“You want to know what I’m into?”
I nodded.
“Why?” His head tilted. “Are you hoping I’ll take control? That if I’m the one calling the shots, it’ll make you feel less guilty about being with me?”
Uncomfortable, how spot-on he was. “I just think we should fuck again,” I heard myself say. The alcohol dulled the bluntness of my words, but Eli’s pupils still widened.
“As far as I can recall, we never did that.”
“Semantics.”
“How much have you had to drink, Rue?”
“I don’t know.” I did. “A few beers.” Three. A few sips of a fourth.
“Yeah. Okay.” He took a step back. Turned away to stare at an embossed Kline logo on the wall, tendons tense on the side of his neck, as if under great strain. Then he looked back at me, once again tightly leashed. “We can revisit the matter when you’ve metabolized the alcohol out of your system.”
“Just like I metabolized you?” I said under my breath. His nostrils flared. “We could leave together. Tonight.”
“Rue.”
“Unless you’re busy.”
“Rue.”
“You can say no, if you—”
“Rue.” His interest was a palpable presence, as concrete as the floor between us. He’s going to say yes, I thought, elated. But: “Tomorrow.” His knuckles whitened around the edge of the bench. “We revisit this tomorrow, if you still want to. Call me, and I’ll tell you what I like.” He had the final look of someone who hadn’t budged in years.
“Sure. In the meantime, feel free to touch me. Or kiss me.”
He exhaled. “Rue.”
“What? It’s a kiss. Are you scared of me now?”
He stepped closer, slowly leaning into me. My heart hammered in my chest, then exploded when he let his hand slide upward under my sweatshirt.
My brain stumbled. The AC blew across the exposed skin of my torso, turning it into gooseflesh. Then his large palm wiped the chill away, and a powerful shiver shook my spine.
“Rue.” Eli clucked his tongue, patient, inching even closer. His lips pressed against me—corner of mouth, cheek, ear. He spoke in a low whisper. “Fair warning: if you don’t stop pushing me, I’m going to bend you over this bench and show you exactly what I’m into.”
14
THE CURRENT VILLAIN OF HER STORY
ELI
The flush on Rue’s cheeks reminded him of the hotel room— heated, pale skin, the rush of red on her chest as she arched against his hand, the half-moon of her teeth biting into his shoulder. He’d never doubted that she’d enjoyed what happened between them. But enjoyment and consent were very different things, and once she’d disappeared off the face of the earth, his worries had lain on more unsettling grounds: Had he crossed a boundary? Had he scared her?
Was she really done with him, even after that?
“That wasn’t a kiss,” she said. Eli wished her voice was as shaky as his hand, but the dark pink dusting her cheekbones was the only hint that she was affected. “It wasn’t anything at all.”
“Ask me again when you’re sober.”
“And you’ll say yes.”
It was a question without a question mark, and two weeks earlier he’d have said that he was a sure thing for her. But after hours of waiting for her to reply to a simple text, after the way she’d run out, leaving him in a mess of sweat and tangled sheets, he wasn’t so certain. She had a power over him that he couldn’t explain. Yielding more would be incredibly stupid.
But maybe Eli was stupid. He’d gotten more of a charge from one very tame hour with her than with anyone else before. He’d come like he was a fucking teenager, and his knees had shaken for twenty minutes after she’d left. He couldn’t think straight around her, and had no clue how to fix his dazed brain. This shit didn’t come about very often.
He took a step back, letting her sweatshirt fall back down. She was still obscenely beautiful to him. He should be inured by now, but the shape of her eyes, the bow of her lips, they struck him anew every time. Populated these new fantasies of his in ways that ranged from absolutely filthy to almost architectonically banal.
What if he took her out for drinks to discuss the merits of high-pressure processing versus thermal techniques, and his fingers brushed against hers across the table?
What if he did her laundry to silently thank her for some of the best sex of his life?
What if he tied her up, fucked her ass, and made her like it?
“Dude, I thought you were going to the bathroom.” They both turned. Tisha Fuli was standing at the door.
“I was.” Rue put some distance between herself and Eli. “I forgot.”
“You forgot that you needed to . . . ah.” Tisha began the curious process of looking back and forth between them. It lasted for many seconds and culminated in a dumbfounded “Oh. My. God.”
Rue’s shoulder slumped—a rare break in her perfect posture.
Eli’s eyebrow rose. “What?”
“You two hooked up, didn’t you?” Tisha asked. He glanced at Rue, who remained stoically silent. “First of all, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Secondly, he’s literally the reason I had to figure out my LinkedIn password, how is this a good idea? Thirdly, how was it?”
Rue sighed, shook her head, and walked out of the lab, leaving Eli and Tisha alone.
She was tall, maybe even taller than Rue. Smooth dark skin, classically beautiful. Far more put together than anyone had the right to be at the end of a workday. They’d never talked before, but they obviously knew who the other was, so he decided to spare them both the gimmick of introducing himself. “Do you two need a ride home?”
“Nah. I’m the designated driver tonight.” She smiled at him like they weren’t on opposite sides of a hostile takeover. “Anyway, it’s nice to finally make your acquaintance, Eli Killgore, Texas resident, born on June twenty-first—”
“I wondered who she’d sent that pic to.”
“It was moi. Tisha.” She pointed at herself with a flourish. “T-I-S-H-A, if you want to add my contact to your phone. I added yours, just in case someone finds Rue’s body in a ditch.”
“They’re more likely to find mine.”
“Nah. She’s a bit frosty, but she wouldn’t. She’ll just ghost you.” She scowled. “Not like, literally.”
“Right.”
“She won’t turn you into a ghost—”
“I got that.”
“Boy, if Florence finds out, she’s not gonna like this.” Tisha ran a hand down her straight hair. “How long ago was it? The consummation of your lust, I mean.”
“Two and a half weeks.” Not that he’d been counting.
“Sounds like the title of an erotic thriller. Wait—that’s long enough that Rue should have forgotten you ever existed. Why are you two still—ooh.” She grinned. “I see.”
“What?”
“You want more.”
He huffed. Nearly said, She wants more, too, like a fucking petulant child. But did she, or was it a handful of beers? “I’m not going to get more.”
“It’s very unlikely,” Tisha agreed sagely. “Rue doesn’t doubledip, and you are the current villain of her story. Although, we both know that Florence is going to win. Your douchebaggery will mostly be irrelevant then.”