Not in Love
Chapter 18

RUE

I drove behind Eli’s hybrid, tailing him down the tree-lined streets of Allandale, through the soft glow of the bistro lights. He lived in a charming two-story single-family home, a mid-century construction with reddish bricks and a wide lawn that had me instinctively thinking of his ex-fiancée. Were we going to have sex in a bed he’d bought during a relationship-straining trip to IKEA? Was what had broken them up a disagreement over the Ekoln soap dispenser?

Irrelevant. None of my business. But I’d never been to a man’s place. Maybe by accident in college, with some guy I wouldn’t have recognized the following day if he’d sat next to me in Chemistry 201. This was Eli Killgore, though. Breaking my streaks. Ruining my plans. Making me want to do terrible, disloyal things.

“Still want to do this?” he asked, waiting for me at the door when I got out of the car. His voice had burrowed among the sulci of my brain and was now prominently featured in my dreams. A few dirty ones, which I could easily brush off, and lots of unsettling, preposterous scenarios. He’d stand behind and ask to observe my X-ray diffraction, or explain what a leveraged buyout was with Nyota nodding by his side. Whenever I reached out to touch him, he’d say, Let’s revisit this tomorrow.

It was finally tomorrow. “Yes.”

Instead of unlocking the door, he bent down and kissed me hard, a hand closed around my waist, the other palm pressing me against the wall. It was sudden, and instantly good, and the very opposite of the kind of restraint he’d shown back at the hotel, in Kline’s echoey hallways, an hour earlier at the rink. He wanted me to feel trapped. To know exactly how hard he was and how quickly. To be aware of his strength, deep inside my bones.

“Jesus, you feel good.” He trailed open-mouthed kisses down my throat. His fingers slid up to cup my breast, and his eyes followed suit. I’d never felt more beautiful than when he looked at me. Like I was the final prototype of someone’s entire fantasy life.

“We should go in.” My words labored against his lips.

“In a minute.” His fingers skimmed between my flesh and the waist of my jeans. I sucked in the night air. “It’s been a few long fucking weeks, Rue.”

“I know.”

With a predatory grin, he nipped at my throat. Chased that with a lick. Squeezed my ass in a way that could only be described as indecent. It felt like centuries before I heard the jingle of his keys, felt the push of his hand guiding me inside, watched the lights from the street disappear as Eli closed the door behind us, and—

I was assaulted. By a three-hundred-pound grizzly bear. It bellowed at me as its paws slammed into my torso with the force of a dinosaur-extinguishing meteor, sending me careening back into Eli’s solid front.

“Tiny, down.” His voice was warm but authoritative. The bear—dog, a giant dog—trotted back, wagging its tail. It stared at me with something that couldn’t anatomically be a smile, but fundamentally felt like one.

I plastered myself against Eli’s chest. One of his arms snaked around my torso, holding me close. “Is it…hungry?” I asked, eyeing the mutt suspiciously. He must have been crossbred with a horse. His fur contained thirty different types of brown, and his tongue rolled out of his mouth like an ancient scroll.

“Always.” With one hand still closed around my hip, he bent to give the dog several energetic pets, causing him to helicopter his tail and bark in bliss.

Maybe coming here had been a mistake.

“Are you allergic to dogs?” he asked, noticing my discomfort.

I shook my head, eyes never letting go of the mammoth. Was his name Tiny? What in the actual fuck?

“You’re not scared of them, are you?”

I wasn’t. Or maybe I was. I hadn’t had sufficient dog exposure to be sure. “I’m not a pet person.”

“I see. You hate animals.” He sounded amused.

“I don’t. I just like to maintain a respectful distance.” Bruce ruthlessly ignored me, which suited me just fine. But Tiny circled me happily, eager for the cuddles and praise he was sure I’d provide any moment now.

“Well, he sure likes you.”

As lush as his fur looked, I had no intention of reaching out. I’d read somewhere that dogs could tell good people apart from the bad ones. I didn’t care to know the verdict. “Do you, um, need to walk him?” sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Findɴovel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Not this late. We have a big yard and he has free access. He wants a midnight snack, though. Are you going to freak out if I let you go?”

