“I just want to make you come.”
It sends me right over the edge. Into something that’s nothing like my usual, run-of-the-mill orgasm. Those tend to start like small fractures and then slowly, gradually deepen into something lovely and relaxing. Those are fun, good fun, but this . . . This pleasure is sudden and violent. It splinters into me like a wonderful, terrible explosion, new and frightening and fantastic, and it goes on and on, as though every heart-stopping, delicious second of it is being squeezed out of me. I screw my eyes shut, clutch Ian’s shoulders, and whimper into his throat, listening to the hushed “Fuck. Fuck,” he mouths into my collarbone. I was so sure I knew what my body was capable of, but this feels somewhere well beyond it.
And somehow, on top of knowing exactly how to get me there, Ian also knows when to stop. The very moment it all becomes unbearable, his arms tighten around me, and his thigh becomes a solid, still weight between mine. I twine my arms around his neck, hide my face in his throat, and wait for my body to recover.
“Well,” I say. My voice is raspier than I ever remember hearing it. There’s a wireless keyboard on the floor, cables dangling by my thigh, and if I move even half an inch back, I’ll destroy one, maybe two monitors. “Well,” I repeat. I let out a peal of winded laughter against his skin.
“You okay?” he asks, pulling back to meet my eyes. His hands are trembling slightly against my back. Because, I assume, I came. And he didn’t. Which is very unfair. I just had a life-defining orgasm and can’t really remember my own name, but even in this state I can grasp the injustice of it all.
“I’m . . . great.” I laugh again. “You?”
He smiles. “I’m pretty great, to be—” I drag my hand down between us, palm flush against the front of his jeans, and his mouth snaps shut.
Okay. So he has a big cock. To exactly no one’s surprise. This man is going to be fantastic in bed. Phenomenal. The best sex I’ve ever had with a dude. And I’ve had a lot.
“What do you want?” I ask. His eyes are dark, unseeing. I cup my hand around the outline of his erection, rub the heel of my palm against the length, arch up to whisper in the curve of his ear, “Can I go down on you?”
The noise Ian makes is rough and guttural, and it takes me about three seconds to realize that he’s already coming, groaning into my skin, trapping my hand between our bodies. I feel him shudder, and this big man coming apart against me, utterly lost and helpless in front of his own pleasure, is by far the most erotic experience of my entire life.
I want to get him into a bed. I want hours, days with him. I want to make him feel the way he’s feeling right now, but a hundredfold stronger, a hundred million more times.
“I’m sorry,” he slurs.
“What?” I lean back to look at his face. “Why?”
“That was . . . pitiful.” He pulls me back to bury his face in my throat. It’s followed by a lick, and a bite, and oh my God, the sex is going to be off the charts. Earth-shattering.
“It was amazing. Let’s do it again. Let’s go to my place. Or let’s just lock the door.”
He laughs and kisses me, different from before, deep but gentle and meandering, and . . . it’s not really, in my experience, the type of kiss people share after sex. In my experience, after sex people wash up, put their clothes back on, then wave good-bye and go to the nearest Starbucks to get a cake pop. But this is nice, because Ian is an excellent kisser, and he smells good, he tastes good, he feels good, and—
“Can I buy you dinner?” he asks against my lips. “Before we . . .”
I shake my head. The tips of our noses brush against each other. “No need.”
“I . . . I’d like to, Hannah.”
“Nah.” I kiss him again. Once. Deep. Glorious. “I don’t do that.”
“You don’t do”—another kiss—“what?”
“Dinner.” Kiss. Again. “Well,” I amend, “I do eat. But I don’t do dinner dates.”
Ian pulls back, his expression curious. “Why no dinner dates?”
“I just . . .” I shrug, wishing we were still kissing. “I don’t date, in general.”
“You don’t date . . . at all?”
“Nope.” His expression is suddenly withdrawn again, so I smile and add, “But I’m very happy to come to your place anyway. No need to be dating for that, right?”
He takes a step back—a large one, like he wants to put some physical space between us. The front of his jeans is . . . a mess. I want to clean him up. “Why . . . why don’t you date?”
“Really?” I laugh. “You want to hear about my socio-emotional trauma after we did”—I gesture between us—“this?”
He nods, serious and a little stiff, and I sober up.
Seriously? He really wants that? He wants me to explain to him that I don’t really have the time or the emotional availability for any kind of romantic entanglement? That I can’t really imagine anyone sticking around for something that’s not sex once they really get to know me? That I’ve long since realized that the longer people are with me, the more likely they are to find out that I’m not as smart as they think, as pretty, as funny? Honestly, I know that my best bet is to keep people at arm’s length, so that they never find out what I’m actually like. Which is, incidentally: a bit of a bitch. I’m just not good at caring about . . . anything, really. It took me about one and a half decades to find something I was truly passionate about. This friendship experiment I’m doing with Mara and Sadie is still very much that, an experiment, and . . .
Oh God. Does Ian want to date? He doesn’t even live here. “So you’re saying . . .” I scratch my temples, coming down fast from my post-orgasm high. “You’re saying you’re not interested in having sex?”
He closes his eyes in something that really doesn’t look like a no. Definitely doesn’t look like a lack of interest. But what he says is, “I like you.”
I laugh. “I noticed.”
“It’s . . . uncommon. For me. To like someone this much.”
“I like you, too.” I shrug. “Shouldn’t we hang out, then? Isn’t that good enough?”
He looks away. Down, to his shoes. “If I spend more time with you, I’m only going to like you more.”
“Nah.” I snort. “That’s not the way it usually works.”
“It does. It will, for me.” He sounds so solidly, irrefutably sure, I cannot do anything but stare at him. His lips are bee-stung, and everything about him is beautiful, and he looks so quietly, stoically devastated at the idea of fucking me with no strings attached that I should probably find this comical, but the truth is that I can’t remember ever being this attracted to someone else, and my body is vibrating for his, and . . .
Maybe you could go out with him. Just this once. An exception. Maybe you could try it out. Maybe it could work. Maybe you two will—
What? No. No. What the fuck? Just the fact that I’m contemplating it scares the shit out of me. No. I don’t—I’m not like that. These things are a waste of time and energy. I’m busy. I’m not cut out for this stuff.