by Lexi Banks
It’s just for me, I reminded myself gleefully. She’s spent all that time getting ready for me.
But if I thought the drive over was a challenge with all the new emotions floating around us, I had no idea what I was in for as we got to the pizza place I’d booked a table at, fully in the knowledge that it was Maddie’s favorite and somewhere that she wished she could go more often. Then, it really started to feel like a date...
“It’s nice here, isn’t it,” Maddie said with an anxious giggle. “I always like it here.”
We took our seats and placed an order before the waiter even left us with menus. We knew what we wanted, so there wasn’t any point in beating around the bush. That was one of the awesome things about being friends first; we didn’t need to worry about how we acted around one another. We had seen each other at our worst already...
Not that I was getting carried away here. That was one of the most important things to me, not to get carried away.
“Did Zac bring you somewhere as nice as this?” I teased, wanting to lighten up the atmosphere.
“I didn’t even notice.” She rolled her eyes. “I was just so busy trying not to listen to him going on. So, anyway.” Immediately, she changed the subject which was for the best. I didn’t even want to think about other dates, never mind discuss them. What the hell was I thinking even bringing Zac up? “Tell me about Buster’s new lady?”
Maddie knew about Buster’s lifestyle just as much as I did... mostly because I told her. They only ever hung out when it was the three of us in a group, but I would still class them as friends... or acquaintances at least.
“I don’t know anything about her,” I admitted. “He’s been all secretive about her which suggests to me that she might actually be the one to settle him down. You know what he’s like with details usually.” Maddie nodded and laughed while delicately chewing on a slice of bread. “He probably wouldn’t have even said anything at all, had it not been for your charity event. It was only when I mentioned that he should be a bachelor...”
“I thought that was strange too. I can’t imagine any girl beforehand stopping him doing that.”
“Well, he’s an old man now, isn’t he?” I shot back playfully. “Thirty-two. Time to settle down.”
“Hmm... yeah.” Maddie stared off into the distance, looking very thoughtful. “I always thought that I would be settled down by thirty. You know, marriage, a couple of kids, that sort of thing.”
“You still have time,” I reminded her. “A lot can happen in a couple of years.”
A lot can happen in one night, I thought as I stared into her wicked sparkly eyes. Maybe even tonight.
Admittedly, I wasn’t in a place where I could see myself as her husband or the father of her children or anything, I was still very much adjusting to the idea that I might like her, but Maddie said those words in a hypothetical way, I was sure of it. She wasn’t trying to tie a weight around my ankle to shackle me to her. She wasn’t like that.
The pizza came quickly, and we both ate like we hadn’t been fed in years. I hadn’t felt any hunger pangs all day long, it was almost as if my appetite had been subdued by anxiety, so I loved having it back. Maddie ended up with a ring of orange around her mouth from the tomato sauce, but I didn’t even bother to tell her because that was just so normal. She was like an animal with pizza, and I really liked that about her. I didn’t want everything to change!
“Did Tina end up with a date?” I asked her curiously. “I forgot to ask that before.”
Maddie shook her head, causing her hair to tickle over her shoulders. My eyes were immediately drawn to the exposed flesh around her throat, and I felt overcome with the urge to lick her everywhere.
“She didn’t. She did bid on someone though, number three. I can’t remember his name.”
“William.” I screwed up my nose in disgust. “Trust me; she did well to get out of it.”
“Are all business guys awful?” Maddie snickered. “You don’t seem to like any of them.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t that. I just don’t like the ones who don’t respect women.”
Maddie narrowed her eyes at me, giving me a curious look. “Right, I see. And you don’t include yourself in that?”
I felt utterly horror-struck that she would even suggest that. Did she see me in that way? Just because I hadn’t had anything long term before didn’t make me a bastard... or so I thought. This was about to be cut short really quick if I wasn’t careful! “I don’t think... no, I don’t think I’ve ever treated anyone badly...”
“Oh no.” Maddie rested her hand delicately against mine. “I wasn’t suggesting that you had. I just wanted to remind you that you’re a business type too. Even if you don’t actually do business anymore.”
I let out a relieved laugh. “Well, I do investments. That counts as business, right?”
“If lazing around all day barely actually doing anything counts as business, then sure!”
I tried my hardest to absorb her joke, but to be honest, I felt very much distracted by the feel of her skin against mine. I had powerful electrical bolts of lightning darting all through me, and it was very unnerving. I hadn’t ever experienced this before with anyone, and it almost knocked me backward. I wanted to snatch my hand away, to digest and process everything, but at the same time, I didn’t ever want the sensation to end...
I flicked my eyes up, meeting Maddie’s and as they did, I felt the whole world tilt and shift once more. It was almost as if everything that I had ever known was wrong, and nothing was the same. Madison was no longer just the girl who was my friend, the world wasn’t black and white, organized as I knew it to be. Everything pin holed and all I could see was her. I regretted all the time I had spent not looking at Maddie; I greedily wanted more of her. As my heart raced and my throat felt thick and dry, my head ached with all the new knowledge it had obtained.
