The Love Hypothesis: The Tiktok sensation and romcom of the year!

HYPOTHESIS: Despite what everyone says, sex is never going to be anything more than a mildly enjoyable activi— Oh.

Oh.

It was like a layer peeled away.

Adam yanked off the shirt he was wearing in one fluid movement, and it was as though the white cotton was only one of many things tossed in a corner of the room. Olive didn’t have a name for what the other things were; all she knew was that a few seconds earlier he’d seemed reluctant, almost unwilling to touch her, and now he was . . . not.

He was running the show now. Wrapping his large hands around her waist, sliding his fingertips under the elastic of her green polka-dot panties, and kissing her.

He kisses, Olive thought, like a man starved. Like he’d been waiting all this time. Holding back. Like the possibility of the two of them doing this had occurred to him in the past, but he’d set it aside, stored it away in a deep, dark place where it had grown into something fearsome and out of control. Olive thought she knew how it would be—they’d kissed before, after all. Except, she realized now, that she had always been the one to kiss him.

Maybe she was being fanciful. What did she know about different types of kisses, anyway? Still, something in her belly thrummed and liquefied when his tongue licked against hers, when he bit a tender spot on her neck, when he made a guttural noise in the back of his throat as his fingers cupped her ass through her panties. Under her shirt, his hand traveled up to her rib cage. Olive gasped and smiled into his mouth.

“You did that before.”

He blinked at her, confused, pupils blown large and dark. “What?”

“The night I kissed you in the hallway. You did it that night, too.”

“I did what?”

“You touched me. Here.” Her hand slid to her ribs to cover his through the cotton.

He looked up at her through dark lashes, and began to lift a corner of her shirt, up her thighs and past her hip until it caught right under her breast. He leaned into her, pressing his lips against the lowest part of her ribs. Olive gasped. And gasped again when he bit her softly, and then licked across the same spot.

“Here?” he asked. She was growing light-headed. It could be how close he was, or the heat in the room. Or the fact that she was almost naked, standing in front of him in nothing but panties and socks. “Olive.” His mouth traveled upward, less than an inch, teeth grazing against skin and bone. “Here?” She hadn’t thought she could get this wet this quickly. Or at all. Then again, she hadn’t really thought much about sex in the past few years.

“Pay attention, sweetheart.” He sucked the underside of her breast. She had to hold on to his shoulders, or her knees would give out on her. “Here?”

“I . . .” It took a moment to focus, but she nodded. “Maybe. Yes, there. It was . . . it was a good kiss.” Her eyes fluttered closed, and she didn’t even fight it when he took the shirt completely off her. It was his, after all. And the way he was studying her, it brooked no self-consciousness on her part. “Do you remember it?”

He was the distracted one now. Staring at her breasts like they were something spectacular, his lips parted and breath quick and shallow. “Remember what?”

“Our first kiss.”

He didn’t answer. Instead he looked up and down at her, eyes glazed, and said, “I want to keep you in this hotel room for a week.” His hand came up to cup her breast, not exactly gentle. Just this side of too forceful, and Olive felt herself clench around nothing. “For a year.”

He pushed his hand against her shoulder blades to make her arch toward him, and then closed his mouth against her breast, all teeth and tongue and wonderful, delicious suction. Olive whimpered against the back of her hand, because she hadn’t known, hadn’t thought that she’d be so sensitive, but her nipples were tight and raw and almost sore, and if he didn’t do something, she’d—

“You’re edible, Olive.”

His palm pressed against her spine, and Olive arched a little more. An offering of sorts. “That’s probably an insult,” she breathed out with a smile, “considering that you only like wheatgrass and broccoli— Oh.”

He could fit her entire breast in his mouth. All of it. He groaned in the back of his throat, and it was clear that he’d love to swallow her whole. Olive should touch him, too—she was the one who’d asked for this, and it followed that she should make sure that being with her was not a chore for him. Maybe put her hand back where he’d dragged it earlier and stroke? He could instruct her on how he liked it. Maybe this was a one-time thing and they were never going to talk about it again, but Olive couldn’t help herself—she just wanted him to like this. To like her.

