Not in love

22

GOOD GIRL

RUE

When we returned upstairs, I had three messages on my phone.

Nyota, emailing the contact information for a real estate lawyer licensed in Texas and Indiana. Good news is, he came highly recommended. Sad news: his hourly rate might reflect that.

Tisha, informing me that she was going to Kline for a couple of hours to finish up something for “the anthropomorphized period cramp” (Matt), asking whether I wanted to join her. We could take a joint dump on his desk on our way out. LMK.

And Florence, who’d snapped a progress picture of a shawl she’d been knitting for me in beautiful shades of red—my favorite color.

“Everything okay?” Eli asked from behind me, and my first instinct was to hide my phone—which made me hate myself. Kline, my friends, my work—they were the part of my life I was proud of.

It was what I was doing with Eli that needed to be concealed.

“I have a story,” I said, still facing away from him. I felt pressure against my eyes, but I wasn’t worried. I’d stopped crying when I was a child.

“Go ahead.”

“I owe everything to Florence. My job. My scientific freedom. My financial stability. The fucking shawl that she’s knitting. And in return I’m here, in the bedroom of someone who’s been making her life impossible, having meals with him, because . . .”

Silence. “Why? Why are you here, Rue?”

My chest felt heavy. I turned around. “Because I’m selfish, and careless. Because I want to be.”

He nodded. Seemed to look around for a tale that could match mine. “I last spoke to my mother a few weeks before she died. My final words to her were that I hoped she wouldn’t be as shitty a mother to my sister as she’d been to me.”

We stood there, sodden with the weird catharsis that came from acknowledging the kinds of flaws and regrets and mistakes that lived in our bones.

He never ran, no matter how shameful. Neither did I.

“Okay, then,” I said, taking a step closer. “Let’s start.”

Eli took off his shirt. He was handsome in a rugged, interesting way, but what I liked about him was the story his body told. The broadness of his shoulders, the product of a childhood spent honing his body. Strong, long arms. A few scars here and there, where he must have taken hits and kept going. “Did you play defense?”

He smiled. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. Do we need a safe word, or something?”

“Why don’t we just . . . communicate, for now? I tell you what I’d like you to do, what I would like to do, and you can tell me no, or ask me to stop. Does that sound good?”

“It sounds better than screaming ‘broccoli’ because you’re pulling my hair too hard.”

He laughed. “That’s the spirit. Are you okay with me holding you down?” He stepped closer and gently pulled my hands from the back pockets of my jean shorts. Then he closed one hand around both my wrists with surprising ease, trapping them on my lower back. “Like this.”

Heat bloomed in my stomach. Blood rushed to my cheeks, but I nodded.

“If you change your mind, just ask me to let go.”

“I won’t.”

He sca

“I’m down for whatever.”

“Really? For whatever?”

I nodded.

“So I can press you into the mattress right now and fuck your ass without lube?” I froze. A now who’s up for anything? eyebrow rose on his forehead, and I had to stop myself from fidgeting in his grip. “Thought so,” he said softly. “Take off your clothes and lie face up on the bed, Rue. And if something bothers you, anything, tell me.”

I was naked in just a few moments, aware of Eli’s eyes trailing my every move. Stopped in front of the bed. “You can,” I said over my shoulder. “But I’ve never done it, so maybe not without lube.”

He stood completely still, but something behind his eyes stuttered, as if his brain was short-circuiting. By the time I lay down, he looked calm. His fingers traced the valley between my breasts, then played my rib cage like a piano. He was still wearing the gray sweatpants he’d put on for breakfast, the outline of his erection straining against the soft material.

“Would you like me to do something about that?” I asked. Wasn’t that the point? For me to service him in some way? The idea had me pressing my legs together in anticipation.

But he shook his head. “How about we start slow? Just relax.”

“So what do I do?”

He chuckled. “But of course.”

“What?”

“You always need something to do.”

Did I? Yes. Ever since I was a child, having a goal was the best way to avoid thinking about whatever misery I was going through. How did he know, though?

“Because I’m the same way,” he whispered, leaning in for a kiss on my cheek. It felt menacingly intimate. “Why don’t we say that your job is not coming, since you speak English so well?” His hand shifted to my abdomen, then pressed lightly, his weight on my flesh delicious.

“I can’t come? Ever?”

“Not until I tell you. It doesn’t matter how close you are, you wait for my permission. Okay?”

