Not in Love (Not in Love, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

She shook her head, then ran a hand through her dark, glossy curls, and when they swept to the side, he caught the line of her nape: stiff. Stiffer as the man started talking faster. Inching closer. Gesticulating harder. Then his hand closed around her upper arm, and Eli intervened. He was at the bar in seconds, but the woman was already trying to pry herself free. He stopped behind her stool and ordered, “Let her go.” The man glanced up, glassy-eyed. Drunk, maybe. “This is none of your business, bro.” Eli stepped closer, bicep brushing against the woman’s back. “Let. Her. Go.” The man looked, really looked. Had a brief moment of common sense, in which he estimated, correctly, that he had no chance against Eli.

Then took a deep breath and smiled the faintest smile he’d ever seen, which sent a new, heated wave of interest vibrating through him. Eli was no aesthete. He had no idea whether this woman was objectively, scientifically beautiful, or whether her face simply came together in a way that seemed to work perfectly for him. Either way, the result was the same. A big fucking turn-on.

The pragmatic tone of her first message to him: Are you still in the Austin area? Interested in meeting up? The only casual—no relationships or repeat meetings in her bio. Her answer to the Kinks? question on the open survey. The list of what she was not willing to do. Of what she was. At this point he doubted anything would happen between them tonight, but he was still going to mull over the latter. A lot. “I don’t want to anymore,” she continued, voice steady. He liked that she didn’t say can’t, but don’t want. The lack of apology in her tone. Her serious, quiet expression. “You mean, you don’t want to go upstairs and fuck a man you don’t know minutes after a man you do know assaulted you?” He gave her a look of mock surprise, and she nodded thoughtfully.

She bit her lower lip. Suddenly, Eli was more physically aware of another human being than he remembered being in a long, long while.

“I bet you think you’re so funny.” “Actually, I know I’m not. I was born without a sense of humor.” He huffed out his amusement. She was fucking with him, had to be. And Eli was apparently very willing to let her continue, because he pushed his entire wallet toward her. “Knock yourself out.” He watched eagerly as her slim fingers opened it, wondering why her elegant movements seemed to be unlocking some kind of long-hidden fetish part of his brain. She brought it to her nose to smell the leather (an odd, inexplicably appealing move),

“You have a library card.” She sounded bemused, and he clucked his tongue. “Here I am, trying to help you out in a difficult situation, and you repay me by being surprised that I can read.”

With Vincent around, he couldn’t have let her return home alone without losing whatever peace of mind he had left, which was very little. She blinked at him serenely, and he was briefly certain that she could read his mind. The filthy thoughts he couldn’t rein in. The way her sweet scent seemed to settle inside his brain. No. She couldn’t, because she was obviously relaxed with him. Trusting enough to send him on a bit of a power trip. Still difficult to decipher, but his gut told him that she didn’t mind prolonging their time together any more than he did.

“Two seven one eight two eight.” “Your password is Euler’s number?” They exchanged a surprised, plane-tilting look. Like they were only just now meeting. “Are you a scientist?” she asked, suddenly curious, and it was the first time he could perceive this kind of interest in him on her part. She’d asked to use his body and volunteered hers in exchange, she’d gone through his documents with the efficiency of a DMV clerk, but she had not considered him beyond the here and now. Until this moment.

“You should call the authorities, tell them what happened tonight. Take out a restraining order.” She closed her eyes, leaning back against the headrest—a sign of deep trust if he’d ever seen one. Eli studied her slender throat, imagined burying his face in it, then reminded himself that he was about to merge into traffic. Eyes. On. The. Road. “It’s for your safety,” he added. “It’s complicated.” “I don’t doubt it. But even if you two have kids together, or you’re married, it doesn’t change that he could be very dangerous—” “He’s my brother,” she said. Eli winced. “Shit.” “Yeah.” She turned toward the passing streetlights. “Shit.”

“When my sister was born, my parents kept saying how perfect she was, and I was so resentful, I refused to even look at her for weeks.” There were no platitudes, no raised eyebrows, no attempts to soften what he’d just said. She just studied him with the same lack of judgment he’d reserved for her, as though he hadn’t just shared the most fucked up of stories, until he glanced away. He didn’t even know her name, and he’d spilled about something he’d never acknowledged before, not even to his closest friends. Probably because he didn’t know her name.

