by Rachel Jonas
Here and now, it’s only us and what little willpower we have that might pull us back before things go too far.
There’s a subtle roughness to his palms that’s got me addicted, wanting to feel them everywhere. They push up from my knees, slowly moving over my thighs where I think he intends to stop, but… he doesn’t. Instead, he reaches back and grabs my ass. Tight, squeezing just enough that I release a sigh inches from his lips.
“I have a confession,” he says with a labored breath.
My breasts heave when I gather air to whisper, “What’s that?”
“I know we’re supposed to respect each other’s boundaries and shit, but… you have the most incredible ass I’ve ever seen in my fucking life,” he rasps.
On cue, he squeezes tighter and at the feel of it, I bite my lip.
“Still don’t feel anything?” he asks in a low, gravelly voice.
Lifting his hips, his erection pushes into me, pressing against my clit. In a completely involuntary motion, I grind into him and wish I could get so, so much closer. Needless to say, I can’t think to answer, which fills my room with dead air. Mostly, I’m wondering how my lonely night with a book, and Dane’s night out with another girl, turned into this—me riding him slow while we both secretly wish all these damn clothes weren’t in the way.
“I don’t… know what to say,” I eventually respond.
“There’s no wrong answer,” he points out with a deep laugh. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
Then, the next sensation that overwhelms me is the feel of his lips pressing against my neck, followed by moist heat where he gently sucks the hollow of my throat.
My eyes fall closed, and my hands move from his shoulders to the back of his hair.
“I feel confused,” I admit, which has him chuckling against my skin.
“And?”
After asking, he gently lifts his hips again, wedging his dick deeper between the lips of my sex, taunting me because it’s still not enough.
“And… weak.”
This time, my confession doesn’t draw a response from him. Which could mean that’s the answer he hoped to hear.
I’m so wet for him. Like, soaking-through-my-underwear wet. All from barely having been touched tonight. But the longer he holds me like this, the longer his tongue and lips move over my throbbing pulse, the more possessive I feel. So much that, when a thought of him touching someone else this way enters my head, it makes me furious.
I’m sorting through my feelings, trying to understand why he has so much control over my emotions when his mouth moves up my throat, to my chin, and finally to my lips. It’s just one gentle peck, but I’m not sure what to do. It’s not that I’ve never kissed a guy before, but I’ve never kissed him before.
Although, I’ve imagined it many, many times.
He comes closer and, slowly, his mouth touches mine again. My lips come to life as fear falls away. We’ve been careful for so long—denying ourselves the pleasure of touching one another—that this feels foreign. But when his tongue passes my lips, I welcome him in, gripping his hair in my fingers when I do.
It’s not every day that a girl can end the mystery surrounding what her best friend might taste like. Mine leaves a hint of mint and something sweet in my mouth.
His dick swells more, and I’m not sure how much longer either of us can stand this teasing.
“How about now? What do you feel?” he asks during the brief second that we tear ourselves apart.
I don’t bother with an answer because he already knows—I feel everything.
It’d be so easy to just… lower his shorts a few inches, pull my panties over just enough for him to slip inside me. At the thought of it, I move one hand over the smoothness of his shoulder and down his chest, until I feel the ridges of his abs against my fingertips.
And then… his waistband.
Realizing how desperate I am to touch every inch of him, I feel oddly vulnerable, lacking the control I bragged about before this all began.
“We should take this a step further,” Dane breathes into my ear.
I’m only half-coherent as my face turns into his hair, breathing him in. It’s on the tip of my tongue to answer, ‘You can take whatever the hell you want,’ but I catch myself just short of letting those words slip out.
“You plan to lose your virginity this summer,” he says. “So, I’m thinking… maybe I can get you ready for that.”
The suggestion has my eyes opening slowly, processing what he’s just offered.
“There are things you might want to learn first or… try first,” he adds.
While I think, he slowly moves both hands beneath my shorts and inside the elastic of my panties, gripping my bare ass this time, clouding my judgment.
“Does that sound good to you?”
Honestly, there isn’t much I wouldn’t agree to right now, but I manage not to blurt the first thing that comes to mind.
“Before you answer, I need you to know something,” he adds. “We’ve been friends since we were kids, Joss. You’re not just some girl to me. You do know that, right?”
My heart races, staring at his outlined silhouette through the darkness as I nod.
“I know, but… there are things I haven’t told you, Dane, reasons I hold back.”
His eyes stay trained on me. “What is it?”
My head’s spinning and I feel the moment slipping away, the heat of it dissipating as we wander into more serious conversation. One we probably should’ve had a long time ago, instead of me letting him think I was fighting the pull toward him for other reasons.
It’s hard to think while we’re close like this, so I slide off to the side of him where I can hopefully gather my thoughts more easily. His hand settles on my thigh, though, and the feel of it makes me want to pick up right where we left off, but we can’t.
