How to End a Love Story(69)

She reaches down between them, slipping into his boxer briefs and holy fuck her hand is on his cock.

“I want to feel you,” she murmurs into his mouth. “Please.”

A strangled groan escapes his throat as she runs a thumb across his weeping head and squeezes his shaft.

“I have to—” He pulls away from her, thinking of the condom in his wallet, somewhere on the ground.

“I have an IUD,” she says suddenly. “I . . . please, Grant, I need to feel you.”

He gasps as she tugs him free of his boxer briefs, and tries to clear the pounding in his brain long enough to think. I have an IUD. I need to feel you.

“I had a physical at the end of last year,” he pants. “I haven’t been with anyone since—since—”

He can’t seem to finish the thought, because her nails are raking softly against his balls as she pulls gently against them.

“Fuck,” he says instead.

“Yes,” she says, and lifts off the table slightly to slide off her underwear. He looks down, slightly stunned, and watches as she guides the head of his cock against her folds. “Just—slow.”

He grits his teeth at the feeling of her taking him in, the tight heat enveloping him in slow, sliding millimeters. I’m fucked, he thinks, as he looks up to see her gasping at the sensation of him pushing into her. I’m going to need this forever.



Helen stares at Grant’s face, thinking through the fog, so this is what you look like when you do this.

His jaw is tense from concentration, and impossibly, he’s still sliding into her, the slickness of her heat making him surge forward faster now.

“Oh,” she gasps, as she squeezes involuntarily around him. He groans, as if pained, then jerks and tilts his hips, and suddenly she’s filled to the hilt by Grant. She gasps at the sensation of him inside of her, foreign yet growing more and more familiar—unforgettable—by the second.

His breath expels hotly by her temple, and his hands grip the sides of her hips as she rocks experimentally—once, twice—into him. He drops a restrained kiss on her lips and rests his forehead against hers, his eyes closed in concentration, and she thinks suddenly of how unfairly beautiful he is.

“Mm.” He exhales, and she becomes aware of him slowly pressing her into him, then easing off, then repeating. They both look down at the point where their bodies are joining and rejoining—her breath catches at how primal it looks.

“I . . . I can’t believe you’re fucking me on this table,” she says, and he lets out a short gust of laughter.

“I can,” he says. “I’ve thought about it so many times, it feels like I was remembering this.”

He runs a thumb down past her peaked nipple and slides himself out a little farther this time, before surging back into her.

“You feel so fucking good,” he exhales into her ear. “How dare you.”

She lets out a throaty laugh that turns into a gasp as he slams into her again.

“Grant,” she pants needily into his ear. “I think I’m gonna come again.”

His thumb slips between them, pinching her clit insistently, unrelenting even as she whimpers. She gasps, arching into him, and suddenly white-hot stars explode in her vision. He groans as she feels the pulsing wave of pleasure sweep over her body, rocking through her, and she’s forgotten to be quiet as she releases her orgasm in racked sobs.

Dimly, she becomes aware of him lowering her back onto the table, and she watches him with lazy fascination as he runs a thumb from her lips down her sternum. She bites her lip as he pulls back, then slams into her, the cold table rocking beneath her, then he pulls back again.

She reaches a hand up, and he captures her hand and kisses the inside of her wrist—a surprisingly tender gesture that catches her by surprise. He slides into her once, twice—she stares with wonder at the sweat on his brow—then he jerks out of her with a groan and she feels a hot stream of his come land in spurts across her stomach.

He drops his head to her neck and exhales in slow, ragged breaths as he comes back into his body. He kisses her shoulder, and laughs in a low, raspy way that makes her belly feel tight with some kind of unfamiliar wanting.

“Let’s do this every weekend,” he says into her shoulder, and she laughs.



He cleans her stomach off using wipes for the dry-erase board, and she already knows she’s going to blush anytime she looks at the prosaic plastic container (still bearing its $3.99 sticker from Staples) on Monday.

She puts her underwear and her clothes back on and remembers a vague conversation she had with Suraya in the early days of the writers room.

“Some writers are bad in the room, but great on the page,” she had explained. “It’s harder for them at the start, but when people discover them, they work.”

Helen had wondered if Suraya had meant to imply that Helen herself was bad in the room, so she had better be great on the page.

“But the vast majority of TV writers are good in a room, and somewhere between decent and pretty good on the page,” Suraya had gone on. “It’s an easier path to what a lot of people want.”

Helen had gone home that weekend trying to catalogue the writers in their room, rereading their spec samples that she had only skimmed when Suraya first forwarded them after the welcome drinks night.