by Candy Sloane
“With a lady in the dark is my favorite place to be.”
Valerie wanted to scoff, but she couldn’t. The way his voice deepened around those words made her shiver, her abdomen contract.
“But I think Val should go first,” he suggested. Alec stared at her, his eyes impatient. He was taking this Cock-fucius thing way too seriously.
“She can just go after you, Alec,” Jenny Gordon pressed. She was an ex–volleyball star, current gym teacher, who looked like she’d had two fully inflated Spaldings implanted in her chest since graduation. She hadn’t even known Alec’s name in high school.
“Whatever, someone go.” Randy Tines spun a finger in the air.
Alec smirked at Valerie, his damn dimple coming out. She felt like she might melt, a puddle on the chair in just her button down and knee-length skirt.
“Fine,” Valerie proclaimed. She took a deep breath and spun. Watched the bottle go from Randy to Kenneth to Jacob to Alec to Paul back to Randy and on and on in a kinky kaleidoscope she had no control over.
When it finally landed, she almost fell out of her chair. It pointed right in the middle of the crossed legs of Alec’s distressed jeans. Her cheeks lit up, and her heart knocked against her rib cage as if it were asking if anyone was still alive in there.
Jenny looked like one of her implants had exploded. Even though Valerie was dealing with her own inner meltdown, she said a silent woo-hoo.
Cynthia covered her mouth, but it was clear she was smiling.
“Let’s go, you two,” Randy pushed.
Valerie waited for something, for anything. Sure, she’d been thinking about touching Alec, about Alec touching her, but this was real. This was happening.
“Maybe I should spin again,” she suggested, her heartbeat drowning out the sound of her own voice.
“The bottle chooses,” Jacob Riedel, ex high school soccer star, current sports equipment store owner, said, shaking his head. “We don’t choose.”
Clearly this decree had been tossed to a couple already who had been unhappy with their result, but no one sitting around this circle had as much to lose by going into that closet together as Valerie and Alec did.
“Rules are rules,” Alec said with a shrug.
Even he wasn’t going to help her.
The room whirled at the speed of that damn bottle, but when Alec finally stood and held out his hand, to Valerie’s surprise, she took it.
…
“What the hell was that?” Val’s eyes were shiny in the half light of the janitor’s closet. “You should have let me spin again.”
Alec leaned against the closed door. “Those guys were assholes. None of them deserves to breathe on you, let alone fuck you.” He smelled peppermint and sensed the heat of Val’s body. It was an unsettling combination—alluringly unsettling—ice hot.
They’d always talked to each other about everything. She could give him shit like no one else, but there was something bubbling below their usual ribbing, their usual heart to heart— want, need, this.
“You’re the one who said I should play, Cock-fucius,” she spit.
The friend in him had suggested it, but when the bottle spun and one of the guys in that circle got that much closer to Valerie, the man in him won out.
“What are we supposed to do now?” she asked.
It was the question in his head, too, and he forced himself to keep asking it, because the only answer that kept lighting up, give in to the whole heaven part of this game, could not happen. So why was he tempting himself?
“We don’t have to do anything.” Though with nothing between them but anticipation and air, he wasn’t sure how long that might last.
“I probably couldn’t have gone through with it anyway.” She chuckled with relief. Her throaty laugh was dizzying, beckoning.
“With anyone?” He edged closer. His heart thumped, roared like a lion with each increasing inch. What the hell am I doing?
Having her in the dark, alone, was like giving him permission. The fact that she stood her ground as he stepped closer was giving him a purpose.
He shouldn’t want this. She was his best friend. But he couldn’t stop.
Even in the dark, he could sense her curves. Ample breasts just begging for a skimpy tank top, her ass plump in that tight little skirt and insistent for a strong squeeze, or a smack if she was being naughty.
The way her gaze locked and her breath met the speed of his own as he erased the last bit of space between them, he was sure she was naughty. Very naughty. That she would welcome the palm of his hand.
And just like that, his best friend had made him hard.
“I don’t hear anything in there,” Randy Tines yelled from outside the door.
“I think we’re supposed to be kissing,” Alec said, his cock so rigid he thought she could feel it through his pants.
“You mean each other?”
“We could just make kissing noises,” he suggested, thinking of his lips teasing along the inside of her collar, biting off button after button of her shirt and spitting them out like watermelon seeds.
Hell yeah, he wanted to kiss her, her lips and her neck and the little spot behind her knee that she had been kneading as they drove here. He knew it was crazy, he knew it was wrong, but he wanted to be the guy to fuck Mr. Peanut out of her.
“Like this?” She pressed her hand to her lips and pretended to make out with it, her eyes on him as her tongue slicked over her skin.
His stomach rumbled in pure sexual hunger. One thing was for sure—all that flute practice had been good for a lot more than music.
“That sounds completely fake,” he scoffed. Though considering the way his cock fought against the fabric of his pants, that was not entirely true.
Her bottom lip lay open against the inside of her palm. “You think you could do better?”
