Not in Love (Not in Love, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

“What are you thinking?” he asked. I blurted out the truth. “You said ‘negotiated.’ ” A confused look. “What?” “On the app. The checklist part of it, it asks about kinks. You wrote ‘if negotiated’ but didn’t elaborate.” His gaze sharpened to something so intense, I couldn’t conceive it. It was heady. A little unhinged. “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.

“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.”

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.

“No. No, I’m not in love with him. I’ve met him a handful of times.” I turned around to face her directly. “It was once. The sex was good. And he’s…I don’t know. Easier for me to be around than most people. But it’s not—there’s nothing.” Tisha examined me, a vertical line forming between her brows. “Listen, if you…if there’s something between you guys, something real, I’m going to be first in line to support that. My loyalty is to you before Florence, or Kline, or even my own damn sister.

“You guys ready?” Hark asked from his side of the court, and Eli had his answer. He was not interested in Piper. Not if while she told him about her last Pacific Northwest road trip, all he could do was think wistfully about having his head between another woman’s legs.

He’d managed not to think of her obsessively for the past week—except when he hadn’t. Which was an embarrassing amount of time. Most of the time. All the fucking time. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need to be reminded of how physical she was, of the way she soaked up the air in his lungs. He didn’t need to witness her full lips parting in surprise, or the moment she went very, very still.

They shook hands, and a spark traveled through him, positively pornographic. He wanted to take her home and spread her out on his sheets. He wanted to tie her to his bed. He wanted to exhaust her until she could no longer fight this unyielding pull between them.

“There are three dishes I can make. Because a professional Michelin restaurant chef taught me.” Rue blinked, like it still wasn’t clear. “I could feed you well. If you’re still hungry, that is.” She gave him a wide-eyed look and slipped into speechlessness. Then she moved closer, and the blood in his veins thickened as she pushed onto the tips of her toes. Her heat warmed him, and her chin tilted up, and her mouth—

“Jesus, you feel good.” He trailed open-mouthed kisses down my throat. His fingers slid up to cup my breast, and his eyes followed suit. I’d never felt more beautiful than when he looked at me. Like I was the final prototype of someone’s entire fantasy life.

“Where is your bedroom?” “Not so fast.” I cocked my head, and he smiled. “I want a story. Before we go upstairs.” Ah, yes. Our currency. “An ugly one that proves how terrible a person I am?” “Doesn’t matter. As long as it’s true.” He paused. “As long as it’s just for me.” “They all are.” I’d told him things I’d never admitted out loud to another soul. It was the same for him, I knew without having to ask.

“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.

He was enthralled. Obsessed. In love. Not with Rue, who would slit his throat with a skate blade before becoming the recipient of any romantic affection from one of Harkness’s partners. But Rue’s body—Eli was fucking enchanted. Her solemn, dark blue eyes that stared at him with hesitance. The deadpan way she said the damnedest things, tripping him up every time.

“You’re staring.” “Yeah.” He smiled. He was going to look at her until he died or until his eyes wore off, whichever came first. “Does it bother you?” “No.”

So you like her mouth, and she has phenomenal tits, and gives a spectacular hand job, he told himself, heaving his way back to normalcy, knees weak. So you feel like smiling whenever she’s around and want to know what’s in her head.

He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared for a long time, feeling creepy and teenage-ish and helpless to stop, feeling euphoric and smitten. He couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like this, which meant that he should tread carefully, that she could be dangerous.

“What about romantic love?” Eli’s heart pounded, and he wasn’t sure why. “You think you could manage that?” he asked her. Asked them. “Maybe. Or maybe some people are too broken. Maybe…maybe things have happened in their lives, in their past, that have damaged them so bad, they’re never going to get happy endings with the loves of their lives.” She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “Maybe some people are meant to be tragedies.” A knife in his fucking stomach, that’s what Rue was.

without hiding her amusement, “Are you anticipating curing me with your magic cock?” That was exactly what he’d been hoping, of course. The idea of her coming with his dick inside her was intoxicating all on its own, but the idea of being the first to make her come like that was stuff he would get off to well into his old age. A permanent place in her sexual history. Something that would make her remember him.

Eli wanted to lean forward. He wanted to smooth out the vertical lines between her brows and tell her that he was right there, and she didn’t need to think about some asshole who was probably shitty in bed and couldn’t get her off, because he had her, he was willing to learn her, he was consumed by her.

“I owe everything to Florence. My job. My scientific freedom. My financial stability. The fucking shawl that she’s knitting. And in return I’m here, in the bedroom of someone who’s been making her life impossible, having meals with him, because…” Silence. “Why? Why are you here, Rue?” My chest felt heavy. I turned around. “Because I’m selfish, and careless. Because I want to be.”

