Leakage: A Friends-to-Lovers Romance

by Harley, Karen

  The haste with which she yanked off her clothes, without any argument or questioning, was exciting. By the time the last piece was gone—which was her bra, a soft-looking thing different from the usual delicate lacy garments his girlfriends wore—he was having a difficult time not simply falling on her and plunging into her like before.

  Before he could decide what to do, she was off the bed, standing in front of him, her hands reaching for his shaft and squeezing his ass, and she was pressing close in that wiggly way that told him she was as far gone as he was in the lust department.

  Knowing how frustration felt, Harrison was determined not to be selfish this time. Or at least, not purely selfish. Her breasts poked him, bursting and ripe, and he tried to stroke them gently at first, to tease her and stimulate them gently, as he was supposed to, but it was just like two weeks ago. In short order, he was sucking and pinching and kneading, and before long she was practically humping him, her wetness smearing all over his thigh.

  The drawer where he kept his rubbers was still partially open, as she must have left it when going in search of one earlier. It was hard to detach her long enough to get what he needed. By the time he was ready, she was tugging impatiently on his arm and pulling him to the bed.

  He really couldn't believe it. No girl was ever this into sex. Then again, he couldn't say he selected for girls who liked sex the way Sara clearly did. As she had pointed out, he was pretty passive about the whole selection process in the first place.

  His fingers explored and found her pussy soaking wet, and her hips lurched, and the more he fingered her with what to him seemed a deplorable lack of finesse, the more she made those fantastic noises that made him feel ten feet tall.

  He hesitated, but as kept happening with her, could find no reason to resist doing what he wanted to do with her body. He turned her over and pulled her up by the hips. With her generous buttocks sticking up in the air, her back a sweeping arc to her head and arms resting on the mattress, and her fluffy hair copper and wild, Sara was like an adolescent's wet dream.

  He swallowed. "Is this okay?"

  She craned her neck and nodded, her bottom pushing out further toward him. He stared; in his experience, women just did not do that. If he tried to take them from behind, they shrank back and muttered stuff about cellulose. He wondered if Sara had any idea how much he appreciated the gift of her offering up her ass to him. He tightened the muscles in his buttocks and thrus—

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  "Hey, ow." Sara rolled over. "What's—oh, I just banged my knee on your tablet." She was clutching her knee. "Geez, I hope I didn't crack it."

  "Are you okay?" Carelessly, he tossed the computer down to the head of the bed.

  "Yeah. Talk about bad timing. Whew. I think I must be a little feverish. I was around kids this week. Don't kiss my mouth, by the way, or you'll get whatever I caught."

  The interruption had changed more than their momentum. Now she was leaning back on her elbows. Her laughing eyes were very Sara, while the voluptuous breasts and the curls between her legs were all woman. In her current position, Harrison suddenly had a surreal vision of the two different women—his cheerful friend and the alluring redheaded goddess—blending together into one that, when it ended, left him so painfully happy he didn't know how to express it.

  "Don't mind me," she said. "Back to your regularly scheduled sex act."

  Following sudden impulse, he fitted himself between her legs just as she was, pulling her thighs up and wide apart. He watched her startled expression as he drove smoothly inside her. Her lips went slack just the way he recalled from that time he'd sucked on her toes.

  "Harrison."

  "All right?"

  "I'll say it's all right. Unless it's not so good for you?"

  "You're small," he said succinctly. "Extremely tight."

  "Does that mean it hurts?"

  He almost laughed. "No."

  "Does it feel good, then?"

  She was making treating her as a generic difficult. "Yes. Could you stop talking, please?"

  Fucking Sara was unbelievable. Every stroke felt better than the last, and her skin was hot, silken, her body made for this. She seemed to have no compunction about doing whatever she felt like, including wrapping her legs around him and tugging his pelvis down so that he rooted in right to her cervix. The fact that she obviously got off on him heightened the already-delightful sensation of her inner muscles compressing him with each thrust.

