Friends with Benefits

by Margot Radcliffe

  Then her legs were being held and he was opening up her folds from his position behind her, letting the cool air flow over her heat. His tongue was on her, separating, exploring, excavating her from the inside out. He sucked at her clit, the first time any real attention had been paid to it, and she cried out, the bud engorged and inflamed.

  Sensation radiated outward like a warning signal, waves of electric need streaming out over her body. He tongued her, treating each side of her clit to the same torture, but the angle was so different from what she was used to, the new intimacy, knowing what he could see made her even wetter. He bit gently, his fingers digging into her hips, and she flew over the cliff at warp speed, shaking with the weight of her own pleasure.

  He was moving behind her again and entered her with one clean thrust. Carter was big, and in the back of her mind, where it still worked on some level and wasn’t completely buzzed out in a blissful haze, she was kicking herself for not doing this sooner. But that was her last thought, because he was jackhammering into her, the walls of her insides clinging and begging for the rough pressure of him, addicted to the width and texture and weight of his cock.

  After two orgasms, her slickness was on her thighs, on the thatch of hair as he pounded into her. They were one sexual being now, instead of Carter and Alexa living separately. He was part of her, part of this hungry beast that couldn’t get enough.

  A hand went to her hair, tugging gently. It sent her so close to the edge she was basically hanging there by a manicured fingernail.

  He hit that spot again and she hurtled toward paradise, crying out as she contracted around him.

  He wasn’t far behind, body spasming in four hard jerks.

  Their shared breathing was the only sound in the dark room as they came down from the high. With a soft caress down her spine, he slid gently out of her. Familiar hands unclipped her wrists and removed the blindfold.

  Turning onto her back, she gazed up at him, barely believing that the man who had indeed delivered the best sex of her life was Carter Hayes, her best friend and roller of clothing. She knew it was because he wasn’t just a guy she was dating. It had been good because he was hers and she was his in all the ways that mattered. And that was more than she’d been willing to admit before.

  “Hi,” he said, meeting her eyes.

  She grinned up at him. “Yeah, I’d say that was one hell of an introduction.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS LATE when Alexa finally got home from work, already completely dark outside. The smell of Carter’s house welcomed her instantly; bright and woody spices wafted from the kitchen and made her mouth water.

  She’d seen Carter only briefly this morning on his way out the door so they hadn’t had time to touch on all the sex, but it had been pretty damn epic. The fact that it had been with Carter was problematic because she wasn’t going to continue with her regularly scheduled life knowing what things were like with him. But it wasn’t as if she and Carter could casually date each other now that they’d had sex either. They were best friends who were technically married and now they had a physical relationship. That was some real-as-fuck emotional entanglement that she wasn’t equipped for.

  She just didn’t know what life looked like if she fucked up her friendship with Carter. Except lonely. And she’d been so lonely for so long after her parents died. What had been a house full of laughter and noise when she was growing up had so quickly gone quiet after her parents’ death. Her uncle had been a single man who was away a lot and Alexa was just alone all the time. Beyond the devastation of her parents being gone, what she feared now were all the hours of silence and solitude without Carter. He’d always known how to cheer her up, bring her out of that place.

  Not that it mattered either way since he was leaving. A fact that she kept trying to push away, but was creeping up as each day passed. Her insides were already shredded up like an old napkin by it.

  Entering the kitchen, she stopped when she saw Carter at the stove, stirring a medium-sized pot with a wooden spoon. He was barefoot in a pair of gray jogging pants and a T-shirt, his glasses slightly foggy from the steam rising from the pot. He looked sexy as hell, and she wondered if she’d have to make the first move again or if they could just go at it. She didn’t know that anyone had cooked her a meal before and the fact that he was doing it sent a heat wave through her.

  But it also made her feel at home, like this was where she belonged even though she knew it wasn’t real. Within the course of a second she’d gone from wanting to jump him to nearly bawling right there in his kitchen at the thought of losing this in her life.

  He spotted her in the doorway staring at him like a lunatic who’d never experienced human emotions before.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Long day?”

  “Not any longer than usual. You?”

  He held up a razor-thin chrome laptop on the island. “Technically still at work.”

  All things considered, he didn’t look as happy as he should be considering what they’d done last night. And again early this morning. Had it meant something different to him? She wasn’t one for having the “where is this going” talk, but maybe she needed to check in with him just to make sure they were on the same page.

  “You okay?” she asked. “Did I take advantage of you last night?”

  He snorted and raised an eyebrow.

  “Seriously,” she pressed. “You look mad.”

  “I’m pissed off,” he allowed, but he didn’t elaborate.

  “At me?”

  He shook his head and she felt a measure of relief that they were cool. “Some douchebag in my company leaked code for a new product to our biggest competitor and now the new office might be in jeopardy.”

