by JC Harroway
Oliver is quiet, so rare an occurrence I’m terrified to look down in case I still have my Rabbit in my hand or I forgot to re-don my bikini bottoms. I tense, my back aflame with the thought of his eyes on me, exactly the scenario I wanted when I purchased this teeny tiny excuse for a bikini.
I spin in a tentative arc to face him.
He’s still laid out on my bed like a sacrificial lamb, still propped up on his elbows like some male pin-up, only now he’s looking at me with a puzzled expression. Only Oliver could pull off that face and still look entirely fuckable.
‘What?’ I demand, in no mood for the usual teasing banter we share.
‘Nothing,’ he says, his jaw slack. ‘It’s just...’
His eyes stay on mine, but I look down anyway in case one nipple has made a bid for freedom. But no, I’m good.
‘Why are you staring?’ Perhaps the sexual frustration is pasted all over my hot face.
‘I’m not. I mean...it’s nothing. It’s just that...you look good in red, that’s all.’
That’s all? I deflate. I want to cry and laugh in the same breath. I want him to scour every inch of my body with his sexy stare. I want him helpless to look away. Helpless against the transformation into my daydream Oliver, who would have stripped me naked and been rattling the headboard by now.
I snort. Move towards the mirror, where I pretend to tweak my messy hair that’s caught up in a topknot, while my body tingles with awareness that I’m scantily clad, alone in a room with the object of my every adult desire.
‘Thanks,’ I say in my best unruffled tone, forcing my muscles to relax. My head spins and I talk my overactive imagination back from the ledge. Olly—despite his infamous reputation with women—is a gentleman. He’s always complimenting me when I dress up, or cheering me on when I crack a tricky case at work. Just as I listen to his work woes about his tech company, even though I don’t understand a word. But that’s what friends do. Support one another. He doesn’t mean anything by his comment. Certainly not what I’d like him to mean.
‘Are you wearing sunscreen?’ I ask to cover my full-body meltdown because, where I turn lobster-pink before returning to pasty, Oliver tans to a deep bronze almost overnight. So not fair.
‘Yes, Mum.’ He grins.
I toss my tube of factor fifty at him, sighing when he sits up and catches it in one hand with lightning reflexes. See? Good at everything...
‘Ha ha,’ I quip. ‘You can do my back.’
No! Fuck...why did I ask him to do that? His hands on me...touching...with my aroused state heightened and my orgasm interrupted. Not a good idea.
‘I will.’ He drops the tube onto the bed and leans back on his hands, arms straight. ‘First tell me why you’re testy. You’re on holiday too. You’re supposed to be relaxing.’
How can I relax when I’m on high alert for any sign he might’ve noticed me in a sexual way, or when I’m just waiting for him to hook up with one of the wedding guests right in front of me? It’s happened before. He wasn’t a dick about it, giving said woman enough breadcrumbs to keep her keen while also attending to me, the friend he brought along as his plus one. But the next morning the smug look on his face told me she’d miraculously found her way to his room once we’d said goodnight.
‘I am relaxed,’ I say, grimacing past my clenched jaw.
‘You don’t seem relaxed.’ Amusement tinges his tone. ‘You’ve put lip gloss on three times. Without wearing your glasses.’
Sometimes it sucks that friends know you so well... I cast him a glare, something so rare it seems to shock both of us.
‘I’m fine,’ I bite out, desperately trying to blank out the pact I made with Brooke and Grace—to orchestrate a holiday fling with Oliver. I should just embrace a bloody dating app. At least then I could vet prospective boyfriends from the comfort of my pyjamas. Instead I’m standing here dithering over the merits of actually confessing my feelings of lust to Oliver versus spending the rest of my life always wondering.
At my lame assurance, Oliver flops back down onto the bed in disgust. I ignore him. Continue with my rant, because it’s his fault I’m in this state.
‘I just...needed a few minutes to myself,’ I say, huffing. ‘I told you I’d meet you by the pool. Plus my bikini seems to have shrunk since I tried it on in the shop, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t have any tan lines showing.’ I pace to my suitcase and find my sarong, then knot it around my waist. Makeshift body armour.
