“I listen to all music,” he laughed.“I thought you knew that. Alright, forget the music. How about 'Sunday brunch?'"
"Sunday brunch?" she asked, laughing. "I'm not a plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns, Michael."
Grinning in relief as the tension between them finally broke, Michael stalked across the room and pulled Renee from the edge of the bed. She was still laughing, and didn’t resist as he pulled her against his chest and dropped his arms around her waist. "Oh, the responses I could make to that statement."
“I can only imagine,” Renee answered. She brought her hands up between them, sliding them up his chest and over his shoulders to link her fingers behind his neck.“Are we really doing this?”
Michael dropped his forehead to hers, looking down into hazel eyes full of unspoken questions. Her lips were slightly parted as she looked up at him, and her fingertips tickled through the hairs at the nape of his neck.“You know what?I think we are.”
Renee rose up on tiptoes to kiss him, her lips soft against his.“I guess we should see how it works then, hmm?”
His heart leaped in his chest, anticipation mingling with relief as she stepped closer and her body molded itself to his. The skin at the back of his neck tingled under her fingertips, and his entire body felt electrified by her closeness. Her own excitement seemed to vibrate through her in a series of fine shivers, and Michael brought one hand up to cup the back of her head, lowering his mouth to hers. The popcorn taste had gone from her lips, but he found the sweet saltiness of the buttery treat on the tip of her tongue as it dueled with his. She moaned softly as he swept his tongue between her lips, and caught him by surprise as she closed her lips around his tongue and sucked. His dick jerked behind the constricting fabric of his jeans; she felt it and smiled against his mouth.
“Oh you think you’ve got surprises, hmm?” Michael murmured. Ather slight nod, he scooped her off her feet and turned to the bed, dropping her across the foot of the bed. The popcorn bowl bounced between the pillows at the other end and tipped over, spilling little puffs of fluffy buttered popcorn across the blankets. Laughing, Michael snatched a handful of popcorn and popped a piece into his mouth.“Finally,” he said.“All that work, but I got what I came for. Guess I’ll go home to bed now.”
Still lying flat on her back, Renee bent one knee, allowing her other leg to dangle over the edge of the bed.“Right. I seriously doubt you came here for popcorn.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe it wasn’t justthe popcorn.” Sweeping the mess to one side of the bed, Michael moved the pretty glass bowl to the nightstand and lowered himself to the mattress beside her. Hesitating, he held one hand over her stomach, wanting to touch her but afraid to go too far.
Finally, Renee reached up and took his hand, pressing it down so that his palm rested flat against her stomach, just below her breasts.“It was mainly the popcorn though, right?”
“That’s how I’m going to tell this story,” Michael answered, looking down the length of their bodies. He watched his hand rise and fall with her breath, watched the way the ribbed fabric of her tank top smoothed and wrinkled with her movements.“In my version, you totally came onto me.”
“Right,” she laughed.“Because that’s totally how it happened, in my house, which youdrove to uninvited.”
Her stomach tensed with her laughter, and he looked up in time to watch her eyes crease, sparkling with amusement.“Some kind of vixen, you are,” Michael teased. She gasped softly as he leaned over her, his chest covering her breasts as he lowered his lips to hers. He paused, watching her eyes flutter closed, and lowered his mouth to hers again in the barest touch, skimming his hand down, over her hip and back up again. Her hands fisted in the fabric of his t-shirt, tugging it up; he pulled away long enough to strip it off and drop it over the edge of the bed.“Are you sure you’re ready for this? It doesn’t have to be fast,” he said, hoping with every cell in his body that she wanted things to be fast. He may have taken a while to realize how much he wanted her, but now that he’d noticed it, there was no way to shut it off, and he desperately wanted relief.
She swallowed, opening her eyes to look at him nervously. Her tongue came out, briefly touching at the corner of her mouth and then disappearing again.“Michael,” she said softly, taking his hand and guiding it backto her breast.“Do you not realize I’ve been waiting for you to seeme for almost two years now?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Michael’s mouth went dry as Renee left his hand cupped over the curve of her breast and slid her palm up his arm. He swallowed, closing his eyes and dropping his forehead to her chest.“I have alwaysseen you,” he whispered.“I just didn’t know what I was seeing.”
Her hand left a streak of electrified heat up the length of his bare arm, over the muscle of his shoulder and down his back. It was the most intimate touch they had ever shared– the softness of her body in his hands as she touched him. “You didn’t see me like this,” Renee whispered back. Her hand had moved down over his shoulder blades and under his arm to come back up his chest, and as her palm passed over the hard nub of one nipple, goosebumps scattered over his body. She knew everything about him as a man, probably knew him more intimately than anyone else. She knew how he liked his coffee, what he liked on his pizza, that he hated green beans. Now, she would know the shapes and sizes of his body, the feel of his skin, the pressure of his touch.
And he would know hers. But crossing the line from just friends to something moremeant more than just adding sex to their usual movie nights, more than just holding hands at family functions. It meant a change in their dynamic, a change in what they meant to each other and how they would meet each other’s needs. Michael didn’t know if it would work out– he couldn’t know that. But what he did know was that he was ready to try again. He had found closure in Nicolette’s letter, and had felt the weight of his own loneliness in the moments after Sherry had walked away from him.He didn’t want to carry that weight with him anymore, and she was the only person he knew that could lift it.
