Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas #3) by Ali Hazelwood

            He exhales. “Really? Now you want dinner?”

            “I promised.”

            “Did you?”

            “Yes. I’m trying to—to show you that—”

            “Hannah.” His forehead touches mine. He laughs against my mouth. “Dinner is . . . it’s symbolic. A metaphor. If you tell me that you’re willing to see where things go, I believe you, and we can—”

            “No,” I say stubbornly. The urge to touch him is nearly painful. I can’t remember the last time I was this turned on. “We’re having our symbolic dinner. I’m going to show you that—what are you doing?”

            He is, I believe, turning around to pluck two grapes from the same cluster I half ate this morning. He presses one against my lips till I bite into it, pops the other in his mouth. We both chew for a while, eyes locked. Though he finishes before I do, starts kissing me again, and—a mess.

            We’re a mess.

            “Done eating your dinner?” he asks against my lips. I nod. “You still hungry?” I shake my head and he picks me up and carries me to the—

            “Wrong door!” I say when he tries to enter the bathroom, then the closet where I keep the vacuum cleaner I never use and the one pair of spare sheets I own, and by the time we’re on my bed we’re both laughing. Our teeth clack together when we try and fail to keep kissing as we undress each other, and I don’t think that anything has ever been like this before, intimate and sweet and so much fun at the same time.

            “Just—let me—” I finish taking off his shirt and stare at his torso, mesmerized. It’s pale and broad, full of freckles and large muscles. I want to bite him and lick all over. “You’re so . . .”

            He has undone my cast. He sets it aside, next to the pajama bottoms that I threw on the floor this morning, then helps me wiggle out of my jeans. “Red? And spotty?”

            I laugh a little harder. “Yup.”

            “That’s what I—”

            I press him down till he’s lying on the bed. Then I straddle him and peel off my top, ignoring the slight sting in my ankle. This should be familiar ground to me: bodies against bodies, flesh against flesh. Just seeing what feels good and then doing more of it. It should be familiar, but I’m not sure it is. Being here with Ian is more like hearing a song I’ve listened to millions of times, this time with a new arrangement.

            “God, you look so— What works best for you?” he asks between breaths. “For your ankle?”

            “Don’t worry, it doesn’t really hu—” I stop myself as something occurs to me. “You’re right. I am injured.”

            His eyes widen. “We don’t have to—”

            “Which means that I should probably be in charge.”

            He nods. “But we don’t have to—”

            He shuts up the moment my hand reaches the zipper of his jeans. And he stays silent, breathing sharply, staring mesmerized at the way I undo it, slow, methodical, determined. His boxers are tented. He is hard, big. I remember touching him for the first time and thinking how good the sex was going to be.

            I just didn’t think it would take us five years to get there.

            “Hannah,” he says.

            I reach inside the slit of his boxers to cup him. The second my fingers close around him, his nostrils flare. “Yes?”

            “I don’t think you understand how— Fuck.”

            He is hot and huge. Closing his eyes, arching his neck before looking at me again with a half-warning, half-pleading expression. He finds me sitting on his knees, his cock spasming in my grip as I lean over. “Hannah,” he says, even deeper than usual. “What are you . . .”

            I start by licking the head, thoroughly, delicately. But he feels smooth and warm against my tongue, and I immediately get impatient. I flip my hair so it’s not in the way and seal my lips around him, suck gently once, twice, and then . . .

            I hear a growl. Then the sound of something ripping. With the corner of my eye, I notice Ian’s large hand fisting the sheet. Did he just tear my—