“This okay?” She must have lingered too long inside her head, because he was looking up at her with a frown, his thumb swiping back and forth on her hip bone. “You’re tense.” His voice was strained. He was cupping his cock almost absentmindedly, stroking and gripping every once in a while—when his eyes fell on the hard points of her nipples, when she shivered, when she squirmed on her feet to rub her thighs together. “We don’t have to—”

“I want to. I said I did.”

His throat bobbed. “It doesn’t matter, what you said. You can always change your mind.”

“I won’t.” The way he was looking at her, Olive was sure he’d protest again. But he just rested his forehead on her sternum, his breath warm against the skin he’d just licked, and let his fingertips coast the elastic of her panties, dip under the thin cotton.

“I think I’ve changed my mind,” he murmured.

She stiffened. “I know I’m not doing anything, but if you tell me what you like, I can—”

“My favorite color must be green, after all.”

She exhaled when his thumb pressed between her legs, brushing against fabric that was already dark and wet. She exhaled in a rush until there was no air left, embarrassment washing over her at the thought that now he must know exactly how much she wanted this—and at the pleasure of his finger, large and blunt, running against her seam.

He definitely knew. Because he looked back up at her, glassy-eyed and breathing fast. “Damn,” he said, quiet. “Olive.”

“Do you . . .” Her mouth was as dry as the desert. “Do you want me to take them off?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“But if we—”

He hooked his finger on the elastic and pushed the cotton to the side. She was glistening, swollen and plump to her own eyes, way too far ahead, considering that they’d barely done anything. Too eager. This was embarrassing. “I’m sorry.” There were two kinds of heat, the one curling tight at the bottom of her stomach, and the one rising to her cheeks. Olive could barely tell them apart. “I am . . .”

“Perfect.” He wasn’t really talking to her. More to himself, marveling at the way his fingertip sank so easily between her folds, parting them and gliding back and forth until Olive threw back her head and closed her eyes because the pleasure was streaming, stretching, thrumming through her and she couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t—

“You are so beautiful.” The words sounded hushed, ripped out of him. Like he wasn’t going to say them. “May I?”

It took her several heartbeats to realize that he was referring to his middle finger, to the way it was circling around her entrance and tapping at it. Applying a light pressure right against the rim. So wet already.

Olive moaned. “Yes. Anything,” she breathed out.

He licked her nipple, a silent thank-you, and pushed in. Or at least, he tried. Olive hissed and so did Adam, with a muted, hoarse “Fuck.”

He had big fingers—that must be why they didn’t fit. The first knuckle was just shy of too much, a pinching ache and the sensation of damp, uncomfortable fullness. She shifted on her heels, trying to adjust and make room, and then shifted some more, until he had to grip her hip with his other hand to keep her still. Olive held on to his shoulders, his skin sweat slicked and scorching hot under her palms. “Shh.”

His thumb grazed her, and she whimpered. “It’s okay. Relax.”

Impossible. Though, if Olive had to be honest, the way his finger was curving inside her—it was already getting better. Not so painful now, and maybe even wetter, and if he touched her there . . . Her head lolled back. She clutched his muscles with her nails.

“There? Is that a good spot?”

Olive wanted to tell him that no, it was too much, but before she could open her mouth, he did it again, until she couldn’t keep quiet anymore, all groans and whimpers and wet, obscene noises. Until he tried to get a little further inside, and she couldn’t help wincing.

“What is it?” His voice was his regular voice, but a million times raspier. “Does it hurt?”

“No— Oh.”

He looked up, all flushed pale skin against dark waves. “Why are you so tense, Olive? You’ve done this before, right?”

“I—yes.” She was not sure what compelled her to continue. Any idiot could see from a mile away that it was a terrible idea, but there was no room left for lies now that they were standing so close. So she confessed, “A couple of times. In college.”

Adam went immobile. Completely motionless. His muscles flexed, coiled strong under her palms, and then they just stayed like that, tense and still as he stared up at her. “Olive.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” she hastened to add, because he was already shaking his head, pulling away from her. It really didn’t matter. Not to Olive, and therefore, it shouldn’t to Adam, either. “I can figure it out—I’ve learned whole-cell patch clamp in a couple of hours; sex can’t be much harder. And I bet you do this all the time, so you can tell me how to—”

“You’d lose.”

The room was chilly. His finger was not inside her anymore, and his hand had left her hip.

“What?”