He yanked her hand to his lips before she could protest, before he could consider. He kissed it lightly at first, soft and drugging, slid the tip of his tongue up to her wrist, until he hit the buttoned cuff. “Maybe it should be me.” The words spilled out against the soft-as-sin fabric.
“What?”
“Maybe I should be the one to fuck you like you deserve.”
Val didn’t reply, just breathed out more peppermint, hot peppermint against the skin of his face. Her eyes smoldered with want. It was clear she felt it, too, the heat between them, the confusing, beautiful, delicious heat.
He grabbed her forearm and drew her closer, slanting in to her chest. The shock of their bodies against each other caused them both to freeze. Not even a breath passed between them, but he knew exactly what he needed to do. He clenched the back of her head, and his lips dipped to her neck, dripping down her skin like melting ice. Fuck, he had to taste her. He opened his mouth, and his tongue lapped at her tender skin.
“Alec,” she breathed.
“Follow my lead.” He couldn’t stop, though she certainly didn’t seem like she was asking him to.
If anything, she was yielding to him. He trailed a finger down the center of her neck, playing with the top button of her shirt, pausing so he could think. Ten years. He could have gone to see her so many times. He hadn’t at first because of how they’d left things after graduation, and then because their careers got in the way and they had both gotten into the routine of being like pen pals, but maybe he had really been avoiding their attraction.
There was no avoiding it now. There was no thinking. She needed this, and he was going to give it to her.
His hands rushed to her chest, undoing one button then another until her shirt was open and her pale pink bra was visible—her tits pumping up and down with deep, unsteady breaths.
Her fingers played with the bottom of his shirt.
“Take it off,” he directed.
She heaved it over his head and ran her nails down the curves of his chest, her scratch creating an insatiable itch.
He slid his tongue against her clavicle, the hardness of it mirrori
ng his own. The skin tasted like she smelled, like flowers in a vase, petals floating on water. He cupped his hand around her breast, and she yelped.
“Did I scare you?”
“Yes.” She slipped her tongue into his ear. “Scare me again.”
He teased at both her breasts, the delicate lace fabric in delicious opposition to her hard nipples. He circled his fingers around them slowly at first, then faster to meet her increasing gasps. She let out a slight moan like a whisper, like she was saying please.
Please.
She was so polite, even in her need.
He kissed the vertical line of her neck and continued to travel up. He still hadn’t savored her lips.
The word “friend” should have stopped him, but they were in too deep now, and the word on his mind hadn’t been friend—it had been fuck.
Fucking her—now.
“Two minutes,” Randy yelled from outside the door.
A growl raged deep within. If he only had two more minutes, he was going to make the most of it. He clutched her ass with one hand and forced her skirt up with the other. The whine in her breath made his already hard cock throb.
Less than two minutes. Not enough time to fuck her properly, or even kiss her properly, but he couldn’t stop.
And she couldn’t, either. She thrust herself against his hand. Her movements were all instinct, all want. Just like his.
He trailed his fingers along her drenched lace panties. Holy fuck was she wet. He longed to slip them to the side and slide his cock deep. Take her slow, so slow they both wouldn’t be able to stand it, before he slammed against her so relentlessly her breath broke. The whine at the back of her throat spiraling into a beg, a shriek, his name.
But this was Val, and they had a suite to share and a whole weekend together. Did he really want to fuck her in a broom closet?
Hell yeah, he did, but she was his best friend.
But she was also a woman soaking through her panties for him, and he was a man holding what felt like the whole of the Capitol Records Building in his pants for her.
But she was also his best friend.
“We can do this, Val. But I need to hear the words. Do you want me to fuck you?” he rasped, pressing two fingers against the fabric over her clit.
Her breath vibrated on his lips, and she forced her hips closer so his fingers grazed her again.
“I can already feel how badly you want it. How wet and ready you are for me—”
“Alec,” she interrupted, her voice begging.
With anyone else it would have been enough, but with her he had to hear it.
“Say it. Say you want me to fuck you,” he insisted, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his cock against her thigh so viciously he could barely see.
Her mouth opened. She licked her lips, an eagerness in her eyes that made him want to enter her before she even had a chance to speak.
There was a knock at the door.
Val jumped away from him like a street cat that had been spooked.
“Time’s up,” Randy Tines yelled.
There was only their breath, so loud it drowned out everything. Her perfume was still on his lips, his cock strained against his pants. He waited for her to look at him, but she started to button up, avoiding his gaze.
“We should get dressed before someone comes in here,” she finally said.
Alec adjusted himself as best he could and slipped his shirt back on. His chest ached. His cock ached.
Maybe she hadn’t wanted this? No, his fingers were still wet from her. Her body hadn’t been the issue. Her mind must have woken up when she heard Randy’s knock.
She bit her lip. “You ready?”
Her skittishness now, not the distance between them for the past ten years, was why they had never done this. Sex ruined friendships, especially when one of the friends knew he could never give more than friendship.
He nodded and she opened the door, light streaming in.
But she hadn’t been asking for more. She’d been asking, begging, dripping for his cock. Fuck. He didn’t want this to end because a stupid game said so, because Randy Tines said so.
