by Aly Martinez
It was Liv.
Palming her ass, I lifted her off the ground. Her legs immediately wrapped around my hips, and a hiss escaped my mouth as she landed directly on my cock.
My knees didn’t buckle. Nor did I stumble. But we hit the mat all the same.
Breaking the kiss, I settled between her thighs. My lips drifted to the soft skin at the base of her neck. Her hips surged up, grinding a relentless rhythm over my cock. I was so fucking hard that it was almost painful, but as my name tumbled from her mouth, there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to hear it again.
Pushing up on my hands, I glanced down between us to watch her writhing against me.
Liv.
Fucking Liv.
Fully clothed, riding my cock.
Not shy. Not timid. Not embarrassed.
Unapologetically taking, knowing there was nothing I wouldn’t give her.
Not now. Not ever.
When I looked back up, her head was thrown back and her eyes were screwed shut. That shit did not fly with me. She could lose herself in ecstasy with me for the next eighty years.
But, this time, she was with me. I wanted her eyes opened until her tight pussy milked the cum from my cock. Some things were better seen than heard. And I wanted her to witness the moment I claimed her as my own.
Then I wanted to witness the moment when she realized she didn’t need to claim me at all. I was already hers.
After a hard kiss, I bit her bottom lip as I pulled away. “Look at me.”
She obeyed, fluttering her lids open but not stilling her hips.
The warmth hit me so hard it knocked the breath from my lungs.
It also lit me ablaze.
Shoving her dress up to her stomach, I hooked a finger in her panties and pulled them aside. Finding her drenched, I didn’t delay in filling her with two fingers.
Her back arched off the mat as a strangled cry escaped her throat.
“Look at me,” I ordered again, dropping my thumb to her clit.
She didn’t.
She sat straight up and crashed her mouth into mine. Our teeth clanked together as she rocked against my fingers. Her tongue swept my mouth, deeper each time.
Oh, fuck this.
Pulling out, I lowered her back to the mat. Her mouth was still attached to mine when I snatched my shorts down and freed my cock. Gripping the shaft, I glided the tip up to her clit then back down, poising myself at her entrance.
Releasing her mouth, I panted, “I don’t have a condom.”
I knew that Liv was on birth control. She had a stupid timer on her phone that went off every day at six p.m. to remind her to take it. Still, this was our first time together. She should be the one who made that decision.
“It’s okay. Please, Qua—” Her plea morphed into a moan as I planted myself inside her. Her hands slammed down at her sides, fisting imaginary sheets.
I hadn’t even moved yet and my balls were already drawing up with an impending orgasm.
That was going to wait though. No fucking way I was going to miss the sight of her coming on my cock.
Slowly drawing out, I tugged down the top of her dress until one breast popped free. Stroking her nipple with my thumb, I drove back in, stilling when I bottomed out. Her thighs sawed at my sides, urging me to give her more, but I couldn’t move.
She was so fucking beautiful.
My cock inside her.
My hand teasing her breast.
Her eyes aimed at me taking her body.
Needy for me.
All fucking mine.
Liv.
Lowering myself to my elbows, I got my head together and gave her what she wanted.
I worked us both to the brink, backing off before repeating the process.
Our moans intertwined to form a harmony, guided by the melody of our bodies.
I wasn’t rough. I definitely wasn’t gentle.
Her core clenched, gripping me so tight that it almost sent me over the edge.
So close.
Angling my hips, I worked her even deeper.
Harder.
Faster.
Drawing in a deep breath, I pressed up so I could see her face.
My lungs burned for the exhale I refused them. I’d waited my entire life for this moment with Liv. Air could wait.
Finally, her arms flew up and folded over my back. “Quarry. Oh, God, Quarry,” she cried, her nails scoring my back as she pulsed around me—ruining me in the best possible way.
Her body slacked, but she clung to my back. I pistoned in search of my own release.
Moments later, I buried my face in her neck and came on the life-altering exhale of her name.
HE HADN’T EVEN PULLED OUT before the guilt slashed through me. His lips were peppering kisses up my neck—each one so reverent that it felt as though it were being tattooed on my soul.
But hidden in my depths of soul would have to be where they stayed.
I wasn’t giving them back.
But they weren’t mine to keep, either.
My chest quaked with a silent sob.
“I need to get up,” I rushed out so he hopefully couldn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
“Mmmm,” he purred into my neck without moving off me.
“Quarry, please.”
“Do you understand how long I’ve wanted you?”
With a jolt, my entire body solidified.
The three weeks he was about to rattle off was going to hurt like hell. Especially since the time I’d wanted him was a lot closer to, oh….my entire life.
“Let me up.” I shimmied up, and it regrettably caused his softening dick to slide out.
The loss severed our connection—and my heart.
He trailed kisses down my chest. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. For months, I’ve wanted you like this.”
Months?
My breath caught in my throat.
“You.” Kiss. “Naked.” Kiss. “On top of me.” Kiss. “On your knees.” Kiss. “Under me.” His tongue laved over my exposed nipple.
