents’ relationship, their marriage, their love . . . I’d even told Noah on the day I loved her for the first time that I wanted us to have a love like my parents did. A love that had since fallen apart and ended.
My parents were together for ten years before they became man and wife. When they told me that they were getting a divorce, I asked my father when he and my mother’s problems began – and he laughed and said their wedding day. I knew he’d said it as a joke, but it stuck with me and had been on my mind for the past six weeks.
I couldn’t shake it off.
For as long as I could remember, my parents had been in love. They were a team, they tackled everything in life as partners. They never made decisions without the other’s input, they were a unit and I loved that about them. I loved that they had so much trust, love and respect for one another. Learning that their love had come to an end made me question everything I thought I knew about them. My dad saying that their problems had started the day of their marriage had hit me like a brick. It meant my perception of their marriage, of their love, was completely and utterly wrong.