Not in love

I wasn’t sure. I squeezed my internal muscles around him, hoping he’d start moving again. Eli looked overwhelmed, and very tempted for a moment, but he recovered after biting the pillow and groaning against it. “Once again, nice try,” he exhaled.

“I just want you to—”

“Stop? Because these are your options. I stop right now. Or I continue, after you say what you need to say.”

I glanced up at him in confusion, but he was inscrutable. The idea of my body losing contact with his was repulsive. My skin would feel so cold without his heat.

“What’s the problem, Rue?” His fingers tangled with mine, palms flush against each other. He sounded almost . . . The more I hesitated, the more tenderly he looked at me. His voice dropped to a low murmur. “It can’t be that difficult a choice, can it?”

It couldn’t. It wasn’t. But he’d wound me up, and without him inside me, above me, I was never going to come down. I couldn’t think properly, to the point that the only possible response was the honest one.

“I don’t want to say it,” I rasped. “I don’t want to.”

“Ah.” He sounded utterly unsurprised. “Do I stop, then?”

I shook my head.

“Let’s introduce another option, then. You explain to me why.” His lips curved in a kind smile. Whatever this game was, he was wi

“Why are you doing this?”

He laughed silently before kissing me again, and this time it was slow and bottomless, thorough like only Eli could be. I arched into him, trembling. But then the kiss died, and no response came. Instead, Eli leaned his forehead against mine.

“Rue. My sad, beautiful fortress girl.”

His voice was so fully, tragically heartbreaking, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I hate you, I thought, just as a single tear rolled out of my eye and streaked my temple. Like I’ve never hated anyone before.

He had given me three options to choose from. One was unbearable. One felt wrong on a visceral level. The remaining . . . the remaining would require me to explain something I myself didn’t understand.

I forced my eyes open, found Eli’s, and chose the fourth.

“It’s not just fucking,” I said. In the quiet of the room, my voice was like shattered glass. “But I—I don’t know why, and I don’t—”

The kiss that silenced me was nuclear. For long seconds we were both feral, suspended in time, interrupted—just Eli and me, breathing each other in, trying to be as close as we could. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said into my ear. “You’ll figure it out. I’ll help you, okay?”

When he began moving again inside me, my body lit up with the force of an atomic explosion. And less than half a minute later, I came so hard my vision went black.