“You’d lose your bet.” He sighed, wiping a hand down his face. The other one, the one that had been inside her, moved down to adjust his cock. It looked enormous by now, and he winced as he touched it. “Olive, I can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“What? No. No, I—”

“You’re basically a vir—”

“I’m not!”

“Olive.”

“I am not.”

“But so close to it that—”

“No, that’s not the way it works. Virginity is not a continuous variable, it’s categorical. Binary. Nominal. Dichotomous. Ordinal, potentially. I’m talking about chi-square, maybe Spearman’s correlation, logistic regression, the logit model and that stupid sigmoid function, and . . .”

It had been weeks and it still took her breath away, the uneven tilt of his smile. How unanticipated it always was, the dimples it formed. Olive was left without air as his large palm cupped the side of her face and brought it down for a slow, warm, laughing kiss.

“You are such a smart-ass,” he said against her mouth.

“Maybe.” She was smiling, too. And kissing him back. Hugging him, arms draped around his neck, and she felt a shiver of pleasure when he pulled her deeper into himself.

“Olive,” he said inching back, “if for any reason sex is something that you . . . that you’re not comfortable with, or that you’d rather not have outside of a relationship, then—”

“No. No, it’s nothing like that. I—” She took a deep breath, looking for a way to explain herself. “It’s not that I want to not have sex. I just . . . don’t particularly want to have it. There is something weird about my brain, and my body, and—I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I don’t seem to be able to experience attraction like other people. Like normal people. I tried to just . . . to just do it, to get it over with, and the guy I did it with was nice, but the truth is that I just don’t feel any . . .” She closed her eyes. This was difficult to admit. “I don’t feel any sexual attraction unless I actually get to trust and like a person, which for some reason never happens. Or, almost never. It hadn’t, not in a long time, but now—I really like you, and I really trust you, and for the first time in a million years I want to—”

She couldn’t ramble anymore, because he was kissing her again, this time hard and bruising, as though he wanted to absorb her into himself. “I want to do this,” she said, as soon as she was able to. “With you. I really do.”

“Me too, Olive.” He sighed. “You have no idea.”

“Then, please. Please, don’t say no.” She bit her lip, and then his. And then nipped at his jaw. “Please?”

He took a deep breath and nodded. She smiled and kissed the curve of his neck, and his hand splayed against her lower back.

“But,” he said, “we should probably go about this a little differently.”

—

IT TOOK HER the longest time to realize his intentions. Not because she was stupid, or oblivious, or that naive about sex, but because . . .

Maybe she was a little naive about sex. But she truly hadn’t thought about it for ages before Adam, and even then, it was never quite in these terms—him above her, pushing her legs wide open with his palms on her inner thighs and then kneeling between them. Sliding down, low.

“What are you—”

The way he parted her with his tongue, it was as though she was butter and he meant to slice through her like a hot knife. He was slow but sure, and didn’t pause when Olive’s thigh stiffened against his palm, or when she tried to squirm away. He just grunted, rich and low; then ran his nose in the skin at the juncture of her abdomen, inhaling deeply; and then he licked her once more.

“Adam—stop,” she pleaded, and for a moment he just nuzzled his face against her folds like he had no intention of doing any such thing. Then he lifted his head, eyes foggy, as if aware that he should be listening to her.

“Mmm?” His lips vibrated against her.

“Maybe . . . maybe you should stop?”

He went still, his hand tightening around her thigh. “Have you changed your mind?”

“No. But we should do . . . other things.”

He frowned. “You don’t like this?”

“No. Yes. Well, I’ve never . . .” The line between his eyebrows deepened. “But I’m the one who put you up to this, so we should do things that you are into, and not stuff for me . . .”

This time it was the flat of his tongue against her clit, pressing just enough to make her clench and exhale in a rush. The tip was circling around it, which—such a small movement, and yet it sent her hand straight to her mouth, had her biting the fleshy part of her palm.

“Adam!” Her voice sounded like someone else’s. “Did you hear what I . . . ?”

“You said to do something I’m into.” His breath was hot against her. “I am.”

“You can’t possibly want to—”

He squeezed her leg. “I can’t remember a moment I didn’t.”

