Page 127 of The Sound Of Us

The lights flicker. Eli is home.

I rush downstairs to meet him, but Pepper beats me to it.

After she’s had her one thousand hours of kisses and hugs, Eli rises to his feet and gazes at me from across the kitchen counter. Pepper is on the mat by the sink with a treat.

“Something smells good,” he signs.

I shouldn’t have, but my response is immediate. Something smells good. The sneer in Frank’s voice rings inside my head.

My body closes up. Eli catches it. He doesn’t move. In therapy, he learned that sometimes the smallest things could trigger me… the way his shoes might drag a certain way, if he made a fist with his hand without meaning to. We both learned that I have ten years’ worth of abusive tics to work through.

This man has gone to the ends of the earth to understand me.

“I love everything you cook,” he says in sign from where he’s standing. “Let’s eat together?”

I rush to him, throw my arms around his neck, and hold him close to me.

He slides his hands into the waistband of my sweats, his fingers grazing my silk panties. I pull back, taking his mouth with mine, kissing him deeply.

“Hmm.” His deep voice tumbles over my body.

“Let’s eat later,” he signs.

“You must be hungry,” I laugh.

His hand moves to the front of my sweats, taking my underwear between his thumb and index finger. So sexy, he signs.

I bury my face in his chest, but he just lifts my face up again and kisses me, wet and hard and full of tongue.

Then, without warning, he yanks down my sweats, exposing me to the cool night.

I’m barefoot, so getting the sweats right off is easy and in point four seconds, we’re shutting the bedroom door before Pepper realizes we’re missing from the kitchen.

I’m naked except for my panties, sprawled on the bed. I sign to him, “I’m single and I have a boner.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re taken and that's my boner,” he signs back. I laugh.

He strips quickly and in no time, I’m on my stomach, my cock painfully hard and sensitive against the silk material. I thank the gods for this erection.

Eli kisses me from my nape to the base of my spine, his lips moving carefully over each part of my skin he touches. I bruise easily these days, so sex is careful but no less explosive.

I know where his mouth is going and fuck, I want him there. Frank was wrong. I’m not a fucking corpse in bed.

Eli’s mouth tracks up my spine again and I squirm, rotating my hips. My fingers sink into the sheets, aching for Eli.

His mouth makes another slow track down my spine and his hands drift up from the back of my knees to my thighs. Up. Up. Up

Hmm. His big hands slide over my silk covered ass. He rubs there, big circles over and over, then sliding between my legs to slip his hand underneath.

“Aahh.” My groans join his loud, harsh exhales and the roughened baritone of his groans. Nothing compares to sex with Eli. His uninhibited pleasure is some kind of wonder.

His palms move again up to my ass, finger pressing down, separating my ass cheeks and then—

Ah, fuck. My dick tightens inside the confines of my panties as Eli rips the silk right in the middle, exposing my ass.

His tongue traces along the exposed crease of my ass. Joining Eli’s loud grunts, I encourage him into my ass. His tongue is everything, sinking in deep, biting, sucking.

I lift my ass for him, and he eats me through the newly ripped underwear. But I want more than his tongue.

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