Page 77 of Vera Stein Is Fine
A few slow tears began to brim at the corners of my eyes as he pulled me in closer so that we were nearly pressed together. The angry heat I’d felt just moments ago took root in my gut and turned into something hungrier. It was the first time we’d intentionally touched since that morning in my room. Not that he’d even really touched me then, and yet it still felt impossibly intimate and vulnerable.
“Vera Stein, you deserve all the light.”
I sucked in a breath as he traced a finger across my forehead and then pushed my overgrown bangs behind my ear.
He curled an arm around my waist, breath hot as his lips found mine. It was tentative at first. Exploratory. A soft, dragging touch.
Every time his mouth left mine—however briefly—I went in search of him so that whatever he did, my lips were there waiting to be found. “Please,” I said on a whisper.
He nodded against my neck as his lips danced across my jawline and nipped at the lobe of my ear. His hands began to move frantically, like he was trying to memorize me by touch. And then his mouth found mine again.
My nails scraped up the back of his neck and into his hair as his tongue moved against mine, and our kiss grew deeper and wider.
My brain didn’t even have a moment to metabolize what my body would feel like to him and the rolls at my hips that so many others politely referred to as curves and the way some of my stretch marks were purple and angry instead of faint and translucent.
Blistering need spread through my chest and into my abdomen as I sighed into his greedy mouth. I shouldn’t want this. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t.
The feel of him made Brody’s touch just moments ago feel clinical. Eli left no room for questions as he directed us to the couch. The backs of my calves hit the sofa and I fell back into the cushions.
He sunk to his knees in front of me so that we were eye to eye and then with his hands wrapped around the backs of my thighs, he pulled me to the edge of my seat. My center pressed against the fly of his jeans, where he was already hard. For a moment, he pulled back and my lips followed him as though we were tethered. Like he was baiting me.
A devious grin spread across his lips. Fingers danced across my collarbone and then around my neck and then to the back of my head as he pulled me to him and left a trail of kisses along the blade of my shoulder. His other hand roamed up from my waist and cupped my breast. “I’ve been dreaming of this since you walked in on me. Fuck, even before then.I don’t think you understand how impossible it’s been to exist under the same roof as you and not touch you. How unfair it was for you to wander back into my life and for me to not immediately kiss you?”
My eyes rolled back as he snapped his hips against me. He was aroused byme. There was no mistaking the hard bulge in his pants.
Eli pulled back again for a moment, his breath indecipherable from mine. “I’m sorry...” He glanced down at his erection. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”
This time it was me who kissed him, my tongue lacing with his. I kissed along the scruff of his cheekbone and to his earlobe, where I sucked and nibbled.
He groaned into my ear and the sound of him broke any remaining resolve I might have had.
The hand cupping my breast moved down past the waistband of my linen shorts. I let myself glance down for a moment as I watched his hand disappear into the leg of my shorts, my body rocking forward to meet him. To beg him to move faster.
“Do you know how hard I am every night thinking about you in the bedroom next door? Ever since that morning in your bed, I’ve held my breath, hoping that I would hear you moan. Do you know what kind of torture it is to have you as a roomate?”
Roommate.That word yanked me back to reality just as his fingers traced the scalloped trim of my underwear.
I pushed myself against the back of the couch in an effort to put space between us. Maybe space would give us both a shred of sense.
His hands dropped to his sides when he finally realized that I wasn’t pulling him with me.
I shook my head. “We... we live together. And we work together. And... you just told me I love Brody and now you have your hands down my shorts.”
His lips parted and his gaze fell, confusion and disappointment heavy in the soft lines of his forehead. “I should have asked,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.
“I am more than willing. It’s not that. Trust me. But that doesn’t mean this is a good idea.” It sounded like lines from a script. The kind of thing you said when you knew someone had to be the adult and ruin the fun. “I need this job, Eli. Desperately. I can’t even begin to explain to you how desperately I need this job. And I can’t risk things getting weird. Especially while I’m living in your apartment.”
“Nothing has to get weird,” he countered.
I gave him a pointed look.
“Okay, well, maybe it’s been a little weird.”
“The fact that you’re my ex-husband isn’t really helping things either.”
“We were kids,” he said firmly, and then groaned. “Forget it ever happened. Okay? I was angry and sad and acted out. That’s all this was.”
I nodded, because that was something I could believe. “That’s all it was,” I said, my voice hollow and unconvincing.