He grabbed her wrist before she could exit, skated his lips against her ear. “You still need to answer my question.”
Chapter Three
Valerie stood behind Alec at the sleek steel check-in desk dazed, drunk, and bursting with desire.
His question pulsed in her head. In every sensitive, swollen part of her, their contact had ignited. She would never have considered it a day ago. There wasn’t a sinner’s chance in heaven before the Rolling Stone cover, before that closet. Sure, she’d seen him when they FaceTimed and, of course, he’d been insanely hot for years, but not for her—never to her. He was Alec, her best friend, her buddy, and a man who fucked women like it was his job.
Alec. She’d turned his name into an entreaty for his touch. Warmth inundated the nape of her neck and dripped down. The way he’d looked at her, caressed her, taken charge of her, had changed the idea from hell no to a lot more than maybe.
Should he be the one? She let that thought swirl, but not before she amended it to: for sex, anyway.
But sex ruined friendships. It was a ubiquitous fact. She was surprised it wasn’t one of the Ten Commandments. Somehow they worked past it in movies, but in real life it left friends enemies. In real life, people didn’t declare their undying love to each other in a very public way with music, or flash mobs, or grand speeches.
Sure, she loved Alec and he loved her, but not like that. Never like that.
“Val.”
She jumped, startled. Alec was snapping his fingers. How long had she been standing there?
“Is a room with a king bed okay?” He leaned against the check-in desk, but he was still tall enough to shield everything but him from her view.
“I thought you said we had a suite,” she blurted. She’d been soothed knowing no matter what had happened in that closet, they had separate beds to sleep in, and doors they could close on each other.
“We did,” he admitted, his brown eyes tense, “but they gave it away because we got in so late.”
Valerie’s heart spun. Usually a king bed would have been fine, but nothing was usual anymore.
“They don’t have any double queen rooms left, either,” Alec explained, scratching the back of his neck.
She’d touched him there and knew his hair was stiff with gel, stiff like… She shook her head. She hated that the number of beds was even an issue. There was a reason people always said sex ruined friendships. It had to be true, if almost-sex made things this awkward.
“Would you guys like a cot?” the lobby attendant asked.
“It’s up to him,” Valerie finally said. If he could control himself so could she, but if he couldn’t…she was a goner.
“No, it’s up to her,” Alec retorted, not looking at her. He stood up straighter, faced the desk.
The lobby attendant swiveled his head from one of them to the other. “They’re free if that’s the issue.”
Neither of them responded. Her throat burned. Her legs tingled, but there was nowhere to run. This was crazy. Though she knew it wasn’t all the almost-sex, it was just them being them. They made decisions together. Unlike some friendships she had with women who could be bossy or one-sided, she and Alec were equals.
Now they couldn’t even make a simple choice about a crappy cot. They needed that cot, if for no other reason than to avoid similar standoffs.
Is this how our weekend will be now?
The lobby attendant typed on his keyboard. He went into the drawer at his desk and produced two key cards. He held one up in each hand. “Be sure to call down to the desk when you make up your minds,” he added with a huge fake smile.
Smart-ass.
They each reached for a key and headed toward the elevator. Alec paused at the newsstand; the gate was down but the light inside was still on.
“Look.” He pointed at the magaz
ines. His Rolling Stone cover was stacked five across on the rack.
Even though staring at that cover had started this whole thing, she was thankful for the distraction now. “You didn’t tell them to stock extra for this weekend, did you?”
He laughed. “No, but I’m betting my publicist did.”
“Thought you needed to impress people even further with your fame?”
“It didn’t impress you.”
“You don’t need to impress me,” she responded quickly.
“I know, but it doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.” He winked and continued toward the elevator, leaving her to ponder the back of his leather jacket.
Did he seriously care? He had millions of women worshipping him, so what was one more? Though considering she still couldn’t shake the tremble in her thighs, maybe she was closer to becoming a subject than she allowed herself to believe.
They entered the elevator. The small space brought Valerie right back into the closet. The goose bumps already swarming her skin brought all their friends over for an out-of-control party. Unfortunately, they also invited stomach acid. Alec’s question echoed, beckoned.
Do you want me to fuck you?
“Sorry about the suite,” he said as they started to ascend.
She straightened her stance and pushed the anxiety down. “It’s fine.”
Their voices were far too calm. Maybe he was trying to appear nonchalant. She certainly was.
“You seem upset about it.” He drew his lips in thoughtfully. “Or something.”
Perhaps his composure wasn’t an act. His question might not be the only thing on his mind.
“I told you it was fine.” She clutched her luggage tighter.
Is he seriously okay? Maybe he could just screw her and leave with no consequences. But he hadn’t screwed her, because she couldn’t say the words. She swallowed, the stomach acid using her esophagus as a waterslide. She couldn’t even think the words.
She couldn’t tell him she didn’t want a stupid cot, and she couldn’t say what he needed to hear in the closet. Even with him there telling her he wanted to hear it, she didn’t have the confidence to say the words. Besides, she wasn’t used to men talking to her like that, and it made her so hot it scared her.