AN: Happy New Year to you all. I hope you have a safe and enjoyable evening, afternoon, morning, day!
Thank you for all your kind words, feedback, reviews, support, friendship and company this year, it's really meant the world.
This is just a small burst, more in the New Year.
X
Fuck.
She blinks across at the empty shower, her mind reeling at his sudden disappearance.
She moves towards the curtain, tugging it to the side and grabbing a towel off the railing, wrapping it around her body and heading towards the bedroom.
At the rate the evening is going she expects him to be nowhere to be found at this point.
He's probably made it out to the kitchen or the verandah by now.
Hell, he's probably back out in the wilderness already never to be found again.
But instead, as soon as she leaves the confines of the bathroom she stops short when she finds him sitting on the bed perched directly in front of her, staring absently ahead.
"Jesus," she lets out the breath she is holding when she sees him, thankful that he hadn't made it too far. She moves directly toward the bedroom door this time closing it, and locking him inside with her, no longer willing to risk him getting away from her again.
"Elliot," she steps towards him, her knees cracking when she bends down in front of him, still trying to gauge if he's conscious.
She just needs him awake.
Please be awake.
She tugs the towel off of her body and wraps it around his shaking form, running it down his arms and chest attempting to get him warmer. Her heartbeat is still hammering in her chest at the events of the evening and the eerie unsettling atmosphere that surrounds them. She starts to towel off his thighs and legs and when she makes her way back up to his chest he reaches out and clutches her elbow.
She freezes at the motion, her breath hitching in response as she looks up at him.
He is staring at her with a confused expression and she lets out a shaky breath.
"Thank God," she whispers through the darkness. "You're awake."
She can see it then, as if a light has been flicked somewhere in the far recesses of his mind. His eyes move slowly between hers in confusion and she starts to stand, slipping her arm out of his hold, breathing a sigh of relief as she tosses the towel to the side.
"You gotta stop doing this okay," she rasps at him through the darkness. "You're scaring the shit out of me."
He starts to rise slowly upward, a blank, confused expression emanating as his eyes start to move across her state of undress, seemingly still coming back to consciousness.
"Why are you wet?" His voice is horse from infrequent use.
"Please Elliot," she says shakily. "This has to stop okay, I can't do this anymore, I just can't-"
He steps forward, his arm coming up immediately, wrapping around her shoulder and drawing her into an unexpected embrace.
Her breath hitches as his firm cold body presses against hers, the stark reality of his physical presence hitting her hard in that moment.
"I'm sorry," he whispers against the crown of her head and it hits her.
He's really here, he's come back to her, this isn't another dream or figment of her imagination.
"Did I hurt you?" he murmurs, his voice thick with regret.
She can sense his worry, he must have caught the look of anguish in her eyes and it was enough to determine that he was the cause.
She pulls back just enough to ensure that it's still him and his fingers slip more intently into the dip of her lower back in an effort to keep her firmly against him.
"No," she whispers after a few beats, her mind reeling at this rare moment of intensity between them and the strange way that he doesn't seem to be letting her go.
He lets out the breath that he was holding, visibly relieved at her answer as his other hand smoothes gently across her shoulder blades in an effort to console.
"I'm sorry," he apologizes once more and her body can't help but meld into the welcome cocoon he has created with his body.
A few beats pass before he speaks again.
"Where are our clothes?" He asks her quietly.
She blinks through the darkness, increasingly conscious of just how intimately nestled their half-naked dripping bodies are against each other.
"I found you out in the rain.." she explains, her voice catching a little as her fingers haphazardly rest on his hips. "So I took them off in the shower."
"You should probably change or you'll get a chill," he whispers, his voice lower now, carrying a far heavier weight.
His eyes dip down to her mouth then and she feels hazy in his grasp, drunk almost, and suddenly all concerns about their surroundings are taking a backseat.
She feels his fingers start to curl beneath the hem of her soaked tank, the material tugging against her breasts, her nipples unintentionally grazing his chest and he makes a low, rumbling sound in the back of his throat.
God she needs this.
She's still wet between her legs.
She's wet all over now.
He is all muscle and brawn in her arms and every time she takes a breath she can feel the slick, cold material of his boxers flush up against her bare thighs.
This is the part where she will wake up - she can feel it, any second she is going to slip back into consciousness and she will be ripped from his arms once more.
His breaths are coming out in small pants and when he lets an intentional hand drive through the back of her hair, she thinks for a second he is going to kiss her.
"El," she treads carefully, her voice shaking somewhat as his lips hover above hers. "I need to tell you something."
"Anything.." he whispers, his voice a low rumble.
"You were outside," she starts slowly. "But all the windows and doors were closed and locked from the inside.."
She leaves the statement hanging limply in the air hoping he will be able to make sense of it but he doesn't respond, in fact he barely acknowledges that she'd spoken, instead his fingers start to twirl her damp tresses between his fingers, tugging intermittently at the strands as he gazes down at her mouth, seemingly undeterred by what she'd just told him.
Her questioning eyes search his as she tries not to react to his unyielding touch.
"You wanna tell me how that's possible Elliot?"
Nothing.
Just silence.
Slow.. palpable silence.
Her eyebrows start to furrow then, confused as to why he isn't as panicked but it seems his mind is elsewhere, his eyeline is dropping to where her breasts meet with his chest.
"You really should take this off," he whispers, his hand sliding boldly up the back of her tank braless tank, drawing it incidentally upward until their bare stomaches are touching.
Her eyes slip closed at the skin on skin contact, goosebumps coursing across her flesh like wildfire.
"You're soaked Olivia," he hums.
Her heart beat is hammering now, her lower half set ablaze from his boldness, yet somehow she manages to reign in the flood of intensity coursing through her veins.
"Did you hear what I said Elliot?" She backs up their faces slightly so he can see the seriousness in her expression.
"Yeah Liv," he whispers down at her, his fingers drawing away the few strands of wet hair that have fallen into her face.
His eyes motion towards the bed as his hand finally and reluctantly slips out of her tank.
"Warm up under the covers," he tells her in a whisper. "And I'll check the doors."
TBC