Not in Love

RUE

The sun was already setting, but I worried that he might still be at the office, and that not finding him might force me to reconsider what I was about to do. Thankfully, I spotted Eli as soon as I pulled up to his street.

He was unlocking his front door, but he turned around when he heard my car approach. In the dusk, his eyes widened. Then softened. I got out quickly, without bothering to collect myself, and marched to him with an outstretched hand.

Eli stared at my open palm for a long while. “What is it?”

“Take it.”

He plucked out the USB. “What’s on it?”

“You know what.”

His expression traveled from confused, to understanding, to shocked. “No.” He shook his head and tried to return it. “Rue, I didn’t tell you so that you—”

“I know. But she took it from you. From Minami. From Hark.”

“Rue.”

“And we agree that she shouldn’t have.”

“We?”

“Tisha and I.”

He stared at the USB pinched between his fingers, silent.

“If Kline is breaking the terms of the loan contract, then Harkness has the right to know. I’m not giving you any secrets. These are just…”

“The documents she should have handed over weeks ago?”

At least, I hoped so. I had access to Florence’s office and computer—and a healthy ignorance of financial records. But that’s what Nyota was for.

After a brief hesitation, Eli slid the USB in his pocket. “Thank you, Rue.”

“You’re welcome.” I took a deep breath. “Can I…”

He tilted his head.

I swallowed. “The last few days have been…difficult. For me. If tonight…if I asked you to take me in and let me stay with you, and not mention a single word about Florence, or Kline, would you—”

He opened the door before I could finish the sentence—an unequivocal invitation—and a wordless conversation passed between our locked gazes.

Can I trust you, Eli?

Always.

My heart leaped in my throat. I stepped inside—and was assaulted once again.

“Down, Tiny,” Eli drawled, not bothering to hide his delight at the way his dog’s paws rested on my midriff. “I’m not letting her leave anytime soon. You’ll get to snuggle later.” Tiny licked my chin, and I flinched.

“I don’t really snuggle.”

“Color me shocked.” He took off his glasses and set them next to a stack of unopened mail. Not Harkness’s Eli anymore, but mine.

Mine.

It was half-ridiculous and all pathetic to think of him in those terms, but relief flooded me anyway. “Is it a vanity thing?” I asked.

“What?” He grabbed something from a shelf, and Tiny circled us and jumped up and down, clearly in the middle of a galvanic episode. Were all dogs this shamelessly happy? Science should study their blood. Come up with good drugs.

“The glasses. You only wear them at work. Are you trying to come across less like a former hockey player and more like a nerd?”

“I only wear them at work because, according to my ophthalmologist, I have the eyesight of a man in his eighth decade and need glasses for reading and staring at computer screens.”

“Ah.”

“But thank you for telling me that I look like a dense jock.”

“I didn’t—”

“Shh. I know. Let’s go.” He unspooled some kind of flat rope. It was…

Oh no. “Where?”

He hooked the rope to Tiny’s collar. “To walk my dog.”

I took a step back, and he followed. Gently pried my hand from my side and slid the leash around my wrist. “Eli, I shouldn’t be in charge of—”

“If you stay, you’re going to have to earn your keep.”

I shook my head. “I’m not really a—”

“Pet person?” He looked at me like nothing I could have said would surprise him. Like he knew not just the contours, but also the shaded, buried parts of me. At the very least, he knew that they existed. “Let’s go.” His voice was kind but adamant, and I had no choice.

I followed Tiny’s indiscernible interests all over the sidewalk, feeling his leash tug determinedly at my fingers. Several neighbors were out, walking their own dogs, and they stopped often to exchange pleasantries (with Eli) and vigorous butt-sniffings (Tiny).

“Not what I had in mind when I came over,” I muttered, pulled in the direction of Tiny’s whims. Eli seemed unfazed, and never made a move to take the leash from me, not even when Tiny freed himself to chase a squirrel, forcing me to run after him in what had to be a Looney Tunes–worthy display.

“Don’t worry, I will fuck you later,” Eli murmured once I was back at his side, nodding at an elderly lady who was walking a poodle that looked eerily like her. I glanced at Tiny, then Eli. There was a resemblance there, too—the messy, curly brown hair. Was this a thing? “But since you came to me, I figured we could do things my way.”

