Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

There was no pity in Rue’s blue eyes, just a silent acknowledgment that she’d heard him—just like he had heard her. Exactly what they needed. He pressed her against himself, combed his fingers through the hair at her nape, and kissed her as deeply as the night before. Except, this time she wore nothing at all, and he was fully dressed. His brain wasn’t at its most functional, his memory was foggy at best, but this could have easily been the most erotic moment of his adult life.

Beyond belief, he thought, pulling back, looking at her breasts wedged against the light cotton of his shirt. He was already out of breath. His cock punched through the fly of his jeans. “Now you can suck me off,” he said.

Rue gracefully went on her knees. Unbuttoned his pants and took him out of his boxers with hands at once soft and calloused. Her breath was hot against his skin.

“Stop,” he ordered, a hint of panic in his voice, and Rue drew back with a puzzled frown.

“You’ve done this before, right?”

He laughed. God, he was gone for her. “I forgot to ask if you want to use a condom.”

She grimaced. “I hate the taste, and you sent your STI results through the app. But if you prefer—”

“No. Very much no.”

Then her mouth was on him, and Eli was dying. It was warm and wet and slow in a way that was at once familiar and completely new, and he was convinced that someone had slipped a high dose of a potent drug in his beer, because only that would explain his buckling knees and the expanding tingle at the base of his spine.

He shut his eyes and tilted his head to the ceiling, just feeling. Her fingers around the base of his cock. Her tongue swirling around the head. Then, when she pulled back, just the cold air in the room. “You’re not even watching.” She pressed a light kiss down his length, followed with a tender graze of her teeth. Her knuckles brushed against his testicles and oh, shit. “After all that talk about my mouth.”

“I can’t quite—”

He grounded himself. Searched for the part of him that knew better than to come in a woman’s mouth twenty seconds into a blow job. Dug into it, heels deep. Stubbornly pulled back from that very humiliating cliff.

“Give me a second.”

“Sure.”

She waited, and it was what he needed. A moment later he could hang his head and open his eyes without embarrassing himself. “Okay,” he said, vaguely amused by his own short fuse. “Okay.”

“Back to work?”

He nodded and this time he watched, her plump mouth and everything else: the dark curls blanketing her shoulders, the rosy tips of her nipples as they got hard and puffy, the warm blue of her eyes whenever they held his. Her slightly arched spine. Her position at once subservient and defiant, and in the blurry edges of the pleasure, he thought about having her at his mercy. A universe in which she gave him control. The power to hold her down and do with her what he wanted.

He exhaled a laugh and cupped her cheek, trying to remember the last time someone had given him head. At the start of the year in Seattle, maybe. Or Chicago? Not that long ago. Had it felt this obscenely good? Had anything, ever? He wanted it to last forever. He wanted to touch her some more. He wanted to fuck her tits, but it would have required her to stop what she was doing.

“Fuck me, but you look so fucking good with my dick in your mouth. You’re as good at this as you are at everything else,” he murmured, and the humming sound she made before slowly licking his balls told him she took it for the compliment it was. She couldn’t take all of him but gamely did her best, and that was the hottest thing about this. No fancy tricks, just enthusiasm and the fact that it was her. He liked—no, he fucking loved that the knuckles of her free hand were moving between her own thighs.

“You like this?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Rue pulled back with a filthy popping sound that was going to echo in Eli’s head on his deathbed. “You mean, do I like sucking dick in general?” Her tongue pressed against the underside, and he grunted. “Or do I like to suck yours?” If there was an award for this, he’d nominate her. Fuck, no, he’d keep her a secret. He’d abscond, covetous, greedy with his own little treasure.

“I don’t love thinking about you doing this with anyone else,” he said, thumb tracing her right cheek, the impression of him. He was once again inappropriate and out of bounds, as though he had a right to her, but instead of chastising him, she buried her head at the base of his cock, and pressed a kiss on his hip that had him wondering if it had become an erogenous zone.

Rue Siebert. Changing his cellular makeup, one solemn look at a time.

“Usually, I don’t mind it. But . . .” Two parallel lines between her eyes, and maybe it was wishful thinking on his part, but—no. She actually said, “This is more of a turn-on than I can remember it being.”

Eli had heard his fair share of dirty talk, and he unabashedly enjoyed having women ask him to spank them, to fuck them in different orifices, to do with them what he wanted. And yet, he couldn’t recall getting as worked up as he was right now, just from Rue’s soft-spoken, bemused admission. “I think this is enough,” he said, tightening his grip on her hair and gently prying her head away. She sucked on him one last time, a lurid sound that made his knees tremble.

“But you haven’t come yet,” she said.