  When the pleasure changed and the lust became critical, he forgot her, his focus narrowing down to his shaft, to the burning that made his testicles tighten and his hips drive fast. Only vaguely did he take note of the passionate little sounds she made. The orgasm that rippled through his body took him so out of himself he was appalled to notice after it was over that his hands were gripping her hard enough to crush. He let go quickly, rolling away, angry with himself, attending to the condom with only half a mind.

  "Did I hurt you?" He forced himself to ask the question to which he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

  Sara wasn't helpful; she'd gone zombie voice. "Oooomph."

  He checked the skin of her hips. Red and yes, dark smudges where his fingers had hooked into her flesh.

  He kissed the spots, unable to tell her he was sorry, because as much as he wanted to, he had the bad feeling he'd probably do it again. Then he had to kiss her belly, while his palms savored the softness of her hips, the sweet dip of her waist.

  Then his thumbs found her clitoris and lightly started to massage. This time, she wasn't so quick in her response, maybe because she was fighting a cold, or maybe just from satiation. His own arousal was pretty much extinct at this point, but he needed to alleviate his guilt for hurting her.

  His thumbs worked for a while before the flesh began to stiffen and feel engorged. At the point that her excitement reached a peak, he inserted two fingers into her passage and said, "Sara."

  That got her attention. Now he let the tip of his tongue come out to knock her clitoris around. Her head fell back. He alternated the pace, slow, then bat-bat-bat, over and over again. As she came, he silently said, Thank you, Becky, to the girlfriend who'd taught him that.

  Sara's vaginal muscles seized on him when he finally removed his fingers. He was tempted to try to give her another orgasm, but then it hit him what he'd done. That wasn't a friend thing, or a woman-as-sexual-catharsis thing he'd just done. It was a girlfriend thing. Worse than a girlfriend thing, even.

  He grabbed the tablet computer on the pillow and activated the screen to check out the time. Almost midnight. Damn. Damn. And damn.

  Despite what he'd said earlier, midnight still loomed as a milestone. If they passed it now together, there would be no going back. The Challenge would be over, and they'd be in full-fledged leakage. He wasn't sure if he was ready for that yet or not.

  About to put down the tablet, he noticed absently that a browser window was open. He started to close it, when a series of anomalous words flashed by in an email application:

  …coffee sometime, since you don't like tea…

  When had he gotten that? His eyes skimmed the email for the few seconds it took to register that it wasn't his email account.

  Oh. Sara. She'd been using his tablet.

  Retroactively, the words he'd read registered, enough for him to understand that some dude named Felix—Felix?—was trying to set up a date with Sara.

  He glanced at her. She was sprawled out—there was no word for it other than wantonly. She looked like she'd just been used for an orgy.

  With extreme willpower, he resisted the urge to read the email again, this time in more detail. Instead, he tossed the tablet so it landed next to her hand.

  Her head turned and she made a murmuring sound.

  "Sara? You have an email."

  As soon as the words were out, he wanted to shove them back. Why didn't you just tell her to log off of her account or better yet, just do it for her?

 
; She groaned. Her hand flailed around till it found the tablet. She raised it over her face and glanced at the screen. Then she skidded the computer back toward him and started to pull herself up.

  "Oh, yeah, Felix." she said sleepily. "I wanted to ask for your help with that."

  Harrison bit his tongue on his instinctive, and sarcastic, response.

  She did a long stretch with her arms up to the ceiling. "Oh, my God, I feel good. Do you feel good?"

  "Yes," he said. "You wanted to ask me…?"

  "Um. How do you tell a guy 'no' so it doesn't hurt his feelings?"

  "'No' works well. "

  "Are you kidding? 'No' does not work well at all."

  "You're telling him no to…what was it he wanted? To go out for coffee?" he prodded.

  "Yeah, I met him at the office. He tried to give me this box of chamomile tea. Yuck. He really meant to be sweet, though. I thought of telling him I'd sworn off men, but I think that just rouses a guy's ego, you know?"