“We always do things your way.”

“Do we?”

We didn’t, and I knew it. Since the very start, I’d been the one setting boundaries, making requests, building fences. Probably because, since the very start, I’d sensed he’d be willing to push past them. His role had been well defined: respect my wishes, follow my lead.

But after the last few days, it was obvious that he wanted a hazy, undefined more. Which was hazily, undefinedly terrifying.

“Don’t worry, Rue. I’m not going to ask you for anything scandalous, like to skate with me.” He glanced at me in tender amusement, as if I were a child who still believed in leprechauns at the end of the rainbow. “This is not a date, or anything as gross and morally perverted as that.”

And yet, it felt just as disturbing. Back at his house, he took a couple of minutes to send the files to his team, and then sat me on a stool while he prepared something with couscous and stir-fry and spicy, mouthwatering scents.

“Is this the last of your signature dishes?”

“Yup. I’m going to have to learn a few more if I want to keep luring you here.”

Do you? Are you sure you want me around? “Where is Maya?”

“Camping.”

“Doesn’t she have summer classes?”

He shook his head. “On break. Left early this morning.”Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

I’d come here because I couldn’t stand to be alone with my thoughts, but with the darkening sky, the rhythmic chopping sounds, the veggies sizzling in the pan, my mind drifted back to Florence. What she’d done. The way she rationalized her actions, as though a valid justification for her behavior existed. There had to have been a point, in my years of knowing her, in which she had expressed some kind of belief that hinted at her capacity for something like this. And I’d missed it.

“Relax.” Eli’s voice startled me. His large hands wrapped around my shoulders, thumbs digging firmly into the knots between my scapulae.

“I am relaxed.”

“Sure.”

“I am.”

“Rue.” Something light and warm nuzzled the crown of my head. His nose, maybe. “If you’re here to avoid thinking about it, then do so.”

“I’m sorry. I know I’m not good company. I should be more…”

“More?”

“Engaging. Chatty. Sociable. Charming.”

He circled my stool to catch my eyes, and I fought the impulse to guide his hands back to me. “Should you?”

I shrugged, and he went back to the stove and tossed the veggies in one smooth move. My social inadequacies were old news by now, but what if Eli didn’t understand the full extent of it? What if he thought he knew me, but—

“You’re enough, Rue. And if you aren’t…I just don’t mind.” I stared at his back as he worked, watching his muscles play under the cotton. “I said it before, but I do like you. You’re funny, even though you like to pretend you’re not. You’re loyal—to the wrong people, sometimes, but that’s still a quality that I deeply appreciate, even more so after what happened ten years ago. You have a strong sense of what is wrong and what is right. You’re deliberate, and you’d rather shut up than lie—even to yourself.” He began plating the food. In his perfect profile, I saw a twitch of a smile. “And as we’ve already agreed upon, you’re a fantastic lay who smells amazing.”

It was my cue to laugh at his joke and dismiss the rest, but my heart was beating hard in my throat. “I’m not sure what to say.”

“You could return the compliment.”

“I should praise your sense of justice and morality?”

“Not that one.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “I guess you’re an okay lay, too,” I said flatly, and my heart galloped when he laughed from someplace deep in his chest. “You don’t resent me?”

“Why should I?”

“If it hadn’t been for what was stolen from you, I wouldn’t have this career.”

“You would still have a career.” He carried both plates to the table and waited for me to join him.

“Sure, I’d be working somewhere else. But my project was funded with something that was taken from you.”

“No, I don’t resent you for that. It looks like you are resenting yourself, though. And we agreed that tonight wasn’t about that.” Eyes still on me, Eli scooped up a forkful of food and began eating. “Did Vincent come back?”

I blinked at the abrupt change of topic. “No. I’ve been calling real estate lawyers, but it’s summer. A few are on vacation, a few are not affordable, some are not taking on new clients. I want to buy him out, and I have some money set aside. I’d been saving it for the down payment on a house. Or for when my car frees itself of its mortal coil. Or in case I need a new kidney.”

“Those three things have vastly different costs, Rue.”

