I waited for my cheeks to burn and for the shame to pour over me, like it always did. But it was difficult to blame myself when Eli offered no recrimination or disgust. He just accepted it openly, this story that I’d carried in my marrow for over a decade, like it was as natural a part of me as my lips or my arm.

So I said, “Your turn.”

He nodded. Took a deep breath. “Last Friday I was out of town. I got drunk off vodka with some colleagues, went back to the hotel, and pulled up your contact. I typed a long, long text describing every single thing I’ve imagined doing to you. I left out nothing. And it wasn’t a list, Rue. It was filthy, and indefensible, and exceptionally detailed. A fucking instruction manual. I have the faintest memory of writing it, and thankfully I fell asleep before I hit send, because when my alarm went off the following morning, it was there in the text box.”

At first I felt shortchanged, and almost called him out for cheating—this wasn’t our kind of story, cruel and bare and flustering. But that wasn’t for me to decide, was it? Maybe for Eli, confessing to his loss of control was all those things.

“Do you want to know the last thing I’d written?” he asked.

I nodded, heart pounding in anticipation.

“How badly I wanted to fuck you into compliance.” He shook his head, exhaling a rueful laugh, and gestured with his chin toward the staircase. “Still wanna do this?”

I didn’t bother answering, but started the climb upstairs. When I turned to check if he was following, I caught his eyes glued to my ass. His smile was unrepentant, as though looking at my body was a sacrosanct right he planned to take advantage of as long as it was granted.

His bedroom was what I’d have expected from an adult man who hadn’t planned on visitors: simply furnished, mostly neat, with an unmade king bed and the occasional item of clothing draped across a piece of furniture. The windows were street facing, and he brushed past me to pull the curtains. When he turned, I’d already toed off my shoes and taken off my shirt.

“Stop,” he ordered.

I glanced down at my shorts. “Want me to leave these on?”

“Nah.” He came closer. “Let me do it.”

“Hardly efficient.” Nor sexy. I was wearing my grocery-shopping clothes.

“Come on, Rue. You have to know I’m going to treat tonight like the second chance I never thought I’d get.” Every catch of the zipper was loud in the quiet room. His large hands opened the front like he was unwrapping a present. Then, eyes fixed to me, he slid his hand inside.

The tip of his index finger tapped against the cotton of my panties. Brushed softly. “Nice.”

Wet, he meant. I’d felt the dampness between my thighs, and now he knew it, too. “You can’t be surprised.”

“I don’t need to be surprised to enjoy it.” My shorts came off. “You don’t really need me to say it, do you? That your body is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen?”

I cocked my head, observing him observe me, greedy and acquisitive. His eyes lingered on my breasts, belly, hips, thighs, all too something to be anywhere near perfect. But I loved my body, even in its flaws. I loved the things it could do on the ice and off, the pleasure it was capable of, the way it looked in the dresses I enjoyed buying. I loved that it had kept going through my first eighteen years, despite the adversities it had faced. And I loved that Eli liked it as much as I did. “I’m glad you think so. Feel free to use it as you like.”

His throat jerked. “You have no damn idea what you’re saying, Rue.” He touched me like he was revisiting a yearly vacation spot, familiar and yet eternally yearned for. My lace bralette did not match my panties, but he didn’t care. He cupped his palm around my left breast, his thumb finding my already hard nipple to brush against it, and I let my eyes drift closed as I arched into him. “You like it, don’t you?” He did it again, and my breath hitched. When he pinched my nipple, I had to swallow a moan. “You know what I’d love to do to you?”

“What?”

He opened his mouth, then stopped himself. Laughed, wistful. “You’d be scared shitless if I told you.”

“I would not.”

He shook his head. “It’s stuff that requires trust. Communication.” His hand fell to his side, and I felt the loss like a stab. “Time.”

“We don’t have that.”

“I know.” His smile was not happy. He undid my braid, took a step back to look at me some more, and seemed even more pleased with that view. “Three times.”

I frowned, confused.

“Let me make you come three times before you leave.”

I tried to remember if I’d come that many times with someone else before. Or by myself. “That might be too ambitious.”

“Might be.” He shrugged, and I liked how he didn’t act as though he knew my body better than I did. His self-assurance was never loud, always quietly, steadily present. “Still, let me try.” He buried his head in my neck. Inhaled. “You smell so good. Every day since the last time, I thought about kissing your sweet cunt. May I?”

He was good at being in charge. Giving soft directions, concise instructions, precise commands. He wanted me on the bed, on my knees, my thighs on each side of his head, and got me there with little effort. He was still wearing his clothes, and I was bare atop his face. I felt him lick up into me, a long swipe that started from my clit and stopped behind my opening, and the burst of pleasure was so unexpected, I fell forward, catching myself on my palms to avoid collapsing into his hip.

“Too much?” Eli asked, still kissing and sucking and biting. I had to choke back a moan. He’d gone down on me last time, too, but he hadn’t been immediately, magically good. It had taken him a while to find my spots and the right rhythm. Now that he knew the basics, he was a real threat, and reveled in it.

“Not too much.” I began unbuttoning Eli’s jeans, caressing his cock through his underwear as he continued to lick me. When he nipped at my folds, I slid it out of his boxer briefs. He was big in a way I wasn’t used to and wouldn’t have expected to enjoy, but I knew that already. When his hands squeezed my tits and he pushed his tongue inside me, I took him in my mouth as deep as I could, which was only about halfway.

We both groaned loudly, the sounds vibrating through our flesh. I tried, really tried to keep up with the way his tongue parted me and his fingers moved with increased purpose toward my opening. I tried to focus, pressing wet, clumsy kisses up the length of his cock, using my tongue to tease the ridge around the head. But the position was unusual and more intimate than I was used to, and the spreading heat made concentrating on anything but the pleasure rising up my spine next to impossible. I knew how to give as much as I got, but with Eli’s hands gripping my ass and his thumb suddenly pressing against my hole, it was difficult to center myself, and—

“You’re not good at this, are you?” He spoke against the inside of my thigh, sounding charmed as he chased the words with a sucking kiss.

“That’s rude and—ah—hurtful.”

“Hurtful? This?” He licked into me again, and my thighs trembled uncontrollably. He was fantastic at that, like he’d mapped every sound of pleasure to the anatomy of my cunt. Or maybe it was his sheer enthusiasm. Either way, I was on the verge of something. “Are you in pain, Rue?”

“No. When you said that I’m not—” He exhaled against my clit. I shuddered, forehead dropping to his muscular thigh.

“Poor girl.” His fingers gripped my hips, bruising tight. “You seem to have issues focusing.”

“It’s . . .”

His fingers pinched my nipples. “Good?”

“Distracting.” The word sounded slurred.

“It’s okay. I’m going to come just from this.” I hazily wondered what this meant, but after a beat he added, “From eating you out, that is.” There was something about the way he said it, something admiring and eager, that had me contracting around the first phalanx of his finger when it slid inside me. “You can clean me up once I’m done. With your mouth.”