Not in Love

ELI

He had no idea whether Rue would show up.

All signs pointed to no—chief among them, the fact that she saw him as a villain, bent on robbing her mentor for his own diabolical amusement. And yet, Eli had managed to foolishly hold out hope until ten minutes past seven. At which point, in the very hotel lobby where he’d first laid eyes on her, he had to face the truth: however out of control his attraction to Rue might be, she was coping with hers far better. And damn him if he wasn’t fucking envious.

His draft beer was still half-full, and he didn’t hurry to finish it. He had nowhere to be, and since Rue was going to be all he thought about anyway, he might as well do so in a place that reminded him of her, where he could nurse his foul mood just as thoroughly as his drink.

The obvious distraction would be to find someone else. There were apps, or the old-fashioned ways: bars, colleagues, friends of friends, who’d help him exorcize the last woman he should be taking up with. But Eli didn’t need to try it to know that no one else was going to be enough. He would rather go home on his own, catalog everything he knew about Rue Siebert, and jerk off like the pitiful loser he clearly was.

“It’s a bad idea,” Hark had told him the night before, driving home from the party. “And you know that.”

“What is?”

Hark had rolled his eyes. “Come on, Eli. You look at Rue Siebert like her pussy tastes like beer. Stop pining.”

“You’re the one who sent me to her the other day. And I don’t pine.”

“Then why are you being like this? Jesus, you’ve been in actual relationships and never lost your mind. What’s so different now?”

Did you look at her? he’d wanted to ask. Tonight? Did you hear her voice? Did you see her expression when she first noticed me? Did you see her mouth?

“I’m not saying she isn’t beautiful.” Hark. Reading his mind. “And she obviously has that energy you like—”

Eli had laughed. “The energy I like?”

“Hyper-competent. Mysterious. ‘I scored better than you on the quiz, and I could kill you with a pencil’ energy.”

“Not one of the women I’ve been with was mysterious. Or murderous.”

“Because you used to know better.”

“Yeah, fuck off,” he’d said mildly. “Nothing’s happening with her.” A long pause. “I just want to fuck her. We’re not going out for milkshakes or planning a coastal town weekend.”

Hark had dropped his head to the steering wheel. “Don’t do any of it. We are going to take Kline, and she’s going to fucking hate you for that. She already does. Plus, she chose to put her trust in Florence Kline, which clearly indicates shit judgment. Who would do that?”

They’d exchanged a dry, self-commiserating glance. “Three dumb assholes, that’s who,” Eli had muttered.

Twenty-four hours later, he could admit that Hark was right. His best bet was to avoid Rue. Get her out of his—

“Eli.”

He looked up. She stood less than three feet away.

“Hi,” she said.

The green dress and complicated hairdo from the night before had been punch-in-the-gut, spank-bank-directory material. Tonight she was a completely different person: plain white T-shirt tucked into jeans, no makeup, and…

Still a punch in the gut. Still spank-bank directory. He wondered if there was a version of her that wouldn’t be.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I…” She shrugged.

“Couldn’t make up your mind?”

“Something like that.” She climbed onto the stool next to him, lips curled in her small non-smile. “Then I did. Figured that if you were still here, maybe it was fate.”

“You don’t believe in fate.”

“Never have. You?”

“I think it’s all bullshit.”

She was quiet, that silence full of stares and pulled strings simmering between them. “Tomorrow. Are you still going to play golf with Eric Sommers? Try to convince him to…”

He nodded, and she glanced away, lips thinning.

“It’s wrong. What you and your friends are doing is wrong, and cruel, and—” She stopped, collecting her anger, and he’d never been more tempted to justify himself. You don’t know everything, Rue. In fact, I suspect you know nothing at all. Let me tell you a few things.

“Listen, we don’t have to go upstairs,” he told her softly. Because suddenly, even more than he wanted to fuck her, he wanted to explain. If Rue understood, maybe the two of them could have a fighting chance at…A fighting chance at what, Eli? “We can just stay here and I can—”

“No. I’m already betraying Florence. If we stay here and talk, it’s even worse.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want any misunderstanding: I despise Harkness and what you are doing.”