She did it again—leaned back against the seat, closed her eyes—and this time he took advantage and let his gaze roam over her. Her long, long legs. Her full chest. The beautiful, rounded curve of her ear. There was something jagged, sharp-edged about her personality, but her body was soft. His type, really, if he even had one. If it hadn’t been for her brother, he could have known for sure. What a fucking pity.

“I think it would have been fun,” she said, a little melancholic. “What?” “Tonight. You and me.” Eli’s blood thudded in his veins—once, loud, violent. When he glanced at the GPS, their destination was three minutes away. He slowed down to well below the limit, suddenly a scrupulous driver. “Yeah?” “You seem like you’d know what you’re doing.” Oh, you have no fucking idea. We still have time. I can be gentle. Or not. I could be lots of things if you— Jesus. She’d just been manhandled by her brother. He was disgusting.

Eli had had a myriad of highly inappropriate thoughts in the past twenty minutes, but this specific one hadn’t even grazed his brain. “I’ll leave once you’re inside and I hear you lock your door. And you should put your phone in rice,” he added, wondering what the fuck had come over him. Among his friends, he was famous for being the easygoing one. Laid back. Never like this, intrusive, commanding—not even with his sister. Probably because Maya would have guillotined him. But this woman only seemed faintly amused. She regarded him with that placid, sphinxlike expression that Eli was already getting used to, and took a step closer—one that had his heart pumping louder and faster for no reason,

She took a step back. Eli was entranced. Her servant. Spellbound. He considered begging her to let him touch her. To let him go down on her here in the hallway. He would go grocery shopping and make her dinner off a YouTube recipe of her choice. He’d wash her car, read her a book, sit here outside her door and just make sure she was safe and protected. They could hold hands all night. They could play Scrabble. He was very close to imploring for something, everything, anything, when she added, “And sometimes the reason is that they should be broken.”

Her hands, cool against his. Her damn skin, he thought. It was soft. He could do a lot to her skin. Her skin could do a lot for him. He wanted to see it flush and redden and bruise for a million different reasons. He wanted to defile it.

While he’d been drowning in her, busy unspooling the filthiest of thoughts, she must have been at work, because there were ten digits written on his palm—just enough for a phone number. And underneath, three letters that knocked the breath out of his chest. Rue.

He was just some ordinary man, and last night he’d exuded the same energy he did now: nice guy, radically unafraid, fundamentally comfortable with himself and others. He’d kept it well into our car ride, that unsettling calm. Meanwhile, I’d been barely able to tear my eyes from him, my hands shaking as I stepped into the circle of his warm, woodsy scent to write my number on his palm.

“That’s quite a…I believe the scientific word for it is ‘coinkydink.’ ” Is it? Could it be? Acid rose in my throat, because I wasn’t sure coincidences of this magnitude existed. Had Eli known who I was? Where I worked? I stared, hoping an answer would appear on his face. He was wearing glasses today. Dark rimmed. The most ridiculous of Clark Kent’s disguises.

Before her, all of my mentors had been men—some of them great, supportive, brilliant men who’d made me into the scientist I’d become. But Florence was different. Something closer to a friend, or a brilliant older sister who could answer my reaction kinetics questions, pat my back when my experiments didn’t work out, and later, once I’d graduated, provide me with the means to do the kind of work I wanted. I didn’t fuck with emotions, not if I could avoid it, but it didn’t take a therapist and months of navel-gazing to tease out what I felt for Florence: gratitude, admiration, love, and quite a bit of protectiveness.

“Rue, did Eli mention anything about Kline when you two met last night?” “Hang on—Eli?” Florence’s eyes widened. “You met Eli Killgore last night?” If I’d been the fidgeting type, this would have been my time to squirm. Luckily, I’d long trained myself out of that kind of stuff. Robotic, I’d once heard another grad student whisper after I was cold-called in bio-nanotech class and neglected to display whatever the appropriate amount of distress was. Stone-cold bitch, my fellow ice skaters had said, because I was the only one not to burst into tears when our team missed the podium by a fraction of a point. “I did.” “How?” Florence scowled. “Was it a date?” “Ha. A date.” Tish waved her hand and ignored the narrow look I gave her. “That would imply a degree of emotional availability homegirl could only aspire to after a heart transplant.”

My first impression of him was probably highly similar to others’ first impressions of me—with the caveat that serious, unsmiling men tended to be considered consummate professionals, while serious, unsmiling women were often written off as haughty shrews.

And told himself that if he couldn’t avoid Rue Siebert, he should at least try to think about her a little less.