It had been a chaotic few days, and as Michael kissed his way over the exposed curves of Renee’s chest, swelling up over the neckline of her tank top, he marveled at how his life had changed so much in so short a time. In less than ten days, he had seen his mother hospitalized, finally let go of his failed marriage, and learned how terribly he had missed an opportunity to move on– but the past, no matter how far in the past it is, is the past regardless, and Michael Kingsley was firmly in awe of his present. The woman who had been his best friend for years moaned softly under him, her hands buried in his hair. Renee. She opened her thighs as Michael moved over her, allowing his knee to slip between hers, and he braced himself on his forearms to protect her from his weight.
He hadn’t done this in so long; it had been years since he had held a woman in this way with no plans to strip her clothes off and claim her body. He hadn’t taken the time to truly enjoy just being with a woman since Nicolette, and even the memory of his time with her didn’t compare to the strength of emotion now coursing through him.
Renee whispered his name, just as he had imagined she would, and he ground his hips against hers, moving his weight to one arm to allow himself the use of one hand; she sighed as he scraped a palm over the fabric that covered her breasts, writhing beneath him as the hand moved lower. Michael couldn’t hold back the groan as he touched her through the soft cotton of her smiley capris, and he buried his face against her throat as her heat radiated through his fingers.“How did we not realize this, all this time?”
She gasped, her breath catching as he rubbed slow circles into her heat, her fingernails digging into his wrist as she guided him.“Who cares, we know it now,” she whispered back. Her leg curled around his waist, and Michael brought his arms up to keep her close as he rolled; she sighed as she settled above him, her hands flat on his chest. She stroked the planes of his stomach, traced the lines between his ribs, both of them watching the lazily erotic movements o
f her fingertips on his skin.“How have I known you this long and seen you without a shirt so many times… just like this… without realizing how utterly beautiful you are,” she said quietly, smiling down at him, rocking against him, the heat of her core searing against the thick rod of his erection.
His balls were aching with need, and every instinct in his make-up told him to throw her down, strip the protection of her clothing away, and bury himself inside her before he lost the chance. Instead, he pillowed his head in his hands and grinned up at her.“Beautiful? Renee, come on. Men are not beautiful. Men are men. Big and burly and butch and… something else that starts with a B maybe. But not–“
“Beautiful,” she broke in, dragging her fingernails down his stomach. She watched the muscles flex beneath her touch, and he watched the glow shine a little brighter in her eyes. The sight of her enjoyment made his heart leap and his chest tighten; he watched her hands flatten over his stomach and slide back up his chest as she lowered herself, and his blood rushed through him as she brought her lips to his.“Trust me, it fits. ‘Beautiful’ is not a girl-only adjective.”
“Haha,” Michael retorted, still trying to get his breath under control.
“I’m serious. It fits you perfectly.”
Her nipples were hard against his chest, and she was still grinding her hips slowly against him;his thoughts were shattering around him like glass, but as he brought his hands down to settle on the curves of her hips, he grinned.“That’s what shesaid.”
“She did, huh?” Renee whispered in his ear. She ran the tip of her tongue over the shell of his ear and kept whispering.“Let’s see if shewas right, then.”
Michael watched in shock as she sat up, her weight solidly centered in his lap. Her ass slipped through his hands as she moved, and he held her thighs as she swept her tank top over her head. He had thought it likely, by the thickness of the fabric over her chest, that she had a bra underneath the little top– but she didn’t, and he saw the elastic of what Nicolette had called a‘shelf bra’ as the top sailed over the end of the bed. Her breasts bounced slightly as she lowered her arms, small but beautiful, perky and creamy and topped with tiny raspberry colored nipples. Michael was mesmerized, watching those breasts come closer to his chest as she lay down on him again, watching the space between their bodies grow smaller and smaller– and when her body was pressed from chest to thighs against him, those pebbled nipples scraping against his bare chest as her softness pressed flat against him, the fragile hold he’d been keeping on his control finally snapped.
She squeaked in surprise when he rolled them again, and he felt hard kernels of unpopped popcorn digging into his forearm as he settled himself between her thighs. He braced himself on his knees, sitting up to look at her, returning her appraisal of him.“Beautiful,” he murmured, echoing her own choice description back at her, smiling as she shook her head in denial.“No, don’t try that on me, you know you are. We both know you are.”
“Maybe. But you didn’t think so before… so what’s changed, Michael?” she asked, looking up at him.
In answer, he wedgedhimself more tightly between her thighs, lowered himself atop her body, and sighed.“I don’t know, really,” he said quietly. Her breathing filled her stomach, lifted her chest beneath his, and he lifted himself on his arms to give her space.“Maybe it’s something that was there all along, but… I don’t know, seeing you at the hospital, and the way you stayed with me. After you went on that stupid date–“ Michael broke off, dipping his head to inhale the scent of her skin, the tip of his nose brushing the pulse in her throat.“You came to me,” he went on, kissing her shoulder.“You were afraid, and you needed someone, and you came to me.” He listened to her quickening breath as his lips moved down her chest, felt her body jerk as he flicked the tip of his tongue over one peaked nipple.
