Not in Love

ELI

His heart skipped a beat, then thudded hard. He felt oddly, foolishly like running a victory lap around the bar. He curbed the impulse and said, as dryly as he could muster: “What an honor.”

“You’re welcome.” Another unsmiling nod. There was something astonishingly effortless about this woman. Like she had no interest in being anything but herself.

“Am I allowed to know your name now?”

“No.”

“Figures.” Eli sighed and handed her his unlocked phone. “Take a picture of my driver’s license, text it or email it to a friend, and then let’s go. Share my location with them, too.”

“Is this an order?”

Yes, and an out-of-place one at that, but she didn’t seem too put off. Whoever her friend was, they were close enough that she had their number memorized. She sent a picture of his license, typed a short explanation that Eli forced himself not to peer at, and returned the phone. Then she gracefully hopped off her stool.

Fuck, she was tall. Even in flats, her eyes were only a handful of inches below Eli’s—and, no use in denying it at this point, right on the verge of spectacular. He forced himself to look away.

“You’re sober enough to drive, right?” she asked.

“Yeah. My plans fit better with sobriety.”

“Very well.” Her words were somewhat queenly, and his grin widened.

“You know you’re not doing me a favor, right?” he asked, even though she was. 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. “Come on. My car’s in the parking garage.”

They avoided the main entrance, where Vincent waited, and called the elevator, a comfortable silence between them. A middle-aged man joined them inside the cabin, and Eli did not like the long, clinging look he gave to…

He still didn’t know her damn name. Which meant that he had no right to scowl at some creep just because he was looking at her tits. He did anyway, and the man must have felt the aggression coming off Eli in waves, because he abashedly lowered his gaze. Eli felt like a primate, half-locked in some ridiculous dominance battle, like the last twenty minutes had regressed him some fifty thousand years of evolution and—

Jesus. He needed to…get the fuck laid, probably. Or sleep. A vacation. Time, that’s what he needed. The past six months had been nothing but exhaustion and work, with no chance to think about any of this. Then, yesterday, she’d messaged him on an app he hadn’t opened in nearly a year, and it had felt like a cosmic gift.

A celebration for what he, Hark, and Minami had achieved. A prelude to what would come. Tomorrow.

He was deluded. A fucking break, that’s what he needed.

“Where do you live?” he asked, steering her toward his car with a flick of his hand. He tried to touch her as little as possible, but it was hard when she was the one drifting closer. Her shoulder brushed his arm, and the spot felt electric, itchy even through his clothes. The cool air of the underground lot was a welcome distraction.

“I can put the address in your GPS—”

“Can you please listen to me for one minute?” someone called, and when they turned back, Vincent was running toward them across the empty parking lot. “You can’t make this decision for the both of us, and I just need you to—”

“Go home, Vince,” she said.

Vince stopped. Then started again in their direction, his gait more menacing. “No, not until you listen to me—”

“I have listened. And I’ve asked you for a few days so I can think it through.”

“You’re being a bitch, as always—”

Eli had heard enough, and stepped in front of the woman. “Hey. Apologize and get lost.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Vince glowered. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Eli wasn’t so sure. He unlocked his car remotely, tossing the woman his keys. She caught them without hesitation. “Get in the passenger seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”

She didn’t move, instead staring at Eli with an expression that he could only define as crestfallen. After a long moment, her lips parted. Don’t hurt him, she mouthed.

Eli ground his teeth, wondering how this loser could have this much power over her. How he’d gotten someone like her in the first place. But he nodded, watched her disappear inside his car, and turned to Vincent.

He was tall, too, and wide shouldered, even if not as much as Eli. Still, he must have seen something in Eli’s eyes, because his first reaction was to take a step back. Then, once his spine met a pilaster, to flatten himself against it.

“You need to stop bothering women who ask you to fuck off, Vincent,” Eli said. Amiably, he thought. He was being a damn gentleman about this.

“You have no idea what she—”

He stepped close enough for Vincent’s boozy smell to hit him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said calmly. Don’t hurt him, she’d asked, but god, Eli was tempted. “You can walk away now on your own, or I can make you. Your choice.”

Vincent didn’t take long to deliberate. With a couple of curse words, he scurried away, jumpily turning every few steps, always finding Eli staring at him. Once he’d disappeared, Eli found the woman was in the passenger seat of his car, hands in her lap.

Rosie, maybe. Rosamund would fit her, too.

“Where did you say you live?”

She lifted her eyes but didn’t reply. “I’m surprised.” She looked around, and he could smell her so intensely, he had to get a grip. Skin and flowers and fabric softener. It was well past good, straight into dangerous territory. “I didn’t peg you for a hybrid kind of guy.”

He snorted and started the engine. “Don’t say what you did peg me for.”

“A Mustang, maybe.”

“Jesus.” He wiped a hand over his face.

“Or a Tesla.”

“Get the fuck out. You’re walking home.”

She laughed once, low in her throat, and the sound made him feel dizzy and powerful and accomplished. She was safe in his car, making jokes. Not on high alert as she’d been earlier. She was letting him take care of her.

