Page 57 of The Anchor Holds

My body sagged in relief but also in grief. I’d never felt more whole than when he was inside me. I already felt my body tensing, hastily building shields, albeit lazily as my body was still captured by the most powerful orgasms in my life.

“Stay there,” Elliot ordered, voice gruff but with a tender edge.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have the ability to form words yet. If anyone walked in, they’d be in for a sight, me completely naked, sagging against the bar, cum leaking down my inner thighs.

I didn’t much care. I didn’t much care if the world fell down around my ears. I didn’t have the energy to do anything but inhale and exhale.

Elliot returned, the sound of his footfalls echoing in my brain.

His fingertips returned to my hips, softer than before, then something warm wiped at the liquid that had seeped down my thighs.

My entire body quivered as he cleaned me, tenderly, slowly. I wanted to argue against it, but no one had used such a caretaking touch on me before. No partner had ever done that. I’d always thought it was something invented by hopeful women who longed for men who didn’t exist—except in the pages of books.

Yet there was Elliot Shaw, tenderly cleaning his cum from me after he’d fucked me harder than I’d been fucked in my life.

My wits scrambled as I internally screamed at myself to stand and snatch the cloth to regain the autonomy I’d gladly given to him, as if it weren’t something women had been fighting for for years.

Yet I stayed still. And the weakness in my limbs couldn’t be entirely blamed.

When the cloth left my leg, I squeezed my eyes shut with the childish wish for that gentle rhythm and sensation to go on forever.

Nothing lasted forever.

My skirt was placed on the bar beside my hands.

Somehow, the vision of the garment, one of the pieces of my armor, shocked me back into my body, into my mind.

I grabbed it, pushing myself off the bar to turn to Elliot.

He was standing close. Too close. But I couldn’t retreat. Had nowhere to go. I gritted my teeth, refusing to look for my panties.

“This is just sex,” I reminded him as I pulled my skirt over my hips, sans panties.

Before I could snag the zipper at my lower back, Elliot was there, one hand steadying my hip with the other going to the small of my back to work the zipper up.

I held my breath so that I didn’t react.

“This isn’tjustanything.” His lips landed on my neck. “This was everything.”

I whirled around then, denying my instinct to sink backward into his body, into the promise of a different relationship dynamic.

He was grinning, hands on his hips as if he was expecting my reaction. “I don’t do relationships.” I tried to sound authoritative, despite the lace of my bra exposing my nipples that were pebbled against the thin fabric. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be with someone like you.”

His forehead wrinkled, but otherwise, his face didn’t change at the insult I thought he’d take as such. “What? A lowly fisherman? A bartender?” His voice still had a teasing edge, but there was also a sense of pride, a security in who he was.

He was not ashamed by the simplicity of his life, nor should he have been. It was hot as fuck to see a man with an appropriately sized and solid ego.

That would’ve been the easy, cruel way out to stick the knife in. Lie to him and say that it was because of those titles that I didn’t consider him worthy of me. It was an arrow on the tip of my tongue, tasting like the poison it was. Not once had I hesitated to sling such weapons at men.

But to Elliot, I couldn’t do it, even if it would eventually be for his own good.

“No,” I sighed. “Because you are a good man.”

The crinkles on his forehead deepened as he stepped forward with purpose. “The insinuation there is that you don’t consider yourself a good woman.”

I looked downward. Again, the first time I’d ever refused to hold my head up high.

Elliot wasn’t about to let that happen, his fingers reaching for my chin and lifting it so my gaze was level with his.

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