California Dreaming

by Shawn Lane

  Was that what I was doing? I didn’t know. I was in a house full of people I barely knew anymore. I had never known Autumn and Summer. I felt like a stranger in my own family. And that was probably my own fault.

  He released me finally, and instead of being happy about it, I wanted to go right back into his arms.

  Instead, I turned to the cabinets in my sister’s kitchen. “Which one do you suppose has the cups?”

  And Zach helped me while I attempted to ignore the way my heart fluttered.

  Chapter 4

  By the time I was allowed to escape the dreary downstairs for the guest bedroom, I felt in desperate need of a long hot shower. So I did just that while Zach lay on his stomach on the bed, scrolling through e-mails on his laptop.

  I took longer than I should have, I knew. After all, California was still experiencing a drought. But the hot water felt good on my tight muscles. I’d considered, briefly, jerking off in the shower, my mind still on the feel of Zach’s arms around me, but I’d learned to deal with my stupid attraction to my best friend with other methods, so I skipped it.

  I dressed in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt in the bathroom. I really had no desire to strut around naked in front of Zach, who had a much more toned body than I ever would, since his seemed to be natural.

  “Shower’s all yours, if you want it.”

  He didn’t look up from whatever he was reading on his laptop, but I did notice he had changed from his contacts to his black-framed glasses. “I think you probably used up our allotment for the night.”

  I winced. “Yeah, sorry. I got a little carried away. Is the door locked?” My glance went to the bedroom door.

  “Of course.” Zach scooted over on the bed and patted the space he’d just made for me. “You’re too tense.”

  I sat on the edge, a little away from him, not wanting to be too close, but Zach would have none of that. He just scooted closer as he knelt on the bed next to me, his e-mail discarded for the moment.

  “You need a massage.”

  “A massage?” I asked skeptically.

  “Relax, Lawler. I’m going to massage your muscles, not harvest your brain,” Zach said, sounding amused.

  I wrinkled my nose. “You smell like cigarettes.”

  “I brushed my teeth.” His long, strong, capable fingers grasped my shoulders as he began to knead.

  I let out a hiss.

  “You’re really tight,” he murmured.

  And I tried not to hear any innuendos there.

  Zach tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. “Take this off.”

  I didn’t know if that was such a good idea. “Zach—”

  But he was already yanking it up my torso toward my arms, and I found myself lifting them to let him pull the shirt off over my head. Once more his hands were on my shoulders, squeezing. I sucked in a breath.

  “Still sore?”

  “Yeah.” That seemed like a better thing to admit to than that his hands on me were working another kind of magic. I could feel my cock getting hard.

  His hands moved to my shoulder blades and then the middle of my back. “Should have brought my oils.”

  That’s right. Zach had been a massage therapist years ago when he was still in law school. That was how he had paid for much of it. Not that he’d ever given me a massage back then. He’d always claimed he didn’t give out freebies. “You still keep oils?”

  “Mm-hmm. Comes in handy.”

  “Handy for what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh.” I exhaled. “Sex.”

  “Foreplay,” Zach said. “You’d be surprised how many guys like massages.”

  “Not really. You have amazing hands.” That certainly explained why I never got the freebies.

  “Glad you think so,” he murmured, and I suddenly realized his mouth was very close to my ear.

  I fought a shiver even as his kneading hands moved down the middle of my back to the lower area. Almost of their own free will, my eyelids lowered and a raspy moan escaped my lips. God he really was good at this. Why hadn’t I ever gotten one of these before? Oh yeah. No freebies. And anyway, bad idea with a capital B. And to remind me of that, I realized my dick was now totally hard and pressing against the slit in my pajama bottoms.

  “You should relax more,” Zach said. “You’re beautiful like this.”

  My eyes flew open at that. Had Zach just called me beautiful? Wait. Had he said massages were foreplay? I moistened my suddenly dry lips with my tongue.

  “Uh, Zach?”

  “Mick.”

  “You-you wouldn’t be, by any chance, trying to seduce me, would you?” I knew I sounded like an idiot. But my heart was pounding and I just had to ask.