“Doesn’t sound too hard. Not having orgasms with a man is something in which I have plenty of experience.”

He muttered something that sounded a lot like mouthy, and then bent down to kiss me in the way I’d become accustomed to, at once restrained and absolutely filthy.

So new for me, recognizing someone’s kiss fingerprint. Being familiar with Eli’s fresh, woodsy scent. “This is a recurring dream of mine,” he said against one of my nipples before biting it softly.

I sighed in pleasure. “What is?”

“You. Naked. Doing as you’re told.” His thumb pressed against my lower lip. “I’ve always liked being in charge, but with you it’s something else altogether. Because you’re so slippery, maybe. It’s a powerful fantasy, having the right to order you to stay put.” He sounded like he was working through a math problem. When our eyes met, his smile was self-effacing. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

He did what he always did: kiss my breasts, trace the edge of my hip bone, inhale the skin of my throat. It turned me on, but I couldn’t see the destination, and it made me restless.

Which amused him. “Relax.” He examined the white shadow of my appendectomy scar.

“But what should I—”

“I just told you.” His hand slid between my thighs. Teased them apart. “Relax.”

“Don’t you—” Air rushed out of my lungs when he parted me with his thumb. His breath hitched, too.

“You’re always soaked when I first touch you, Rue.” His thumb moved unhurriedly from my entrance to my clit, and then down again. I arched into his touch, heat radiating through my nerve endings. “I like to think that it’s my doing.”

“It’s my doing,” I bit back. Laughter rose from deep in his chest, making me even wetter.

“I might like your tits even more than your lips. And I definitely like your honesty even more than your tits. Believe me, that’s saying something.”

I’d expected him to go down on me, because he seemed to truly enjoy it, and because if the game was to push me to the edge as quickly as possible, it would have been the cost-effective way. But he took his time: he rubbed me leisurely, lightly, just the tip of his fingers over my cunt, and little by little I melted into his touch. I closed my eyes, lay back, and it could have been three or twenty minutes later when I noticed how close I was.

Trembling.

Gripping the sheets.

Chewing on my lower lip and arching into every stroke.

The climb had been so gradual I’d barely noticed, and when I looked at Eli with a disbelieving expression, he smiled, almost sweetly, and eased the tip of his middle finger inside me. “You’re already right there, aren’t you? Clenching around my finger.”

“Because you—” I groaned. His calm was destabilizing. I was more worked up than I could remember being, and he was unaffected.

“You know I’m not going to let you come for a long, long while, don’t you?”

I squeezed my muscles around his thick finger and reveled in his sharp exhale. His cock was still hard, impossibly larger. “What about y-you?”

“Me?” He took his hand away, and I bit back a whimper. I watched him stroke himself from above his sweats, then take his cock out for a few more pumps. “I can come whenever and wherever I choose, Rue. Now. Later. Now and later. Isn’t that fun?”

I closed my eyes, trying to push his entertained tone out of my head, asking my body to wind down. This felt like a joke, a joke I wasn’t in on. All I wanted was—

“Let’s try again, okay?” His voice was soft and patient, and I instantly felt more at ease. But the way his palm spread my thighs was feral, and his mouth on my cunt reminded me that he was in control.

It was agony. Or the best thing I’d ever felt. After what felt like hours, I still couldn’t make up my mind. All I knew was that Eli spared no quarter, and brought me up and up and up with his mouth and his fingers and sometimes with his deep, filthy voice, and then, when I felt like I was going to explode from the tension dilating inside me, he stepped away and left me bereft. Once, I almost came, and he punished me with a soft bite at the edge of my cunt that had me shivering, ready to promise him anything for one more second of contact. I was willing to get myself off with my own fingers. To hump his leg. To be his fucking servant—and then he decided that I was fidgeting too much, and did what he’d promised: he restrained me, both my wrists in his hand, and pi

“Please.”

“Please, what? What do you need, Rue?”

“I can’t. Please, please, please, make me come. Or let me make myself come. Please.”

He clucked his tongue against my clit, not quite hard enough. I was going to die. “I thought you were an expert. I thought it was easy for you, not coming.”

“You have to—please. You have to.”

“Is this too much, Rue? Would you like me to just finish you off ?” He kissed my belly button, jarringly chaste after the places his mouth had been for the past hour. “Broccoli, Rue?”