My nails, I realized, were digging in his forearm. “Sorry.” I released him, and he untangled himself with a smile that looked almost affectionate before he disappeared into the kitchen, followed by the beast. I heard puttering, cupboards opening and closing, and soft, patient murmurs. I caught myself smiling at the sound, and wasn’t sure why. What did I care if Eli had a dog, or quail, or a raft of otters? When he returned, wiping freshly washed hands on his jeans, I immediately asked, “Where is your bedroom?”

“Not so fast.” I cocked my head, and he smiled. “I want a story. Before we go upstairs.”

Ah, yes. Our currency. “An ugly one that proves how terrible a person I am?”

“Doesn’t matter. As long as it’s true.” He paused. “As long as it’s just for me.”

“They all are.” I’d told him things I’d never admitted out loud to another soul. It was the same for him, I knew without having to ask. And I had the perfect story. “When I was eleven, Tisha and Nyota—her younger sister—started pestering their parents to get a puppy. It involved PowerPoints, Post-its left all around the house. They even got character letters from their teachers. Tisha liked cats better, but if they were going to get a pet, an alliance was necessary, and Nyota was younger. Less willing to compromise, you know? Anyway, they ended up adopting Elvis, a Chihuahua mix. He was…loud, and small. He pretended I didn’t exist, and I returned the favor.” I swallowed. “I was maniacally jealous of that dog. Because he got to stay with Tisha and her family every second of every day. He was fed, taken care of, doted on. While I had to go back home and deal with…” My unpredictable mother, my little brother, who was getting more and more aggressive, the empty kitchen and the stench of mold. The certainty that if that was my life, I had to have done something to deserve it. “I had to deal with a lot. So I looked at Elvis and was so resentful and thought, ‘Why not me?’ over and over, until it felt like—like a cancer, metastasizing in every interaction I had with Tisha. It took me a long time to wean myself off the habit. Maybe I never fully succeeded.”

I waited for my cheeks to burn and for the shame to pour over me, like it always did. But it was difficult to blame myself when Eli offered no recrimination or disgust. He just accepted it openly, this story that I’d carried in my marrow for over a decade, like it was as natural a part of me as my lips or my arm.

So I said, “Your turn.”

He nodded. Took a deep breath. “Last Friday I was out of town. I got drunk off vodka with some colleagues, went back to the hotel, and pulled up your contact. I typed a long, long text describing every single thing I’ve imagined doing to you. I left out nothing. And it wasn’t a list, Rue. It was filthy, and indefensible, and exceptionally detailed. A fucking instruction manual. I have the faintest memory of writing it, and thankfully I fell asleep before I hit send, because when my alarm went off the following morning, it was there in the text box.”

At first I felt shortchanged, and almost called him out for cheating—this wasn’t our kind of story, cruel and bare and flustering. But that wasn’t for me to decide, was it? Maybe for Eli, confessing to his loss of control was all those things.

“Do you want to know the last thing I’d written?” he asked.

I nodded, heart pounding in anticipation.

“How badly I wanted to fuck you into compliance.” He shook his head, exhaling a rueful laugh, and gestured with his chin toward the staircase. “Still wanna do this?”

I didn’t bother answering, but started the climb upstairs. When I turned to check if he was following, I caught his eyes glued to my ass. His smile was unrepentant, as though looking at my body was a sacrosanct right he planned to take advantage of as long as it was granted.

His bedroom was what I’d have expected from an adult man who hadn’t planned on visitors: simply furnished, mostly neat, with an unmade king bed and the occasional item of clothing draped across a piece of furniture. The windows were street facing, and he brushed past me to pull the curtains. When he turned, I’d already toed off my shoes and taken off my shirt.

“Stop,” he ordered.

I glanced down at my shorts. “Want me to leave these on?”

“Nah.” He came closer. “Let me do it.”

“Hardly efficient.” Nor sexy. I was wearing my grocery-shopping clothes.