It just didn’t feel like standard hookup fare, something this intimate. But it was hard to protest when he looked spellbound, staring at her, at her face and her legs and the rest of her body. His hand was large, open over her abdomen and holding her down, inching higher and closer to her breasts, but never close enough. Lying like this, Olive was a little embarrassed of how concave her stomach was. Of the way her ribs stuck out. Adam, though, didn’t seem to mind.

“Wouldn’t you rather—”

A nip. “No.”

“I didn’t even say—”

He glanced up. “There isn’t anything I’d rather do.”

“But—”

He sucked on one of her lips with a loud, wet noise, and she gasped. And then his tongue was inside her, and she moaned, half in surprise, half at the feeling of— Yes.

Yes.

“Fuck,” someone said. It wasn’t Olive, so it must have been Adam. “Fuck.” It felt incredible. Otherworldly. His tongue, dipping in and out, circling and lapping, and his nose against her skin, and the quiet sounds he made from deep in his chest whenever she contracted, and Olive was going to—she . . .

She wasn’t sure she was going to come. Not with another person in the room touching her. “This might take a while,” she said apologetically, hating how thin her voice sounded.

“Fuck, yes.” His tongue swiped the entirety of her, a long, broad stroke. “Please.” She didn’t think she’d ever heard him quite this enthusiastic about anything, not even grant writing or computational biology. It kicked the whole thing a few notches higher for her, and it got worse when she noticed his arm. The one that wasn’t cupping the cheek of her ass and holding her open.

He hadn’t taken himself out of his pants yet, that Olive could see, and wasn’t that unfair, since she was all splayed open for him. But the way his arm was shifting, how his hand was moving up and down slowly, that was just unbearable. She arched further, her spine shaping a perfect curve as the back of her head hit the pillow.

“Olive.” He leaned back a few centimeters and kissed the inside of her shaking thigh. Took a deep breath with his nose, as if to hold the smell of her within himself. “You can’t come yet.” His lips brushed against her folds as his tongue dipped in again, and she squeezed her eyes shut. There was a liquid, burning heat blossoming in her tummy, spilling all over her. Her fingers clawed at the sheets, grasping for an anchor. This was impossible. Unmanageable.

“Adam.”

“Don’t. Two more minutes.” He sucked on— God, yes. There.

“I’m—sorry.”

“One more.”

“I can’t—”

“Focus, Olive.”

In the end, it was his voice that ruined everything. That quiet, possessive tone, the hint of an order in the low rasp of his words, and the pleasure broke over her like an ocean wave. Her mind snapped, and she was not wholly herself for seconds, and then minutes, and when she had a sense of the world again, he was still licking her, except more slowly, as if with no purpose but to savor her. “I want to go down on you until you pass out.” His lips were so soft against her skin.

“No.” Olive fisted the pillow. “I—you can’t.”

“Why?”

“I have to . . .” She couldn’t think straight, not quite yet. Her mind was addled, stuttering.

She almost screamed when he pushed one finger inside. This time it sank like a rock into water, smooth and without obstacle, and her walls clamped on it as if to welcome Adam and hold him inside.

“Jesus.” He licked her clit again, and she was too sensitive for this. Maybe. “You are”—he hooked his finger inside her, pressing against the roof of her channel, and the pleasure welled in her, washing against her edges—“so small and tight and warm.”

The heat flooded within her once more, knocked the air out of her lungs, leaving her openmouthed, bright colors bursting behind her eyelids. He groaned something that was not quite coherent, and slid in another finger on the tail end of her orgasm, and the taut stretch of it, it was ruinous. Her body bloomed into something that didn’t belong to her anymore, something made of bright, high peaks and lush valleys. It left her heavy and boneless, and she was not sure how long went by before she could bear to raise her palm to his forehead and gently push him away to get him to stop. He shot her a sullen glance but complied, and Olive tugged him up—because he looked like he might start again any moment, and because it would be nice, to have him next to her. Maybe he was thinking the same: he lifted himself above her, leaning his weight on his forearm; his chest pushed against her breast, one large thigh lodged firmly between her legs.

She was still wearing her stupid knee socks, and God, Adam was probably thinking that she was the lamest lay he’d ever—

“Can I fuck you?”

He said it, and then he kissed her, unconcerned with where his mouth had been just seconds earlier. She wondered if she should be put off by that, but she was still twitching with pleasure, contracting with aftershocks at the memory of what he’d just done. She couldn’t make herself care, and it was nice to kiss him like this. So nice.