“Have fun on The Price Is Right, Finance Guy.”

He smiled. “Eat up. Your food’s getting cold.”

I’d assumed we would transition to sex after dinner and loading the dishwasher, but Wednesday night hockey was, to my shock and awe, something that existed. When Eli twined his fingers with mine, led me to the couch, and turned on the TV, I was uncertain how to react, but didn’t protest.

His arms, wrapped around me, felt equally alien and mundane. In the uncertainty of the night, I let myself be led down the path of least resistance and sank into his body. He was warm. He smelled good. Outside of sex, I’d never touched someone for such a prolonged time, but contact with him was soothing. “Watching team sports” ranked somewhere below “tweezing spines out of a cactus” on my list of enjoyable activities, but this was, somehow, good.

Really good.

When Eli muttered, “That’s some bullshit,” either thirty seconds or forty minutes later, I blinked in confusion. I’d been that relaxed.

“What happened?”

“That penalty shot the ref called.”

“Ah.”

“The player with the puck jumps sideways to avoid a hit, barely gets clipped, and the defender gets called for a trip. Come the fuck on.” He waved his hand, charmingly aggravated. “Refs have been shit all season,” he muttered. His eyes flitted to me before moving back to the TV. Then did a double take. “What’s that face? If you think it was a legitimate penalty, I swear to god, I will cast you out to the mercy of the elements.”

“The temperature is really nice tonight. And I have no opinion. I don’t know the rules at all.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to teach you.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

“You grew up around rinks. You’d have learned everything there is to know about hockey by now if you were interested. You don’t need me imposing my shitty hobbies on you.”

A dense, heavy weight suddenly pressed against my sternum. Burned behind my eyes. “No?”

“Nah. Just tell me I’m right and the ref’s a shithead.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You’re right and the ref’s a shithead.”

“You’re a natural.”

We exchanged a smile. The primal, gravitational force tugging me toward Eli was not new, but this was different. A new hum, buried deep, hidden below the frequency of civilization, and it was so much—so, so much—I couldn’t bear it.

“Eli,” I said.

“Yes?”

I thought I’d be rid of you by now. I thought I’d sweat you out. But it’s like you’ve stolen a little piece of me. And I’m afraid that when this is over, I’ll go back to my life, and my shape will have changed—just a little, but enough that I’ll no longer fit into my lonely, angular hole.

“I don’t know,” I said, as sincere as I could be.

“No?” He sat back, assessing me calmly. I couldn’t shake the needling sensation that he understood something fundamental, something nuclear about us that I could not yet accept. “I think you do know, but I might be mistaken.” His half smile was conciliatory. “Am I mistaken, Rue?”

My chest constricted. I was stripped. Uncomfortably seen. “I think,” I said, moving my hand up the inseam of his pants, “that we’ve been talking too much, and that’s not like us.”

His breath was a sharp intake when I cupped him through the fly of his pants. He was instantly hard. “Yeah? What’s like us?”

He didn’t help me, not even by shifting a single inch, but it took me very little to free his cock. By the time he was in my hand, hot and huge, I felt less fragile. “This.” I kneeled between his knees, put my mouth on him, and it felt like the world made sense again.

It was new—not giving a blow job, but giving one to someone whose body I’d become familiar with. Eli had become muscle knowledge, the wheres and hows of his pleasure seeped into me of their own free will.

“It’s almost fucked up, how much I like my cock in your mouth,” he said, and then he swore, shuddered, swore again. After a few valiant seconds of resisting me, he combed both hands in my hair and began thrusting, moving my head in the exact rhythm he wanted. I craved this—to be just a mouth and body again. To be used by him meant that I could not be observed, a second of precious respite from what was growing between us.

He was gentle, because he was Eli, but he was also rapidly losing control. He groaned. His grip tightened, his thighs tensed, and he was right on the verge—until he stopped me. “Nice try,” he half laughed, half panted. The accusation heated my cheeks. “Not working, though.” He took my chin between his fingers and forced me into a slow, deep kiss before carrying me upstairs.

