I. Inhale

You try not to think of Kathy when his lips fall against the juncture of your neck, warm and a little wet. Nipping. Teasing. Tasting.

You try not to think of his kids when his body forces you further backwards, slowly, until you hit the wall, his chest and stomach and hips and hardness pressing against your tits and ribs and heat. Your scars.

You almost freeze. Almost. Shake yourself out of it. Your sexual partners after come down to two. Two men, both of them aware before you first took off your clothes for them. Knowing. Expecting.

Elliot is neither knowing nor expecting. He's clueless to the terror you've lived, survived. Overcome, for the most part. You wish it could stay this way, that he could be oblivious. For a little while longer, for ever, you really don't know.

You want to spare him. Perhaps, it flickers up within, you want to spare yourself, too.

He slides a hand under your shirt, his mouth wrapped around your pulse point firmly, suckling, and you gasp while simultaneously sucking air into your lungs.

And you forget.

You feel.

His touch is calloused, rasping against the smooth skin of your soft belly and everything about him feels so good, so right, you knock your skull against the wall and succumb, breathing out one simple word.

"Yes."

It fuels him, your encouragement, your consent. The audible desire intertwined in your breathy, sultry voice. There are his teeth, scraping, his hand jolting up, cupping your bra-clad breast, pushing his palm into the succulent weight of it. Your nipples turn into pebbles.

He claims your mouth then, takes your kisses, takes your tongue, you slide across the seam of his lips, takes your breath away.

Twenty-odd years have him hard for you, make you melt and liquify for him, your damp underwear is proof enough. You're aching, burning. You want him to spread you out beneath him, part you, shatter you.

His fingers peel off the cup of your bra, rip it away so he can feel your flesh, and he groans as he squeezes you beneath your shirt, the sound making you drip for him.

You're ridiculously wet and he's hardly touched you, and it's part him, part the fact nobody's fucked you for years.

The hard planes of his chest sandwich you between himself and the wall, and there's nowhere for you to go but him, and you allow yourself to stop running from the hurt, the abandonment, the truth, from him, from twenty-three years of he's married.

You fall into him instead.

Because he no longer is married, or gone and he damned well hasn't done anything to hurt you in months, and oh, the writing's on the wall, and maybe, possibly-most likely-you don't just consummate lust, or your puzzling connection. You consummate the inevitable.

You find your balance against the wall, push your weight into it as you curl one leg around his waist, drawing the bulge covered by layers of fabric fully against you. A rush of hot arousal makes your insides plummet to your core as you breathe him in, breathe your desires out.

"Take off your clothes and fuck me."

You know what you want. You're not always this blunt, this bossy. But it's been such a long time, so many years, since you've been kissed, touched and wanted, and it's Elliot-oh God, it's Elliot- and you're not going to take any chances tonight.

You want him and you want him to know that you do, and by the way he pulls back just to grind himself against you, his cock aligning to your heat, you know he wants you, too. Needs you. His mouth is hard and taking against yours as he curses, attaches your name to it in a hot flash of air.

"Goddamn, Olivia."

The O is sharp, not round and luxurious, nothing like he said it ever before. It drives you mad with the need to hear him say it again. Tonight you want to be Olivia for him, familiar, yet new-the person he once knew, maybe still knows inside out, but who still has secrets to share body to body, skin to skin.

Releasing your breast his hand drops to your hip, grabs your thigh, unwinding it from around his middle. You're off the wall then, he turns with you and propels the both of you further into your living room.

You're impatient, so you go for his dress shirt, undo the first button with frantic fingers.

"Take it off," you repeat, and to your satisfaction he complies. You pull off your shirt, your heated, dark gaze not leaving him. His comes off too, then his shoes, his pants, leaving a trail to your bedroom.

He looks at you hungrily as you shimmy out of your Levi's, disappearing into the semi-dark of your room. You hope it will take the edge off of the marks sweltering metal of a coat hanger left on the outside of your thigh.

Elliot follows, drives you towards the foot of the bed without touching you, draws nearer, and you think how he's always been the push to your pull. Your jeans are pooled at your ankles and he makes short work of them as you lower yourself onto the cool sheets, grabbing one foot, taking it off. The other foot. He pulls, letting them fall.

You're not quite sure how you got here. From him showing up at your door not fifteen minutes after he dropped you off, to… this. You on the bed, him standing there in black tight boxers, a white undershirt, taking you in. Hard for you for days.