“This is how things started for my parents,” I begin. “They met as friends their first year of college when they both moved to the States. I think it was that common thread—that notion of not quite feeling at home—that drew them together. They were tight like us, told each other everything, double-dated with whoever they were seeing at the time. But then, their junior year of college, they crossed the line. Mom says they were able to keep things in perspective for a while and were just having fun at first, but then things turned serious. That lasted a while, until they started bickering more and drifting apart.”
Dane’s focused on me, listening as I share details my mother shared with me years ago.
“They eventually broke up and stopped speaking altogether. It didn’t matter that they’d been friends before, didn’t matter that they were once each other’s everything, because once things started going bad, it consumed them.”
Dane squeezes my thigh, drawing my attention to his gaze despite how difficult it is to look at him right now.
“You know they’re not us, though, right?” he asks. “I mean, you know I’d never hurt you or let anything ruin what we have, don’t you?”
I sigh, feeling like he’s missed the point.
“I’m sure they didn’t think that either, Dane, but it happened,” I say.
There’s so much more to the story, but I’m not in the mood to go there right now. I already feel raw just having said that much, which forces me to realize how deep their wounds have cut me. I guess growing up in a home where the love was professed out loud but never shown stuck with me, damaged me.
When Dane’s finger touches my chin and I’m made to look into his eyes, a tear slips down my cheek. I think he takes it for what it is—a sign of how seriously I’m taking this, how important our friendship is to me.
“Joss, you have my word that we’ll never turn into them. Whatever course we take, we won’t end up like that.”
It’s dark, but I can still see his sincerity. And when he kisses me, I feel it.
This is new—impromptu displays of affection.
Is this the door we’ve opened
? Who we’ve become—friends who kiss and touch?
He pulls away and I inhale slowly to steady my breaths.
“If you don’t want to do this, I’m cool with that,” he adds, “but my offer stands.”
My body’s still overheating from our make-out session, but I know that has nothing to do with the answer I’m about to give. But first, like with anything else, there have to be rules, boundaries that will hopefully prevent disaster.
“If I say yes, we have to promise each other a few things.”
His brow quirks when he smiles. “Ok, shoot.”
“We have to swear to keep our emotions out of it.”
Right after I speak, there’s this weird twisting in my gut. Like my body’s trying to tell me that I’ve already broken this rule. Hell, maybe he has, too, but it needs to be said anyway. The point of this isn’t to fall for each other, but rather for me to experiment with someone I trust.
And… maybe get some things out of our systems before curiosity burns us alive.
I don’t miss how he seems to sober up a bit more before answering. “Sounds fair, I guess.”
“And you have to promise there won’t be other girls. I don’t mean you can’t go out or anything, just no… physical stuff,” I say shakily, feeling like I have no right whatsoever to make these kinds of demands. Mostly, because I’m not his girlfriend and this is clearly just a friends-with-benefits situation, but these are my terms, what I’m comfortable with if we’re to move forward.
He can absolutely turn them down and I’d understand.
However, he doesn’t even hesitate.
“You have my word.”
I search his eyes and see that he means it. I’ve known him long enough to spot a lie.
“Then… okay,” I say, agreeing to something I never thought I’d agree to, but by it being Dane, it feels different.
It feels right.
He leans in and kisses me again, and it’s soft this time, not meant to lead to anything more. A girl could get used to this feeling, get addicted to it even. And now that we’ve reached an agreement, I imagine this summer will be filled with many more just like it.
17
Dane
Sterling slams his locker shut, then drops down onto the bench beside West. Wiping sweat from his brow, he gazes up to where I’m leaning against the painted brick wall just beneath the university’s logo.
“And it ended just like that?” he asks, finally responding to the news I shared about me and Joss. News I thought about all night, and again all through today’s practice.
I shrug at his question. “Yep. She set out a couple rules—which didn’t surprise me, we made out a little more, then I left and went to bed.”
Well, I beat off in the shower, then went to bed, but they probably don’t want to hear that.
West has this I-told-you-so grin set on his face that I don’t miss.
“Got something to say?” I ask with a laugh.
“Only that I called this shit way back in eighth grade. I should’ve put money on it.”
He isn’t lying. He and Sterling have both been predicting that Joss and I would eventually hookup, but I don’t think any of us imagined it would go quite like this. She’s always been kind of reserved, which is why I thought she’d shoot down my idea last night, but she didn’t. Proves she’s more ready than I realized. Clearly, number eleven on the list wasn’t just an afterthought.
“Guess we know what distracted you from catching that easy-ass pass I threw you,” West adds. “And here I was thinking it was Shawna who had your mind gone.”
I don’t say it out loud, but, honestly, I haven’t thought about her since we parted ways after the ‘date’.
“So, what now?” Sterling cuts in. “You two just planning to dry hump all summer.”
Laughing, I shake my head at him. “Shut the fuck up. What’s next is we take things slow, so she doesn’t retreat into her shell. But not so slow that she starts thinking too much, convincing herself this was all a mistake.”
