I buck up beneath her, growing more aware of what we’re doing—wrestling—and what it means—motherfucking foreplay, ma’am—and I advance toward her on the couch, swatting at her hands, darting my fingers between her arms to tickle her ribs, and, with my other hand, grab a pillow from behind her and use it to hit her right in the face.
She shoves—hard—sending me off the couch and onto the floor, where she dives onto me, pinning me, wrestling in earnest. We’re laughing and yelling and one of us knocks the sleeve of Ritz crackers to the floor and it crunches under her shoulder when I roll over to hover above her, getting the upper hand and finding the place on her waist that, when prodded with a long finger, makes her wail in hysterics.
She smacks my hand when my tickles get too close to her boob, and scream-calls me a pervert so I bend down and blow an enormous raspberry right into where her neck meets her shoulder.
London shrieks even louder, and holy fuck, I am deaf. I clamp a hand over my ear, working to fight off her relentlessly tickling hands with only my left hand as defense.
We seem to realize at the same time that I’m over her, lying completely on top of her and situated between her legs and, in unison, we both freeze. I’d climb off her if she didn’t have two tight fistfuls of my shirt in her hands and if her eyes weren’t currently traveling the slow path from my stomach to my face.
It feels like I count to a hundred in the time it takes for either of us to breathe.
Finally, I feel the slide of her legs up my hips. Feel the give of her body beneath mine, and am suddenly, intensely aware of that soft, warm place between her legs. Her eyes have gone wide and I watch as they make their way back down my face, stopping at my mouth.
“Logan?”
She sucks her lower lip into her mouth to keep from smiling.
I press forward, not much but just enough to feel more, the gentle heat of her. Her eyes grow heavy, mouth goes slack, and I watch a pink blush creep up her chest. In the span of one of her tight breaths I go from half hard to desperate for her.
“Luke.”
“Fuck,” I growl, bending and pressing my mouth to her neck as I start to rock against her.
I nearly come at the sound she makes, that soft, restrained cry, and I’m fucking her through my clothes, through hers, sucking and licking her skin, just insane to be with her like this.
My need for her ratchets up, climbing from this heated infatuation to something more, something that traps my lungs, threatens to break me.
“I missed this,” I say into her skin. “Fuck, I missed this. The feel of you . . .”
Three rough grinds in and her hands are on my chest, sliding down and over my pecs to the hem of my shirt, where she makes fists in the cotton again.
She could pull it up and off me in a single tug.
I can feel her reaching the fork in the road, and then she hesitates, going still under me. “Luke. Wait. Wait.”
I stop moving, closing my eyes where my face is pressed into her neck.
No. Please.
She pushes at my hips with her fists still around my shirt, pushing me away from her. More than the desperate tension in my body, my heart feels like it might tie itself into a knot.
“We can’t,” she says through a tight exhale. “We shouldn’t.”
I push up off her, sitting back on my heels and watching her scramble to her feet.
“Sorry,” I say. I fucking mean it, too. I know she’s not into me that way, and I keep pushing.
“No, I’m sorry,” she says. “It was me.”
Her hand comes out, gesturing for mine, and I wave it away, pushing myself to stand.
“Ugh, this is awkward,” I say in a quiet growl.
Laughing, she says, “No . . .” in a way that totally means yes.
I don’t really know what to do with myself now. I look to the side, feeling her discomfort and drowning in it.
We look back at each other at the same time. “Do you think we should talk about . . . ?” I ask, trailing off.
“Um, no,” she says, horrified. “I had a moment of weakness, it won’t happen again.”
A moment of weakness? As in, she sort of wants this? “But what if I want to talk?”
“What’s there to say?” she says, shrugging helplessly.
“Just . . .” I pull my thoughts together, sitting down on the couch. “Okay, look. Even when we’re just friends, the fact that we’ve slept together is always hanging between us. I feel it in every second we’re together, and I’m lying if I say I don’t.”
“I figured of anyone you’d be good at pretending it didn’t happen,” she jokes, but it falls flat.
This totally fucking stings, and I let her see it on my face. “Well, I’m not.”
Nodding, she says, “Okay. Sorry.”
“And I know you think I’m a total player—and maybe I deserve that—but I’ve only been with one person since you and—”
“That’s, like, one month, Luke.”
I laugh. “I know, but someday maybe I’ll tell you about how comically horrible it was.” She starts to ask, but I cut her off. “The point is, I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. And it requires reflection, which is sort of new for me . . .” I trail off, feeling like I owe her the chance to make a smart remark, but I’m actually relieved when she doesn’t.