by Neve Wilder
I was tempted to turn my head and kiss her, to give Eric a real dose of jealousy. The other half of me was tripping over the fact that he was clearly jealous in the first place. Mr. Calm, Cool, and Collected getting his panties in a wad. Fuck, that was refreshing. I almost laughed out loud but instead squeezed Shana’s fingers gently as I drew them away from my face. “I just got out of something and it’s still a little…uh…fresh.” Hi, my name is Nate and I’m lame. Jesus. What the hell was I talking about? You could easily argue that being newly single was the perfect time for a random threesome. Except that my fresh wound was sandwiching the intended filling of said proposed threesome.
“Awww, I’m sorry. What happened, did she cheat?” Shana’s voice carried over the music, sharpening at the end.
I flicked another look at Eric, who was staring at me intently now, traces of amusement still in his eyes. I didn’t think it was so amusing. “Nah, nothing like that. We just had a difference of opinion on things.”
“She got nervous about the return on her investment,” Eric said, tilting his head meaningfully.
“She shouldn’t have thrown her chips into the pot to begin with, then.”
“She has a hard time turning down a good hand.”
I snorted, and Shana looked between us curiously before she squinted at me. “I’m kinda getting the impression she’s one of those girls who plays a lot of games? Maybe you’re better off without her.”
I nodded. “That’s exactly how she was. She knew I liked it, though. Knew it kept me right on the edge and drove me batshit fucking crazy. It got pushed too far, though.”
“That part wasn’t solely her fault.” Eric lifted a brow.
“You’re right. But the part where she acted like a bitch about it—” Shana looked confused now, and I waved my hand. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“The ones who are the biggest players always end up falling the hardest. She’ll get what’s coming to her, don’t worry,” Shana said sagely, twisting around to pat my chest as Eric rolled his eyes. Then she took our hands. “C’mon, if I’m not getting my threesome fantasy, let’s go get obliterated.”
I didn’t get obliterated, though. I took a shot and had another beer, my mind helicoptering all over the place, thinking about what she’d said, thinking about what Eric had said—both on the dance floor and earlier in the car.
When the bar closed down, we all piled into an Uber van and headed toward Shana’s since she was staying in the garage apartment at her parents’. Whatever sobriety we’d all regained while dancing was washed away with more booze once we got there. Jensen disappeared into Shana’s bedroom with her cousin, and they didn’t even try to be quiet. Mike made out in a corner with the chick he’d been dancing with at the bar, and Shana and Eric were waging a Mario Kart battle against each other while I tried to be interested in whatever the hell Paul was slurring about some upcoming football games. But I wasn’t. We’d probably all hung out like this a ton of times over the years, getting stupid, hooking up, playing drinking games. In my peripheral vision, I was constantly tracking Eric, noticing every time he laughed or Shana nudged his shoulder, and now I was the one who was jealous, though I knew he wouldn’t hook up with her. I knew it, but it didn’t matter—the feeling still came, rolling over me like darkness, setting my teeth on edge, and finally I’d had enough. I stood abruptly, finished off the rest of my beer, and chucked my empty cup on the counter as I held out my fist for Paul to bump. “I’m out.”
“Take it easy, man. Tomorrow night?” he asked, and I shrugged.
“Maybe.”
“Nooooooo,” Shana pouted as Eric dropped his controller and stood.
“You can stay,” I told him. “I’ll leave the back door unlocked. There’s a path from Shana’s that runs behind the houses. Not hard to see. Eight houses down to the right.”
Eric cast a glance down at Shana and gave her a conciliatory smile. “Nah, I’m ready. She’s about to kick my ass anyway.”
“Someone needs to,” I muttered, maybe not as quietly as I thought since Paul gave me a funny look.
“TBC?” Shana batted her lashes at Eric, and I barely managed to check an eye roll.
I didn’t hear Eric’s response because I was already heading down the hall, slinging my coat over my shoulders and opening the door. A half minute later, I heard his footfalls behind me as I hit the grass and stumbled toward the path between the trees. We were having one of those weird warm spells, and with all the alcohol coursing through me, too, I really didn’t need the coat, but I shoved my hands in my pockets as I stalked through the underbrush that had built up on the path just so I wouldn’t fidget or be tempted to…I didn’t know what.
