His mouth was dry, his skin was burning where she held his hand, his other hand was clenched so hard his fingers ached, and he thought his dick had probably never been harder.“Right. Yep, that's how it's done in these situations."
"Is that what you want me to do, Michael? Give you the speech you came here for?"
Desperately afraid that that was exactly what she was going to do, and desperately hoping she wouldn't, he swallowed his fear and tried to lighten the mood. "I didn't come here for a speech, Renee,” he said, hoping he didn't sound as strangled as he felt. "I came here for popcorn."
"Good," she answered, pulling him into the room. "I wasn't gonna give you the speech anyway."
Chapter Thirty-Three
Her room smelled of summertime and coconuts; she had a giant print of Van Gogh’s‘Starry Night’ above her bed, and the top of every furniture surface was covered in white and yellow candles. Michael gestured to the collection of scented candle jars.“Cass’s doing?”
Renee nodded, smiling as she pulled him further into the room.“Yep; coconuts and sugar cookies. She keeps giving me more of them… said she doesn’t want me to run out.” Her fingers gripped his wrists and she backed slowly into the room, her eyes still on his face, each step backward pulling Michael closer to taking a step he wouldn’t be able to go back from.
“Doesn’t look like there’s any risk of that happening any time soon.” His breath was catching in his chest, in his throat. His heart wouldn't stop trying to beat its way through his ribs. He'd never been so nervous in his life, so afraid of messing something up. But he'd never been so arousedbefore, either– not even with Nicolette.
She put the tip of her tongue out to wet her lips, watching his face. Her eyes flicked lower to settle on his mouthbefore coming back to meet his questioning eyes, and she smiled nervously. "No, no risk of that," she said softly. "Especially since I don't burn them." She watched as he arched his brows in silent question, shrugging as she answered.“It just– candles are meant to be romantic. Can’t have romance by yourself, I guess. Or I mean, by myself.”
“You aren’t by yourself,” Michael murmured, bringing his hands up to cup her face. He saw her throat move as she swallowed, and her hands dropped from his wrists to settle lightly at his waist. Her fingertips fluttered above his jeans, and she fisted her hands in the fabric of his t-shirt as he rested his forehead against hers.“Light them.”
“I could,” she whispered. “Think I ought to?”
“Maybe later.” He tipped his face and touched her lips with his, softly, tentatively. Her breath was a whisper against his mouth, and then he was lost in the taste of her. Renee was soft in his arms, pliable even as he felt the strength and life coursing through her. Her fists pressed into his sides, tugging on his shirt, but then he felt the scorching heat of her palms as she released the fabric and ran her hands up under it. Kissing her was a whirl of sensation unlike any Michael had ever experienced; he was surrounded by the summer scent of her perfume, his arms filled with the soft curves and firm definition of her body, the buttery taste of popcorn still salty sweet on her lips.
She touched the tip of her tongue to his upper lip, and he smiled against her mouth, answering her challenge with a daring swirl of his own tongue that followed the curve of her bottom lip. She scraped her nails down his back, gasping as he crushed her suddenly closer against his body. Michael was sure she could feel him, hard against the flatness of her stomach; she pressed closer, grinding softly, and his erection jerked between them.
“I don’t know what we’re doing,” he whispered, dropping his mouth down over the curve of her jaw and kissing the sensitive place behind her ear. He had known it was there for years; she had confessed once that on a date, a boy had kissed her there and the tickle of his breath had made her laugh. The boy, offended, had immediately jerked away– and he hadn’t asked her out anymore. Michael didn’t release her, though; instead, he tested her, purposely playing up and down the curve of her shoulder and the strong column of her throat to see if he could get the same girlish reaction. It worked– she sucked in a sharp breath as he nuzzled her throat, and moaned as the scrape of his evening stubble roughened her skin. But then, as he swept the tip of his nose up the length of her throat and caught the soft lobe of her ear between his teeth, she tensed in his arms, laughing. He pressed a kiss against the artery pulsing just below the surfaceand laughed with her.“I wondered if that would work,” he said.
Guiding his face back to hers, Renee bumped the tip of her nose against his.“I don’t know what this is, either,” she said.“And now I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have told you about that spot.”
Laughing again, he tightened his arms around her, enjoying the feel of her body against his.“You’ve told me about a lot of spots,” he answered.“We’ve had a lot of conversations, Renee.” It wasn’t the first time they’d been pressed together, but dancing as friends at some function or family event wasn’t nearly the same as the way he held her now, alone in her house with the lights low and the tension high. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, small but firm, her nipples pressing against him through their clothes. Michael could feel the heat pulsing from her, could scent her arousal in the air.“Do you want me to stop this?It’s not too late for me to just go.”
She wouldn’t look at him, but she shook her head against his chest.“No,” she whispered.“No, I don’t want you to stop. But–“ She broke off and looked up finally, sliding her hands down his chest to settle between them, pressed flat against his stomach.“Michael…We have a really good friendship, right?”