“Right.” He tried to keep his tone light and amused. Are you hurt? a Hark-sounding voice taunted. Because this woman you barely know doesn’t like you?

“It’s just sex,” she continued. “If it’s just fucking, there’s no need for moral dilemmas.”

Oh, Rue. Are you sure?

“We do this once,” she continued, voice firm, as if laying down important rules. “It’ll be as though Vince didn’t interrupt us that first night. We…pretend. It’s still Tuesday, and this is happening before I found out that you work for Harkness. We work it out of our system, and never think about it again.”

I hope you’re right, Rue, because I’m not sure my self-respect can take much more of you.

Maybe she was right. They needed to expel each other from their heads, quickly. Novelty was a powerful stimulant—take that away, and maybe there would be little left between them.

Eli lifted his hand, hotel key card between index and middle finger. “Ready to go?”

“I have been for a while.”

They were silent in the elevator, at first staring ahead at the closing doors, then turning to face each other. Eli considered closing the distance between them, getting an early start, pulling her in to let her feel his eagerness, but he just drank her in. Delayed gratification, he thought. There weren’t going to be repeats. He had to file away every moment.

When he smiled at her, she didn’t smile back, but neither did she avert her wide, studious eyes. The doors swished open, and he gestured for her to go first. His heart, remarkably steady until then, began racing.

He followed her into the hallway. Opened the door for her. Watched her step inside the room and glance around indifferently. Before he could touch her, or kiss her, or even take her hand, she faced the window. Giving him her back, staring at the urban glow of the Austin skyline, she began taking off her clothes, and Eli lost his ability to breathe.

There was nothing sensual, or purposefully titillating about it. It was the most utilitarian striptease he’d ever witnessed. Nevertheless, he had to lean back against a section of bare wall. Take a moment and a steadying breath as her shoes, shirt, pants, bra, and underwear were not quite folded, but neatly set aside on the wooden desk. And as she undressed, still facing away from him, she began talking. “My first time, I was a freshman in college. With some boy whose name I either forgot or never learned. My roommates, they wanted to throw a party before the winter holidays. They invited a bunch of guys, who invited other guys, and one of them was the one I had sex with. He was actually not bad at it. He knew what he was doing. Made it good for me. I think I was really lucky. But I fell asleep after, and by the time I woke up, he was gone. Didn’t leave a note, didn’t ask for my number. My roommates kept saying how much of a dick move it was, how terrible that my first had been such a jerk. Even Tisha, when I told her on the phone, was enraged on my behalf. I performed the disappointment that was expected of me, and never had the courage to tell anyone that I was so relieved. That guy and I had gotten what we wanted from each other, and then had a clean break before things could go south. Seemed ideal to me.” She removed her earrings, and as her head tilted in Eli’s direction, their eyes met again. She turned his way, and he could only stare.

It was her.

Rue.

Naked.

Eli’s cock got so hard, so suddenly, he was sure it was all over for him.

He was her servant. Anything she wanted, Eli would do it. He had to slide his hands behind his back, trap them between himself and the wall, just to stop himself from touching and gripping and taking.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He couldn’t compute her body. She was full in a way that reminded him of the movies his grandmother used to watch, of the actresses he’d think about when sex was just a hazy notion in his head. Mediterranean, he thought. With rounded hips and a rounded stomach and rounded shoulders and some rounded, truly luscious, magnificent tits. Her legs were smooth, nicely shaped, and maybe it was because of the anticipation of the last few days, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything this lovely in all his years on this damn planet. He’d enjoyed looking at a lot of women, and they were all made different, and they’d all been beautiful, but there was something here, with Rue, that felt almost…

Poignant, he thought, and laughed at himself, soft yet loud in the quiet room. A few days of being horny, and he was ready to write a fucking sonnet about her ass. Her lush, spectacular ass. It bounced slightly as she took a side step—a fucking work of art.