“Why haven’t we ever kissed before?” The words seemed to pour out of Madison’s mouth as if she’d parted her lips while drinking milk. It was as if she had absolutely no control over herself at all. “Like, ever?”
“I don’t know,” I practically whispered back. “It seems weird now, doesn’t it?”
A few days ago, it didn’t. It wouldn’t have been anything for me to even think about albeit in an abstract way, but now the idea consumed me. All the missed opportunities, all the times alone, all the chances I’d had.
“Maybe we should,” Maddie continued with a half-smile. “Just to see what it’s like, you know?”
She really wanted to test the waters, to see where this chemistry could lead us, and of course, I was on board too. We’d already overstepped the line, gone too far, why not see? If the kiss felt like nothing, then I could simply stop obsessing over her, and we could go back to our normal lives. Simple.
“Shall we get out of here?” I rasped back as my answer. “Maybe... try...”
She paused for a moment and bit down on her bottom lip, but thankfully, in the end, she nodded, flooding me with relief. I needed to know now, I couldn’t go another day without the information, and now that the choice had been made I could feel a powerful surge of lust overcoming me. The animal inside of me was taking over.
“I’ll pay the bill.” I handed her the car keys. “I’ll meet you outside.”
I watched her walk away feeling tense all over. This was make or break, and I honestly didn’t know which way I wanted it to turn. She had me swimming, almost drowning, and soon I would know if I could survive in her waters.
Chapter 12 – Madison
Tuesday
This time, the car journey felt even worse. The air was so thick with a heady lust that I just couldn’t sit still. My brain kept spinning over and over the words I spoke in the restaurant: “Maybe we should, just to see what it’s like, you know?” How did that come across? Did I sound desperate, childish, idiotic? Parker didn’t act like I had, but I really wished that I could crawl into his brain to see what he was thinking. But
both of us were resolutely staring forward as if we couldn’t bear to look at one another for fear of what might happen if we did.
Maybe, once we got to my apartment, we would gloss over that weird moment in the restaurant and we’d forget anything was said. Although, I wasn’t totally convinced that I could do that. It was out there now; I really did want to know. Ever since I had started to even slightly think about Parker in that way, it had kept me awake. Long, endless stretches of night where he consumed my thoughts. I felt swallowed up by the desire I felt for him.
“Here we are.” Parker sounded nervous as he pulled up outside my apartment. “So...”
I panicked. Shoots of cold burst through my veins. If we were going to kiss for the very first time, I didn’t want it to be outside in his car. I at the very least wanted to be in my apartment where we could probably feel things.
“Come inside?” I asked him pleadingly, clearly giving up any desire to look cool. “Please.”
“Of course I will.” He looked relieved at the suggestion. “Yeah, no problem. I’ll park up properly.”
Parker slid his car into a space and followed me up to my apartment. The whole way there I felt acutely aware of his body, of every damn inch of him, it was almost as if he had become an extension of me and I knew his movements as well as I did my own. Underneath the carefully chosen dress, I could feel my skin starting to flush.
Once I had unlocked the door and we both went inside, anticipation built up inside of me like a tsunami ready to explode. I had a feeling that if we didn’t kiss soon, the moment would pass, but I feared making the first move...
“Oh...” All of a sudden, Parker grabbed me by the waist, and he spun me around to face him. Clearly, he had the same trail of thought as me, but it didn’t terrify him quite as much. Or maybe the thought of not kissing me scared him more. He dipped his head down, and he crashed his lips against mine, totally claiming me.
After the initial second of shock, I molded into the kiss, loving the sensation of his mouth against mine way more than I should have done. His soft lips pressed hard into mine, sending my heart flying into my mouth, and his tongue darted between my lips immediately softening my brain and turning it to mush. I’d been kissed before, I’d had good kisses before, but nothing made me feel so chemically imbalanced. No one had ever made my lips tingle in such a powerful way, never had a kiss made my knees turn to jelly. Thank God he was holding me upright.
After a while, Parker pulled away, but I couldn’t bear to stop kissing now. Not when it felt even better than I thought it might, so I hooked my hand around the back of my neck, and I yanked him back to me. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to let him go yet. In fact, I wanted... no needed more. I didn’t want this to just be a kiss any longer.
Parker could tell this this was no longer just a kiss too, and that brought his sexual, primal side out. He walked me backward until I hit the wall behind me and he grabbed my leg to wrap it around him, hitching up my dress in the process. There I could feel just what I was doing to him, I could feel his thick, throbbing length that my core absolutely pulsed for. I rolled my hips into him, moaning desperately as the entire evening took things up to another level. Now, I needed him; I didn’t care about our friendship any longer, or anything else. My brain had a single goal in mind, and it was to get Parker inside of me, to feel what it was like to fuck him senseless.
My fingers fumbled with Parker’s suit jacket; I shook it off him as quickly as I could, and I wrapped my hands around his bulging biceps, gasping with sheer pleasure as I did. Now, the body I knew well felt like a freaking temple, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about all the times we could have been doing this...
