Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(32)

“Does this feel like I’m giving you a pity fuck?”

No. No, it definitely does not. But. “I don’t know.”

Of its own free will, my hand starts moving up and down his length, simple strokes that have him gasping and shutting his eyes. His lips part as I circle around the damp head with my thumb. The arm he’s leaning on shakes. Visibly.

“Come on, Mara.” His hips are thrusting now. In and out of my fist. He’s getting closer. Closer to something. “You must know.”

“Know what?”

“How hard it’s been, to—fuck—to keep my hands off you. How much I’ve wanted this, almost since the very beginning.”

Oh.

Oh God.

His eyes are glazed, muscles taut. He is on the verge of coming, that much is obvious. So obvious that I’m shocked when his fingers wrap around my wrist to stop me.

“Please, let me fuck you. Let me give you what you need. Let me try, at least.” He kisses a spot under my jaw. “Hard and fast.”

I’m not about to tell him no. I’m not about to tell myself no. Instead I smile and pull him on top of me, arms twined around his neck as I silently mouth against the flesh of his shoulder how much I like him, how much I love this, and Liam adjusts us and angles himself until he’s almost inside again, hot and wet and . . . the most annoying thought occurs to me. Shit.

“Condom! We need—do you—?”

Liam groans. “Fuck.” His biceps are shaking, fingers white as they fist in the sheets. Then he takes a deep breath and shifts, rearranging until he can slide one finger—two—deep inside me, curling them upward so that he is thrumming exactly where I need him.

“What are you—?” God, this feels insanely good.

“I don’t have any condoms.” His words are a bit slurred. “I’m just going to make you come like this and then get myself off.” He sounds like he’s doing the single hardest thing in his life, and yet it’s clear that he’s absolutely fine with it. Which . . . No. No, no, no, no.

“Liam, are you—Ah—are you clean?” His thumb brushes my clit. I moan. “Because I’m on the pill, and . . .”

“I have no idea.”

How does he not know? I reach down to hold his forearm still. Problem is, he can still curve his fingers. His long, beautiful fingers.

“Have you been tested, since the last time you . . . ?”

I brace for all sorts of horrifying answers, ranging from Why, of course not, my last one-night stand was yesterday, to Everyone has HPV anyway. But what comes is, “I’ve had a bunch of yearly physicals for work. I— Mara, it doesn’t matter.” He kisses me on the cheek, and a clever twist of his wrist makes my brain go blank. “I think I can make you come with my fingers. That’s safe. And you don’t have to be around later, when I . . .”

Yearly physicals? Plural? “When was the last time you had sex? Can you—ah, please, please stop that.”

“I have no idea.” Liam pulls out his fingers. For a second, the friction is distracting. Then my pussy clenches in protest. “I don’t have sex, Mara.”

“You . . . You what?”

He looks away. We are both breathing too hard. “I don’t like sex.”

I look down. He is so hard. His cock is so heavy on my thigh. There is pre-come on my skin. “You seem to . . . um, you seem to like it fine.”

“Yeah. But I really don’t. It’s just . . .” He holds my eyes. His are a dark, beautiful brown. “I like you very much, Mara. I like talking to you. I like watching you do yoga. I like the way you always smell like sunscreen. I like how you manage to say pretty much whatever you want while still being unbelievably kind. I like being in this house with you, and everything we do in here.” His throat bobs. “I don’t think it’s a surprise that I really, really like the idea of fucking you.”

Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God—

“But I don’t need to . . . I’m enjoying this”—he grimaces, as if appalled by the understatement—“maybe too much, since I almost lost it . . . a number of times, just by being near you, so I’ll be more than fine if you just let me take care of you and—”

No.

I push at his shoulder, his chest, and then keep pushing through his first resigned, then confused, then shocked expression. Once his back is on the mattress, he lets me straddle his hips and groans. “What are you doing?”

I lean over and whisper in his ear, “Hard and fast, Liam.”

There is a long moment in which he just stares up at me, disoriented. Then he must realize: we are perfectly lined up. I’m working to take him inside, struggling a little, because he’s so big this way. But I’m moving now, balancing my palms on his chest, up and down and up again, and a few minutes later, on the downstroke, he’s completely wedged inside me.

The angle is so deep, my vision spots. Liam’s grip digs almost painfully around my waist.

“Mara.” He is panting. “I’m not going to be able to pull out.”

“It’s fine.” It’s perfect. “Just do what feels good.”

Everything does, anyway. The slide of flesh, the wet friction—even within the clumsy mess of our movements, as he slips out and has to nudge himself back in, this feels like perfection. The way he stares at my face, my breasts, the rise and fall of my hips, looking stunned; the wet, filthy sounds of us moving together; the things he says about how beautiful I am, how precious, about all the times he has imagined doing this—and there are so many.