“It was the first place I thought of,” Renee whimpered, squirming as Michael moved to her other breast.
He brought his hand down between them, touching her again, stroking her heat as she whispered his name again.“That’s exactly the point,” he whispered back, lifting his mouth from her stomach and looking up the length of her body.“You could have gone to Cass, your mom, wherever. Your friends. You came to me. And maybe it made me realize that if I needed someone to run to, I’d come to you.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“You would?” She looked down her body at him, her stomach flexing as he kissed his way lower.
“I would.” He caught his thumbs in the waist of her pants, pausing to look up at her again.“Renee, are you sure about this?” he asked.“There’s still time to go back… if you want to.”
“I’m sure. And I don’t want to go back,” she said quietly. She watched as he pulled her capris down her legs, laughing softly as he sucked in a breath at the sight of her panties.“They’re just panties, Michael.”
“No. These are not just panties,” he said, staring up at her.
Renee quirked an eyebrow at him, smirking as he pressed his lips to the rose that covered her lower stomach; the shades of pink that made up the flower were the only bright colorsto be seen, as the boy short panties themselves were a dense black lace.“What did you expect?” she asked.“Obviously not those.”
“Obviously,” Michael answered dryly. He sighed, looking up at Renee before glancing back down at the swatch of lace that was all that stood between them.“I don’t know, you’re like a yoga queen. I guess I expected… cotton. Polka dots. I don’t know, hemp? Granola bars?But these are like–“ he broke off, slipping the tip of one finger beneath the black lace that wrapped over the curve of her hip and swept over the line where her slender thigh met the slight dip of her lower stomach. Running his fingertip along that line, he reveled in the velvet feel of the skin along her hip and inner thigh; he closed his eyes when his knuckle ran close enough to her core to feel the heat still radiating. She was damp there, aroused and ready for him; the waiting was killing him, but he wanted to savor her, to enjoy her while he had the chance. In case he lost it.
“They’re like what?” she asked, distracting him. She was laughing at him; her eyes sparkled with amusement when he glanced up at her again.
His face heated, knowing how silly he would sound if he said out loud what he had been thinking. She pressed harder on his shoulders, urging him to answer, and he crossed his arms over her stomach, propping his chin on his wrists.“Rock star panties,” he said.“They look like something you might see on… I don’t know, Pink. Or Madonna or somebody.” At this, Renee laughed outright, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. She moved to sit up, crossing her arms over bare breasts, and Michael rolled onto his back, watching her.“What’chacovering up for?”
She shook her head, still smiling.“I’m not. Just cold, I guess.”
“Alright, get up.” Michael waited until she stood up, before he stood with her. Taking the edge of the blanket that covered her bed, he flicked it, sending popcorn flying all over the room. Renee’s mouth fell open, and he laughed.“Well, you can’t get between the sheets with popcorn everywhere. I don’t want it where it doesn’t belong. Here, get in.” He held the blanket up, waiting for her to slide beneath, and then stood looking down at her as he unbuckled the belt around his waist.
She watched him unbutton and unzip his jeans, and as they opened to reveal bare flesh underneath, her eyes flicked to his before flying back to the obviously hard length of his erection, standing out behind the fabric the covered him.“Commando, Michael?”
He shrugged.“Now and then.”
Pushing his jeans down over his hips, he let them fall to the floor and stepped out of them, his body flushing with warmth as her eyes swept over his work-hardened body. He stood proudly in front of her, his nakedness on display, his aching arousal reaching toward her like a homing beacon. He heaved a sigh, watching her watch him, and lifted the blanket again to slide into the pocket of warmth Renee’s body had already created. She moved over to make room for him, and he turned to pull her
into his arms. Renee melted against him, her body pressed tightly to his as he slipped a hand down her back; his hand edged her panties down as he cupped her hips and pulled her closer. Her hands were moving too, down his chest and stomach, over his hip, down the sensitive skin of his lower stomach. When her hand closed tightly around him, soft but firm, Michael groaned and thrust himself into her grip. She smiled against his mouth, biting softly at his bottom lip as she stroked him. He heard the rip before he realized what he was doing, felt the give of the lace, and knew that her panties were ruined.
“Oh, we’re doing it like that, are we?” she asked, laughing softly against his throat.“Okay, then.” Releasing him, she reached under the blankets and tugged the ripped panties from around her hip, sliding them down her leg and tossing them to the floor.“You’d better be glad that wasn’t my only pair.”
“Oh GodRenee, really?” he groaned. He had never imagined her this way, strong and in control. Until his feelings for her had changed so suddenly, he had never imagined her as a sexy woman, but here she was, naked against him, sexy and proud to be sexy, but still somehow not at all slutty. She still felt like the same wholesome beauty he had met at his brother’s wedding, the same fun-loving girl he had danced with at his sister’s wedding. She was still his best friend, still everything she had ever been to him…
More Than Friends (Kingsley #4) Page 17