  Zach’s hot breath fanned across my skin. “What do you think?”

  This time I couldn’t prevent the shiver. “We don’t do that.”

  I felt his lips graze my ear. “Why not?”

  I swallowed. I couldn’t believe he was seriously asking me that. Or that he was doing this. “We’re friends. Only. Always have been.”

  “Time for a change.” His teeth nipped at my jaw. “Don’t you think?”

  “Do you?” That squeak couldn’t have come from me.

  “Obviously.” His hands were on my shoulders, turning me and then lowering me to lie flat on the bed. I watched his gaze slide from my face down to the quite prominent bulge in my pajama bottoms. “I think you concur, counselor.”

  “Zach,” I started to protest, my voice coming out as a plea instead.

  He hovered over me now, bracing himself on his arms on either side of my head. Those chocolate-colored eyes were focused solely on me, their intensity stealing my breath, as he lowered his mouth to just inches from mine. I heard the vague thud of the laptop falling from the bed, but neither of us even turned our heads.

  “Let’s not talk about it, Mick. Let’s just do it.”

  It was like he was the devil himself, all hot sexy sin tempting me to take a bite of the apple. And fuck, I wanted to do exactly that.

  He leaned even closer, his face, his jaw touching mine. His Italian heritage meant he was covered in a very dark five-o’clock shadow. His glasses were gone, and I wondered when he’d gotten rid of them.

  “Tell me you want me,” Zach ordered. And there was no doubt to my submissive self that was exactly what it was. His command.

  As I opened my mouth to reply, he pressed his body into mine and I felt the hard ridge of his own obvious erection.

  “I want you,” I whispered. But I couldn’t stop the doubts from crowding my brain. Were we going to be friends with benefits? Could I even handle that? “Zach—”

  “After.” His hands spread out over my ribcage on either side of me, causing my whole body to quake with need. “How long as it really been, Mick?”

  “I don’t keep track,” I insisted, even as I watched his thumb head for my right nipple.

  He chuckled, warm and low. “You keep track.”

  His thumb flicked at my nipple, and I groaned, my hips rising, trying to feel more of him. So far he hadn’t kissed me, though he’d come close, and I wondered if maybe he didn’t kiss his lovers. Or if he did, maybe he wouldn’t kiss me because we were friends.

  I opened my mouth to ask when Zach took that opportunity to push down on me and slip his tongue into my mouth and down my throat. My lungs seized with the loss of air, and I didn’t even care, because Zach was kissing me like he could just devour me. Even in my wildest fantasies I hadn’t imagined this.

  He had amazing lips, perfectly shaped to be both masculine and sensual, and they were not just warm but hot. I lifted my hands up to his head, threading my fingers in his dark hair and holding him to me. I didn’t want him to stop kissing me.

  I felt his hands move down to the waistband of my pajama bottoms before dipping down beneath the material to grasp my ass. His hands were hot, too, as they squeezed my cheeks.

  Zach broke the kiss long enough to let me catch my breath e
ven as he whispered, “Wanna fuck you.”

  And Jesus, if those weren’t the finest three words I’d ever heard.

  But I didn’t have anything with me. No condoms, no lube. Nothing. And why would I have? This occurrence hadn’t ever crossed my mind. Not really.

  “I don’t have anything,” I reluctantly admitted, trying to quash my own disappointment.

  But he just gave me his amused smirk. “Luckily one of us was a Boy Scout.”

  I watched, bemused, as he rose from the bed and went over to his suitcase, which he’d left in the closet. A moment later he returned with a condom package and a bottle of lube.

  “You were never a Boy Scout.”

  He grinned. “Well, no. But I’m prepared like one.”

  “Do you always carry condoms and lube?” I hated asking. Because I knew what he was like, and really, why did I want confirmation of that? But the words were out before I could stop them.

  Zach shrugged. “I keep a supply in my suitcase at all times. No point in unpacking them.”

