Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

I wasn’t, but I nodded vehemently. Overcompensating.

“I’ve wanted to do this to you since I saw you at that hotel bar. I went home afterward and lay in this bed and thought about how serious you were, how self-possessed and solemn, and I imagined how nicely you’d come apart.” He bit softly at the top of my pelvic bone. “I’m fifteen again, Rue. You wouldn’t believe it, how much I jerk off, thinking of you.”

I was unglued. He was ungluing me. “How much longer?”

“You’ve done so well, baby. It’s your first time, and you’ve made me so happy.” He rewarded me with another open-mouthed kiss, and pride burst inside me at his words. “Can you give me five more minutes? Five more, and then I’ll let you come.”

His tone was patronizing. Insulting, really, but it wound me up even harder, cramming more pleasure inside me. “Okay.”

“That’s my girl. And then you can come however many times you want.”

Just once was going to be enough. It was going to rip me apart and wreck me forever. “Okay.”

“But I’m not going to make it easy.” I opened my eyes and met his. Dread mixed with the heat in my belly. I hate you, I thought, loving every second, every touch, every fragment of this. “One last sprint, Rue. Five more minutes, but I get to . . .”

He didn’t say what, but his tongue licked up my slit again—this time with purpose.

I gasped and arched almost completely off the bed.

“Don’t come,” he reminded me, and I nodded blindly, kept nodding as he told me to remember my promise. “Be good, Rue,” he repeated, but the flat of his tongue was pressing against my clit and I couldn’t—just couldn’t.

My legs began shaking, then my arms, and the tingling pressure in my abdomen exploded into shock waves that crashed through my body.

I couldn’t help it, so I screamed, sure that this was the most severe, unyielding pleasure anyone had ever felt at once. Too big for my body and too intense for this world. I was grateful for Eli’s hands holding me, keeping me tethered to something as my vision narrowed, as everything but the splendor of it receded.

Then, once every sensation in the galaxy had cycled through my body, I fell limply on the bed and realized what I’d done.

“Shit.” I sat up. Eli’s grip must have loosened, because I could easily free my hands. It hadn’t been five minutes. It hadn’t been one minute. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, watching my still-trembling body with a transfixed expression.

“I—shit. I know I wasn’t supposed to—I’m sorry—”

“Stop apologizing,” he ordered distractedly. Instead he moved on top of me, blanketing my body, one arm on each side of my head. He stared at me like I was a beautiful, exotic flower that had the power to kill him with a pollen drop.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“You are so fucking hot.” He leaned down and kissed me, almost violently. “You don’t understand what you do to me. Because I don’t understand what you do to me.”

“It wasn’t five minutes. I . . .”

He exhaled against my cheek. “Rue, don’t you get it? It’s the whole damn point, to see you lose it. Why do you think I do this? To see you go wild.” He was hard, grinding against my belly through his sweats. His muscles trembled with impatience, and his breath was all over the place. He seemed as far gone as I’d felt just a minute earlier.

“Are you going to—I don’t know, punish me? Spank me?”

He laughed. “I’d rather fuck you.” His muscles flexed as he lifted himself up. I felt the mattress shift, then heard rustling noises as a drawer slid open. When I could see his face again, he was holding a condom in his hand. “Okay?” he asked.

We’d discussed this. Was I really up to it?

Yes. Yes, because I had no doubt that Eli would stop if I needed him to.

I nodded.

“Good girl.” He kissed me again, firmly this time.

“Because I’m letting you do it?” I asked against his lips.

“No. Because you thought about it before saying yes.”

He rolled the condom on, his cock almost obscene covered in latex, and then slathered it in lube. I doubted he’d need it, but appreciated the consideration. It had been a couple of years for me, and when he laid on top of me, I almost expected it would be like my first time, a pinching discomfort requiring some adjustment.

Something large and blunt prodded against my opening, and as he pushed in, I felt an impression of intense fullness. Then, abruptly, with his cock no more than one or two inches inside me, Eli halted. His arms caged my shoulders, and he muttered something that resembled unbelievable, and then something like thank fuck we’re doing this with a condom. His forehead sank into the pillow, right next to my head.

“Goddamn,” he muttered.

“You okay?” I asked. My hand traveled up and down the divot of his spine, brushing the planes of muscles on either side. They twitched under sweaty skin.

“Fuuuck.” The word was muffled by the pillow. “Give me a second. Be a good girl and don’t move.”

I didn’t move. But he felt so large and foreign inside me, I needed to test the stretch and the limits of him, find out where he ended and I began. So I clenched around him, and that was all it took.