Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

            The noise Ian makes is rough and guttural, and it takes me about three seconds to realize that he’s already coming, groaning into my skin, trapping my hand between our bodies. I feel him shudder, and this big man coming apart against me, utterly lost and helpless in front of his own pleasure, is by far the most erotic experience of my entire life.

            I want to get him into a bed. I want hours, days with him. I want to make him feel the way he’s feeling right now, but a hundredfold stronger, a hundred million more times.

            “I’m sorry,” he slurs.

            “What?” I lean back to look at his face. “Why?”

            “That was . . . pitiful.” He pulls me back to bury his face in my throat. It’s followed by a lick, and a bite, and oh my God, the sex is going to be off the charts. Earth-shattering.

            “It was amazing. Let’s do it again. Let’s go to my place. Or let’s just lock the door.”

            He laughs and kisses me, different from before, deep but gentle and meandering, and . . . it’s not really, in my experience, the type of kiss people share after sex. In my experience, after sex people wash up, put their clothes back on, then wave good-bye and go to the nearest Starbucks to get a cake pop. But this is nice, because Ian is an excellent kisser, and he smells good, he tastes good, he feels good, and—

            “Can I buy you dinner?” he asks against my lips. “Before we . . .”

            I shake my head. The tips of our noses brush against each other. “No need.”

            “I . . . I’d like to, Hannah.”

            “Nah.” I kiss him again. Once. Deep. Glorious. “I don’t do that.”

            “You don’t do”—another kiss—“what?”

            “Dinner.” Kiss. Again. “Well,” I amend, “I do eat. But I don’t do dinner dates.”

            Ian pulls back, his expression curious. “Why no dinner dates?”

            “I just . . .” I shrug, wishing we were still kissing. “I don’t date, in general.”

            “You don’t date . . . at all?”

            “Nope.” His expression is suddenly withdrawn again, so I smile and add, “But I’m very happy to come to your place anyway. No need to be dating for that, right?”

            He takes a step back—a large one, like he wants to put some physical space between us. The front of his jeans is . . . a mess. I want to clean him up. “Why . . . why don’t you date?”

            “Really?” I laugh. “You want to hear about my socio-emotional trauma after we did”—I gesture between us—“this?”

            He nods, serious and a little stiff, and I sober up.

            Seriously? He really wants that? He wants me to explain to him that I don’t really have the time or the emotional availability for any kind of romantic entanglement? That I can’t really imagine anyone sticking around for something that’s not sex once they really get to know me? That I’ve long since realized that the longer people are with me, the more likely they are to find out that I’m not as smart as they think, as pretty, as funny? Honestly, I know that my best bet is to keep people at arm’s length, so that they never find out what I’m actually like. Which is, incidentally: a bit of a bitch. I’m just not good at caring about . . . anything, really. It took me about one and a half decades to find something I was truly passionate about. This friendship experiment I’m doing with Mara and Sadie is still very much that, an experiment, and . . .

            Oh God. Does Ian want to date? He doesn’t even live here. “So you’re saying . . .” I scratch my temples, coming down fast from my post-orgasm high. “You’re saying you’re not interested in having sex?”

            He closes his eyes in something that really doesn’t look like a no. Definitely doesn’t look like a lack of interest. But what he says is, “I like you.”

            I laugh. “I noticed.”

            “It’s . . . uncommon. For me. To like someone this much.”

            “I like you, too.” I shrug. “Shouldn’t we hang out, then? Isn’t that good enough?”