“Come on, Rue. You have to know I’m going to treat tonight like the second chance I never thought I’d get.” Every catch of the zipper was loud in the quiet room. His large hands opened the front like he was unwrapping a present. Then, eyes fixed to me, he slid his hand inside.

The tip of his index finger tapped against the cotton of my panties. Brushed softly. “Nice.”

Wet, he meant. I’d felt the dampness between my thighs, and now he knew it, too. “You can’t be surprised.”

“I don’t need to be surprised to enjoy it.” My shorts came off. “You don’t really need me to say it, do you? That your body is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen?”

I cocked my head, observing him observe me, greedy and acquisitive. His eyes lingered on my breasts, belly, hips, thighs, all too something to be anywhere near perfect. But I loved my body, even in its flaws. I loved the things it could do on the ice and off, the pleasure it was capable of, the way it looked in the dresses I enjoyed buying. I loved that it had kept going through my first eighteen years, despite the adversities it had faced. And I loved that Eli liked it as much as I did. “I’m glad you think so. Feel free to use it as you like.”

His throat jerked. “You have no damn idea what you’re saying, Rue.” He touched me like he was revisiting a yearly vacation spot, familiar and yet eternally yearned for. My lace bralette did not match my panties, but he didn’t care. He cupped his palm around my left breast, his thumb finding my already hard nipple to brush against it, and I let my eyes drift closed as I arched into him. “You like it, don’t you?” He did it again, and my breath hitched. When he pinched my nipple, I had to swallow a moan. “You know what I’d love to do to you?”

“What?”

He opened his mouth, then stopped himself. Laughed, wistful. “You’d be scared shitless if I told you.”

“I would not.”

He shook his head. “It’s stuff that requires trust. Communication.” His hand fell to his side, and I felt the loss like a stab. “Time.”

“We don’t have that.”

“I know.” His smile was not happy. He undid my braid, took a step back to look at me some more, and seemed even more pleased with that view. “Three times.”

I frowned, confused.

“Let me make you come three times before you leave.”

I tried to remember if I’d come that many times with someone else before. Or by myself. “That might be too ambitious.”

“Might be.” He shrugged, and I liked how he didn’t act as though he knew my body better than I did. His self-assurance was never loud, always quietly, steadily present. “Still, let me try.” He buried his head in my neck. Inhaled. “You smell so good. Every day since the last time, I thought about kissing your sweet cunt. May I?”

He was good at being in charge. Giving soft directions, concise instructions, precise commands. He wanted me on the bed, on my knees, my thighs on each side of his head, and got me there with little effort. He was still wearing his clothes, and I was bare atop his face. I felt him lick up into me, a long swipe that started from my clit and stopped behind my opening, and the burst of pleasure was so unexpected, I fell forward, catching myself on my palms to avoid collapsing into his hip.

“Too much?” Eli asked, still kissing and sucking and biting. I had to choke back a moan. He’d gone down on me last time, too, but he hadn’t been immediately, magically good. It had taken him a while to find my spots and the right rhythm. Now that he knew the basics, he was a real threat, and reveled in it.

“Not too much.” I began unbuttoning Eli’s jeans, caressing his cock through his underwear as he continued to lick me. When he nipped at my folds, I slid it out of his boxer briefs. He was big in a way I wasn’t used to and wouldn’t have expected to enjoy, but I knew that already. When his hands squeezed my tits and he pushed his tongue inside me, I took him in my mouth as deep as I could, which was only about halfway.

We both groaned loudly, the sounds vibrating through our flesh. I tried, really tried to keep up with the way his tongue parted me and his fingers moved with increased purpose toward my opening. I tried to focus, pressing wet, clumsy kisses up the length of his cock, using my tongue to tease the ridge around the head. But the position was unusual and more intimate than I was used to, and the spreading heat made concentrating on anything but the pleasure rising up my spine next to impossible. I knew how to give as much as I got, but with Eli’s hands gripping my ass and his thumb suddenly pressing against my hole, it was difficult to center myself, and—

“You’re not good at this, are you?” He spoke against the inside of my thigh, sounding charmed as he chased the words with a sucking kiss.