But.

You know it when he sees it. The scar. His eyes settle. He squints, and you're still for a second or two before you follow his gaze, pull your left leg up a little.

You wonder if he's going to ask, but already know you don't feel like talking. Not now anyway. You want his mouth to be busy, otherwise.

He swallows, the tension radiating off of him palpable, and you prop yourself up, scooting further up the bed.

"Come here, Elliot," you say, coax. "I'm okay. I'm okay now."

You weren't always. You weren't then, on another bed in another apartment, the place he used to know. The place he used to frequent. You weren't okay for a very long time after.

Recognition flickers in his eyes and you see his struggle as he tears his eyes off the winding scar tissue.

You reach out for him, offer him your hand, invite him to have your body. It's all there's left-he already owns everything else. This, tonight, you and him-it's all about to come full circle.

You didn't see it coming, not tonight or anytime soon, but you're sure. You've never been more sure of anything from the moment he stepped into your apartment after standing in your doorway for multiple seconds, staring at you, not speaking, not saying anything, and for a moment you were worried. Until there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes, an epiphany, maybe, and he came for you, grabbing both of your arms, your nickname on his tongue dropping just before he put his mouth on yours and kissed you. It wasn't timid or testing. He was sure of himself, sure of you, of what he wants from you, and this thing...it has been building for a while now, and as much as you need him between your legs there's the unspoken clarity hanging in the air that it's not about fucking. Not for either of you.

"I'm okay," you whisper again, and following your lead he crawls onto your mattress, makes himself at home between your legs, his torso hovering over you, arms at your sides.

He's hard and intense, but when you touch your hand to his upper arms you feel weakness right there, beneath your fingertips. The lingering, raging, unsettling questions that he doesn't ask. Not yet.

It's only a matter of time, you know. And while you don't owe him details, don't owe him anything, you're not going to be cruel and leave him floundering, agonizing over scenarios his mind creates. Not for long anway. Now, however, is not the time, so you stifle the restraint born from insecurities with your mouth as you pull him down, your fingers coiling around the strung muscles at the base of his neck. You pluck his undershirt away from his boxers, fisting the thin cotton as you pull it up, wanting it off.

And off it comes, and you arch, your mouths, your tongues connected again as you reach behind you to unhook your bra to get the one part you dread over with.

Whenever you played this over in your mind, it was with a faceless guy you didn't necessarily care about, because there were times you seriously considered finding someone for a quick hook-up on a dating app, or going out to find someone with the intent to pick them up at a bar.

But this is Elliot, which changes everything. You may be okay, but it doesn't mean you're not nervous. There's already so much guilt he carries, so much devastation for the both of you in the aftermath of Kathy's death, his abandonment of you, his return, the effort it took to sit down repeatedly and rebuild...something, only relying on the implicit trust that once was there.

You feel the slight bounce of your tits as your bra slides down your arms, and your blood shoots through your veins, your stomach dropping and your arousal screeches to a halt. It's only for a brief moment, because there's his hand skimming up your side, all the way until his knuckles brush the side of your breast. You press your chest against him, giving yourself a little more time. Giving him a reprieve he's not yet aware of.

His knee pushes against your wet heat, and your breath hitches, and when you fall back and remove your bra, he takes you in. It's instant. The beat of your heart topples, picks up, and your breath slows when you see the struggle for control in his face. You see the abject horror, the grief, the guilt, then the stoic expression he puts on to mask his emotions.

His jaw is tight, the muscles of his neck tense. You know it's not a pretty sight. You give him a moment, knowing he needs to process that something happened to you, something horrendous, but you won't allow him to get lost in his own head, because you're not ready to get lost in yours.

"Touch me, Elliot." It comes out a lot weaker than you intended, and you realize you're more affected than you thought. It's your third go-round, yet you still feel fucking awful about the effects your scar-littered chest has on other people, but then Cassidy and Tucker at least knew what they were getting into.

You don't want Elliot's pity, you don't want his guilt, can't deal with it so many years after the fact. It's done, and all you want to do is get this over with, and you're not entirely sure what is going to happen when he looks at you like he's about to shatter in ways you didn't intend tonight. You hold your breath for what seems like minutes, exhaling heavily when he lightly brushes his knuckles across your breast.

"Cigarette burns." His voice is constricted. You hear the anger, the disbelief he suppresses, the weight of his emotions interwoven in every syllable.