  Sworn off men? What was he, chopped liver? "Nobody likes to be rejected, but it happens."

  "So what do I say? Thanks for the offer but no thanks?"

  "Works for me."

  She looked at him sideways, as if just beginning to get that he wasn't in a happy mood anymore. "Is something wrong?'

  Yeah, something's wrong. I just fucked you from here to Sunday, pretty much as though I owned you, but I don't, we're obviously just friends. Friends with Friday night privileges. And now that it's almost midnight, I'm already relegated to platonic consult for a boyfriend decision.

  "I'm the wrong person to ask about this," he said shortly. "Try asking a woman."

  "Why? I want a guy's perspective."

  "Why ask a woman? Because they're the ones who know how to say things that really mean something else. I'm the one who has to read between the lines when they could just say what they want."

  "It would be great to say what I want, but then people could get hurt."

  He snorted. "You think it doesn't hurt more to wonder what the hell you're really saying?"

  "Well, what would you do if someone came on to you that you just didn't want to be with? Theoretically."

  "Why theoretically?" Why was everything she said now irritating to him? "Whenever a guy comes on to me, I just say, 'No. Not interested.'"

  "But that's a guy. What do you say to a girl?"

  "There haven't been that many I've…" Reluctantly he reached back in his memory. "'No.' That's what I say."

  "Well, I can guarantee you her feelings were hurt if you said it like that."

  "I'm rejecting her. Of course her feelings are hurt. But at least she doesn't fucking spend the next few hours trying to analyze what 'I'm kind of busy right now' means."

  "Why are you so cranky all of a sudden?"

  "Because it's almost midnight and I'm leaving for Savannah on Sunday," he said, grabbing her and falling back so she landed on top of him.

  "What? You're going away?"

  "My great aunt died a couple of days ago."

  "Oh, I'm sorry." She wrapped her arms around him, sharing the warmth of her body. "Were you close to her?"

  "No, I barely knew her. But I hate traveling, and I don't really have the time to be gone for nine days."

  "Nine days?"

  "Funeral, then regular family stuff. Coming back the next Monday."

  "That means you'll miss the next Challenge day."

  "Sara, I told you…"

  "I know you said you wanted to stop it, but…listen, Harrison. You're going to be gone next weekend, so can't we just forget about canceling the Challenge and tell Matt and Jasmine they're going to have to do the Challenge on their own that day?"

  He reached around, seeking the tablet and checked the time again. Five more minutes. "That's manipulative."

  "Well, duh!"

  "Leave it alone. It's their business. How about concerning yourself with your own business for once?"

  She scowled. Her face looked kind of splotchy, and he started to feel guilty, remembering that she was sick.

  "Let's just forget it for now," he said. "We can wait until I get back to discuss this."

  Procrastination held a lot of appeal right now. There were some things he seriously needed to think about. And the clock was ticking.

  She drew back from his advance. "You're not supposed to kiss me, remember?"

  "I wasn't supposed to plow you, either, but look how that ended up. C'mere."

  He held her face and recklessly took her lips, cooties and all. She collapsed on him limply and snuggled up, and for the next three minutes, before the friend zone hit, it was perfect.

  EPISODE 4

  IN THE WINGS—JASMINE AND MATT

  Jasmine's sets had gone well this morning, considering. She'd been studying Tai Chi for a few years now, and though she wasn't very good at it, it was the only activity she was involved in that wasn't performance-based. The process, and not the result, was everything.

  If she had her choice, all her life would be that serene.

  Saturday had dawned less windy than the day before. It was warmer, too. The light fog smelled clean. Peaceful. Still too early for the Saturday morning Green Lake exercise posse to be out in full force. And the good feelings from yesterday lingered.

  They were good feelings, too, she admitted with something near optimism. A hurdle had been passed with Matt last night during the Challenge. Now, of course, she was in a place far more precarious than ever, but somehow, the fear factor was less. The notion that he was deliberately trying to torment her was, if not completely gone, then less convincing.