There was usually, at some point of us being together like this, a moment in which the floor tilted and we tipped over—the momentum so fast and hard, we forgot ourselves and tumbled into bed. But this time it was slow, excruciatingly so, and it was Eli who paced us. He lingered on every inch of skin he uncovered, marked it with his hands and eyes, celebrated all progress with kisses and grazing teeth. It felt like revenge—like he wanted me to pay for trying to make him lose control.

“Hurry up.” I tugged impatiently at his clothes, but he ignored me and took his time, even when I begged. “Why are you being like this?”

“Because I can,” he said, and I had no choice but to settle into his touch, trembling with pleasure under his slow, thorough hands.

He’d changed the sheets. It was a weird thing to register, but I couldn’t help it. The new ones were a deep blue and smelled like fabric softener. I couldn’t understand why he left me to retrieve his belt, but my heart raced as he moved my wrists above my head, tied it around them, and then tethered me to the bed. He was slow, giving me every chance to stop him.

“Good?” he asked, voice low. The request was simple: I’m going to be in charge. Okay?

I nodded eagerly. The makeshift cuff was loose enough that I could have freed myself, but I had no intention of doing so, not when it anchored me to the here and now.

“Okay, then.”

The last time we’d done this, he’d teased me within an inch of my life, and I expected more of that. Instead I felt the wet tip of his cock across my thighs, my belly, pushing against my entrance. He groaned with something that sounded like bliss, then stopped himself.

“Shit. I’m going to get a condom in a second, I swear.”

He rubbed against me for a few more seconds that turned into minutes, and then, with some choked profanities, opened his nightstand drawer.

A moment later he pushed inside me.

I felt it down to my toes, how thick he was, the burn of the stretch. Gasped in shock at how sudden it had been, how incredibly good. Pleasure used to be something I had to work on, something to climb toward, but this was instantly, aggressively enjoyable in a way I couldn’t comprehend.

And Eli knew it. “Come on, baby.” He sounded amused, if breathless. “I’m not even all in yet.” He kissed me on the lips, something featherlight that immediately turned filthy and deep. Then he rocked a few more times and suddenly he was all in, and we were panting in each other’s mouths, uncoordinated and frozen in time.

Eli white-knuckled the dark sheets. I tugged at the belt, finding that being restrained heightened my pleasure. When he rocked upward inside me, the lick of heat that ran through me almost frightened me. “Oh my god.” He did it again, and I moaned. Loudly. “Why does this feel so good?”

“It’s the way I’m aligned.” He ground again. The base of his cock rubbed against me, making me shiver. “I can stimulate your clit without touching it. I think that’s the trick of it with you.”

He knows my body, I thought. Like I know his. “It’s nice. I—oh god.” He moved again, and I felt myself clench against him. “I like it,” I exhaled.

His groan melted into a soft laugh. “I know, Rue. I can feel it.”

I was on the verge of coming in minutes—the pressure, the delicious drag in all the right spots, his chest brushing against my nipples. Heat climbed inside me, and I closed my eyes and arched my back to better push against it. A little longer, I thought. It felt so punishingly good, I wanted it to last. But Eli was talking into my ear, telling me how criminally beautiful I was, a danger to his peace of mind, that sometimes he wished he’d not checked his phone when I’d first messaged him; he wished he’d flung it to the other side of the room and spared himself. The low rumble of his voice and his shallow movements—I was going to come apart, any second I was going to—

Eli stilled.

Underneath him, I was as tense as an unplucked guitar string, the pleasure at once extraordinarily close and immensely out of reach.

“Good?” he asked against my ear.

I nodded. My cunt throbbed, swollen around his cock.

“Look at me, Rue.”

I tilted my hips into him, trying to get the friction I needed.

“Open your eyes, and look. At. Me.”

My eyelids fluttered. Eli’s face was right above mine, beautiful and familiar. Sweat dripped from his temples, dampening his dark hair. I watched his hard expression, still dazed and overstimulated by having him inside me.

“Good girl.” He rewarded me by surging upward. My thighs twitched, and I let out a long moan. “Doing what she’s told. And you know what good girls get? I think you do know.”

Blood pounded in my ears.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this. After all, that’s the point of fucking.”