‘It’s all right for you guys,’ I continue. ‘You can just throw on a pair of shorts and parade around in all your manly, hairy glory, attracting stares of appreciation from the opposite sex...’
He’s fidgeting, another of his annoying habits I find attractive. Damn, everything he does appeals to my libido, but now I’ve started it’s as if my sexual frustration has discovered an oral pressure valve.
‘But us women, we have to wax shit and plump stuff and squeeze our bodies into ridiculous, minute fashion statements...’ I grab my mascara and slick a layer over my stubby upper lashes. I locate my glasses, push them on and check my mascara. I’m happy with me. Mostly. I’m an attractive, smart, bordering on a proud nerd with my own forensic-accounting business.
But I’m not done venting.
‘And you know how challenging it is running your own company,’ I say, wiping a smudge of black from my cheek. ‘I’ve had a very stressful week, with three new clients and meeting deadlines in order to have this week off. So forgive me if I can’t simply switch on the party girl just to keep you entertained.’
I can sense without turning around for confirmation that he’s stopped listening. But, instead of riling me further, his inattention deflates me. I’m being unfair. I’m not really angry with him. I’m frustrated with myself, at my continued inertia where he’s concerned, because maybe Brooke and Grace are right. Maybe I should have told him I fancied him the night we met. Maybe it’s time to tell him how I’ve felt about him all these years... At least then we could laugh about it, clear the air and move on.
My blood runs cold at the very idea. No. A swim in the ocean is what I need. Douse my hormones and reboot my mind-set to fun, holiday Neve.
‘Neve...? What’s this?’ he asks, with the rustle of a plastic bag.
‘Hmm?’ I mumble as I tackle my lower lashes with the mascara wand, a feat that requires a bizarre facial contortion while my glasses are perched on the end of my nose.
‘I said, what’s this?’ His voice has dropped several octaves to that smoky quality of all my filthiest fantasies.
But there’s no time to enjoy the sound.
I freeze.
The mascara wand hovers near my eyeball, ready to blind me with one false move.
No, no, no... Please, no.
I turn, horror a tight ball cramping my stomach.
Dangling from Oliver’s long, elegant and tanned index finger is my bag of sex toys.
CHAPTER TWO
Oliver
THE PLASTIC HANDLE digs into my fingertip, so monumentally weighted are the surprising contents. I swallow past my dry throat, my body heat rising as if I’ve sat too long in the sun. The minute I peeked inside the bag, Neve became a living, breathing sexual being in my mind. I’ve spent nine years avoiding thoughts of her that way. Thinking about sex and my best friend in the same head space...
Nope.
I’m not a masochist and that would have rendered our entire long relationship hellish. It’s bad enough that she’s amazing—kind, smart, funny. Plus, she just gets me. Hence, best friend.
The knock of my excited heart against my ribs mocks the boundaries I’ve used to keep our friendship intact. It’s too late to un-see the sex toys. Too late to switch off the torrent of erotic images featuring my astounding Neve and her gorgeous body.
I grit my teeth and keep my eyes away from the tiny red bikini I want to
rip off so I can complete the Neve jigsaw. The triangles of fabric concealing her best bits remind me I’m not supposed to wonder what she looks like naked. But my imagination is intent on torturing me.
I focus on her pretty, familiar face as the silence pulses around the room. She’s panting, flushed, realisation dawning. I stare into her eyes, because that bikini fried my brain the minute she stepped from the bathroom and I can’t think of a single non-sexual thing to say to my friend. At least this red offering is better—and by that I mean worse—than yesterday’s white one, which was hard enough to ignore. Or maybe she’s actually growing sexier day by day...
Of course, a gentleman would have ignored the bag on her bed. Even a degenerate would have discreetly closed it on discovering its contents. But I’ve been labelled worse—womaniser, lothario, playboy—my reputation is renowned. Just like my father’s.
More seconds, more silence.
