Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

            “Will you . . .” I laugh helplessly against the collar of his shirt. “Please?”

            He won’t. He doesn’t. Not for the longest time, instead choosing to wrap his hand around my jaw, cup my face, stare down at me. “I think this is it,” he murmurs, thumb swiping over my cheekbone, eyes pensive, like he’s processing a momentous piece of information. My pulse races. I’m dizzy.

            “I . . . What?”

            “This.” His eyes are on my lips. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere from this.”

            “I’m not sure I . . .”

            He moves so quickly I can barely keep track. His hands close around my waist, lift me up, and a second later I’m sitting on the shelf in the entrance. The height difference between us is much less dramatic and . . .

            It’s the best kiss of my life. No: it’s the best kiss in the world. Because of the way he presses a hand into my shoulder blade to arch me into him. Because of the scratch of his stubble against my cheeks. Because it starts slow, just his mouth on mine, and stays like that for a long time. Even when I loop my arms around his neck, even when he leans into me and pushes my thighs open to make space for himself, even when we’re flush against each other, my heart beating like a drum against his chest, it’s just his lips and mine. Close, brushing, sharing air and warmth. Achingly careful.

            And then I open my mouth, and it becomes something else entirely. The soft press of our tongues. His grunt. My moan. It’s new, but also right. The scent of him. The way he holds my head in his hand. The delicious liquid heat spreading in my belly, rising up my nerve endings. Good. It’s good, and I’m trembling, and it’s really, really good.

            “If . . .” I start when he comes up for air, but immediately stop when he buries his face in my throat.

            “This okay?” he asks before inhaling deeply against my skin, as though my Target body wash is some kind of mind-addling drug.

            My “Yeah” is faint, breathless. When he bites my collarbone, I wrap my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist, and the pleasure of being so close slices through me like the sharpest blade.

            He is hard. I can feel exactly how hard. He wants me to feel it, I think, because his hand slides down to my ass and pulls me into him. I squirm, twisting my hips experimentally, and he groans ruggedly into my mouth. “Be good,” he chides, stern, a little rough. He grips me tight, holds me still against him, and I unexpectedly shiver at the command in his words.

            It escalates quickly. For me, at least. There is a stretch of seconds, maybe minutes, in which we just kiss and kiss and kiss, Erik leaning even closer and me following his lead, liquid heat flooding inside me. And then I start noticing them: the soft groans. The sharp hiss as his cock rubs against my inner thigh. The way his fingers dig hungrily into my hips, the nape of my neck, the small of my back. He alternates between clutching me to his body as tight as he can and avoiding touching me at all, hands white-knuckled against the edge of the shelf as he puts some distance between us. I think he might be trying to slow this down. Pace himself, maybe.

            I think he’s not managing to, not very well.

            I pull away, and his eyes slowly blink open. They’re glassy, unfocused, a nearly black blue fixed on my lips. When he tries to lean down for another kiss, I stop him with a hand on his chest. “Bedroom?” I gasp, because he looks like he could just fuck me in the hallway, and I’m afraid that I’d gladly let him. “Or if you want . . . here is . . . fine, if you—”

            He cups a hand under my ass and carries me all the way down the hallway, like I’m no heavier than his cat. When he flips the light switch on, the bed is huge and unmade, and the room smells so much like him, I have to briefly close my eyes. He sets me on my feet, and I’m about to ask him if this is necessary, if we could please do this in the semi-dark, but he’s already unbuttoning his shirt, eyes fixed on me. My mouth goes dry. On second thought, light’s fine. Probably.

            Erik is a mountain. A giant dome of flesh and muscles—not GQ-cut, ridiculously defined ones, but solid, oak-tree big, and I might have gotten absorbed into staring and catastrophically lost track of time because:

            “Take off your clothes,” he says, no, orders, and I shiver again. There’s something about him. Something commanding. Like his first instinct is to take charge. “Sadie,” he repeats. “Take them off.”

            I nod, shrug out of my jeans first, then my sweater. I’m frantically looking for the courage to continue when I hear a low, hoarse, “Not purple.”