“That’s rude and—ah—hurtful.”

“Hurtful? This?” He licked into me again, and my thighs trembled uncontrollably. He was fantastic at that, like he’d mapped every sound of pleasure to the anatomy of my cunt. Or maybe it was his sheer enthusiasm. Either way, I was on the verge of something. “Are you in pain, Rue?”

“No. When you said that I’m not—” He exhaled against my clit. I shuddered, forehead dropping to his muscular thigh.

“Poor girl.” His fingers gripped my hips, bruising tight. “You seem to have issues focusing.”

“It’s…”

His fingers pinched my nipples. “Good?”

“Distracting.” The word sounded slurred.

“It’s okay. I’m going to come just from this.” I hazily wondered what this meant, but after a beat he added, “From eating you out, that is.” There was something about the way he said it, something admiring and eager, that had me contracting around the first phalanx of his finger when it slid inside me. “You can clean me up once I’m done. With your mouth.”

The pleasure broke me apart like an earthquake. It was, without doubt, the most sudden orgasm of my life, something that started from a place deep in my brain as much as from the stimulation of my nerve endings. I found myself gasping against the jeans covering his thigh, swallowing embarrassing noises down my throat. His cock twitched next to me, precome beading from the tip, and once the first aftershocks had calmed I tried to take him in my mouth again, to show him how grateful I was for the pleasure he was giving me, but it was impossible to concentrate. Giving and taking were hard to combine, and from the curve of his cheek as he smiled against my thigh, he didn’t mind.

It amused him, my lack of control.

“Eli, I can’t—”

“You’re okay, love,” he soothed. “You’re going to be fine. Don’t you like this? Don’t you like to come?”

I whimpered. His hands, large and strong and absolutely filthy, closed around the cheeks of my ass and spread me open. There was a hint of aggression in his touch, an ever-increasing directiveness, and I wondered if he was punishing me for depriving us both of this for weeks, or if he was just that impatient. Then he sucked my clit between his lips, and I stopped wondering anything at all, teetering on the edge of a second, stronger orgasm.

“God,” he gasped. “You really are the sweetest fucking thing.”

In that moment, I wanted him in my mouth more than I wanted to come. And when I moaned around his cock I thought that maybe he felt the same. His breath hitched, his hips arched in a way that had him nearly sliding inside my throat, and when he let out a deep groan, I wasn’t sure what I felt first: the pleasure racking through me once again, or his come flooding my mouth.

We remained there, still, making sounds that belonged to wild creatures for long moments, our descent slow and laborious. And then Eli untangled us, kissed me deeply and gratefully, and laid me down on the bed, one arm around my waist. I felt like a transcendent being made of sensation and heat and the imprints of Eli’s fingers on my skin.

“That was two,” I said, small aftershocks coursing through me. I’d felt this way last time, too. Wrung out. Empty. Like my body was his puppet, something he could mold and shape at will.

Intense, he’d said, but the word seemed all wrong. This was frightening. Dangerous. I needed a moment to regain my bearings and was thankful when he withdrew his arm to cover his eyes. I wouldn’t have been able to take any more closeness.

“Give me a second,” he panted. “I can give you another. Or die trying.”

I laughed, feeling sparkly on the inside. With my cheek pressed against the pillow, I observed this man who could make my body sing like never before. The exhaustion from the sex, the past weeks at work, the stress of being alive and for the most part alone began setting in. One minute, I thought. One minute, and I’ll get up. Make a big obnoxious scene about saying goodbye, since it’s so important to him, and leave this bed once and for all. As far as last times go, this was a good one.

I watched Eli’s broad chest rise and fall to the rhythm of his labored breath. I watched him lick his lips absentmindedly and curve them into a hint of a smile at the taste. I watched him be unmistakably, unapologetically pleased with himself—and then, when my eyelids fluttered closed and the sounds from the streets muted in my ears, I watched him no more.

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