He just needed to stop noticing how close she was.

“Here.” He handed her his phone. “Put your address in.”

“It’s locked. I’ll need your password.”

He turned to tell her and forgot to speak. Her haircut, he realized, was more elaborate than he’d originally thought. It was cropped close to the skull for a couple of inches around her left ear. Pretty. He’d have to ask Minami what the style was called.

“Are you embarrassed because it’s a string of sixty-nines?”

His mind took a brusque, inappropriate, sexual turn. Unavoidable, too. He’d been on the edge of it for a while, and it was getting harder to leash it back. “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.

“If I say yes, will you take it as proof that I’m the Unabomber?”

She smiled. A little wider than before.

“I’m not a scientist,” he admitted, loath to disappoint her. But it was the honest, if painful, answer. “I just studied science for a bit.”

“A minor in college?”

“Something like that.” No point in bringing up the rest.

“What do you do, then?”

“Boring money stuff.”

“I see.” She didn’t seem disappointed. She was still looking at him, searching. It was intoxicating, having her eyes on him. Her attention felt more precious than gold, stocks, market crash predictions.

“Are you a scientist?”

She nodded.

“What kind?”

“Engineer.” He pulled out of the lot, then turned to her when the soft weight of her hand settled on his forearm, a sudden shock of warmth in the blow of the AC.

Fuck. Just—fuck.

“Thank you,” she said simply. She sounded serious, as usual. Sincere.

“For not being a Tesla owner?”

She shook her head. “For being kind.”

He wasn’t kind. No one kind would wake up tomorrow and do what Eli was going to, relishing every moment of it. But it felt nice to have her think so.

“And for caring, I guess.”

There was something lost in her tone. Something that made Eli’s voice rough as he told her, “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.”

The resemblance was there, now that he knew to look for it. The height. The near-black hair. The eye color was different, but not the shape. “Shit,” he repeated.

“He’s not always like this. But when he drinks…well. You saw.”

“I did.”

“I don’t think he would actually hurt me.”

“You don’t think? Not good enough.”

“No.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “My…our father, our estranged father, died a few months ago. He left us a small cabin in Indiana, of all places—we didn’t even know he lived there. We disagree on what to do with it.” Her head rolled toward Eli. They were all alone, and it was disarming, how at ease she seemed. “Are you bored yet?”

“No.”

Her smile was dim. “It’s not easy to say no to someone who shares fifty percent of your genes.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

He nodded once.

“Brother?”

“Sister. No public harassment, but she’s always found highly creative ways to drive me nuts.”

“Such as?”

Eli thought about teenage Maya, screaming at him that he was ruining her life and she wished he’d been the one to die. Grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and soaking the cotton after being stood up for homecoming. Poking her nose through his things because she was “looking for batteries,” then following him around the kitchen to criticize his choice of condoms and lube. Bitching at him on the phone that he always left her alone, that he might as well have let her go into foster care—and then lashing out whenever he’d tried to spend time with her. “Siblings can be hard.”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

“I’m sure Vincent would agree.”

“I’m not sure Vincent has any right to agree.”

She was silent for a long beat. But when Eli thought that was the end of the conversation, she said dully, “One day, when we were still kids, he was late coming home from a friend’s place. I waited for him, worried out of my mind, for one, two, three hours. Wondered if he’d been run over, or something. Eventually he did return home, but instead of being relieved, when I saw him in the entryway, I thought, ‘My life would be so much easier if he’d just disappeared.’ ”

He turned to meet her eyes. Found a bemused expression in them, as though she’d surprised herself by divulging something that was clearly a source of deep shame. And he surprised himself by saying, “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.

“How do you think your brother found out your address?” he asked, mostly to shut down whatever that exchange had been. An anomaly. Had to be.

“Online?”

“Well, fuck.” He turned right, heading for North Austin—the same road he’d take tomorrow morning. He was going to drive it thinking about her instead of the day ahead, he just knew it. This girl, she was going to stick around, even if only in his head.

“Right. Fuck.” 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.

“How old are you?” he asked to distract himself.

“Six years, two months, and five days younger than you,” she said without missing a beat.

“Nice. Did you also memorize my social security number?”

“You should invest in some identity theft protection before you find out.”

“I will, if you take out a restraining order against your brother.” There he was again. Glaringly overstepping. “If you believe he won’t hurt you to get what he wants, you are too trusting.”

“I think you are too trusting.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Has it occurred to you that I could be the serial killer? Right here, in your car.”

Eli looked at her again. Her smile was faint, her eyes still closed. He wanted to run his knuckles against her cheekbones. “I’ll take my chances.”

“With some girl who’s luring you to a second location and never even told you her name.”

Robin? No, didn’t suit her. And Eli was starting to wonder if ignorance was best. The less he knew, the vaguer and fuzzier she remained in his imagination, the quicker he’d stop thinking about her. And yet: “Tell me, then.”