  So when she finished the last set and glanced up to see him standing there with his hands in his pockets, watching her from a few feet away, she didn't panic immediately.

  He strolled down the slope. He'd obviously finished his run. His normal breathing suggested he must have been standing there for quite a while, observing her.

  He stopped a good three feet away.

  "Good morning," he said.

  As usual, she had no clue from his expression as to what he was thinking. Leakage? How badly she performed Cloud Hands?

  "Hi." Too husky. She cleared her throat and wondered what he'd say if she said what she was thinking, that he looked wonderful. Shadowy beard, his black hair tousled, his dark eyes wakeful and clear. Almost like a teenager. Innocent.

  Right. That's Matt. Innocent.

  "Hi," she said again, idiotically, gaze darting aimlessly to the lake, the sky.

  "You have to be anywhere, Jas?"

  She shook her head.

  "Then let's walk around," he said, turning toward the path.

  Her heart thudded. And the fear factor was suddenly back.

  "Why?" she demanded.

  He stopped, looked back, and his mouth twitched. "Typical. She asks if we'll still be friends, and when I make the effort, she thinks it's my idea. And nefarious at that."

  Oh. As a peace offering, it took her breath away.

  He waited as she caught up to him. They walked in silence for a while with several feet between them.

  "Bike coming," he said as they neared a sharp turn.

  She stepped closer to him.

  They passed a dog walker and a couple running together. Where the path widened, she heard the unmistakable cacophony of crows.

  Matt chuckled. "They're pissed."

  She followed his gesture. The crows were going wild at the tops of the trees.

  "See him?"

  "See who?"

  "Bald eagle."

  "No, I—oh." She could just make out a white head on a large bird sitting on the topmost branch. Crows were swooping and hollering all around it. "Why are they doing that?"

  "It's been a warm winter. Not too many migrants. Crows are territorial, and they remember. Eagles think their chicks are tasty."

  She looked at him. He'd slowed down almost to a stroll, and his hands were still stuffed in his pockets. "Matt?"

  "Mm."


  She opened her mouth, then thought better of it. Just because he seemed relaxed, that didn't mean it was wise to introduce known trigger topics. And the question nagging uppermost in her mind was definitely that.

  "That sign," she said randomly instead, pointing to a lane rules sign. "Do you think anybody pays attention to it?"

  "Doesn't look like it, does it? Everybody walks everywhere." He glanced at her, then back at the path.

  The lake looked its biggest from here, Jasmine thought as they walked. She guessed they were about halfway around.

  A little while later, he said, "I like this part. It's one of the few straight stretches. A good place to…"

  Two things happened at once. A flock of ducks flew up noisily from the lawn. And she was uprooted and swung around even before she registered the scooters flying to either side of her, complete with kids.

  "…come at you blindly out of the parking lot," Matt finished, laughing, letting Jasmine slide down his body. Breathless, she felt her feet gain solid footing, Matt's hand lingering at her back. "You kids okay?"

  "Whoa, sorry, for almost slamming into you," the boy said to Jasmine. "Hey, you're the dude with the Zwort set. He's the guy that brings the stuff to the library," he informed the older kid, who was picking up her scooter.

  "Was the set as lame as I said?" Matt called to him, walking backwards as the kids got back on their scooters.

  "Yeah. Not enough base pieces," the boy hollered.

  Jasmine followed the exchange with confusion. "Do they know you?" she asked as the kids vanished down the path.

  Matt turned back, his hand still on the base of her back. She felt his fingers slide almost caressingly to her waist before they were gone and there was distance between them again.

  "Mm," he said noncommittally.

  He was walking past the cars now, and the mallards were resettling on the sandy stretch lakeside. She hastened her step, recalling what Sara had told her the other day. "Were those kids from the library where you take the toys you've reviewed?"