“Thank you.” Her mouth curled upward, as though she enjoyed the compliment, and he wanted to give her a million more. Scribble them in the fucking burning Library of Alexandria. “On the app you wrote you’d be fine with my limits?”

He nodded, remembering the message he’d been pulling up at embarrassingly frequent intervals in the past few days. He had it memorized, but all those clinical words felt so at odds now with her pink, soft glory. He would die one day, and med students would find the sentences carved in his brain.

FYI, I don’t enjoy penetrative sex much. If that’s a deal-breaker, then we should both move on.

“You still don’t want to have sex?” he checked.

She frowned in confusion. Then her eyes widened. “You mean, penetrative intercourse?”

A gynecologist, that’s what she sounded like. And he was dying to touch her. Ready to beg to smell the crease where her abdomen met her thigh. “Yup.”

She nodded. “Correct.”

He was curious about the reason, but she didn’t volunteer an explanation. Narrowing his options might be a good idea, anyway. He had things in mind, enough to fill the next week with, that didn’t require putting his dick inside her. He could probably just look at her for a while, and things would happen.

“Okay,” he said, finding himself split. He wanted Rue to enjoy this, a lot, but he was also absolutely, single-mindedly focused on his own desires and needs. It had been a long time coming. It had been . . .

Shit. Four days. They’d met four days ago. He felt like he’d been trudging upstream for the last year.

“Come here,” he murmured, and he was half in love with how quickly she complied, how close to him she stopped, how straight her posture. She was within reach. He could touch her wherever he wanted. His fingers twitched with impatience.

And yet, Eli found himself lifting his thumb and pressing it into her lips. His true north. “There is something about your mouth,” he mused.

“You mentioned.” She shrugged. The way her tits bounced would likely count as a formative moment in his sexual history. “It’s weirdly asymmetrical. The top and bottom, I mean.” She sounded calm, but her voice was eager. “Would you like me to go down on you?” she offered plainly.

His muscles, his nerve endings, the entire bone structure of his body tensed and stretched and reached toward her. “Would you like to?” he asked.

She nodded without hesitation. Eli could barely process it.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said eventually. “Not this time.”

“There won’t be another time,” she reminded him.

The edges of his arousal sharpened. Eli clenched the back of his teeth before forcing a smile. “If this is my only chance, then yeah. I’d love for you to suck my cock.” They were being so goddamn polite, from his pragmatic tone to her minute nod. Her hands made quick, sensible work of unbuckling his belt, undoing the top button on his pants. Her knees bent to—

“Wait,” he stopped her. She gave him a wide-eyed look, and the impulse to carry her to his home and keep her there for months or until this mess with Kline was over, whichever came first, was so overwhelming, he had to consciously get a grip. Hand on her upper arm, he dragged her back up. “I owe you a story. One of ours.”

Something terrible, he meant. Shameful and hitherto untold. Rue’s lips parted. She nodded, expectant.

“My first time was with my high school girlfriend. I was crazy about her, Rue. We were together for two years, and I swear to god, I was ready to marry her. Then one day, when her parents were gone, I walked into her house for a surprise visit and found her having sex with someone else.” He swallowed. “He was one of my teammates, and it had been going for months. They ended up getting married. Last I heard, they had kids. I think they’re happy.”

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.