That sounds good, but I have no idea how this plan should actually go. I mean, do I wait a week to approach her? Wait until she approaches me? Hell if I know.
I glance toward West when he stands and starts gathering things from his locker to shower.
“Well, I don’t have any answers, but I think this arrangement is just a means to an end. Everyone knows you and Joss are gonna get married, have a bunch of kids we’re all gonna spoil, then grow old together.”
With that, he leaves me and Sterling on our own.
Sterling pushes off the bench, but I stop him before he can bail. “Hang on a sec. Where the hell have you been?”
He meets my gaze and quirks a brow. I hold off on speaking when a few teammates pass, wanting to make sure no one overhears us.
“Feels like you’ve been avoiding my calls. If it weren’t for practice kicking off today, I would’ve thought you skipped town or something. What’s up with you?”
Our father’s face has been all over the news, which is why I’ve given up on TV, but we’re all still affected. My first guess for why Sterling’s been M.I.A. is that it’s getting to him a bit more than the rest of us. Maybe because he’s still living in the penthouse for now, ground zero, the place that holds all the memories, most of which are too fucked up to talk about.
He pushes a hand behind his neck and something about that look on his face tells me I’ve gotten it all wrong. So, I rack my brain for a different explanation as to why he’s been ghosting.
Then, that’s when I remember Pandora’s post. The one where it looked like he might be entertaining our former headmaster’s wife. She’s had her eye on him since we were at least fifteen and it was always a running joke that he’d eventually give in. Only, I never thought it’d actually happen.
Not to mention, the woman is the dean here at the university.
When he looks off instead of answering, I know.
“You fucked her, didn’t you?”
His gaze lowers to the tile. “No, it’s not like that.”
“Bullshit.”
She’s been on his ass since graduation and must’ve caught him in a moment of weakness. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it right now.
“All I know is, you’d better find some way to cover that shit, or… whatever went down. Pretty sure fucking the dean is frowned upon.”
“I didn’t fu—” his voice trails off when he pauses to breathe deep. “I’m handling it.”
My hand slams down on his shoulder. “Let me know if I can help, but in the meantime, keep your dick in your pants,” I tease. “Or, at the very least, keep it out of Mrs. Harrison.”
18
Joss
Sitting poolside with a fruity drink in hand feels like the perfect time to spill the beans.
Blue and I have spent a better part of the day together, hanging out at her place, and I still haven’t shared the latest development between me and Dane. Not that she hasn’t asked how things are going, I just didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to tell her.
So, I’m just gonna blurt it. Why the hell not?
I glance to my right and stare at her from beneath the brim of the plaid bucket hat Dane bought me as a joke. It was a souvenir from when his family vacationed in Fiji a few years ago, but I pop it on every now and then when I’ll be out in the sun.
Blue’s completely relaxed in her lounger, and possibly asleep. It’s hard to tell with the dark, oversized sunglasses covering her eyes, looking all glamourous and shit. She won’t mind if I wake her for this, though.
“So, Dane and I kissed,” I say casually, to which Blue responds by nearly leaping out of her skin. Those sunglasses are ripped off and she’s staring right at me.
“No. Way.”
I nod, holding in my smile.
“Joss! You’ve been keeping this to yourself all day? I can’t believe you! Tell me all the things,” she gushes, turning to sit on the edge of her seat.
I breathe
deep and imagine everything I felt last night.
“Well, he came in from his date and the plan was to just hang out and watch a movie, but… it didn’t end that way.”
“OMG! Did he initiate? Or was it you? I’m dying!” she squeals.
“It was him, I guess you could say? But I definitely wanted it to happen. And by the end of it, we… kind of made a deal.”
She doesn’t miss how I trail off there. In fact, her eyes narrow with suspicion.
“A deal?”
I nod first, gathering the courage to say more. “We’ve… officially shifted to a friends-with-benefits situation. The only two rules are that neither of us will fool around with other people while we’re involved in said situation, and we swore to keep emotion out of it.”
She was with me right up until then. I know as much because her expression just went from elated to deflated.
I’m almost afraid to ask why that is, but when she cocks her head to the side and raises a brow, I may as well.
“Ok, what’s the look mean?”
“Do you even have to ask? No emotion?” she scoffs. “Are you two seriously denying that that ship has already sailed? I mean, it’s already gonna be a push to compartmentalize this whole thing, but now you’ve closed the door to honesty, put both of you in a box where you’re allowed to fool around but not express how it makes you feel,” she reasons. “Just my two cents, but I think you might want to reconsider that rule.”
I hear her, but I also know my limits. I’ve already crossed the line that I, myself, drew in the sand when it comes to him. If we’re going to keep things in perspective, if we’re going to avoid the drama that befell my parents and preserve our friendship, we have to stick to the plan.
She must see me overthinking things, because she places her hand on mine and her expression has softened.
“Listen, I’m all for this deal between the two of you,” she assures me. “I just want you both to be openminded about where it could lead. That’s all.”
I exhale my anxiety and nod. “I get it.”