With each step I grew needlessly angrier, and I recognized that as mostly the alcohol’s fault. I thought I’d done a good job earlier detaching from the whole bullshit situation with Eric. Or at least appearing as if I had. But now I was churning in the big red sea of it and struggling to hold myself together. The sound of his footsteps didn’t help. They sounded like a countdown, and I just hoped I could make it into the house and shut myself in my room before I exploded and did something stupid.
“Nate.”
Fuck.
“Not in the mood right now, dude.” I kept walking and didn’t look back. The crunch of leaves underfoot grew louder as he closed in.
“I had zero intention of hooking up with her. Hey, I’m not int—” Eric’s hand closed around my shoulder, and it was like that point of my body became ground zero for the detonation that happened inside of my chest.
“I know!” I grated out, and I didn’t remember my feet moving, or grabbing him, but suddenly my torso was compressed against his, the sound of nylon scratching against rough bark as his back hit the tree I’d shoved him into. His heart hammered against mine. “I don’t give a shit about Shana, you fucker. It’s you, it’s…”
Eric’s breaths came hard and fast as I pressed my full weight against him until I could feel the effort it took for him to draw air in the way his rib cage shuddered against me. He flinched around the eyes but remained still.
I waited for him to grab me, spin me around, push me away, something. But he just stood there letting me make a sandwich of him and the tree. “Do you think about me?” I winced as soon as I’d spoken because what a stupid fucking question. How much more transparent could I possibly be? But I wanted to know if I’d infected his every fucking thought the way he’d infected mine. If he could go a solid ten minutes having forgotten I existed. Because I couldn’t. He was wrapped around my reality now.
Eric lifted his hands like he was making a show of surrender, and then they kept rising, turning to grip the tree trunk above his head. “Every goddamn day. All the time.” There was no hesitation in the reply, and fuck if that didn’t catch me off guard. I was ready for an argument or some smart-ass quip, not a confession.
He gritted his teeth as I pressed harder into him. I could feel his dick stiffening, smell his arousal mingled with my own. My weight against him had to be verging on tortuous by now, and I really had no idea what I was doing or where I thought I was going with this line of questioning. My biceps and forearms strained with the pressure of holding him against the tree, and it felt fucking electric. I wedged my knee between his thighs and pressed, feeling the smallest arch of his hips into me. “Good.”
“Good?” He let out a choked laugh, and I crammed my hand down between us, cupped him, and gave a little twist of my wrist that made him flinch again. His lips parted and a soft, breathless gasp leaked out.
He fucking liked it.
“Fuck,” he gritted out as I squeezed harder, and I caught the sear of pain through his eyes that time. “Are you about to rip it off or stroke it?”
“It’s a toss-up.” I honestly wasn’t sure. Running on alcohol fumes and without a plan was really fucking bad form. My head swam and my thought processes clogged between that last beer at Shana’s and the stiff dick pressed against
my palm.
“Well, make a fucking decision before I pass out and you’re perving on deadweight.”
I let off some of the pressure and Eric’s chest expanded harshly as he gulped in a deep breath, his gaze following as I kept my forearm against his chest, fumbled his pants open with my other hand, and pulled out his cock, so stiff and swollen and ready. He huffed through his nose, his eyes falling shut and his face tensing as I stroked him roughly. I didn’t want it to feel as good as it did to touch him, but after weeks of nothing, fuck, just his expression lit me up. The moan that followed my thumb rubbing over his head made my balls tighten up in warning. His dick was like iron, wet at the tip, hot in my hand, and I almost lost my resolve as he started rolling his hips against my touch, pushing himself harder into my grip. I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing or why, only that my entire body felt like this fucked-up miasma of ache and fury that desperately needed some kind of outlet, that wanted him to be as screwed up over all of this as I was.
“Nate, listen.”
