Not in love

She laughed. He nearly choked on his breath. “Sure. But also, when we do this, you practically vibrate.” Her fingertip traced the taut curve of his triceps, nail lightly scraping. “Every single muscle in your body is tense, and I can feel how much you want to move, and yet you’re not, and it makes me . . .” She tilted her hips at a perfectly disastrous angle, and he had to grip her hips and force her to be still and take a deep, shuddering breath before his third time fucking her turned out to be even more lackluster than the first two.

“Jesus Christ, Rue.”

She nipped at his earlobe, and he couldn’t help himself anymore, so he closed his fingers around her waist and began moving her, up and down. For a second he lost himself to the feeling of it, the tight squeeze of her muscles, the taste of her tits in his mouth, the soft yield of her ass under his fingers. He hooked his arms under hers and was moments away from chasing his orgasm, but when he looked at her face, she was staring down at him, interested but detached, and everything inside him screamed, Fuck, no.

Not this time.

“Rue.” He let out a breathless laugh. “If only you knew how fucking good this feels to me.”

“That’s nice.” She bent down to kiss his cheek. “I want you to feel good.”

He groaned. “Okay, new plan.” He guided her off him. “I’m going to turn you around.”

“Around?”

“Yeah. That way I should be able to . . .” He arranged her to face the wall, then guided her until her palms were on the headboard. He pushed back inside without giving her time to adjust. Her gasp matched his grunt. “I can control my thrusts better. And I can touch you more easily.” He pressed an open-mouthed kiss against the valley behind her ear. “And even if you don’t come, at least you can . . .”

He circled the heel of his hand against her clit first, then his fingers. He pushed in and out of her, shallow thrusts that had her ass grinding against his groin. “How are you—”

“Good,” she exhaled. “I like it.”

“Yeah?” He touched her some more. “Is it working for you?”

She nodded, and he felt her breath speed up. “You just—you really know where to touch me. And it’s not even . . .” She whimpered at another stroke of his thumb, and when she contracted against him, he felt his balls tighten and the pressure at the base of his spine tingle. “I think maybe I could . . .” She exhaled again, but he knew what she was about to say.

“Yeah,” he breathed in her ear. “Maybe you could.”

Every thought of his own pleasure was forgotten. He surged against Rue, as deep as he could go, and once he bottomed out, he kept his strokes shallow and began moving his fingers on her. “Like this?”

She nodded eagerly, almost violently, and Eli felt like this was what he’d been put on this earth for—get Rue off, right here, in this very moment. “Oh, sweetheart. Why does it feel like you’re going to come, huh? Why do you feel so wet and soft and—”

Abruptly, she seized around him. Her entire body clenched, the sound of her winded breath stopped, and even though all Eli wanted was to fuck her into the mattress, he pushed in to the hilt and let her ride her orgasm until she collapsed in his arms.

“You just came around my cock,” he rasped out. His words sounded shocked—just as shocked as he felt.

She nodded, lost for words.

“Rue.” He kissed her temple. Her cheekbone. The line of her jaw. He held her to himself with shaking hands. “I’d like it if you said it.”

Her voice trembled. “I just came around your cock.”

“Okay. Okay. I need to—I’ll finish, okay? Let’s see how long it takes me to . . .”

He pushed in, then out again, then in.

And that, apparently, was how long it took.