“What?” She came toward him, eyebrows lifting inquisitively.

Her body was on full display, unfaltering, and her effortless confidence kicked his arousal up another notch, even when he’d thought it had nowhere else to go. “Nothing. You look…” Amazing. Sweet. Enchanting. Fuckable. “Good.”

“Thank you.” Her mouth curled upward, as though she enjoyed the compliment, and he wanted to give her a million more. Scribble them in the fucking burning Library of Alexandria. “On the app you wrote you’d be fine with my limits?”

He nodded, remembering the message he’d been pulling up at embarrassingly frequent intervals in the past few days. He had it memorized, but all those clinical words felt so at odds now with her pink, soft glory. He would die one day, and med students would find the sentences carved in his brain.

FYI, I don’t enjoy penetrative sex much. If that’s a deal-breaker, then we should both move on.

“You still don’t want to have sex?” he checked.

She frowned in confusion. Then her eyes widened. “You mean, penetrative intercourse?”

A gynecologist, that’s what she sounded like. And he was dying to touch her. Ready to beg to smell the crease where her abdomen met her thigh. “Yup.”

She nodded. “Correct.”

He was curious about the reason, but she didn’t volunteer an explanation. Narrowing his options might be a good idea, anyway. He had things in mind, enough to fill the next week with, that didn’t require putting his dick inside her. He could probably just look at her for a while, and things would happen.

“Okay,” he said, finding himself split. He wanted Rue to enjoy this, a lot, but he was also absolutely, single-mindedly focused on his own desires and needs. It had been a long time coming. It had been…

Shit. Four days. They’d met four days ago. He felt like he’d been trudging upstream for the last year.

“Come here,” he murmured, and he was half in love with how quickly she complied, how close to him she stopped, how straight her posture. She was within reach. He could touch her wherever he wanted. His fingers twitched with impatience.

And yet, Eli found himself lifting his thumb and pressing it into her lips. His true north. “There is something about your mouth,” he mused.

“You mentioned.” She shrugged. The way her tits bounced would likely count as a formative moment in his sexual history. “It’s weirdly asymmetrical. The top and bottom, I mean.” She sounded calm, but her voice was eager. “Would you like me to go down on you?” she offered plainly.

His muscles, his nerve endings, the entire bone structure of his body tensed and stretched and reached toward her. “Would you like to?” he asked.

She nodded without hesitation. Eli could barely process it.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said eventually. “Not this time.”

“There won’t be another time,” she reminded him.

The edges of his arousal sharpened. Eli clenched the back of his teeth before forcing a smile. “If this is my only chance, then yeah. I’d love for you to suck my cock.” They were being so goddamn polite, from his pragmatic tone to her minute nod. Her hands made quick, sensible work of unbuckling his belt, undoing the top button on his pants. Her knees bent to—

“Wait,” he stopped her. She gave him a wide-eyed look, and the impulse to carry her to his home and keep her there for months or until this mess with Kline was over, whichever came first, was so overwhelming, he had to consciously get a grip. Hand on her upper arm, he dragged her back up. “I owe you a story. One of ours.”

Something terrible, he meant. Shameful and hitherto untold. Rue’s lips parted. She nodded, expectant.

“My first time was with my high school girlfriend. I was crazy about her, Rue. We were together for two years, and I swear to god, I was ready to marry her. Then one day, when her parents were gone, I walked into her house for a surprise visit and found her having sex with someone else.” He swallowed. “He was one of my teammates, and it had been going for months. They ended up getting married. Last I heard, they had kids. I think they’re happy.”

There was no pity in Rue’s blue eyes, just a silent acknowledgment that she’d heard him—just like he had heard her. Exactly what they needed. He pressed her against himself, combed his fingers through the hair at her nape, and kissed her as deeply as the night before. Except, this time she wore nothing at all, and he was fully dressed. His brain wasn’t at its most functional, his memory was foggy at best, but this could have easily been the most erotic moment of his adult life.

