Page 19 of Drawn By Dragonblood
My dick swelled at the image of the damned man in my head, overshadowing the guilt nagging at my stomach. Imagining cheating was the same as doing it, wasn’t it?
Jaw clenched, I climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Maybe a couple of beers would take off whatever edge I rode.
Barefoot, I slipped into the hallway. Silence lay heavy over the cave, but the lights welcoming me with every step and fading behind me strangely gave me that sense of home again I’d never experienced before stepping into Elijah’s domain. I should have been unsettled thanks to the truth of my upbringing where I had never belonged. Elijah was a mere stranger with an odd living space in the middle of nowhere. So why did my soul rest and freedom from the hardships of real life wrap around me with every breath filling my lungs? Even the continued sexual tension riding me didn’t threaten that sense of serenity.
The quiet, main living area opened up before me, and I wound my way down the stairs into the kitchen with no answers whispering in my head.
As promised, cold beer sat in the fridge. The chilled bottle against my palm cooled my hand but not the heat Elijah had stirred to life inside me upon first entering our camp.
Had it only been that morning?
I twisted the cap off and glanced at the door he’d earlier disappeared through while chugging down a few swallows.
Should I find him and figure out what the fuck was going on or ignore the tension and light out with the sunrise like Dakota and I had agreed to do, leaving Elijah Tolzman and his hotter than hell everything behind? Not used to dealing with temptation, I didn’t know what the fuck to do.
I stared at the door and finished off my beer, some sort of energy rippling over my skin and pulling me into the bowels of his cave castle. My feet moved as though on their own, and I slipped behind the door beneath the stairs.
It was the damned fishing line he had me on, I swear to fucking god.
A staircase led down into the dark, but the second I stepped onto the first tread, lights shimmered into existence overhead. Similar to the stairway to the second floor, some rock had been cut for more headspace. Another cavern opened at the bottom, smaller than the living area above with two doors on either side. The hallway continued on ahead, but I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and listened.
Not a single sound caressed my ears, no hint of Elijah’s boring as fuck music, not even dripping water expected inside a cave. My exhales broke the stillness as I strained to listen for the slightest noise. My gaze flitted to the door on the right, and like my body knew Elijah was on the other side, I found myself moving in that direction.
The door sat ajar by a few inches, and breath held, I peeked through the crack.
A weight room, I noted from a quick scan of what I could see, but my focus honed in on the man lying on a bench beneath a barbell in its hold, his laced fingers atop his forehead as his chest rose and fell.
He rested between sets, most likely.
I’d never found a man’s bare legs attractive before, but the defined calf muscles and bulge of his thighs peeking from beneath the shorts were damn fine. I imagined Elijah standing and ordering me to kneel before him.
My dick twitched at the idea of him tugging on his cock inches from my face. My mouth watered over the thought of him rubbing the head slickened with pre-cum over my lips before telling me to open. His low voice rumbling to take him deep—swallow it all.
Fuck.
I bit back a groan and adjusted my swelling dick, even though the thought of Elijah’s spunk on my tongue should have grossed my straight ass out.
Guess that label needed to be tossed in the trash. I wasn’t bi or pan. Elijah-sexual? That sounded about right.
He reached up and grasped the barbell, readying for another set.
Like a sick fuck, I continued to watch him, every lift of the bar flexing his massive pecs and pulling a grunt from him. He was a beast. The amount of weights on the ends bent the fucking barbell. Thank Christ he had a safety bar slightly above his chest, but the man really should have a spotter when benching that kind of weight.
With that excuse in mind, I pushed the door inward and approached him.
Elijah grunted one last time and set the bar on its handles before I made it halfway across the room. He sat up, his focus landing on me. Sweat beaded his brow and every inch of his bare upper body. Like the stone around us, his muscles were cut, defined, and I expected hard as granite.
The intensity in his gaze twisted my stomach in a way that only one woman’s perusal had ever done.
“Is everything all right?” he asked as I forced myself to meander to a pull-up bar bolted into the wall.
I tried for my usual carefree grin and probably failed while wrapping my hands around the bar. He had every weightlifting apparatus imaginable, and most of it appeared brand new. “Guess when you live this far out, you need your own gym, huh?” I asked rather than answering.
Deflection at its finest, something I’d learned from my not-so-lovely foster parents.
Elijah’s low chuckle as his stare roved over my exposed midriff sent a shiver rustling over my spine. “I probably spend too much time down here.”
I bit back the compliment that almost rolled off my tongue about every minute obviously being worth it but couldn’t keep from sliding my eyes over his seated form again.