I didn’t follow, but he bent my knee with his palm, and I nodded anyway. My prize was another roll of his hips that had his pubic bone right against my clit. I almost went over the edge. Not quite, though, and the noise slipping out of me was pure, mortifying frustration.

“Which is exactly what we’re doing. Just fucking, right?” he asked, nipping at my throat.

“I—oh god. Eli, please.”

“Please, what?” He shifted so that both his hands twined with mine, and suddenly we were even closer. The fresh scent of his sweat flooded my nostrils. He was strong, heavy, and I never wanted him to stop. “Ask for what you want, sweetheart.”

“I want you to move. Please, move.”

He did move, but instead of grinding he pushed in, then out, and that was the difference between excellent sex and the cruelest of disappointments. “Like this?”

“Eli.”

“No?”

“You know it’s not. Just—please.” I could barely recognize this bumbling mess he’d made me into. And I never wanted him to stop.

“You want me to make you come, don’t you?”

I nodded vehemently.

“Of course you do.” He kissed me softly on the mouth. I was pinned underneath him, completely at his mercy while he moved inside me in the obscenest of ways, and yet his kiss was disarmingly sweet. “I’m going to make you come however many times you want, however many ways you want. But you have to do something for me first.” He spoke in a calm, determined tone, but his muscles strained, and he wasn’t any less ready to finish than me.

“Do what?”

“I want you to look me in the eye, and tell me that this is just fucking.”

I froze. “What?”

“You heard me.” His voice was kind. Another kiss pressed against my cheek. “Tell me that all we’re doing is fucking, and I’ll make you come.” He balanced on his elbows and made a couple of shallow, experimental thrusts. His face contorted with pleasure, and he stopped. “That’s it.”

“Eli.”

“Come on.” He looked down at me, patiently. “Just say it.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

I wasn’t sure. I squeezed my internal muscles around him, hoping he’d start moving again. Eli looked overwhelmed, and very tempted for a moment, but he recovered after biting the pillow and groaning against it. “Once again, nice try,” he exhaled.

“I just want you to—”

“Stop? Because these are your options. I stop right now. Or I continue, after you say what you need to say.”

I glanced up at him in confusion, but he was inscrutable. The idea of my body losing contact with his was repulsive. My skin would feel so cold without his heat.

“What’s the problem, Rue?” His fingers tangled with mine, palms flush against each other. He sounded almost…The more I hesitated, the more tenderly he looked at me. His voice dropped to a low murmur. “It can’t be that difficult a choice, can it?”

It couldn’t. It wasn’t. But he’d wound me up, and without him inside me, above me, I was never going to come down. I couldn’t think properly, to the point that the only possible response was the honest one.

“I don’t want to say it,” I rasped. “I don’t want to.”

“Ah.” He sounded utterly unsurprised. “Do I stop, then?”

I shook my head.

“Let’s introduce another option, then. You explain to me why.” His lips curved in a kind smile. Whatever this game was, he was winning it. I could tell even without understanding the rules. “You explain to me why you don’t want to say it, and I’ll spend the rest of the night fucking you. I’m going to devote the rest of my natural life to making you come so hard, we’ll both lose our minds.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He laughed silently before kissing me again, and this time it was slow and bottomless, thorough like only Eli could be. I arched into him, trembling. But then the kiss died, and no response came. Instead, Eli leaned his forehead against mine.

“Rue. My sad, beautiful fortress girl.”

His voice was so fully, tragically heartbreaking, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I hate you, I thought, just as a single tear rolled out of my eye and streaked my temple. Like I’ve never hated anyone before.

He had given me three options to choose from. One was unbearable. One felt wrong on a visceral level. The remaining…the remaining would require me to explain something I myself didn’t understand.

I forced my eyes open, found Eli’s, and chose the fourth.

“It’s not just fucking,” I said. In the quiet of the room, my voice was like shattered glass. “But I—I don’t know why, and I don’t—”

The kiss that silenced me was nuclear. For long seconds we were both feral, suspended in time, interrupted—just Eli and me, breathing each other in, trying to be as close as we could. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said into my ear. “You’ll figure it out. I’ll help you, okay?”

When he began moving again inside me, my body lit up with the force of an atomic explosion. And less than half a minute later, I came so hard my vision went black.