“Mmm.” Her palms came up to cup his face, and she began to trace his cheekbones with her thumbs. They were red, and hot. “What?”

“Can I fuck you?” He sucked the base of her throat. “Please?” He breathed it against the shell of her ear, and—it wasn’t as though she could say no. Or wanted to. She nodded her permission and reached for his cock, but he beat her to it and pulled down his pants, closing his fist around it. He was big. Larger than she’d thought he’d be, than she’d thought anyone could be. She could still feel his heart pounding rapidly against her chest as he aligned himself to her and nudged the head against her opening and—

Olive was lax now. And pliant. And still not loose enough. “Ah.” It didn’t quite hurt, but it was nearly too much. Definitely not easy. And yet, that sensation, the push of him against every part of her, it held a promise. “You’re so big.”

He groaned into her neck. His entire body was vibrating with tension. “You can take it.”

“I can,” she told him, voice reedy, and her breath caught halfway through the second word. Women gave birth, after all. Except that he was not in, not really. Not even half. And there was just no more room.

Olive looked up at him. His eyes were closed, dark half-moons against his skin, and his jaw was tense. “What if it’s too much?”

Adam lowered his lips to her ear. “Then . . .” He attempted a thrust, and maybe it was too much, but the friction was lovely. “Then I’ll fuck you like this.” She squeezed her eyes shut when he hit a place that made her whimper. “God, Olive.”

Her entire body was pulsating. “Is there something I should be . . .”

“Just . . .” He kissed her collarbone. Their breathing was erratic by now, loud in the silence of the room. “Be quiet for a moment. So I don’t come already.”

Olive canted her hips, and he was rubbing that spot again. It made her thighs tremble, and she tried to open them wider. To invite him inside. “Maybe you should.”

“I should?”

She nodded. They were too dazed to kiss with any kind of coordination by this point, but his lips were hot and soft when they brushed against hers. “Yes.”

“Inside you?”

“If you—”

Adam’s hand came up behind Olive’s knee and angled it just so, spreading her legs in a way she simply hadn’t thought of. Firmly holding her open.

“If you want to.”

“You’re so perfect, you’re driving me insane.”

Her insides opened to him without warning. They welcomed and pulled at him until he bottomed out, until he was wedged deep and stretching her to a point that should be breaking, but just made her feel filled, sealed, perfect.

They both exhaled. Olive lifted a hand, closed it shakily around Adam’s sweaty nape.

“Hey.” She smiled up at him.

He smiled back, just a little. “Hey.”

His eyes were opaque, like stained glass. He moved inside her, just a hint of a thrust, and it made her entire body clench around him, until she could feel his cock twitch and pulsate inside her, like a drum. Her head fell to the pillow, and someone was groaning, something guttural and out of control.

Then Adam pulled out, pushed back in, and they annihilated the no-sex rule. In the span of a few seconds his thrusts went from tentative, exploratory, to fast and all-eclipsing. His hand slid to the small of her back, lifting her into him as he piled in, and in, and in again, rubbing inside her, against her, forcing pleasure to vibrate up her spine.

“Is this okay?” he asked against her ear, not quite managing to stop.

Olive couldn’t answer. Not past the sharp hitch of her breath, the way her fingers dug desperately into the sheets. Pressure built again inside her, swelled large and consuming.

“You have to tell me, if you don’t like it,” he rasped. “What I’m doing.” He was eager, a little clumsy, losing control and slipping out of her, having to nudge his cock back inside; he was out of focus, but so was she, too flooded by how good he felt, how stupefying the pleasure, how smoothly he slid in and out. How right this felt.

“I—”

“Olive, you have to—” He stopped with a grunt, because she canted her hips and clenched around him. Gripping him harder, sucking him deeper.

“I like it.” She reached up to fist her fingers in his hair. To catch his eyes, make sure he was paying attention as she said, “I love it, Adam.”

His control poured out. He made a crude noise and shuddered, pumping hard and muttering nonsense into her skin—how perfect she was, how beautiful, how long he’d wanted this, how he would never, could never let go of her. Olive felt his orgasm soar, the blinding, scalding pleasure as he trembled on top of her.

She smiled. And when new shivers began to roll down her spine, she bit Adam’s shoulder and let herself go under.