AUTHORS NOTE: This is the final part of "Lost & Found". I want to thank my volunteer editor James for making this story a lot better than it originally was when I started! Would love to hear from you readers what you thought of this story.
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Chapter 11
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Winter went by fast for Carly, perhaps because she spent a lot it sleeping. Eli joked that she was a mama bear hibernating.
It was a drizzly winter morning. Carly had some breakfast in bed, walked around the vineyard, watched TV and fell asleep again. When she woke up, no one was in the house. Her parents had gone out to visit friends. Lydia and Eli went to pick up nursery furniture.
She woke up and watched the rain fall outside the window.
She had lived with Eli for a while now, and every day she still could not believe it: that she was going to have a baby with a man she barely knew and had both hated and wanted to kill, only the man turned out to be sort of a diamond in the rough that no foresighted girl had discovered earlier because said diamond spent the last decade mostly in dusty warzones deplete of women, then when he returned to society he did not shave for a very long time. Well, technically, he didn't return to society either.
She was getting to understand Eli more now. Beneath the cynicism, there was a tenderness that had always been there, but was never nurtured because the environment was harsh. She thought the cynicism protected the tenderness, as luck would have it, until he was put in an environment where tenderness was praised as a virtue.
She had never thought of herself as generous. In fact, she often felt ashamed. Though she never openly admitted, the moral observer in her had always graded Carly Morris as a spoiled privileged girl, raised only fit to complain about first world problems.
But Eli told her in several different ways that she was generous. She had a lot to give. It sounded as if he was suggesting that because she was never broken, she had a well of kindness that she could endlessly draw upon. She could give and give and give. Sure, she would judge and complain a little on the way, but she gives.
Carly sighed. He was putting her on a pedestal and that was not a good thing. He was the one who had never had much love from the world.
Hmm, maybe I should start this daily exercise of thinking "What is one thing I can do for Eli today?"
She went through her skill sets. She was a veterinarian and accidental EMT, but he wasn't getting injured anymore. She could cook but her parents were even better cooks and did all of the cooking. She was a good horse rider, but she couldn't ride horses during pregnancy and Eli didn't care about horses. She read books, but book discussing already happened frequently and didn't seem special.
Ahhh, this is hard!
She watched their truck pull into the driveway with the furniture box in the back. Lydia hopped out of the passenger seat and helped Eli carry the furniture to the garage, up through the stairs, then into the nursery next door.
She would have never guessed that Lydia would become best pals with Eli. Once Eli figured out that Lydia liked things unfiltered and uncensored, the floodgates -- Pandora's box -- or whatever you call what comes out of his arrogant mouth, were let loose. Lydia asked and he answered. By virtue of being usually within 20 feet of them, Carly got to know way too much about what went on in a field porta potty. Most of the time the conversations were obscene and harmless, but when a bachelor party arrived consisting of Eli's old friends, Carly had to make sure her parents didn't notice that Lydia gave the them keys to the cellar and they ransacked the barrels. She was very sure Lydia had sex with at least one of them.
Lydia went back to her room. Eli walked in. His hair was wet and his long cotton shirt was damp, revealing the masculine contours underneath.
Carly broke into an evil smile. There was one thing she was also very, very good at. And surprisingly, she had not used that skill on him.
"What is that smile about?" Eli looked at her amused.
"Hmm....so....I....want...to...do...something....interesting..." she said with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Uh-huh..."
"But it requires your participation..."
"OK..." Eli was getting the idea, but he wasn't entirely sure.
"You just have to stand here...right here..." Carly motioned for him to stand right by the bed as she kneeled on the bed, "And the rule of this game is, you are not allowed to move."
"No moving?"
"Well, more precisely, you are not allowed to do anything. You cannot use your hands too."
"This is terrifying." Eli mumbled.
Carly smirked and made sure he complied to the no moving rule before she let loose her plan. She put her hands on his chest and started feeling him up and down his body, stopping right beneath the navel and going under the shirt. She pulled up the shirt as she leaned in and landed small kisses in the area.
"Hmm..." Eli closed his eyes and leaned back a little, enjoying the treatment.
"Ah, one exception, you can move your arms so I can take this off." Carly pulled off his shirt and started blowing wet, warm air on his chest, occasionally licking him a little.
"Where is this going?" Eli smiled.
"Going down..." Carly drew her tongue past below the navel and unbuckled his jeans. She pulled his jeans down and allowed him to step out of it. Then she happily felt her palm around the fabric that was hiding the thing beneath that was getting hard.
"Well look who's at attention, petty officer Rhodes..." Carly licked her lips. A few things were bound to get a reaction from Eli, and this was one of them.
Eli sighed, "You will drive any man crazy with that."