  “So you think this other company can go to market faster than you with your code?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, shouldn’t you hack their system or something and steal your property back?” That’s what would happen in the movies, anyway.

  “It won’t matter if we get it finished before they do if ours is better,” he finished, apparently deciding against breaking the law. He poured her a glass of Chianti. “Besides, they won’t finish as fast as we can. It’s just an irritation.”

  She took a sip of the wine he’d placed on the island in front of her. “Are we having Italian?”

  He nodded. “Bolognese.”

  “Sounds delicious,” she purred, hoping a little flirtation might take his mind off his problem and lighten the mood. They had had sex last night and while she wasn’t in a big hurry to hash it out with him in any meaningful way, she would have liked it if he’d at least acknowledge it. He’d said he’d wanted it since he was fifteen and now they were talking about spaghetti and work? It just wasn’t what she’d expected.

  He filled two plates with pasta and pulled some bread out of the oven, completely ignoring her invitation.

  She met his eyes, her suspicion suddenly growing. “You hate cooking. Is something going on?”

  “First of all, spaghetti is hardly cooking. But yes, there is something we have to talk about that you won’t like.”

  “Well, after producing five orgasms last night, there’s really not going to be a better time for you to bring it up.”

  She expected a reaction to that, but got nothing from him except a muscle twitch in his jaw. So, he didn’t want to talk about last night in any capacity. That was fine by her. Or at least she thought it was, but she felt like he could at least say something along the lines of, it was the best sex of his life, thank you for your patronage, your body was the stuff of dreams. Anything was better than this.

  “I spoke to my board this morning and of course, they were preoccupied with the fact that I’d gotten married. Considering the leak, they think it’s best if we stay married for now.”

  Her attention snapped back
at “stay married for now.” “Oh. So we can’t get an annulment.”

  “We can,” he allowed. “Just not right now.”

  “So longer than the month we’d originally planned to be engaged?”

  “A monthlong marriage doesn’t look good, no.”

  She fell silent, not sure what to make of this news. “This is what your board wants?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this what you want?” She both wanted the answer to that question and didn’t. Of course, she didn’t want to be married to Carter through their own absentminded blundering on paperwork, but whatever angst she was supposed to feel at being accidentally married to him was strangely absent. She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but if someone had told her a month ago that she’d actually be married to Carter she would have flipped out. But she wasn’t. Not that she wanted to stay married, but being tied to Carter wasn’t sending her screaming in the other direction, either.

  “I don’t want to be married to anyone against their will, but I also want to open the San Francisco office.”

  She sprinkled some Parmesan cheese onto her plate, staring out his French doors onto his terrace and the moonlight reflecting off his pool.

  “Do you realize that we’re legally married now?” she asked. “Like, actually married.”

  “It had crossed my mind,” Carter said wryly, taking a seat at the end of the island.

  She gave him a small grin. “I guess somebody had to be my first husband.” That some deep part of her had assumed Carter would be her last husband remained unsaid.

  He laughed, shaking his head.

  They ate in silence until his phone rang and he left the room for several minutes as she poked at the pasta, waiting for him to return.

  When he came back, he looked even more bothered and started typing furiously at his computer.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Our internal network was almost hacked. We’re locking it down.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “You could clean up dinner while I deal with this? You know I hate old food smells.”

  She did indeed know that about him and she would get on it as quickly as possibly because she’d never seen such a stressed-out look on Carter’s face. Something bad was happening.

  Sitting a beer beside him on the island, she got to work. She scooped up the leftover pasta into a glass container and put it in the fridge, then loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. By the time she’d gotten out the disinfectant to wash down the counters, he’d gone back up to his office.

  For over an hour after changing into yoga pants and a sweatshirt, Alexa sat outside Carter’s office. She listened as he barked instructions that sounded as if they were in a different language to his employees while she read news and thumbed through social media on her phone. Mostly, though, she thought again about the fact that she was married, really married. It wasn’t a state she thought she was even ready for, let alone to Carter. That it wasn’t real didn’t make it any less problematic because what she and Carter were to each other was extremely real. The realest, most tangible thing in her life.

  She listened as he fixed the problem for the company he loved. A company that made her life easier—a fact that had never been lost on her. Carter was a man who, when she’d told him about employees stealing from her, had come up with a program to catch them and then built an empire. It had all started with him wanting to help her out. Remembering that made everything very clear to her because she wanted Carter to have everything he wanted, and if that included moving to San Francisco without her, that’s what he should do.

  And that’s why she needed to end the marriage. To set Carter free once and for all. A tiny voice inside her head called her a liar. She accepted that it wasn’t completely selfless of her and that it saved her from taking that final crucial step into a real relationship with him, but it was better for both of them in the long run.

