Sully’s jaw ticked, his eyes bright but unreadable.
The moment stretched, silence and tension simmering between us. I found I couldn’t move while waiting for his answer.
Finally, he lifted a hand to my face, cupping it and tracing his thumb over the shape of my mouth. His voice had a rasp to it, but something darker also lingered there. Something foreign to me. “You think I’m going to let you suck my cock, Eleanor?” He tilted his head to the side, considering me. “You think I’d let you suck even more life out of me?”
My chest tightened, suddenly so full of pressure that I felt it ballooning out of control. It took everything in me to push back, to fight against the pain and guilt threatening to topple me. I channeled a different part of me, an older part that only existed in certain lights, and parted my lips, letting the tip of his thumb slide onto my tongue.
“Fuck,” he hissed. I clamped down, sucking, and Sully groaned, his eyes still locked on mine. “Truth is, my cock wouldn’t even make it this far.” It was a husky confession. He slid his thumb back and forth again. “I wouldn’t even make it past the touch of your lips before I was coming on your tongue.”
I pulled back, releasing his finger so I could talk. “So youdon’t want to come in your pants, and you don’t want to come in my mouth. Wheredoyou want to come?”
His lips cocked to the side, a touch of playfulness returning. “Did you or did you not take graduate courses at MIT, Eleanor?”
“You know the answer to that.”
He nodded. He did know. “Just like you know exactly how hard I’m about to fuck your pretty pussy.” Sully bent forward, and I tipped my head back to maintain eye contact, my pulse taking off like a rocket. His voice lowered. “How I’m going to come in it like it’s mine again.” My heart fluttered, even knowing there was nothing romantic about how he’d saidmine. He still said it. “Do you still have your IUD?”
The abrupt switch in topic took me aback, but I shook my head. “No, I got it removed. It was making my periods unbearable.”
Sully’s brows drew together, dipping in a harsh V. “If you tell me you’re on the pill again?—”
“I’m not,” I assured him but then gave him a funny stare. “But what would you do if I was?”
Sue me for being curious.
“I’d find them and flush them all down the toilet.” My lips curved, and Sully seemed annoyed by the presence of my smile. “Tell me you’re not. Please. I’m not fucking kidding, El.”
“I’m not,” I repeated because he seemed to need to hear it twice. And call me fucked up, but I liked it. That he still cared a little. “I’m not on any birth control.”
“You’re—” Sully stilled, seeming even more bewildered by that than when I’d said I’d removed my IUD. But that copper contraption was the only birth control option I felt comfortable using after what had happened when I was on the pill, so I just…decided not to use anything. I hadn’t been seeing anyone, anyway.
Sully cleared his throat, straightening. “You still want to do this, then?”
“I have condoms,” I said by way of answering. “But if you aren’t comfortable?—”
“Where are the condoms?”
Sully’s voice was brisk, his expression severe as he caught sight of the toiletry bag I pointed to, sitting by the mirror behind him. I was starting to wonder if maybe, despite the raging erection he was sporting as he moved across the room, he reallydidn’twant to do this. But then his scowl explained itself when he said, “You really did have big plans when you came to Boston, huh?”
He pulled a condom off the top of an admittedly large stack inside the bag, and I tried to act casual.
Tried to act like I usually packed that many condoms, or any condoms at all, when I went on a work trip.
Tried to act like maybe my conscience hadn’t heardSully will be thereand secretly wished that this might happen.
Tried to act like I wasn’t immensely happy that it was, even if things were stilted between us, harsher than normal, but no less hot, no less electrifying.
His touch felt like home. Like water after weeks in the desert.
I tried to play it off, scoff. “Like you didn’t do the same thing.”
A brow rose, taunting me. “You think I packed an entire box of condoms to come to my brother’s engagement party?”
I shrugged and looked away, struggling with how intense his stare was. Like my insinuation was wild. “I don’t know where you pick up girls these days.”
Sully’s expression was only visible out of the corner of my eye, but I saw him tense. “Eleanor?—”
“Did you know I was going to be there?” I cut in, blurting the one question I badly wanted to know the answer to. And also interrupting whatever he was going to say. I didn’t want to know where he picked up other girls. I didn’t want to know anything about Sully and who he might have met after me, wasn’t sure I could handle it. “At Noah’s?”