“So what do I do?” He chuckled. “But of course.” “What?” “You always need something to do.” Did I? Yes. Ever since I was a child, having a goal was the best way to avoid thinking about whatever misery I was going through. How did he know, though? “Because I’m the same way,” he whispered,

“You are so fucking hot.” He leaned down and kissed me, almost violently. “You don’t understand what you do to me. Because I don’t understand what you do to me.”

I liked this: his big body moving in mine, the stretch of him, the way he rocked into me. I liked that he seemed to be less in control than I was, the power of it. I fundamentally trusted him not to hurt me, and he seemed to trust me just as much. His undoing was electrifying, and never frightening.

“Rue, I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear,” Eli said. His thumb resumed its movements on my clit. A shiver of pleasure rose up my spine. “It was always going to end this way.” His cock was softening inside me, a pleasant stretch that was little more than a counterpoint to the strumming of his fingers. “Even if we hadn’t matched on that damn app, we’d have met in this rink, or at Kline, or walking down the street. And I’d have seen you, talked with you for about five minutes, and you would have looked at me all serious and curious and uncompromising, and I would have known that I needed to do this with you more than anything else in the whole damn world.”

She tensed. “I didn’t call you here because…I don’t think that just because we had sex you should be at my—” “I am, though. At your disposal.” He smiled at her, small but reassuring. If she needed to tell herself that this was just fucking, she was welcome to do so. He refused to play the game any longer. I’m not going to follow the rules, Rue. I’m not going to behave. I’m not going to pretend this is enough.

Rue laughed, bubbly and wet, and even in the midst of recounting his worst story, he couldn’t believe how rare and lovely it sounded. I like you when you laugh. I like you when you’re serious. I like you all the damn time.

And, the whole experience gave me something very important.” “What?” “A total lack of interest in having children.” Rue laughed again, and had he ever yielded more power than right at this moment? Had anything felt better than making her smile when she’d been crying only moments ago? It was fucking intoxicating.

When she pushed his head away because it was too intense, he saw it in her eyes: she hadn’t thought she was capable of this pleasure. When they were together, she sometimes doubted that her body was really hers. “Whenever you want to feel like this,” he murmured at the inside of her thigh, “call me. Use me.” Her heels dug into his back like little fists. “I think about doing it every second of every day anyway.”

When he caught his reflection, what he found in his eyes was terrifying. He’d told himself to be careful with her, over and over. To keep his guard up. He’d failed, miserably. You’re fucked. Completely, irrevocably fucked.

He stared at me for an endless moment, and a silly thought nestled into my mind. If I were able to love someone, I would choose you. In that timeline, I would want it to be you.

When he strode into the lobby, Rue sat on one of the leather couches, hands in her lap, legs neatly folded at a ninety-degree angle. Her posture was impeccable, unfidgety and calm as ever within the chaos of the world around her. It reminded him of the first time he’d seen her, at that hotel bar. He had a couple of seconds to observe her before she noticed him, and used them to the very last drop, drinking her in like she was the end of a century-long drought.

“I said it before, but I do like you. You’re funny, even though you like to pretend you’re not. You’re loyal—to the wrong people, sometimes, but that’s still a quality that I deeply appreciate, even more so after what happened ten years ago. You have a strong sense of what is wrong and what is right. You’re deliberate, and you’d rather shut up than lie—even to yourself.” He began plating the food. In his perfect profile, I saw a twitch of a smile.

“Out of all the people I’ve met, the things I’ve wanted, the places I’ve been, none has ever felt as necessary as you do. Because I love you. I love you in a way I didn’t think I was capable of. I love you because you showed me how to fall in love. And I don’t regret it, Rue. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Even if you can never say it back. Even if you never think about me again after today. Even if you were right after all, and you’re not capable of love.”

My confidence in my people-judging skills was at an all-time low, but if there was anyone I could trust, it was Eli. I knew that now, and I’d known before he’d made it possible for me to hold my new contract in my hands.

Blood roared hopefully in his ears. “So you’re recruiting cheap kitchen labor,” he murmured to mute it. She was giving him very little. He’d told her that he loved her, and she was admitting to enjoying his company. Maybe Eli had no dignity, but he’d take it.

“And something else. Something I didn’t have the language for. It was growing between us, and I didn’t know how to name it. Even when I could finally imagine life as something shared. Even when I trusted you. Even when my mind was always full of you. There had never been anyone like you, and for a long time I didn’t have the word.” “What word?” “Love.” The world stopped. Tipped over. Returned to its original state—but brighter. Sharper. Sweeter. Perfect. “If you still want me to love you, I really think I can love you back. Because I already do.”

He shook his head, and then caged hers between his hands, leaning closer. Breathing in her scent. “I love you, Rue. You are the only chance there is.”