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—