Eli’s eyes shone with amusement; he was clearly laughing at me. Suddenly I was the Rue I’d always been: awkward, lost, unable to decipher the nuances of social interactions or to grasp what the hell people found so funny about what I’d said. Filled with the certainty that the world was in on the joke, and I’d once again failed to keep up. A beat too late. Out of sync. Yet another unabridged summary of my life. Except that the Eli I’d met the other night hadn’t made me feel this way, not a single time. Which was the reason this hurt so sharply.

I tore my eyes from his complicated face and put on my lab coat, facing away from him. When I turned around, he was staring with hungry eyes, as though I were something to be eaten, as though I were peeling off layers instead of the opposite. Jay’s lab coat was larger than mine but turned out not to be big enough for Eli. He put on rubber gloves with the ease that only someone who visited a lab every day—or a serial killer—should have. I stared at his hands stretching the latex and thought, This is dangerous. We shouldn’t be together, he and I.

Eli stared as though my skull were made of glass, and he could see the exact mess passing through my head. He took my free hand, gently pried it open, and deposited the tip on my palm. Then, just as gently, a lot more slowly, he closed his fingers around mine. There were two layers of gloves between our skin. I could barely feel his heat, but his grip was possessive, at once taking and making an offer. My heart beat in my throat, and heat rushed to my cheeks.

And hours later I still felt him buzzing in my skull, as if my brain wanted to hold on to precious fragments of him. The way he pulled at the hem of his shirt to wipe his glasses clean. His large hand around mine. The acquisitiveness in his eyes. And then Florence’s interruption. She’d looked so surprised and hurt to see us together, and Eli had made things worse by staring defiantly at her until she’d averted her eyes. Retreating was such an un-Florence-like behavior, I couldn’t make sense of it, nor could I understand why Harkness seemed to be treating Kline like their own personal playground.

When he’d gotten in his car to meet Rue at Kline, he’d not meant to come on to her. But her physical presence in his space was heady, a little hypnotic. The room had been small, and she’d smelled amazing, like the shower she’d just had, and buffer solutions, and something sweet and personal and her underneath it all.

“You simp,” Minami muttered, and he didn’t bother denying it. He liked Rue. The no-nonsense looks, the plain speaking, the way the air around her always seemed to turn a darker, more serious color, that constant sense of something simmering just beneath her still surface. Her body.

When people—no, when women didn’t like him, he was happy to leave well enough alone. He really didn’t know what to do with this urge to change someone’s mind. Rue Siebert’s mind. Maybe he’d just ignore it. Let it fester inside him. That should be healthy.

“Um, was it Rose…?” “Rue,” a deep, familiar voice said from beside Harkness. “Dr. Rue Siebert.” My lungs turned into concrete.

I simply did not understand this man. He stepped closer, eyes looking right into mine. “Well,” he said, in his deep, calm voice, and I didn’t reply, because—what was there to say? Well. Did you go to college on an athletic scholarship? I wish I’d never messaged you on that damn app. Dressed this way, you look different. Less like my Eli, and more like the kind of person who— My Eli. What the hell was I thinking?

His eyes slid down my body, following the shimmery flares in the green fabric. They seemed to remember themselves halfway through, and abruptly skittered back to my face.

“We should dance,” Eli offered. There were no tells that he was joking. “Should we? Why?” He shrugged, and abruptly he seemed lost, as uneven as I always felt in his company. “Because I like your dress,” he said, nonsensically. It occurred to me, for the first time since our meeting three nights ago, that maybe he didn’t want this, either. Maybe he, too, was desperately fighting off this inexplicable attraction between us. Maybe his success was just as abysmal as mine. “Because I like you. As a person.” His eyes were teasing all of a sudden. Warm. “Even if you don’t like me.” “You don’t know me,” I pointed out. “No.” He offered his hand. I want to touch you, though, that outstretched arm seemed to say. When our fingers met, the electricity thrumming between us felt like free fall and relief. “Okay, then.”

We fit well. Because of our heights, likely. I could smell the skin of his neck, clean and spice and something a little dark.