“We always have,” he said.
“Right. So…” She waited while Michael pressed the curtain of her hair away from her face, watching his eyes breathlessly as he traced the curve of her lips with the tip of one thumb. Finally, she caught his thumb in her teeth, biting gently, and Michael watched her lips close around the tip.
She sucked softly, and Michael had to fight the urge to push her down in her bed right then, had to stop himself from going too far too soon. But after holding her so closely, having tasted her, swept his tongue between her lips to dance with hers, cupped his palms over the firm curves of her delectable little ass, all he wanted was to bury himself in her body, to feel her tighten around him, to feel her thighs wrapped around his waist. It had to be her choice though; Michael valued Renee’s role in his life, and he respected her as afriend. It didn’t matter how much he wanted her, he had to know she wanted him, too.“So? What are you asking me, Renee?”
”What if… Michael, what if this ruins what we have? And what if we can’t get it back? What if we lose… what we have? And what is this becoming, anyway?”
“What if it doesn’t? And what if we don’t need to label it to know what it is?” he asked her. Releasing her, hetook her hand and led her to the dresser, where a lighter rested between two candle jars. Arching an eyebrow, he glanced down at her.“You never burn them, huh?”
“I don’t,” she retorted, laughing.“The lighter came with the second candle, after I told Cass that I hadn’t burned the first candle because I didn’t have a lighter.” Reaching out, she took the lighter in one hand and one of the candles in the other, meeting his eyes in the mirror above the dresser before she lowered them again to light the candle. He watched her steel herself to speak, taking a deep breath as she set the first candle back among its fellows and lit another.“This is important to me. Our friendship, I mean. I don’t want to lose this.”
Michael stepped behind her, marveling at how he had never noticed the way the top of her head tucked perfectly beneath his chin. He settled his hands on her hips, squeezing softly as he pulled her back against him, and he watched her flickering reflection in the mirror as she lit a third candle.“It’s important to me, too,” he said. It was only then that he noticed the tension that had slowly filled her expression, tension that ran down through her body, vibrating through her as she stiffened in his arms.“What’s wrong?”
“We can break the tension with jokes if you want to,” she said,“but what did you mean just now? What was it you said? That we don’t need to label it?”
“We don’t,” he said.
Fear licked through his gut as she blew out the candle she’d just lit and placed it back on the dresser.“We don’t call babies,‘Hey,’ Michael. We name them. We label them. We label illnesses, we label each other.” She sighed, and Michael felt a twinge of panic as her face went blank in their reflection.“We label the important things; it’s how we know which things are important.” She met his eyes briefly in the mirror, still tucked so perfectly against him, and then she looked away, moved away to lift and blow out the second candle.“You know, I’m kind of tired. Maybe you should just go after all, and we can talk about this another time.”
There was no way he was leaving it like this, with their relationship as blackened as the two now-burned candle wicks sticking out of the unmelted candles on the dresser. One candle still burned, and as afraid as they both were of losing their friendship because of this sudden attraction, there was no way he would allow her to shut down like this– he knew that if he did, they would never be the same. Michael plucked the lighter from her hands and dropped it beside the candle still burning in the low light of the TV screen. Renee turned easily in his arms when he spun her, but she used the movement to step further away and put some space between them; he caught her hands and held them lightly in an effort to keep her near him.“No,” he said.“Renee, don’t do this. Come on, talk to me.” Renee shook her head, her hair spilling over her shoulders as she lowered her face. She shrugged, and Michael pulled her closer. She stepped forward willingly, but held her tension as he settled his chin on top of her head.“Please, Renee. I don’t know what you think, but you have to know that’s not what I meant.”
She shrugged again.“What if I need a label?” Her voice was muffled against his chest as she spoke, but she went on.“What if I need to know what I am? Where I stand?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know, Michael. I feel like… not labeling something is a way of saying– maybe it’s a way of saying it isn’t important.”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying. This is important to me. Whatever we decide to call it, Renee, this mattersto me. And I know I might be a little late to the game here–“ he gripped her hands tighter as she tried to pull them away, her brows coming together as she frowned.“Wait, I’m not done. And I’m not saying anything right, and I know that, but… Renee you know me. So you’ll know I don’t mean what you feel like I’m saying.”
“Well, you know me too, Michael,” she answered, stepping back to look up at him. Her eyes moved over his face, her lips pursed as she watched him.“You know what I want out of life, and you know why I gave in and went out with Harvey and… Michael, I want the next step in my life. I want a label. I wantsomething that means something!” Her eyes flashed, filled with tears, and she closed them.
Michael watched her struggle for control, his chest aching as he recognized his own loneliness radiating out of her. His stomach twisted, his thoughts were racing, and he was about to lose a woman he cared for– again– if he didn’t step up and find a way to explain what he felt.“Renee. Look at me.” He waited, but she shook her head in silent refusal, so he stepped forward and wrapped her in his arms. Her breath left her in a shuddering whisper, and she stiffened again as Michael turned them away from the dresser. He guided her to her bed, no longer thinking of the way it would feel to press her into the mattress with the weight of his body, but instead only seeking a place for her to sit.
