Not in love

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.