As Parker’s jacket hit the ground, he lifted me from my feet, causing me to squeal loudly, but that sound quickly fell away when he walked me into my bedroom, his lips brushing against my throat the entire time. He could probably feel my jackhammer pulse in there, the slick sheen covering all of me, the way my entire body heated up because of him. As he threw me back onto my bed sheets, my eyes snapped right back open again.
Parker climbed onto the bed, hovering over me. He rested his forehead against mine for a second with a question in his gaze. I had a feeling that he was offering me a way out of this if I wanted it but halting this right now when it felt so incredible was the last thing in the world that I wanted. I needed him now, so to give him that message, I wrapped my legs tightly around his back, brought my hips up to crash against his body and I kissed him hard.
“Oh, Maddie,” he moaned into my mouth as I ground into him. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”
In a flurry, my dress flew up over my head, my bra shed like a second skin, I yanked off Parker’s shirt, and he shimmied his way out of his trousers. Only his boxers and my lace panties stood between us, and that felt like too much. Especially when one of Parker’s hands brushed against the thin material as the other one cupped my breast.
My ragged breaths fell painfully out of my mouth. This was a position me and Parker had never expected to find ourselves in, and it was very intense. My brain wanted to creep in, to remind me of certain things, but I didn’t want to hear my thoughts. Instead, I wanted to listen to the craving inside my body. I wanted to give me what I wanted, not what was smart for me, so I shut my thoughts off by dipping my hand into Parker’s underwear.
“Oh fuck.” The moment my fingers wrapped around his rock hard erection, I knew that I was lost. There wasn’t any going back now; I needed to feel him inside of me. I’d heard the whispers; I knew that he had a good reputation in the bedroom department, and I wanted to learn that for myself. I needed to know. “Oh, Parker, fuck me.”
Those magical words ignited something in him. My panties became much less of a problem as he ripped them from my body, tearing them all the way down. I didn’t even care; I was just glad to have them gone. Even more so as I felt that incredible erection of his teasing my entrance. I tried to roll my hips, to bring him deeper into me, but he held me back for just a second, rubbing his thumb over my clit to take me to another level entirely. My head spun, pools of pleasure swam through my body, I became a slave to the sensations he had racing through my body.
By the time Parker drove all the way into me, his thrust was the last thing I needed to take me over the edge. The anticipation, the expectation, the foreplay, it had all driven me to the edge of desire so it didn’t take me long. The pressure had built to boiling point, so it wasn’t long before the waves were rolling over me in a motion that never seemed to end. I kept my legs firmly clamped around his back even as I shuddered and buckled beneath him. I writhed, I collapsed, I spun violently into the abyss of bliss, but I kept hold of Parker the entire time. He was the one thing I needed to keep me sane, the one person connecting me to the Earth. Right then, he was everything.
As my walls contracted around Parker, his cock twitched rapidly and succumbed to the bliss too. It all happened so fast, as if we were virgins and this was our very first time. With Parker, I did feel a bit like that. It was as if it wasn’t just my first time with him, but my first time with a real man. He opened up my body and in a short time exposed me to a brand new experience. Never had an orgasm been so intense. It was never ever that good the first time with anyone else anyway! It took time for someone to get to know my body. I wondered if that was because we were friends first, so he did know me somewhat. Maybe not in that way...
Shut up, brain. I needed to stop my racing thoughts before they ran away with me. Parker collapsed onto the bed next to me and lay breathlessly with a much more relaxed expression on his face. Why was I the only one with a brain racing at a million miles an hour? Stop thinking, just enjoy this moment for what it is... whatever that is...
“So, what do we do now?” Parker asked me without looking at me. “I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but...”
“No, we do need to discuss it,” I jumped in, rationality finally kicking in. “After all, we are friends...”
“And I don’t want our friendship to be ruined.”
As he said that, the friendship that seemed to easy to discard in the heat of the moment not that long ago, became crystal clear. I genuinely couldn’t lose Parker, he was far too important to me. I needed him.
“Yeah, maybe it’s best if we don’t...” I gulped, unsure of what my nest word should be. “Move too fast. Put too much pressure on us. Make it more... more complicated than it needs to be.”
“Yeah.” Parker sat up and immediately started to grab his clothes. He didn’t do it in a pissed off manner, just in a matter of fact way because it was the best thing for all of us, but I still yearned to cling to him. “You’re right.”
I felt bad watching him go, but it was for the best. While I wanted to see if we could become something I didn’t want to jeopardize us. There wasn’t any reason we couldn’t do that slowly anyway. It was the smart thing to do. I never jumped head first into a relationship anyway, and Parker needed to learn to slow things down anyway. This was for the best. If I kept telling myself that, then eventually I would learn to believe it.
“I’ll see you soon,” Parker told e reassuringly while kissing the top of my head. “Have a nice sleep, okay?”
I wasn’t sure that I could, but I nodded anyway. It saved me getting out of bed and putting my clothes on. I would have much rather stayed where I was, enjoying the sensation of Parker on top of me anyway. For now.
Chapter 13 – Parker