You're not surprised he recognizes the cluster of scars, some pale, some of them darkened, visible indentations where Lewis repeatedly melted the lit tip into the same spots on your skin.

"El, if this..." at the crack of your voice his gaze turns stormy, but his voice drops to something softer when he speaks.

"You think I want you any less for it?"

Maybe you do. Not generally speaking, of course, you don't believe he's shallow like that, don't believe for a second that he wants you only for your body, not even mostly for it. But it's a lot to take in, a lot at once-not just the scars, but what you've been through that put them there.

It renders you speechless, so when the pad of his thumb drags across pink skin shaped like your former mailbox key all you do is shake your head slowly. You feel the heaviness of the things he longs to know, but instead of asking he searches you out, puts his mouth where it's safe, and at the simple capture of your lips you feel a little more steady, a little more sound.

He brushes your nipple, then closes his palm around your full breast, and there's the same need behind it as before. He doesn't kiss or touch you any differently, and you release a bated breath of relief against his occupied lips. You don't take it for granted, have experienced the impact on how you were seen, how you were treated firsthand. The cautiousness, the awkwardness, the hesitation that was always there, driving every little thing they did—or worse, didn't do.

Even fighting your way back to what you considered a normal sex life, they never made you feel like you were whole, but fractured. Broken.

Like you didn't stand a chance to be seen as a person, yourself, as anything other than the sum of your trauma.

It's hard to believe that's going to change tonight, but Elliot seems undeterred, no less lavish with his hands and his mouth as he moves down on your body.

He wraps himself around your tit, your nipple, licking, sucking, rolling the other between his fingers regardless of your scars, all while pressing himself firmly against you. His cock lands square on you, and when he stretches out on top of you, chasing your mouth hard and wanting, you gasp at the friction against your clit. Your hip gravitates towards him and grinding himself against you, he pushes you back down, pins you to the mattress. His desire for you is unfaltering and you feel liberated.

You're floored

You're turned on.

He saw you, he's aware of what was done to you, and he still treats you like a red-blooded woman. Not like you're lesser than, not like a goddamn china doll.

He asked if you think he wants you any less for it, but you start to think he wants you all the more.

Maybe it's not surprising that he's the one putting everything back together, back in order, giving you the gift of normalcy. To him you're still Liv, still Olivia. Not a victim. Not someone's collateral damage.

Wrapping yourself around him you give what you get. You grab his neck fervently, feel his cropped hair beneath your fingers. One hand slides across his shoulder, claws its way back with the enormity of your overloaded senses and overwhelming emotions. You give him scratches, and in the haze of the moment it registers that after all the invisible branding, this is the first visible mark you leave on him.

It's undeniable now: You've had him. Made him yours.

You never knew what it meant to feel possessive over a man.

He's at your thigh. A single squeeze, then the dance of his fingertips. They are a flutter against your skin, and you tremble when he moves inwards, drops, drops and drops until he dips and drags the side of his hand along your lace trimmed panties, ass to groin. You desperately want to create space, want him to touch you, but he doesn't relent, doesn't give an inch as he rocks himself against your covered depths.

"Elliot," you pant out his name. "Please."

You don't usually beg, but then everything about you and him has always circumvented the norm. You're starved, impatient, your voice bleeding urgency as you unhook your legs from around his waist, planting both feet firmly to his sides. You need this to come to fruition, now.

And your pleading seems to do something to him, seems to spur him on, because suddenly it's not the granite of his cock you feel. His fingers graze your underwear, the dense rug of trimmed dark hair underneath, the side of your clit, your heated and damp lace-clad mound.

It's been too long. Too many lonely nights you've spent in this room, this bed. Without being touched, without anyone caring about you, about the things you needed. It's healing when Elliot nestles the pad of his thumb against your clit, drawing tiny, light circles, giving you a taste of him, the things he can do. You quiver: your legs, your stomach, your lips, as you puff out a moan at how good it feels.

"Please." You sound so much more desperate for what you know he can give you, what your body's so deprived of.

You have to plead no more, because he puts a little more pressure behind his skilled manipulation of you, and you whimper, receptive.

"I've got you." His voice is quiet but thick as he shifts onto his knees to make more room for his hand, sinking the other into your loose hair. His breath is hot and a little ragged against your lips. "I've got you, Liv."

And you let yourself fall into safety and hushed promises.

...

Your feedback means the world to me. You can find me on twitter under Georgia_v_g