by Emma Hart
“Jesus, Luke, if I knew that having sex with you would turn you into a high school jerk, I’d have kept my legs shut.”
He choked on his juice. “I forgot how nice you are on a morning.”
Cradling my cup of coffee, I turned around, glaring at him over the rim.
“You’re also very pretty on a morning.”
“Stop sucking up to me.” I hid my smile behind the cup. “It’s not working.”
He folded a pancake in two and tore off a bite. “Then why are you smiling?”
“Don’t eat with your mouth full. It’s gross.”
“You did it last night.”
“It’s my apartment. I can do what I want.” I poked my tongue out at him and walked to the front door to answer the knock. I twisted the key and pulled it open.
Shit.
“You can fuck off,” I said to Blaire. “Traitor.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” She pushed me to the side, storming her way into my apartment.
I barely had to a chance to steady myself before she stopped.
A large grin broke out on her face when she saw Luke sitting at my island. “Let’s see. Wet hair, yesterday’s clothes, enough food to feed the five hundred… Hello, slut.”
“’Sup,” Luke said, nodding his head while reaching for another slice of bacon.
My cheeks flamed as Blaire’s eyes met mine. I mouthed, “Not now,” but said out loud, “Coffee?”
“Oh, so she gets coffee, but I don’t?” Luke pointed his piece of bacon at me with an annoyed look on his face.
“Yes. She’s not thinking with her dick and her stomach.” I snatched the bacon from him and put it in my mouth.
“Sharing food?” Blaire asked, setting her purse on the floor. “How romantic.”
“You know where the coffee machine is.” I detoured back around to my stool at the island and sat down. “I don’t have to take this shit from you two.”
She stuck her middle finger up at me and walked over to the machine. “I’ll make you a coffee, Luke. You’re clearly exhausted. Was it a long night?”
I glared daggers at her back.
“Nope. I was asleep by eleven-thirty,” he replied. “I just like coffee with my bacon on a morning.”
“You probably don’t even have any bacon in your fridge,” I muttered into my cup.
“Correct. I don’t.” He flashed me a grin. “That’s why I stayed here last night. So you can feed me.”
“Yeah,” Blaire drawled, pulling a cup from the machine. “That’s why you stayed.”
I glared at her some more.
Luke drained his juice and stood up. “Don’t worry about my coffee, Blaire. I’ve gotta go home and get changed before work. I’ll grab a cup there.”
He was smarter than I gave him credit for. He clearly saw I would be more comfortable sitting on a cactus than I was in this conversation.
“Leaving so soon?” My best friend’s eyes sparkled as she turned around.
“She’s going to punch someone if I don’t, and since I’m not being an ass, I’d rather it were you.” He grinned, grabbing his phone and keys off the island and turning to me. “I’ll call you later?”
“Working,” I said.
“All right, so I’ll see you later?”
“Given your habit for showing up, you probably will.” I half-smiled. “See you later.”
He winked, tugged my hair, and threw Blaire a wave as he left. The door shut, and the sound of it closing against the frame seemed to echo through my silent apartment.
Blaire said nothing for a good minute. She simply stood there, leaning against the counter, cradling her coffee cup in front of her so she could blow into it. She watched me like a hawk.
A hawk who wanted to be punched in the face.
I chewed on my bacon, waiting for her to say the first word. She usually did. The first and the last was her M.O. That was why she was even worse to argue with than I was.
“So,” she finally said after a few minutes of waiting. “You banged him, huh?”
“We did an experiment,” I replied. “We wanted to see if we felt the way we did because the first…accident…was so bad.”
“Okay, one: it wasn’t an accident. Two: You didn’t do an experiment. You banged him.”
“It was an experiment! We slept together purely to see if we wanted to do it just because we were curious or because there was…something…there.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Is there something there?”
I paused. “I think so. Either that or the two orgasms were given to me by witchcraft.”
“Two? Hold up.” Blaire put down her cup. “He couldn’t even get your motor running the first time, yet this time, you’re coming like you have an orgasm button on your ass?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m not going to complain.”
“Wise. You’ve probably moaned enough in the last twelve hours.”
I spat my coffee all over the leftover pancakes while she laughed. “Whatever.”
“What happens now?”
Shrugging again, I stood up and took the plate of pancakes to the trashcan. “We don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Look, Asp, even I have a clear plan of action after I bang a guy. He’s either a keeper or I’m out of there.”
“Wow. I bet Tom’s so glad you don’t play fast and loose with your standards.”
“Har-har-har,” she drawled. “He’s the lucky one who gets a piece of this regularly.” At ‘this,’ she motioned down her body. “The only one.”
“I’m so glad you clarified.” I put all the dishes in the dishwasher and started it. “We just don’t know. I don’t think either of us were prepared for the fact we’d feel something other than idle curiosity.”
Blaire nodded like she understood. “Yet, he stayed the night. Was it different?”
“Yep.” I popped the ‘p.’ “Like, I wasn’t just lying next to Luke. I was lying next to this really hot guy with abs that would make a bodybuilder weep, and I woke up with his arm around me. It felt weird.”
