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.

34

UNTRODDEN TERRITORY

RUE

Iwoke up at the crack of dawn, curled into Eli’s chest. The sex had lasted for hours, but I couldn’t recall when precisely it had ended or having made the conscious decision to stay over. It mattered very little: after what I’d admitted to last night, I no longer required mental gymnastics to justify sleeping at his place.

I gently freed myself and pulled up my shorts, staring at him. He was on his side, bare chested and only half-covered by the sheet, his hair a beautiful, chaotic nightmare. I thought about running a hand through it, and the impulse was so hard to resist, I had to force myself to turn away.

My phone informed me that it was early—early enough that the sky wasn’t fully bright yet—but I had a lab booked for the morning, and couldn’t show up smelling like sex and Eli. With one last lingering glance and the overpowering feeling that I should stay, I made my way down the stairs.

As soon as I was no longer around Eli, an insidious sense of dread began spreading through me. My stomach ached. My bones were heavy. Something dense solidified in my chest, and the farther I got from the bedroom, the heavier it became.

It was not just sex, what he and I were doing. He knew it, and so did I. And now . . . what now? What did people do, once they acknowledged that they had something—someone—to lose? What was expected of me? What if Eli decided that he didn’t want me?

It was untrodden territory, and I felt scared and nauseated.

Calm down, I told myself, taking a deep breath. Get yourself home. Take a damn shower.

Tiny sleepily escorted me to the front door. He stared up at me with small, hopeful eyes, and before slipping out, I found myself reaching out. It took me about three attempts, but I managed to clumsily pat him on the head—and shockingly, I didn’t screw it up. His tail swung in delight, and I smiled. Maybe there was hope for me, after all.