Once he’d steered her to the bed and pressed her shoulders to urge her down, Michael knelt next to the bed, still holding her hands in his own. Their hands rested in her lap, gripped tightly together on the soft fabric of her pajamas. Smiling softly, he traced one of the smiley motifs on her thigh with the tip of his thumb, giving her time to gain control before he looked up into her face.“Renee, listen to me. Okay? Just listen. What I mean is that I obviously took a long time to notice what’s been right in front of me. And honestly, apparently I’m an idiot because it seems like everybody noticed this but me. I’m not even kidding, my family is talking about it, waiting for me to see what’s been right in front of me.”
She jerked in surprise, her hands tightening against his.“They are?”
“They are. But that doesn’t matter, that’s– it’s not what I was going to say.”
“Well, say it then.”
“Look, I don’t need a label to know how I feel Renee, now that I know how I feel. And I don’t need a label to know what I want from this. That’s all I meant earlier. But if you need a label?” He sighed, swallowing his fear. He knew fairly well that if he reached out to her, she wouldn’t reject him. She wouldn’t have taken his hand and led him to her bedroom if she hadn’t wanted something to happen. No, he wasn’t afraid of rejection. What he feared was following her cues,his desires, and taking the next step in a definite way that couldn’t be undone… and ultimately losing her somehow, too.
But then, Michael had never let fear of risk rule his life. He had started a business from nothing, afraid of failing but willing to go for it. And he would go for it now, too.“Alright, Renee. If you need a label,” he said again, watching goosebumps break out on her arm as he stroked tiny circles along her wrist.“Then we’ll think of one.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
A tear dropped onto his hand and he looked up again, surprised. Renee smiled, embarrassed, and shook her head.“I don’t,” she said.“I don’t need a label right now. But I’m just saying, because this matters to me, because you’re my best friend other than Chelsea… and because I care so much about you and I value our friendship… I’m going to need one. If we’re friends, we’re friends. If we’re something else… I’ll wanna know what we are.”
Michael looked into her face, watching her lie, knowing that she was promising more than she could give. She wasn’t the kind of girl to have one night stands, or to have meaningless relationships. She wasn’t the type to be someone’s booty call. And, like Sherry, Renee might pretend she could be a casual woman– and maybe, like it had for Sherry, it would work for a while. Michael had been blind enough to let it happen with Sherry, blind enough to take her at her word without realizing what she really needed from him. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Renee.“Alright, then,” he said, standing up.“How about we just don’t bother with the waiting. Because we’re obviously not just friends, or we wouldn’t be dealing with this right?”
Renee nodded, watching silently as Michael moved away. He saw the confusion clouding her face as he crossed the room to the window, and he heard her sigh as he pulled back the yellow sheers to stare out into the night. He took his time, listening as her shuddered breath grew steady again, contentedly inhaling her summer scent. How was it that she always smelled that way, even the morning after they had spent the night at the hospital? It was like the scent memory of his family’s early vacations to the tropics was somehow buried just beneath her skin, releasing fumes that reminded him of safety and fun and simplicity, before his childhood had left him behind and life had gotten complicated.
It was certainly complicated now; his relationship with Renee had always been laid-back and easy-going. They had shared countless jokes, made countless memories– but as friends. Could they build on what was there? Probably. They had come this far, had built a solid foundation, had attempted to talk through their differences over the years. Michael and Renee each had a good sense of the best way to communicate with the other; they had had their share of disagreements, but they did try to be patient and hear each other out. More importantly, they shared an unshakeable sense of respect for each other.
But they had haddisagreements. They had argued politics, policies, parenting, music. There had been arguments that had left them feeling awkward around each other, times when they wouldn’t talk as much and would even grow distant from each otheruntil
life and the need for each other’s companionship brought them close again. He had always thought it a good thing that they could find their way back, but could they really build on what was there? If they crossed the line, would they be able to make it last?
If he was honest with himself, he would have to admit what he had already realized some time ago– that they had already gone past the boundary between friends and more. And he knew in that moment, just as he knew that bread was bread and water was water, that Renee was his – he only needed to know if she felt it, too.Michael's heart twisted in his chest, fear and nerves mingling with excitement as he struggled to gather his thoughts, to prepare his words. Finally, he turned back to look at Renee again, taking in the set of her shoulders, the curious tilt of her head, the challenge in her eyes. Narrowing his own eyes, Michael mimicked her crossed arms, leaning back against the wall. "You want a label? How about this one?" he said quietly. "How about‘good morning beautiful’? Or 'honeybee?' Or‘whatever it is’ – I know you like country music;you probably know those songs, right?”
“You’re giving me country songs?” Surprised, she tipped her head and stared.“You listen to country music?”
More Than Friends (Kingsley #4) Page 16