“You’re just such a beautiful couple.” She left for more receptive pastures, and Eli gathered me close once again. “She’s right,” he murmured softly. “About what?” “You do look beautiful.” He didn’t sound happy about it. “It’s the dress. And the makeup.” “No. It’s not.” His eyes lingered on me,

“Make one,” he ordered. And then shook his head, massaged his eyes, and repeated more gently, “Maybe you should make one.” “It’s not that simple.” “You need someone to call if—” “What about I call you?” I joked. “Yes, please. Please, fucking do that. Do you want my number now, or…?” He stared, waiting for an answer. And then his eyes softened. The breeze picked up between us, and he kept looking, looking, looking. Looking. “It’s unsettling when you do that,” I said softly. He turned away, chest heaving. “I’m sorry.” His Adam’s apple moved. “I forget to look at other things, when you’re around.” “I’m sure I do the same.” I feel it, too.

“I tried to imagine a reality in which she and I had gone through with it. I’m still with her, I love her, we’re a family, and…and then I meet you by chance. And this thing between you and me, it’s there.” His eyes roamed the landscape, then landed on me. Contemplative. “I keep thinking about how fucking tragic it would be. For me. For her. I’ve never even been tempted to cheat on a partner, but this pull, it would still be in my head. You would still be in my head. Do you have to go through with it, for it to be cheating? How would I deal with…what would I do with all of this?” He pointed at himself when he said this, but I knew he was referring to the gravitational energy between us. We were both caught in it.

With a guttural sound, he pushed my back into the wall of the balcony, so fast that I found myself instantly dizzy, held upright by two things: the stone and Eli’s strong body. He didn’t kiss me. Instead his hand wrapped around my jaw, and his thumb pressed into my lower lip, slow, inexorable. I had all the time in the world to push him away, but found myself urging him on.

“Your damn mouth,” he murmured, “is the most obscenely lovely thing I’ve ever had the burden of seeing.” The kiss that came after was open mouthed and unbound. We exhaled against each other’s lips, and when my hands closed around his nape, Eli groaned low in his throat. I moaned when he broke from me, but he simply found the hollow of my neck, the valley behind my ear.

“It’s disconcerting.” His breath was hot on my cheek. “But in the past seventy-two hours, I’ve found myself thinking over and over that we could fuck however you wanted. For however long you wanted. Wherever you wanted. I’d consent to any and all demands, and it’d be so good that you’d probably just ruin me for the rest of my life, and I’d just sit there, grateful.” He let out a laugh. “Rue. It’s humbling, how bad I want you.”

“Come on, Eli. You look at Rue Siebert like her pussy tastes like beer. Stop pining.” “You’re the one who sent me to her the other day. And I don’t pine.” “Then why are you being like this? Jesus, you’ve been in actual relationships and never lost your mind. What’s so different now?” Did you look at her? he’d wanted to ask. Tonight? Did you hear her voice? Did you see her expression when she first noticed me? Did you see her mouth?

The green dress and complicated hairdo from the night before had been punch-in-the-gut, spank-bank-directory material. Tonight she was a completely different person: plain white T-shirt tucked into jeans, no makeup, and… Still a punch in the gut. Still spank-bank directory. He wondered if there was a version of her that wouldn’t be.

She turned his way, and he could only stare. It was her. Rue. Naked. Eli’s cock got so hard, so suddenly, he was sure it was all over for him. He was her servant. Anything she wanted, Eli would do it. He had to slide his hands behind his back, trap them between himself and the wall, just to stop himself from touching and gripping and taking.

He’d enjoyed looking at a lot of women, and they were all made different, and they’d all been beautiful, but there was something here, with Rue, that felt almost… Poignant, he thought, and laughed at himself, soft yet loud in the quiet room. A few days of being horny, and he was ready to write a fucking sonnet about her ass. Her lush, spectacular ass. It bounced slightly as she took a side step—a fucking work of art.

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,

“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.

I would do this a million more times, he thought. I would spend a million more hours like this. With you.

He watched the door close behind her, and when he glanced away, his eyes fell on her panties, forgotten in a heap of dark blue cotton on top of the sheets. Eli covered his eyes, wondering how he’d ever thought that once was going to be enough.

I sat at my desk for several minutes as every moment, every second, every touch and hitched breath and heated look from last Saturday raked through me like nails down my back. I’d had him. Why did I still want him? What was I supposed to—

You have to answer him. You cannot ignore him. You have no reason to. I glanced up. “Sorry. I was distracted. Hi, Eli.” Our eyes met, and all of a sudden I felt as though he were touching me. He was spooling grateful, filthy praises in my ear as I came uncontrollably. He was gripping the hair at the back of my neck and showing me what he liked. Then the floodgates opened, for real this time, in hot, near painful flashes. His open mouth trailing down my rib cage. His obvious arousal against my hip.