Beyond belief, he thought, pulling back, looking at her breasts wedged against the light cotton of his shirt. He was already out of breath. His cock punched through the fly of his jeans. “Now you can suck me off,” he said.

Rue gracefully went on her knees. Unbuttoned his pants and took him out of his boxers with hands at once soft and calloused. Her breath was hot against his skin.

“Stop,” he ordered, a hint of panic in his voice, and Rue drew back with a puzzled frown.

“You’ve done this before, right?”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

He laughed. God, he was gone for her. “I forgot to ask if you want to use a condom.”

She grimaced. “I hate the taste, and you sent your STI results through the app. But if you prefer—”

“No. Very much no.”

Then her mouth was on him, and Eli was dying. It was warm and wet and slow in a way that was at once familiar and completely new, and he was convinced that someone had slipped a high dose of a potent drug in his beer, because only that would explain his buckling knees and the expanding tingle at the base of his spine.

He shut his eyes and tilted his head to the ceiling, just feeling. Her fingers around the base of his cock. Her tongue swirling around the head. Then, when she pulled back, just the cold air in the room. “You’re not even watching.” She pressed a light kiss down his length, followed with a tender graze of her teeth. Her knuckles brushed against his testicles and oh, shit. “After all that talk about my mouth.”

“I can’t quite—”

He grounded himself. Searched for the part of him that knew better than to come in a woman’s mouth twenty seconds into a blow job. Dug into it, heels deep. Stubbornly pulled back from that very humiliating cliff.

“Give me a second.”

“Sure.”

She waited, and it was what he needed. A moment later he could hang his head and open his eyes without embarrassing himself. “Okay,” he said, vaguely amused by his own short fuse. “Okay.”

“Back to work?”

He nodded and this time he watched, her plump mouth and everything else: the dark curls blanketing her shoulders, the rosy tips of her nipples as they got hard and puffy, the warm blue of her eyes whenever they held his. Her slightly arched spine. Her position at once subservient and defiant, and in the blurry edges of the pleasure, he thought about having her at his mercy. A universe in which she gave him control. The power to hold her down and do with her what he wanted.

He exhaled a laugh and cupped her cheek, trying to remember the last time someone had given him head. At the start of the year in Seattle, maybe. Or Chicago? Not that long ago. Had it felt this obscenely good? Had anything, ever? He wanted it to last forever. He wanted to touch her some more. He wanted to fuck her tits, but it would have required her to stop what she was doing.

“Fuck me, but you look so fucking good with my dick in your mouth. You’re as good at this as you are at everything else,” he murmured, and the humming sound she made before slowly licking his balls told him she took it for the compliment it was. She couldn’t take all of him but gamely did her best, and that was the hottest thing about this. No fancy tricks, just enthusiasm and the fact that it was her. He liked—no, he fucking loved that the knuckles of her free hand were moving between her own thighs.

“You like this?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Rue pulled back with a filthy popping sound that was going to echo in Eli’s head on his deathbed. “You mean, do I like sucking dick in general?” Her tongue pressed against the underside, and he grunted. “Or do I like to suck yours?” If there was an award for this, he’d nominate her. Fuck, no, he’d keep her a secret. He’d abscond, covetous, greedy with his own little treasure.

“I don’t love thinking about you doing this with anyone else,” he said, thumb tracing her right cheek, the impression of him. He was once again inappropriate and out of bounds, as though he had a right to her, but instead of chastising him, she buried her head at the base of his cock, and pressed a kiss on his hip that had him wondering if it had become an erogenous zone.

Rue Siebert. Changing his cellular makeup, one solemn look at a time.

“Usually, I don’t mind it. But…” Two parallel lines between her eyes, and maybe it was wishful thinking on his part, but—no. She actually said, “This is more of a turn-on than I can remember it being.”

Eli had heard his fair share of dirty talk, and he unabashedly enjoyed having women ask him to spank them, to fuck them in different orifices, to do with them what he wanted. And yet, he couldn’t recall getting as worked up as he was right now, just from Rue’s soft-spoken, bemused admission. “I think this is enough,” he said, tightening his grip on her hair and gently prying her head away. She sucked on him one last time, a lurid sound that made his knees tremble.

