Ecstasy

Zara

When I open my eyes, I’m standing up.

I’m standing up, and for a second, I can’t move. I’m paralyzed, and everything is dark and it’s so quiet. It’s so fucking quiet that I don’t know where I am. I’m not in Alex’s house.

This can’t be his house.

This is not a party.

This is like hell.

I sense something looming in the shadows, something coming closer, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Something is going to get me, and I can’t move. I can’t scream. I can barely even breathe.

I want to clamp a hand over my mouth.

I want to turn around. I want to scream.

Run.

It’s getting closer and everything is so dark and so quiet except this thing.

“Zara. Zara, wake up.”

I flinch, my eyes flying open, and I stumble back into someone’s warm body. I open my mouth to scream, but a hand comes over my mouth.

“Shh,” a voice says in my ear. “Shh, baby girl. It’s me. It’s Eli.”

Slowly, like binoculars coming into focus, I see the room, and it isn’t Alex’s. It isn’t the one I fell asleep in.

It’s bigger, and it’s shrouded in shadows. There’s a bed in front of me, a desk to my left with a dimly lit laptop screen. Is that a car?

There’s a door between the wall of the desk and the bed and I think it’s to a bathroom. I think I see white tile beyond it. And the floor beneath my feet is cold.

But Eli’s hand over my mouth is so warm.

With another little jolt, I realize his body is pressed against every inch of mine.

I open my mouth to speak and he must know I’m not going to scream because he drags his hand over my lips, my chin, down my throat, then brushes back my hair off my shoulder.

The words I was going to speak are stolen from me. Hijacked by the feel of him.

I’m in a tank top, and he slides his finger under one strap, pulling it down. His mouth touches my skin, warm and wet and so soft. His other arm is wrapped around me, fingers digging into my waist as he holds me to him.

“Why did you come here?” he asks me. I can feel his every breath against me.

I realize I’ve been holding my own breath and I exhale, slowly, trying to will my pulse to calm. My head to clear.

Why did I come here?

He drags his bottom lip over my shoulder, toward my neck. I tilt my head to the side, giving him better access. I shouldn’t…

“Talk to me, Zara. Why did you come here?” His mouth trails up my neck, just underneath my ear.

“I don’t—I don’t know.”

He slides the hand on my waist lower, his fingers gliding under the material of my tank top until his skin is on mine and I feel a fire light in my core. It’s hard to stay standing, hard not to sway here in his arms.

“What did I…I don’t remember—”

He kisses that hollow behind my ear, and I can’t think. I can’t do anything but feel him. His mouth, his fingers on my skin. His erection against my back. He’s so hard.

He’s so hard for me.

“You don’t remember?” he teases me, his voice low but rough. Playful but…not.

I don’t remember. I fell asleep with Alex, after we…after Eli saw… “You watched us.”

He nuzzles his nose just below my ear. “I watched you,” he says, and I can feel those words against my skin.

I clench my thighs together, wishing I was wearing something besides Alex’s boxers, far too big, barely hanging on as it is. And if Eli just brushed his fingers a little lower, grazed the waistband, he could send them floating to the floor with barely a touch.

But I want that, too.

I want him.

“Why?” I gasp as he walks us forward, until the front of my thighs are against the side of his bed. “Why did you watch?”

He slides his hand down my abdomen, slipping it under the loose boxer shorts. I should stop him. I should tell him no. I should get out of this room and tiptoe back to Alex’s room.

I should do a lot of things I’m not doing.

How did I even get here?

I try to reach for something. Something to put distance between us as he runs his teeth over my shoulder, his hand reaching lower down my shorts.

“S-shouldn’t that bother you?” I whisper into the dark. “Watching us?”

He pauses, his hand still on my low belly, his mouth momentarily gone from my skin. Then he laughs, a throaty sound. He kisses my neck with an open mouth, and I shiver at the warmth of him in this cold room. “Oh, Zara.” He laughs again. “You can fuck him all you want, baby girl. I couldn’t care less about that. In fact, it turns me on, thinking about his cum inside of you right now.” He brushes his hand lower down my shorts, until his fingers graze my i

God, what is wrong with you?

Fuck, what is wrong with me?

“You don’t mean that, Eli,” I whisper, wanting it to be true. “You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t want me to share you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you wanted to experience everything, Zara. And that’s what I want for you. Everything.”

I bite my lip, gripping the sheets of his bed in front of me. “How did I get in here?” I shake my head, trying to remember. “I don’t remember walking in here.”

He’s quiet a moment, only the sound of my own pulse in my ears. The feel of his breath against my skin. His fingers calloused and rough, igniting a fire within me. But I have to think over it. I have to breathe through it. I need to know.

“You really don’t remember?” This time his question isn’t teasing. It’s curious.

“No,” I whisper into the dark.

He kisses me again, on the curve of my shoulder, and even though I don’t remember wanting my brain to do it, my head leans back against him, resting against his chest, my throat exposed.

Surprising me, he pulls his hand from my shorts and wraps his arm tighter around me. “You walked in.”

I blink into the darkness, and then I laugh. He seems to stiffen behind me, like he doesn’t know what to make of it.

But I can’t stop it. I’m laughing, gripping his sheets, him tense at my back.

“Do you mind telling me what the fuck is so fu

His hand goes up to my throat, clamping down around me.

I stop laughing. “Eli…no fucking shit I walked in here.”

He’s silent a moment, then he sighs, his hand loosening around my throat.

And then he lets me go. He just…steps back, and I have to tighten my grip on the bed in front of me to keep my balance. The absence of him is so disorienting.

I spin around, see him ru

That is a car, I realize.

“You need to go back to Alex’s room,” he says, turning his back to me, his hands fisted in his hair. His shoulders are so broad, and I can see his biceps, the dark stains of tattoos on his arm, trailing down to his hand. I can’t make out the art in the darkness, but I can see it there.

Almost like a reminder.

Eli is cold.

“Okay,” I tell him, my voice rough, my own hand at my throat. “Sorry for…” I trail off. I don’t know what I’m sorry for. I don’t know if I am sorry.

He doesn’t look at me.

I take a step toward the door, the floor creaking softly beneath my feet.

“It’s not the first time,” he says, catching me off guard.

I freeze, staring straight ahead, at the door. My mouth opens to ask him what he’s talking about, but nothing comes out. I think because I know.