  He slid the jeans he still wore down his legs and to the floor. He’d removed his shirt when he’d gone to get the condom. Zach was a little on the thin side, but his abs and arms were still defined and the hair on his chest was black and thick.

  Next he slipped off the brick-red boxer briefs he’d been wearing, exposing his large, cut, erect cock. It was thicker than mine but perhaps a little shorter. He knelt on the bed. “Now, are you going to spend time worrying about where I came up with these, or are we gonna fuck?”

  The analytical lawyer in me wanted to keep talking. I wanted to know where we were going, if anywhere, before I got to this point. This was the reason I didn’t do one-night stands, after all.

  He was staring at me, though, with those intense dark eyes furrowed under those way-too-sexy eyebrows, and I knew whatever protests I should be making wouldn’t be made. Not now.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  Zach gave me a sinful smile that had just a touch of relief behind it. I was pretty sure Zach hated talking things out.

  “How do you want me?”

  He angled his head this way and that even as he tore open the condom package. “Stomach.”

  With a nod, I turned over to lie on my stomach, spreading my legs out in anticipation. I watched him rolling the rubber onto his dick.

  “Eyes front, Lawler.”

  My submissive tendencies had me immediately obeying, my gaze now aimed at the headboard of the bed.

  He slapped my right ass cheek. “Get these off. Why are they still on you?”

  I rose up just enough to push the pajama bottoms down my body, and then I kicked them off with my legs. A little awkwardly, no doubt. My bid to look temptingly sexy surely failed.

  Zach was smirking at my expense, but he said nothing. Just smoothed his hands over my now naked butt.

  I couldn’t help but voice my doubts. “It’s a little weird, isn’t it?”

  His thumbs massaged into my lower back just above my buttocks. “Hmm?”

  “You with your hands on me.”

  Zach gazed down at me. “How is it weird?”

  I tried to think how to explain to him without giving a hint to how much my heart was invested in him. “Just…we’ve been friends for years, and we’ve never done this. And now with us here, at my sister’s, under kind of odd circumstances, it’s just weird.” Maybe it was just me. “Right?”

  “Just because we never have doesn’t mean we can’t.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Seriously, Mick. What was that HR crap they made us train on at the firm? Be here now,” Zach quoted. “I think it applies to us. Can you maybe think about me?”

  I bit my lip and nodded, burying my face into the pillow in front of me. I heard the squick of the flip top of the bottle being lifted. At his throaty chuckle, I raised my head and tried to look over at him. He shook his head, smiling. “I’m not about to murder you. Relax.”

  He was right, of course. I was being way too weird. But he had no clue just how much I was into him. And here he was, his hands on me, about to lube up my ass. In my sister’s house, no less. Could I really be blamed for being tense?

  I closed my eyes and once more buried my face as I waited for him to prepare me. Every sound in the otherwise quiet room made me anxious. I knew he was squirting lube onto his fingers, and I couldn’t help wondering if they’d feel cold or warm inside me.

  Zach’s hands rested on the crack of my ass, then slowly spread my cheeks. Just the tip of his finger tapped around the puckered ring of my entrance. I was already quivering with anticipation or need, I wasn’t sure which, but maybe even a mixture of both.

  “More,” I urged.

  I was greeted with his low chuckle again, but he pushed his index in up to the first knuckle. It really had been a while since I’d had sex, and the intrusion of something as small as his finger burned like hell.

  Zach stopped his finger’s descent when I hissed. “Bad?”

  I licked my suddenly dry lips. “No. Just…I need a moment. Or two.”

  He nodded. “Just say when.”

  I bowed my head, trying to relax and not focus too much on how absurd this probably was. I exhaled. “All right.”

  Zach wiggled his finger inside me, and I was happy it no longer burned.

  “You could try another,” I suggested.

  “Very well.” He sounded very serious, and I dared to take a peek at him, craning my neck in his direction. He arched his eyebrows at me, and I was half-expecting some kind of sarcastic remark, but instead he just inserted another finger inside me.

  I moaned and pushed my face into the pillow in front of me, spreading my legs farther apart to give him better access to prepare me.