My chest defied my mind and arched into him as he sucked me into his mouth. Sparks rushed to my clit, awakening my sated body all over again.
No way could that happen again.
I gasped as his teeth raked across the sensitive flesh of my breast.
Well. Maybe. Just once more.
He kissed across my chest, scooping into the top of my dress in search of my other breast. “Want to take a shower?”
What the hell was he doing?
And why was I just lying there, letting him do it?
And why couldn’t I breathe?
Or drag my eyes off him?
Or stop my heart from racing?
Or figure out why my hands were shaking?
It had to stop.
“Get off me!” I snapped.
His head popped up, confusion etched in his beautiful face.
“We can’t do this,” rushed from my mouth. The lie burned my throat.
I scrambled out from under him.
“Liv,” he called in warning—one I did not heed.
I jumped to my feet, and he quickly followed, not even pulling up his shorts before grabbing my arm to stop my getaway.
Although I wasn’t really going anywhere. We lived together. We worked together. He was my best friend. Our lives were braided together in every possible way. Where else would I go when the only place I ever wanted to be was with him?
“Talk,” Quarry gritted out.
I snatched my arm from his grip and then righted my dress. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
Straightening his shorts, he barked a laugh. “Bullshit. We should have done that months ago.”
That stung.
Months ago. What a joke.
I kept that to myself.
“Whatever the hell this is…it has to stop.”
He closed in on me, gripping my hips and lighting my betraying body. His lips dipped to mine, where he whispered, “
Stop freaking out. We’re not stopping anything. This is the beginning of me and you.”
I wanted to believe him. The idea of a me and Quarry was almost enough to drown out the voice in my head shrieking that it was never going to happen. I wanted to melt into his arms and steal the safety and comfort that only existed when I was with him. I wanted to let him hold me while we talked things out and somehow let him convince me that we were as right as it had felt only minutes before.
But it wasn’t. No matter how it had felt wrapped in his arms with his mouth pressed to mine. He wasn’t mine to keep. He never had been.
“This is so wrong,” I squeaked. “You’re… Mia’s.”
His arms spasmed around me. “Excuse me?”
“I swore this would never happen. No matter how much I wanted to.” My anxiety grew with every word spoken. My chest constricted, and my hands began to tremble. “She was my best friend. You…you were hers.”
He rocked back on his heels and glided his hands up to frame my face. Tipping my head back, he rested his forehead on mine and very calmly said, “This has nothing to do with Mia. This is about you and me. And us finally starting something that it sounds like we’ve both been fighting for a long time.” He kissed me again.
But, no matter what he said and no matter how much I wanted to spend a lifetime feeling his lips pressed to mine, it could never happen.
I twisted from him before he even had a chance to react or my body had a chance to change my mind. I only made it halfway through the ropes before he was dragging me back into the ring.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere!” I screamed at him. “Nowhere, Quarry. I’m not going any-fucking-where. I can’t walk away from you no matter how many times I should have. Which is exactly why I’m still standing here right now, your cum all but dripping down my legs. It’s the biggest slap in the face I could have ever issued Mia, alive or dead.” I threw my hands out to my sides. “And, worse, I know that and still can’t seem to just walk the fuck away!”
“Christ,” he mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Gnawing on my thumbnail, I paced a circle around him and continued. “Honestly, I can’t see how you think there could ever be an us. She wanted to kill me when we were sixteen when she even thought I wanted you. God, if she only knew the half of it! Are you insane enough to think she would ever approve of me and you together?”
“What I think right now is that you’re currently having some kind of orgasm-induced nervous breakdown.”
I stopped and glared at him. “You think this is funny?”
“Not at all. But I’m going to let you rant and rave for a little while to get all that shit you’re spouting out of your system before I wade into the quicksand in your head and pull you out.”
“You can’t pull me out! It’s the truth.”
His body went ridged, and he cracked his neck menacingly. “You done yet?”
“Stop acting like I’m freaking out for no reason. This is wrong and you know it!”
And that’s when he moved. Fast.
Charging forward, he forced us both into the corner.
“We are not wrong! We could never be wrong,” he snarled inches from my face.
“But that doesn’t mean we’re right, either.”
“She’s gone, Liv. Mia doesn’t get to approve of anything. Stop acting like she’s sitting at home while we screw around behind her back.”
“But that’s just it. If she were at home, we wouldn’t be standing here at all. Would we?”
His lips thinned as he closed his mouth. He knew the answer to that question. He just didn’t want to say it any more than I wanted to hear it.
“That’s what I thought. You’re fooling yourself if you think I would ever be anything but a consolation prize. She’d always be in the back of your mind.” I attempted to duck under his arm, but he shifted to the side, blocking me.
“How long?” he growled.
“How long what?”
“You said if Mia only knew the half of it. So tell me how long you’ve wanted me.”