Speed bump. My stroking ground to a halt. He wasn’t supposed to talk right now. We’d already talked. That ship had sailed; we’d both stood on the shore and given it the finger as it passed by. And he especially wasn’t supposed to say my name like that, so soft and wrecked.
“Nope.” I let go of Eric’s dick, pushed off him, and started down the path again, the smug smile on my face feeling clunky and wrong because I was being a drunken idiot, giving in to petulance and immaturity. What I’d just done was all of those things because I’d done it with vicious intent to fuck with him. No, don’t think about that. He deserves it. He—
My knees hit the ground, and the twigs snapping beneath me sounded as loud as gunshots on the otherwise empty path. A dull pain spread through my kneecaps, and then I was shoved onto my back. My arms swung blindly, landing with a thud on some part of Eric, maybe his ribs. He caught me by the elbows, spread my arms wide, and forced them down, the awkwardness of the angle giving me no leverage to push back against. His weight on top of me was heavier than I remembered.
“Get the fuck off me, Eric,” I growled, levering my hips off the ground to try to unseat him. He doubled down by throwing his weight back into his ass, then hovering over me as he forced my thighs down with his calves.
“No. You’re going to listen to me for five fucking seconds.” He tightened his knees around my hips.
“There’s nothing to say. We’re friends, whatever. I don’t give a shit now.”
“Bullshit,” Eric snarled and recentered his weight as I twisted, trying to rise from my shoulders this time. He bore down on my elbows until I relented. And fuck, I liked it, could feel myself chubbing up again with the struggle and the solidity of him on top of me forcing me still. His expression held a fury I’d never seen in him before; it burned white-hot in his eyes and flared his nostrils. “I want you. That’s never been the fucking issue. Jesus Christ, I fucking want you. All the time, every day. To the edge of my own goddamn sanity, I want you—”
I made some sound too embarrassing to bear and folded like a damn soggy cardboard box. I didn’t know how long he would’ve kept going, every hard spot on his body grinding into me like he was trying to turn me to ash, but I couldn’t take another second of him looking at me that way, his hair wild and his gaze untethered and raw, smoldering into me. So I kissed him, twisted my wrist in his grip until his skin burned against mine, fire shot through my forearm, and he relaxed long enough for me to wrench free and yank him down by the collar.
For a second, it was just our lips smashed together, surprise in the grunt that fell across my chin as we knocked into each other. Then Eric responded like a fucking savage, all teeth and tongue invading and taking. I seized his mouth, his lower lip, whatever I could get at until I tasted the tinge of blood and wasn’t sure whose it was. For a handful of seconds, it was more combustion than desire, all that furious chemistry flowing between us and igniting like magma. Incendiary to the point of pain. That’s what it felt like.
The groan I let out rang of desperation to my own ears, saturated with the knowledge that no one else made me feel the way Eric did, that I didn’t think anyone else could.
His erection ground into me, and when he drew back, his gaze was still hot and agitated. In it, I could finally see what I hadn’t earlier, the troubled kid he’d called himself. The fire starter, the outlet seeker.
“You want to know that I’m suffering. That’s what it is, isn’t it? You want to see me suffering? Then fucking look at me. Because I am.” His pupils were huge in the darkness, his eyes a glossy mirror that reflected the same longing I knew I had to be projecting, even if I was still wiggling around beneath him. In his expression, those glimpses of vulnerability I’d caught on other occasions were made into a whole laid bare before me.
Eric slid a hand through my hair and held me still. “You were right. What you said in my room that night about whether I could get over you? I can’t. I’m fucking wrecked. I want to be with you, asshole, so name the terms, because I can’t do it for you. I can’t make any of these choices for you any more than I can stop wanting you. I thought I could and I can’t. It has to be you who makes the call.” He paused, chest rising and falling in ragged heaves as he searched my face, clearly waiting for me to say something, but I was speechless. Fucking speechless. Wrecked, he’d said. I’d wrecked him. The meaning spread through me, and it didn’t feel in any way like righteous vengeance. It just thumped around restlessly in my chest and hurt.