  “You have a great ass, Mick. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “A time or two.”

  “Well, it’s an ass to be worshipped.” Zach grabbed a hunk of my right cheek and squeezed.

  “Hey!”

  “Poor little princess,” he said with a chuckle. “Let me kiss it and make it better.” I felt his lips briefly on my cheek, but almost immediately Zach sank his teeth in.

  “Did you just bite me?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.” Zach pushed his fingers deeper into me, drawing out a long, keening moan I could not stop.

  “Fuck.”

  “Oh, very soon, Mick. Very soon.”

  I waited for him to maybe put a third finger in me, but instead the two he did have in me slipped out. I turned to look at him again and saw that he was now poised between my cheeks, his thick cock slanted downward. I swallowed my nervousness and faced front once more. I could do this. I was not a virgin or some young teenager with a crush. Nope. I was an adult lawyer. With a crush on my best friend, who was about to fuck me. I can do this, I repeated in my head.

  Zach pushed my legs into a position so that I knelt on the bed, spread open. His hands were on my hipbones, almost but not quite digging in. He lowered himself until he was just hovering above me. I waited.

  “Jesus, Zach, are you going to get on with it or what?”

  There was that warm chuckle that nearly curled my toes. I closed my eyes.

  With frustrating slowness that nearly had me screaming my head off, the head of Zach’s cock breached me. I blew out a breath as my muscles loosened to accept more of his shaft as it slid farther inside. My fists clenched the pillow beneath my face as he pushed deeper still until it almost seemed impossible for him to get more into me.

  “Relax, babe,” Zach whispered.

  I wasn’t sure how relaxed I could be with him calling me endearments, but I decided to try. He probably used them for every one of his string of lovers. It didn’t make me special. In fact, it made me the same, which was quite depressing.

  A slap on my side brought me up short. “You aren’t relaxing. Get out of your head and into your body.”

  It made some sort of weird sense in an existential sense, so I tried to
forget the head games I played with myself and concentrated on the cock stuffed inside me. I exhaled slowly, and my muscles eased, letting him shove his dick in until he bottomed out.

  I heard a shuddered breath come from Zach, which weirdly made me feel triumphant. I liked affecting him. I released the grip I still had on my pillow and managed to ease my hand between me and the bed to close my fist around my own cock. It had deflated just a little when Zach first entered me, but it perked right up at the attention it now received. I rose up on my knees just a bit more, both to get a better grasp of my shaft and to give Zach better access to the hole he was even now beginning to plunge over and over.

  It was glorious.

  Every time he nailed my prostate, I let out a moan I couldn’t contain. My fist tightened around my dick, pulling it in long, rough strokes.

  “Oh fuck. Zach.”

  His hands tightened on my hipbones as he pulled almost all the way out before slamming all the way in. It had been so long since I’d been fucked so deep, so thoroughly, and maybe never quite this good, that I knew I was babbling incoherently, and probably being way too loud, so I buried my face in the pillow, biting into it to prevent my cries. I didn’t hear the bed creaking too much as he pumped into me, but I hoped it didn’t sound louder from other parts of the house.

  Zach’s thrusts had become so powerful he was pushing me against the headboard, and my hand slipped briefly off my cock as I was pressed down hard into the mattress. The friction against my already supercharged dick had me screaming into the pillow.

  Zach leaned over me, pushing in deep. His right hand threaded through my hair and then twisted the strands between his thumb and forefinger, yanking my head back.

  My limbs felt heavy, and I struggled not to collapse under his weight as once, twice, three times he pumped into me, biting my back as he came silently, his arm wrapping around my torso tightly as he quaked inside me.

  Zach shifted us until he lay on his side, still embedded in me. He pulled me close and then batted my hand away from my cock, replacing it with his. It didn’t take long before I was shaking with my orgasm, spurting my seed all over his fingers and the sheets beneath us.

  I was barely aware when he slipped out of me and rose from the bed. He returned with a warm, damp cloth he wiped me down with, then disappeared into the bathroom again.