“Good weird? Or bad weird?”
“Just…weird. It’s still Luke, you know? But I’m starting to think the weirdness is all in my head. It doesn’t feel wrong at all. In fact, I’m way too comfortable around him. It’s so…seamless.”
She tilted her head to the side, slowly pushing her hair behind her ear. “It’s so easy that you’re afraid it’s too easy.”
Wrapping my arms around my waist, I nodded. “Way too easy.”
She sighed, then looked at me with a resigned look. “I get it. You know I’m not really the emotional kind—”
“No, really? I’m shocked.”
“Shut up.” She bit back a laugh. “But I felt the same when I started dating Tom, and we were just friends, and even then that was only because we were both friends with Luke. Hell, we weren’t even dating. We were just screwing.”
“I remember the ass phone calls.”
“My bad.” She even blushed. “It was too easy to go from that to dating to actually being together.”
I hugged myself even tighter. “Why did you bring him here last night? Tricking me?”
“Tricking is a strong word,” she replied slowly. “I wanted to help. I just—I know you, Asp. You were beating yourself up about it, and when you do that, you have a tendency to become an ostrich.”
“An ostrich?”
“Yeah, you bury your head in the sand and hope the bullshit will pass you by.”
I wanted to argue with that but… yeah, yeah. She was right.
“I went to his place, and he looked like I’d just run over his puppy.” She raised a shoulder nonchalantly and pushed off the counter, moving toward me to put her mug in the dishwasher. “I just—you have something. You have to talk it all over. I can see that you feel something else for him.”
“I don’t know what I feel,” I admitted. “I need to figure it out. I just… Wh
at if I lose him, Blaire? I’d rather feel something for him and never take it any further than risk losing my best friend for good.”
“Aspen, honestly,” she replied, meeting my eyes. “You just have to take a chance, if that’s what you want to do.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t even know if we can turn a friendship into a romantic relationship without ruining everything.”
I expected some kind of smart-ass response, but I didn’t get it.
Instead, Blaire wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly.
Blaire didn’t hug.
Ever. Not even puppies or little kids or her own family.
Resting my head on her shoulder, I closed my eyes, and it was only then that I felt the tears roll down my cheeks.
Damn it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – LUKE
Dirty Dreams < Sex < Jealousy
I walked into the bar, my eyes instantly sliding to the brunette behind it. Aspen was laughing at something a guy close to our age was saying to her, her honey-colored eyes alive with amusement and her smile wide.
The twinge of jealousy that twisted my stomach pissed me off.
I hated it. I didn’t want to feel this. I hated that seeing her laugh at a strange guy made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I hated that this was even a fucking thing for me.
Usually, this site would have me walking up and introducing myself as her best friend. That, or I’d observe from a distance, making sure the guy wasn’t a dick to her.
Now, I wanted to walk over there and drag him away from her by his collar.
Something I had no right to do.
Hell, despite my quips about marriage this morning, even if she were my wife, I wouldn’t have the right from stopping her from talking to someone. Especially not at work.
But I wanted to rip his ears right off the sides of his head.
Then, I wanted to choke him on them.
“You all right, man?” Will slapped me on the shoulder. “You look like you’re plottin’ a murder.”
I rolled my shoulder and followed him up to the bar. “Not today. Maybe tomorrow.”
His eyes followed mine. The guy was now leaning forward on the bar, and the sleeves of his t-shirt were rolled up a little higher than they had been before I’d looked a minute ago.
How did I know?
I’d rolled my sleeves up more than once to impress someone.
“Ah,” Will said. “A guy hitting on Aspen.”
“Not just a guy hitting on Aspen,” Tom said, coming up next to me. “A guy hitting on the woman he slept with last night.”
Will jerked away. “What?”
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill Blaire,” I muttered, pushing away from both of them toward the bar. I smelled like sawdust and sweat with a little sea air mixed in from the build we’d been working on just a few feet from the beach, but it was probably better than anything that pretty boy she was talking to smelled like.
Fuck.
This was getting worse.
“You slept with Aspen?” Will hissed in my ear, grabbing my arm.
“It’s a long story, but yeah,” I replied. I reached up behind me and grabbed the back of my neck, dipping my head forward so I didn’t have to watch the asshole at the end of the bar flirting with her.
Fuck, this was so different.
Where the hell had this come from? Not from having sex with her. This was more than me just being protective of her—this was me wanting to protect her. Hide her away from fucktards who just wanted to have sex with her and discard her.
Because fuck what I’d told her last night, it hadn’t been curiosity for me.
I knew I wanted her. I knew I wanted more. I didn’t know when it’d happened, and I didn’t know why, and I couldn’t put my finger on anything at all.
I just knew that I wanted Aspen Camden more than I’d ever wanted anyone in my life.
I wanted my best friend more than I’d ever wanted another woman.
“Shit,” Tom muttered, leaning forward next to me. His elbow nudged mine.
“He gave her his number on the back of his receipt,” Will continued.