“But you haven’t come yet,” she said.

He gripped his cock, as if that would restrain it. Shit. Shit. “Should I?” I could, easily. I could make a mess of you.

“Isn’t that the point?”

Precisely, every vertebra in his spine roared. Except. “When is this over, Rue?” She gave him a blank look, and he continued. “Tomorrow morning? When you get bored? When we both come?”

She thought about it with that serious expression that made him want to do unspeakable things to her beautiful face. “When we both come.”

“Then we move to something else,” he told her, and she let him tug her up, kiss her again, and roam his hands over her, palming the soft globes of her ass, molding his fingers into pliant flesh. “This is just…” He groped her crudely. But Jesus, he could have done much worse. “I might like your ass as much as your mouth.”

She looked him in the eye. Smiled faintly. “I should have guessed it.”

“Guessed what?”

He could feel her amusement. “That you’d talk so much during sex.”

Did he? He had no idea. Had never thought of himself as particularly verbal. “I think,” he said with a kiss to her throat, “I like to remind myself that it’s you I’m doing this with.” As though he could ever forget. “What do you want? How should I get you off?”

Her smile widened. “Aw. You’re not sure what to do.”

“Correct,” he deadpanned. “I’ve never once made a woman come. Teach me, please.”

She pulled him away from the wall and took off his shirt, her cool fingers brushing against his torso. He tried to recall anyone else undressing him, but couldn’t, not even women he’d lived with. He toed his shoes off, but then her hands began exploring, lingering in unexpected places. The side of his midriff. The line between his pecs. The inner part of his upper arm. He wanted to feel her naked skin against his own, but she seemed lost in her own world. “I didn’t think,” she started. Stopped.

“What?”

“That I’d be much into men made like you.” Her palm curled around his shoulder. A red fingernail traced his bicep, and the polish was starting to chip. “Is this from college hockey?”

“This?”

She shrugged. “The muscle, I guess.”

“For the most part.” He pushed her until she lay on her back, hips on the edge of the bed, and bent over her, licking the side of one breast while cupping the other in his palm. Her tits were big, and sensitive, and fit into his hands in a beautiful, overflowing manner that was intensely pornographic. Her breathing sped up as he stroked her nipples with his thumb, sucked them into his mouth and between his teeth, nibbled at the undersides. He pinched a hard pebble, just north of delicate, and her whole beautiful, soft body arched off the bed and into his mouth. Perfect. She was fucking perfect.

And he was going to be so good to her. “How would you prefer I make you come?” he asked. “Fingers? Mouth? Cock?”

Her chest heaved. “I said no—”

“Come on, Rue. You know I can make you come with my cock without putting it inside you.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and when they opened again, they were glossier. “Why don’t you surprise me?”

“Because you clearly have limits and preferences, and I don’t want to fuck up my one chance.” They held each other’s eyes for a long, swelling moment. He waited and waited, but she never replied. “Okay,” he murmured, kneeling in front of the bed. When he yanked her hips closer, she gasped in shock, but her heels remained on his shoulders, exactly where he’d placed them.

She liked it—a bit of roughness. A hint of violence. Yielding control. Just as much as he liked to clutch it. If this had been the beginning of something, they could have explored it. Negotiated. She’d let him take charge, he was sure, maybe a little more than that. But this was more like an end, so he parted her with his thumb—her beautiful, plump, shining cunt. “Very nice.” He kissed her just above her clit. Felt her tremble. “I like women who get really wet.”

“D-do I?”

“Fuck yeah,” he said before swiping the length of her with his tongue.

He loved doing this. It was something he’d unabashedly, enthusiastically enjoyed since he was in his teens—the flavors, the scents, the sounds. And with Rue…maybe it felt special because she was usually so guarded. Now she was still quiet, no loud moans or over-the-top whimpers, nothing purposefully meant to broadcast pleasure, but her breath hitched, her thighs tightened around his ears, her pelvis tilted to rub against his mouth. Eli felt each little tell right in his cock.