  Also, the child in her that dreamed of a perfect, magical wedding was screaming to get out of this as soon as possible. She’d imagined wearing a white dress and walking down the aisle with her dad. Not that she’d really ever have that dream wedding, since her dad obviously wasn’t there. Their sham wedding was just one of many milestones her parents had missed in her life, but that memory she never allowed herself to have anymore was resurfacing now and she just had to get out of this.

  Carter finally appeared in his office doorway looking exhausted and strung out.

  “Fixed?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s going to be an ongoing fight apparently.”

  She smiled. “Isn’t it always?”

  It would be a dick move for her bring up the annulment now when he looked like death warmed over. She decided it could wait until tomorrow.

  “Have you been sitting here the entire time?”

  She nodded. Quiet and stillness seemed to blanket them in the dark house. Only the light from his office illuminated them in the hallway.

  He was looking at her strangely.

  “We can’t stay married,” she blurted. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve just been thinking about it and I just can’t do it. I’ve been sitting here feeling sorry for myself that I had a wedding and my parents weren’t there and even I don’t remember it.”

  His held tilted and he held out his hand to help her up. “Come on, let’s go get a drink and talk this out.”

  “Do we have to?” she asked. This was why she never talked about her parents with anyone. Because it opened up “a conversation.” Her entire past was brought into the present again as if she could never escape the weight of it.

  “Yes, Alexa,” Carter told her, his voice dry. “It’s what adults do when they have a problem.”

  They took the steps together and when they made it to the kitchen he passed her a bottle of her favorite beer that she noticed had been stocked in the fridge. Yet another example of his thoughtfulness was not what she needed right now.

  “That wasn’t your real wedding, you know that, right? It was Kaylee and Bruce’s wedding. I’m not sure I understand the problem.”

  “If we stay married that was our real wedding,” she told him.

  Carter swallowed his beer. “But you don’t want to stay married, so we won’t.”

  Alexa ran her hands through her hair, agitated. How could she fucking explain that the thought of being married was like a vise around her neck. She felt immobile and trapped, but there was no way to say that to him without it sounding like she hated him. “I just don’t want to be married, Carter. I shouldn’t have to explain it.”

  His whole body tensed as he stared her down. “You’re really doing this now?”

  She tried not to cringe. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about this. “I didn’t think I was going to, but I couldn’t not do it now.”

  He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “So you’re reneging on our earlier deal to stay married.”

  “I guess so. Yeah.”

  Lockjawed, he pulled out his phone, scrolled to something, then held up the phone’s face to her. As he drank his beer down, she watched a video of her begging him to get married at the altar of the Blue Angel Chapel. Saw him back off and try to talk her out of it, but she badgered him until he kissed her, and that was the part of the video she’d already seen.

  “So what?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I was drunk!”

  “You just saw me working upstairs for over three hours on an additional problem unrelated to the one I shared with you earlier and you’re going to fuck me over like this?”

  “What does it matter if we’re married or not? Your company still has the problems.”

  “It’s the optics, Alexa,” he gritted out. “I cannot get married and divorced within the same damn week! It makes me, and therefore my company, look unstable! Britney Spears i
s only a pop star and her quickie Vegas wedding and divorce is still the advent of her crazy.”

  “Oh, it’s just the press,” she dismissed. “Blame it on me, say whatever you want. Just give them a story that sounds good and I’ll corroborate it. You’re making too big a deal out of this.”

  He stood, his face red. “You’re such a goddamn coward, Alexa. I’ve fucking turned my whole life upside down for you to clean up your reputation and you can’t do me this fucking favor that you got us into in the first place? You’re an awful friend.”

  The last mark pierced her heart like a rusty knife, the wound messy and jagged.

  “Being married indefinitely was part of no plan that we had, Carter, and you know it. You’re pressing an unfair advantage here and I’m not some newb who will just take the first deal offered.”

  But he was finished fighting.

  “Cut the shit, Alexa,” he said. “Quit pretending that this has something to do with our agreement. This has to do with the fact that you’re scared as fuck that when you found out that we were married it wasn’t scary at all. It was the rightest thing you’ve ever fucking felt. Add in the best sex of our lives and you’re running at the first chance available.”

  “Oh, are you Dr. Phil now, just handing out pop psychology advice whenever you feel like it? Maybe you’re just pissed that I don’t want to stay married to you in the first place.”

  * * *

  Carter could barely remember a time that he’d been so angry, but it was probably at Alexa, too. Especially because he knew he was right. If he was afraid of being married and what their physical relationship meant, she had to be absolutely terrified. Between the two of them, there was only one emotionally well-adjusted person in the room and it wasn’t the one who’d just claimed that her reason for wanting an annulment was about a dream wedding.

  But he wasn’t a fool, and knew there was no arguing with her when she’d only dig her very high heels in. Which was just fine with him, because he was so fucking tired of talking.