Part of me wants her to deny that this bag of dildos and vibrators belongs to her, to say that she found them in the wardrobe, anything that might stop me imagining her using them. The very idea sets me on fire, balls first.
At last, she lifts her cute, slightly upturned nose in defiance. ‘It’s a bag.’ She crosses her arms under her breasts, pushing them up and accentuating her cleavage, all seen with my highly evolved peripheral vision. Because I’ve perfected looking indirectly at Neve’s forbidden zones.
I release a curse in my head for the thousandth time today and it’s only ten in the morning. I’ve seen her in a bikini before. What’s changed? Why am I struggling with the line, a heavily policed line I put in place nine years ago when I realised she was different and some smart corner of my primitive, immature brain decided to keep her as a friend? My first instinct was to shag her of course—she was striking, beautiful in that girl-next-door way, nerdy just like me and with a sense of humour dry and dark enough to make me forget all my troubles. Upon meeting her, my day went from shitty to ‘it’s going to be okay’. No mean feat, considering I’d just been through my one and only heartbreak and learned some valuable life and love lessons from my asshole father.
But despite fancying her I instantly knew she was too good for me—a messed up, commitment-phobic charmer with a bad reputation and an embarrassing family. I’d selfishly wanted her in my life, the act of keeping my hands off my proudest moment.
Of course, I’d tarnished my mature conduct by sleeping with Neve’s then-roommate that night, but I am the son of a rock-and-roll has-been.
‘Did you look inside?’ she says at last, her cheeks darkening while she waits for my answer.
‘I might have looked inside,’ I say, fighting the urge to smile, because this is serious. How will I spend the rest of the week, with her in those barely-there bikinis, knowing the intriguing and highly informative contents of this bag? Knowing the girl I made asexual in my head, to keep me sane, is all grown up and likes to play?
Damn, could she be any hotter?
I shift my hips, trying to get comfortable while my shorts garrotte my dick.
‘Okay, I lied,’ I say, giving free rein to my smile. ‘I definitely looked inside.’ I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know the lid to Pandora’s box has flown off with this discovery.
The idea of my beautiful, funny, sweet Neve using sex toys does strange and wonderful things to me. Dangerous things, because now I just want to get my hands, mouth and dick on her.
Will I ever be able to contain my desire for her again?
This is the first time I’ve seen her this naked while she’s been single. Since she dumped her latest serious, hoity-fucking-toity boyfriend who wasn’t good enough for her. What was his name... Liam? Yes, that’s it. I christened him Limp Liam.
Not that I’m good enough for her either. The opposite, in fact. Otherwise I wouldn’t be snooping in her bag of dildos more turned on than I’ve ever been in my life. For a woman who’s always been there for me, always believed in me, even when I didn’t value myself.
Finally snapping into action, Neve stamps closer. ‘Don’t mess around—you have no personal boundaries.’ She snatches the bag from my hand.
I grab the bottom of the bag in an immature game of tug-of-war, my fist curling around a phallic object inside.
‘You’ve always known I’m an arsehole—it’s genetics,’ I say, waggling my eyebrows. ‘Tell me, do you always travel with such an extensive toy collection?’ I don’t want to tease her, but it comes out dripping with playful challenge. Because that’s the way I’ve always skirted my attraction to her. But something inside me, the part seeing Neve in a whole new and sexy light, doesn’t want to play games. I want to know more about her sexual side.
And I always get what I want.
My blood thrills, hot and laced with adrenaline. She’s so close I can see the delicious flush of her neck and the tiny teardrop-shaped imperfection of her right pupil with which she was born with and that makes her uniquely Neve.
‘I’m not ashamed of my needs,’ she says, lifting her chin. It’s an adorable display of grit that’s at odds with her petite stature and freckled nose...and the fact that I know her so well I’m certain she’ll forgive me for this indiscretion. Damn, she’s so sweet. I fight a smile at the fact she’s wearing two pairs of glasses—her regular pair and her sunglasses perched on her head.
‘Quite bloody right.’ But now I’m incandescent with curiosity. Does she use them all? Every day? In the shower?