I would do this a million more times, he thought. I would spend a million more hours like this. With you.

He hoped he’d feel differently after an orgasm. And since Rue was likely to agree, when she began cresting closer to her peak, when her abdomen started contracting under his palm and she shuddered against him, he pulled back.

She let out a small, plaintive breath. Eli wanted to go back and finish her off—or keep her here forever, with him, on this edge. “Not yet.” He looked down at her flushed, trembling body. She was so close. So beautiful. “Can I put my fingers inside you?” he asked.

She nodded eagerly.

He showed her his hand. “How many?”

A pause. “No more than two.”

He lay down next to her, and being inside her was a slick, tight fit that made the prospect of never fucking this woman absolutely devastating. When her face showed nothing but pleasure, he added another finger, and that was a game changer.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, canting her hips against him.

“Yeah? You like it?” He crooked his fingers, and her thighs began trembling. “I think you like it,” he said against her shoulder. He found the hood of her clit with this thumb, tapped it gently, and it was like lighting a match.

This was supposed to be a brief stop. Just a slight detour before Eli got to do all the other things he wanted. Bite into her ass, eat her out some more, maybe fuck her tits for real this time, and then get her off. But Rue contracted around his fingers abruptly, with a breathless, shocked gasp, and all of a sudden every single thing within the hotel room was pushed miles beyond his ability to control. “Fuck. Fuck, you’re so close.”

She turned her head, gazing blindly at him. “I—” She gasped against his mouth. “Yes. I’m going to.”

He grazed her clit, and that was it. She arched in a curve of pure pleasure, eyes open and unseeing, lips parted in a soundless scream, and she looked so—beautiful and fuckable and lovely, Eli was completely ruined. His orgasm thundered through him with no warning. He ground his cock against the tender flesh of her hip and came like a freight train, the pleasure pulled from him in large, pulsing gusts.

He started kissing her instinctively, before fully coming down. And then he kept on kissing her, and kissing her, and kissing her, through the tail end of her orgasm and through the crest of his own. She didn’t always kiss him back, overwhelmed by the shudders running through her, but her mouth stayed underneath his, even as the pleasure slowly subsided. Sweat cooled on their bodies, the tempo of their hearts quieted, and once it was time to pull away from her, Eli found that he couldn’t. His fingers remained between her thighs, and he began to trace soft, aftershock-inducing circles around her clit, dragging his fingers through the damp mess at her opening, and…

It wasn’t over yet. It couldn’t be over. They’d just gotten started, and the things he could do for her, the things they could do for each other were beyond this world, and—

Rue turned away from him. “Eli.” Her fingers slid down to grip his wrist. “I have to go.”

“What?”

“Please.”

He moved away, giving her space. But said, “Rue. Come on.” Body still twitching with pleasure, she slid out of bed. The moment she stood, her legs almost gave out. Eli reached forward, steadying her before she collapsed. “Rue? What the hell?”

“I’m fine.” She took a deep breath and held out a halting hand. She sounded weak. Not like herself. “Just a…a cramp, I think.” She turned to him, and she was undone. Destroyed. As ruined as he felt, and Eli wanted to pull her back. Have her underneath him. He wanted to clean her up and do everything all over again, a thousand times over.

“Rue.”

She ignored him, silent in a busy, industrious way that involved cleaning herself of his semen with her underwear, pulling on her T-shirt with trembling hands, retrieving her pants. Not meeting his eyes.

He exhaled a laugh. “Are you really…you’re done,” he half said, half asked.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. Her breathlessness belied her indifference. “You aren’t?”

Fuck no, he thought. Said nothing.

“I’m going. I…thank you. It was fun. Maybe I’ll see you again. If not, have a good life and all that.” She was gone before he could think of a response. He watched the door close behind her, and when he glanced away, his eyes fell on her panties, forgotten in a heap of dark blue cotton on top of the sheets.

Eli covered his eyes, wondering how he’d ever thought that once was going to be enough.