My mouth was locked and loaded to fire the scripted answer I had been telling myself for years, but that was when I realized I didn’t even have it in me to lie anymore. Quarry had admitted that he wanted something between us. I wouldn’t be able to fight him off alone. I needed all the guilt in the world to have my back in this one. Luckily for me, the overwhelming weight I’d been carrying since I was a kid was finally good for something besides threatening to break me.
“Before I met Mia? I had been in love with you every day since we first met,” I answered.
He held my stare with gentle eyes and then asked for my deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret. “And for how long after you met Mia?”
My chin quivered as I fought to keep the truth safely trapped in the confines of my mind—where, if I were a stronger woman, it would have stayed for all of eternity.
I wasn’t a stronger woman though. I was a woman who was irrevocably in love with the only man her dead friend had ever loved.
“Every single day,” I admitted. “Every. Single. Day.”
I was vaguely aware of Quarry’s mouth landing over mine. I even went willingly into his arms as he lifted me off my feet. It wasn’t as frenzied or desperate as it had been before.
It was slow and apologetic.
Comforting and consoling.
Deep and compassionate.
And it only made me feel guiltier—because it made me feel so much better.
Quarry continued to kiss me even as the tears fell from my eyes. His thumbs stroked back and forth across my cheeks, wiping them away as his mouth made unspoken promises I knew he could never keep.
When my eyes dried, he released my mouth long enough to climb from the ring with me still securely held against his chest.
Ten minutes later, the gym had been locked, my car had been moved to the back parking lot, and I was in the passenger’s seat of his car on our way back to our apartment.
There was no more discussion.
The radio was blaring on the way home, but with the truth of my deception hanging between us, it was the most frightening silence I would ever experience.
I KEPT MY HAND ANCHORED to her thigh on the drive home. I was afraid that it was the only thing keeping her from disconnecting from me all over again.
“Every. Single. Day.”
Her words echoed through my mind.
When she’d made that announcement in the ring, I’d felt like I’d taken the worst beating I could ever experience within those ropes. How had I never seen that she was in love with me? With the exception of our drunken night, she had never been flirty. But, then again, I wasn’t sure I would have noticed. We lived together. So it wasn’t like she had to go out of her way to spend extra time with me. She didn’t have to make up reasons to stay up late bullshitting with me or text me just to say hi twelve times a day. That was expected in our relationship.
She didn’t have to think of creative ways to touch me. She had always been a hugger. I didn’t count how often her arms found their way around me. I just loved it when they did.
I was a funny motherfucker, so of course she laughed at my jokes.
We spoiled each other with gifts every chance we got. And, well, Liv just spoiled me in general.
There hadn’t been a chance to flirt. But maybe that was what our relationship had been all along, and precisely why I’d missed all the signs.
“Every. Single. Day.”
Fourteen years.
Fourteen years she had experienced the torture I had been living for the last four months. I couldn’t imagine how she had lasted that long.
Maybe there had been subtle clues I should have seen.
The way she dropped her entire life to make sure mine was running smoothly.
The way she took care of me as if the small things like the way I ate or if I was getting enough rest mattered more than anything else.
The way I
knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would always be there for me. Unconditionally. Forever.
Okay, so maybe they hadn’t been so subtle and I was just a blind dumbass.
“Every. Single. Day.”
God. She loved me.
When we arrived at our apartment, I folded her hand in mine and walked up the sidewalk. She didn’t try to stop me, but she didn’t exactly tuck into my side the way I would have liked, either.
I unlocked and opened the door. Then I paused before walking inside.
“Nothing changes,” I whispered, bending to kiss her forehead.
Her eyes closed, but it wasn’t in rapture. Her lids were pained, and when they fell, it set off a chain reaction, crumbling her face all the way down to her chin.
“Right,” she smarted.
“Stop and listen to me. Everything is absolutely going to change between us. But that’s just the details. Me and you. We don’t change. Ever. When we walk through this door, we aren’t going back to the fucked-up lie of friendship we’ve been living. We start the real us. We go to bed naked and wake up kissing. But that is the only shit that changes.” I lifted her hand to my chest, settling it over my heart. “This doesn’t change. It’s you and me to the core. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. If it happens to you, it happens to me, remember? And this is definitely happening to us. Please don’t fight it.”
Her big, brown eyes lifted to mine. “This is weird.”
I smiled. “Get used to it. It’s going to get a whole lot weirder when we get in the shower.”
Her cheeks blushed, but not in a shy way. It was heated, and it said that she didn’t think the shower would be all that weird, either. She was struggling, but the way she still sparked for me spoke wonders.
Brushing my nose against hers, I teased her lips. “Nothing comes between us. No matter where this goes. Or how it goes. Or how many times I make you come.” I paused to smirk. “We don’t change, Rocky.”
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“We don’t change.” She didn’t sound convinced, but I heard her promise.
And, if Liv knew me at all, she felt mine banging in my chest.
We would never change.
I wouldn’t accept it any other way.
She was the one woman I’d never be able to survive losing.