Bile hits the back of my throat—did she use them with Liam? Or with the dick-wad boyfriend before Liam—Tristan? Or, as I liked to call him, Tris Tosser? The one who disliked her girlfriends, Brooke and Grace, and suggested she try a carb-free diet... He’d been heading for a rendezvous with my fist, right before Neve dumped him.
Then it hits me, my lusty sluggish brain fitting the pieces together. The noise coming from the bathroom when I came in. It wasn’t an electric toothbrush.
My cock surges against the fabric of my shorts. If she happened to look down she’d see how inappropriately perverted I am. Lusting after my only true friend. The only person who knows the real me and all my fucked-up family bullshit. The only person to unconditionally, unselfishly care about me—not for my famous father or because I can get free tickets for his reunion tour.
My precious Neve.
But I can’t resist. I have to know.
‘Were you just using one of these? When I knocked on the door?’ I tilt my head towards the bathroom, my eyes burning with the effort of steering clear of her delicious body.
She flushes a deeper shade of puce. ‘I might have been—your timing sucks, by the way.’ She snatches the bag free of my grasp and tosses it into her open suitcase. ‘I’ve been single for way too long.’ She braces one hand on the curve of her hip. ‘In fact, I’ve finally downloaded that dating app Brooke recommends. After eight months, it’s time to get back out there.’
She over-talks when she’s nervous. But this little nugget of information is like a slap in the head. Neve’s past boyfriends have all graduated from the school of Serious Boring Fuckers—or the SBF Club, as I like to call it—but at least she met them in person, got to know them, dated them for a while before making it official. Not that any of them had particularly taken to me, of course, even though I was no threat—I’ve never laid one finger on her in a sexual way. A few of her exes even tried to break up our friendship or insinuate themselves into it by throwing a sister or cousin at me in the hopes the four of us could double date.
‘What...?’ I drop my voice from the squeaky pleading that tries to escape. ‘Dating apps aren’t the way to go. I know. I’ve used them.’ As far as I’m aware, she’s not into one-night stands. She’ll be eaten alive in the shark tank of the dating app scene. She’s way too kind and sweet.
‘Why not?’ She holds eye contact, waiting for my explanation, but my brain is still mush from the knowledge that I interr
upted my sexy goddess friend taking care of business with a battery-operated phallus.
My flesh-and-blood phallus throbs.
‘Because...’ Comprehension kicks in. She’s back on the market. Actively seeking the next wanker who’ll probably wind up hurting or disappointing her. I was certain the last one would have the balls to pop the question, but I’d known almost instantly he wasn’t man enough for Neve...
But the next one might be. And then what? A husband won’t have the tolerance that a boyfriend might for me in her life. We’re close and I don’t want that to change. But, as this current little pantomime proves, I’m selfish, inappropriate and lack boundaries. She’d choose, and I’d lose. Lose my Neve.
I swallow hard, the razor blades slashing through the lust gripping my throat.
‘Do you have a better suggestion?’ She offers a nervous laugh and looks down at her pretty painted toes in that way that tells me she’s feeling vulnerable. ‘Any dishy single friends who want to date a woman who works ten hours a day running her own business and prefers a night in with her cat watching baking shows to an evening out on the town?’
My thoughts turn murderous at the idea of any of my single friends with Neve. I want to rush to the bathroom, scoop up as many towels as I can find and cover all her gorgeousness from view in case any other single wedding guest gets any ideas.
‘Don’t put yourself down,’ I say. ‘Any guy would be lucky to have you—you’re intimidatingly intelligent and have a wicked sense of humour.’ The Neve I first met used to compare herself unfavourably to her younger sister, who’s a professional swimmer, although I’ve never understood why; Amber bores me to tears.
Neve sighs, shoving a beach towel into her bag. ‘Look, I know it’s not the best way to meet someone, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m heading towards my thirties—’
‘In a year,’ I scoff.
She shrugs and flashes her playful smile at me, the one that kicks me in the gut every time. ‘Yes, but my toy habit is pretty expensive—time to find a real live substitute with enough staying power that I don’t need a truckload of double As.’