Kinky Boots(44)

Chapter 14


‘We’ve never done anything like that. You and I,’ Finn said.

‘I’ve always wanted us to. It was always my plan.’ Eleanor replied.

Jill was dreaming again, but this time she wasn’t tied up. This time she stood quietly at the side of her bed looking down at the couple. Eleanor rested her head on Finn’s chest, absently stroking a nipple that stood erect against the mound of his pectoral muscle ‘I was crushed when things went so badly with Lisa. Surely you know that.’ She rose to meet his gaze. ‘But it’s different with Jill. She’s so comfortable. She feels so right. Even you think so, I can sense it every time you touch her.’

Though Jill knew what she looked down on from the hazy place of dreams wasn’t real, Eleanor’s statement made her chest feel tight, as though some unpleasant thing had worked its way into her lungs and was squeezing them.

Finn pulled Eleanor closer to him, into such a tight embrace that Eleanor emitted a little gasp. ‘I’ve never felt anything like what the three of us share,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid, Eleanor. I’m so afraid. You could have experienced her through me. You could have left her as she was. I mean, the attraction was there between us before you possessed her, and every time I’m with her I want her more. I don’t understand why you risked it.’

‘I would have thought that would be obvious, my darling.’ Eleanor traced a finger down along Finn’s sternum, trailing a ticklish path down beneath the duvet to where his cock rested against his thigh. ‘I don’t want to experience the world through your body, Finn. I want to experience what it feels like to love your body, the way you like your body to be loved, the way I never can when I’m inside you. You’ve never been without flesh. You don’t understand how it is to feel things you can’t express, to watch the world around you and not be able to interact with it unless you … unless you take up residence in someone who has what you don’t, in someone who has flesh and bone and breath.’ She slid her hand under his penis and rested it gently against his balls.

He pulled her hand away and brought it to his lips. ‘Dear Goddess, Eleanor, I know I don’t understand. I can’t possibly, but you have to understand what you’ve done to Jill, what will happen to her when you leave.’

‘But we don’t know that, Finn. We don’t know that. I’m convinced she’ll be just fine. In fact I’m convinced that she …’

He shook her gently. ‘That she what?’

‘That she won’t want me to leave.’

Jesus! Jill had never thought about asking Eleanor to stay on as a permanent resident, and yet at the moment she couldn’t imagine life without her.

‘That’s one helluva gamble to take after what happened to Lisa,’ Finn said.

‘What? What happened to Lisa, and what gamble are we taking?’ Perhaps she was talking in her sleep. Perhaps she was speaking in the dream, but suddenly she was falling back into her body, and she woke in Finn’s arms. ‘I want to know. Tell me about Lisa. Tell me about the gamble.’

The startled look on Finn’s face was mirrored in the equally startled feel of Eleanor inside her. ‘You heard us?’ Finn said. His voice sounded breathy, a bit unsteady.

‘Of course I heard you. I heard every word.’

‘But it was a dream, Eleanor said.’

‘Bullshit. It wasn’t a dream. You two were talking while I slept, and it’s been going on ever since you possessed me, Eleanor.’ Jill didn’t know how, but she knew. She knew with a gut certainty that Finn and Eleanor’s little chats after they thought she was sleeping were exactly that, a chance for them to talk without her hearing.

She thrust her way out from under the duvet and threw on the robe that she had tossed on the floor only a few hours ago. ‘Tell me what the hell is going on.’ She paced at the side of the bed. ‘Who’s Lisa? Did she really hang herself? And what’s this gamble that I’m suddenly at risk in? And don’t lie to me,’ she said, ‘because I’ll know.’ She didn’t know if she’d know or not, but it felt like she would.

Finn sat up in the bed and settled the duvet over his lap. He worried his bottom lip with his teeth, then he spoke. ‘Lisa was the last woman Eleanor possessed.’

‘Was?’ Jill said, perching on the bed across from him. ‘Then she is dead.’

‘Yes.’ The word was barely more than a whisper, and she didn’t miss the rise and fall of his throat as he swallowed, as though even that simple word was painful.