He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, then opened them again, swiping the heel of his hand across his chest to dislodge a leaf that had gotten stuck there. His grip on me lightened by a fraction. “If you want me to stop, say it. I’ll leave right now and you can tell your folks my mom made it back after all. Because you and I both know I can’t stay.”
Stop. Four simple letters. Like love. Like hate. I tried. I tested it out, felt the word form in my mouth, felt the logical composition of letters. But if I let it out, it’d be the biggest fucking lie I’d ever told, and I was tired of lying to everyone. But mostly to myself. Exhausted, really. Eric and I got each other on some primal, subdermal level that maybe I’d never fully understand, and I was fucking kidding myself trying to fight it. So that left me with what? Was my best hope that someday enough time would pass that I’d forget about him and my heretofore vanilla existence would somehow be fine again?
Fuck that.
This time when I tested the restraint of his hands around my wrists, he gave easily, and I meant to shove him off me, I really did. Talk it out like normal people or, shit, just apologize for being a drunken idiot. But the shove never came. My hand landed on his chest and instead of pushing, wrapped around his shirt and pulled. “I want you to stay. Want you…” I stuttered it out and let out an exasperated noise, seizing his waistband to hitch his ass higher as I arched into him seeking friction, seeking pressure, seeking the good shit only he could give me. “I want you.” It came out hoarse, almost a whisper, so I said it again because the words deserved to be in bold and certain, regardless of how speaking them squeezed around my heart like a vise and made me feel dizzy. When I threw my forearm over my eyes, Eric dragged it away and pressed it to my side. He held it there, then grabbed the other, pinning both with his knees. His hands moved under my shirt, the chill in them lifting goose bumps over my skin as he pulled it up and bent to kiss the side of my neck. I swallowed under the pressure of his lips, his heat moving across my throat and burning through my cheeks. “Then I’ll stay.” He made it sound so fucking simple. Maybe it was. Maybe it could be.
Relief, joy, and need twined through me. I wrenched my hands from beneath Eric’s knees, the friction of denim scoring my knuckles as I reached for his waist and tugged at the button of his jeans. We could figure everything else out later. Right now I wanted a hit of him, wanted to feel him burning through my core and tangled around me, pushing me all the way to my limits as he took me apart.
�
��We should go somewhere else.” His voice was rough with the same desire I felt, and I was too impatient.
“No.” The shake of my head brushed my lips against his. “Here. I want it. I fucking need it.” Like I was some junkie sweating it out in detox.
Eric glanced around us. The forest was quiet, the path overgrown with stiff, dead grass, and the only sound aside from our breaths was the distant whine of heat pumps kicking on. It had to be close to four in the morning, the dead zone of night. He gave me a gauging look, then pushed my hands from his fly, unbuttoned my jeans, and pulled my zipper down as he spit into his fist. His hand around my cock was the purest relief I’d ever felt, and the rough strokes he gave my shaft ignited me so fast and hot I almost choked on something that was dangerously close to a sob. I squeezed my eyes shut, not sure where the hell that’d come from—the alcohol, the sheer relief of giving in to exactly what I’d wanted all day. No, weeks.
The heat of Eric’s palm seared across my cheek, the thrust of his tongue into my mouth like liquid fire, and I lapped it up like an arsonist, addicted to the way he scorched through me. In seconds I was gasping for air and bucking into his grip, about to lose it.
“Gonna come for me or make me work harder for it?” Eric moved away long enough to spit on his palm again, and then he was back, pumping me so relentlessly the friction made my spine twist on the ground like a sidewinder.
“Yes,” I choked out, then shook my head, my eyes flying open as I shoved his hand away. “Wait. No. Not yet.” What if tomorrow he changed his mind? What if it was just the alcohol talking? Damned if I was going to waste this opportunity on a hand job, even a really fucking good one.
Eric laughed softly and my body shuddered in protest, ache backing up in my balls and making them throb. Then came the pressure of his hands on my hips and my shoulders as he yanked me up to sitting position.
We moved in a blur. He tore his coat off, tossed it aside, and helped me with mine when it got stuck around my elbows.