“It’s the third time you asked.”

“It’s the third time you didn’t answer. Do you think the two things might be connected?”

She pressed her lips together—really, he might just have conjured them. They were something out of some extremely lurid dreams he’d had when he was very young and very hormonal. “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. “Maybe you’re overestimating me.” Even though, no. He’d have made sure she had fun. And had fun himself in the process.

“I think I’m just estimating myself correctly.” A small smile. “I’m the one who messaged you, after all.”

He was starting to wish she hadn’t. It was destabilizing, all of this—at a time when all he needed was his feet firmly on the ground. “Why did you do that, anyway?”

“I appreciated that your photo wasn’t a gym selfie, or you doing the peace sign next to a sedated tiger.”

“I see the bar is underground.” He tried to remember what his picture was. Something from Minami, probably. She was always taking candids of him and Hark. For the website. So much better than the smarmy suits-and-ties shit in our current photos.

“Your profile said you hadn’t been active for a while. I figured you’d either settled down and found someone, or you were overdue. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Find someone?” She sounded…not pruriently curious, but at least interested, and Eli had to remind himself not to squeeze any hope out of it. Hope for what, anyway? It wasn’t like he was in the market for a girlfriend. He’d failed abysmally at that.

Not everyone has the capacity for love, Eli.

“No. What about you? You wrote ‘no repeats’ on your profile.”

“I did,” she confirmed, and damn her for this habit of hers not to offer any explanations. Damn her for not living farther away. There it was, her apartment complex. He gripped the steering wheel, aware that he couldn’t go any slower without getting pulled over.

“Is it a rule of yours?”

She nodded, unperturbed.

“Seems arbitrary,” he said casually while parking. Seems like what’s standing between me and you having a fucking spectacular time.

“All rules exist for a reason.”

He killed the engine and ordered himself to let it go. It wasn’t good for either of them, talking about something that wasn’t going to happen. “Come on. I’ll walk you inside, just in case your brother’s waiting around.”

But Vincent had given up on her, at least for the night. No car had followed them.

It was late May and it was Texas, which meant instant, oppressive heat, even at night. Eli was pleased to see a doorman in the lobby, one who didn’t look just burly and alert, but also highly suspicious of Eli. That’s the attitude, he thought, nodding at him, making a mental note to let him know the situation on his way back.

“You know I’m not going to invite you inside, right?” she asked when they stopped in front of her apartment.

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, since all she said was “Thank you. I really appreciate what you did for me tonight.”

“It was the bare minimum.” Not a good time to tell her he was considering sleeping outside in his car just to intercept her idiot brother.

Fucking nuts. Was he developing a crush? He hadn’t even known he was capable of it.

“It was not.” Her key chains jingled in her palm. A sparkly ice skate shoe, one of those flashlight and pen combinations, a supermarket loyalty card with h-e-b printed on the back. He had the very same one. “You are kind. And I find you very attractive.”

Eli’s brain blanked for a split second. He wasn’t shy, not by any means, but he couldn’t remember the last time someone had complimented him that matter-of-factly. She had that somber look in her eyes and no guile whatsoever, and he was half-smitten.

He needed to get the hell home.

“That seems beside the point,” he said, not liking the gravel of his voice.

“Does it?”

“Since you never do repeats. Isn’t that your rule?”

She was pensive for a moment. “You’re right. Then, it’s farewell.”

It was. Unavoidably. But before Eli could remind her once more to be safe, she did something as simple as it was unexpected: she took another step in to him, rose on tiptoes, and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

Of its own volition, Eli’s hand rose to hold her waist, and that near imperceptible touch blossomed into something exponential.

Possibilities.

Current.

Warmth.

Her scent enveloped him. The world shrank to them and nothing else. Eli turned his head, curious to see what he’d find on her face in response to all this electricity. She briefly held his eyes, then closed the distance between their mouths.

It barely constituted a kiss. Her lips pressed against his in the slightest of contacts, but his body was aflame. A surge of heat coursed through him, violent and sudden. Eli tried to remember the last time he’d felt anything approaching this, and came up empty handed. But it didn’t matter, because her fingers found his, and he was dizzy, lightheaded with all the things he was imagining.

He could take her. Abscond with her. Press her back against the door of her home, tucked under his bigger body. He could show her how beautiful she was to him and—

“Although, it occurs to me,” she murmured against his mouth, breaking the spiral of his thoughts, “that rules exist for a 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 fingers were still around his, thumb stroking his palm, but Eli could not tear his eyes from hers. That warm, sinking blue. 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.

“Good night, Eli.” Her full, beautiful, obscene lips curved into one last smile, and before any amount of oxygenated blood could return to his brain, she was gone. The dull gray of her door closed in Eli’s face, and all that was left in the dimly lit hallway was her clean scent, the heat of her lips on his flesh, and his raging hard-on.

He heard the click of the lock and took a vacillating step back, disoriented, wondering what the fuck this woman had done to him. Then the cool air of the night hit his hand, and he finally lowered his eyes.

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.