I ran my fingers through my hair.
“Houston, we have a problem,” Tom continued, still muttering like a fucking five-year-old trying to get out of eating all the cookies.
“Houston, I need a spacewalk. Bring my beer outside, would ya?” I pushed off the bar and turned on my heel, walking to the front door.
The hot, late-afternoon air slammed into me the second I left the air-conditioned bliss of the bar. There were two tables on the patio outside, and I could see the beach from my new perch at the end of one of them.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I bent over, resting my elbows on my knees, and buried my head in my hands. My fingers slid into my hair, and I dropped my chin so far it all but touched my chest.
What the hell was happening? What was this?
I wasn’t the kind of guy who went insane over a woman just because we’d had sex. Aside from my cousins, Aspen and Blaire were the only two I’d ever actively protected, even if that had meant getting my ass thrown out of a bar because someone had pissed me off a little too much.
That had happened. Once or twice. Maybe three times.
All right, so there were three bars in the next town over I was no longer welcome in. But all I ever did was protect them from handsy little fuckboys.
The guy in the bar hitting on Aspen and making her laugh—he wasn’t being a dick. I’d seen guys hit on her a thousand times. It wasn’t a new thing. I was no rookie in being the guy best friend.
I knew my role.
Sit back. Bite my tongue. Drag the guy away when he got too much. Maybe throw him a right hook if he got a little cocky with me.
This—this was not my role.
Sitting outside the fucking bar, my head in my hands, feeling sorry for myself, was not what I did.
Not over Blaire. Not over any woman.
Not over Aspen.
But here I was.
Sitting outside, head in my hands, feeling sorry for myself. Over a guy hitting on Aspen.
Fuck me sideways and call me daddy. I was screwed.
“Here.” Tom put a bottle down on the table next to me. “Drink that.”
I did. Most of it, anyway. My lips formed a seal around the top of the bottle that popped when I pulled it away. “Thanks.”
Will met my eyes from the opposite table. “She threw his number away.”
“What?” I jerked my head up.
“Yep. She smiled until he finally turned away. She swept that piece of paper under the bar and tossed it in the trash as she came to us.”
A sick kind of satisfaction flooded through me, even though I had little reason to believe it was because of me. We hadn’t exactly discussed what we were doing with our weird situation, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like what I’d heard.
Fuck, I loved it.
Screw you, pretty boy.
Not that I wasn’t one.
No, fuck that, I wasn’t. I was not a pretty boy who spent hours on my hair or who wore pants tighter than my girl’s.
Not that I had a girl.
Nope. Not me.
I grabbed the beer and took a long drink. Fuck this shit. She wasn’t mine. She was my best friend, but that was it right now. No matter how much I wanted to take the guy’s number out of her hand and shove it up his nostril…
At this point, she was still just Aspen.
My best friend.
The girl I’d slept with last night.
The girl who was sending me mixed messages because she was just as lost as I was about this.
She was fucking Aspen, goddamn it.
She was not just Aspen.
She was Aspen.
Aspen.
“All right, Dec’s given me ten minutes to sit with y’all, so shift over, I’m comin’ through.” Aspen scooted over to our table and
set down a tray full of beer and chips and salsa. “The queso and sour cream are coming right out. Mostly because I reminded him that if he didn’t give me them in ten minutes, he owed me another five.”
She stepped up onto the bench next to me and perched on the table. Her thigh brushed against my upper arm.
Her skirt was skin-tight and, while sitting down, barely reached her knees. It hugged her figure like it was made for it. The white tank she had tucked into the skirt was just as tight and form-fitting, and fuck, did it show off her tits.
When did I notice this?
Shit.
Aspen ran her ponytail through her fist, pausing to tease out a knot. “How’s work going?”
“Great,” Tom replied. “Luke hasn’t been catcalled for an entire three days.”
Her lips pulled to the side into a smirk. “The women y’all’ve been whistling at have great taste,” she said. “How many flipped you off?”
“All of them,” Will admitted. “Except the one who waved at Luke.”
Aspen’s gaze slid to me, darkening as they did. “Color me surprised,” she said. “I’d love to hang with y’all, but my break is over.” She slid off the bench, wiping her hands over her ass.
“That’s the fastest ten minutes ever,” Tom said.
“Yeah, well, time flies when you’re having fun.” She smiled tightly and turned to walk back into the bar.
“That wasn’t awkward at all,” Will said, watching her go. “So, you gonna tell us how you ended up having sex with her?”
“No.” I pulled my beer toward me and swigged from the bottle.
Tom raised his eyebrows. “You know Blaire already told me.”
“You tell the story then.”
“Or not,” he finished.
I rubbed my forehead and rested my arms on the table. This whole situation was weird. I was feeling jealous over a guy giving her his number, and she disappeared the second Will said someone had waved at me.
And nobody had. The asshole was trying to get under her skin, and it’d worked.
It was tough enough without anyone else getting involved.
Aspen reappeared with two small bowls of queso and guacamole. She put them down on the table without a word and walked back inside.