If I breathed too loudly, I might jinx it. I couldn't believe my luck.

After I'd retreated to bed, realizing full well I was a bit sulky, I'd laid in my sheets restlessly. The sounds of Freddie and Kaycee's voices echoing from down the hall, however little I could make out their words, kept me from sleeping. Well, that and the hunger inside me, a deep need to do something, anything to stop Kaycee from dating some loser rebound right away.

I was protective of my friend.

Lying in bed, though, I knew it was more than that. Of course it was. I knew that the way her hair curved around her ear, the sparkling clarity of her eyes, those were noticeable to me as more than a friend. And I couldn't even get started on thinking about her body without a marked increase in blood flow to my cock. Kaycee was fucking hot.

I knew what I had to do. I couldn't take it anymore. Rather than lie there agonizing over how frustrated I was, how little I could sleep, I could take matters into my own hands. I reached down my shirtless front to the cotton boxer briefs I was wearing, dipping my hand underneath the waistband to grab myself.

Within seconds, I was growing. I closed my eyes, picturing the memories I still held fresh in my mind of the first time Kaycee and I had sex: the soft moonlight on her pale skin making her glow by the lake, as if she were a nymph from some fantastical world. The plump fullness of those incredible breasts, firm yet supple in my hands. The way her nipples hardened when I touched her, met my eager tongue with another wave of stiffening.

My cock stiffened, too. It was fully hard in my hand now as I stroked myself rhythmically, my head tilted back on the pillow so I could revel in the images flowing through my mind. I could already tell I wouldn't last long. The thoughts I was revisiting about Kaycee were so enticing, so feverish that I was closer than I thought possible to exploding, even now. A few more pumps would be all I'd need.

The movements of my hand were a little spastic now, faster, and faster, and faster. I quickened the pace until I was caught in a delirious blur of friction and images: Kaycee's mouth, her full pink lips tantalizingly close to my head. The feeling of shoving myself inside of her, the imagined gasp she'd make as I moved and opened her up with my thrusting. I wanted to grab her hips so hard it'd leave bruises, to flex into her with a forceful motion again, and again, and again...

There was a knock at the door. I held my breath, my hand flying away from its ministrations quickly as I sat up, pulling the covers over me so that my raging erection wasn't visible.

"What's up?" I said, keeping my voice quiet so I could regain a normal pace of breathing. I grabbed a book from the bedside table and switched on the lamp. Though I knew I was a bit flushed, it could be from anything. Los Angeles was a warm city, and I was under the covers.

Kaycee came in, and the juxtaposition between my fantasies of her and the reality was stark. She was even more gorgeous than my mind recalled. What made the difference was taking her in all at once: the full picture, not just snippets of memories, flashes of parts rather than the whole. For each memory I had of her naked, I suspected there was a reality far greater than I could remember.

And the next thing I knew, she was kissing me. I had to shake my head to convince myself I wasn't still fantasizing. The mental whiplash was strong: one minute, I was mid-stroke, wanting to explode all over my sheets with the gasping, gorgeous picture of her. And next, I had the real thing in my bed. She was crawling over me, guiding my hands to her underwear, gasping as I made her come.

Like I said, my luck was fan-fucking-tastic.

So you'd best believe I made the most I could of the situation. I flipped Kaycee over once her waves of pleasure finally stopped wracking her body. I pushed her into the sheets face-first, licking a swift motion up her naked spine as she shivered with agonizing anticipation.

She could feel my hard, hot cock against her leg from this angle. And she knew what I was about to do, but I still waited a moment just to let the need to feel me grow, to let my mind recover from the stunning experience of witnessing Kaycee coming from my touch. I would never forget that, as long as I lived. Sexiest thing on earth, if you asked me.

Then I grabbed a condom, unfurled it, teased her entrance with a moment of shallow penetration until she whimpered to feel more. So I slid inside, taking a kind of pace that would have driven me absolutely insane if I was her. As it stood, I was even closer to the edge than I should have been, given my self-love exploits a little while earlier, so I needed to pace myself if I wanted to show her how I could treat her now that I was fully grown.

And oh, how I wanted to.

When Kaycee and I had dated before, I was a restless teen from the middle of nowhere in Minnesota. I wanted her as badly as I did now, sure, but I had little experience other than a sloppy blowjob from a cheerleader trying to live on the edge for a weekend, and my many, many imaginary exploits while stroking myself nightly. Since then, since our first time together, I'd travelled the world as a famous rock star and slept with a good many women who were way better in bed than that cheerleader.

I was ready to obliterate Kaycee’s older memories of young Winston, to replace them with entirely new, better experiences. With a steady hand on her back, I thrust into Kaycee firmly, evenly, conveying with each movement how much my body was enjoying her body. It was a kind of dance, one we’d done before but without as much knowledge of how to follow our intuition. Now that we were older, knew ourselves more thoroughly, I couldn’t believe the difference.

Younger Kaycee had been much more self-conscious. This time, Kaycee was willing to let herself make noise. And goddamn, did I ever like it.

“Let me hear how much you’re enjoying yourself,” I said, grabbing a fistful of her hair at the base of her neck. She grinned back at me, a knowing smirk out of the side of her mouth, and closed her eyes. She let herself buck with the pleasure of me sinking into her again and again, and with each thrust she allowed a throaty, emphatic sound to escape from her mouth.

“God, you feel good,” she said to me, arching her back to let me gain deeper access.

“So do you,” I whispered, digging my left hand into the flesh on her hip, keeping her in place so that we could connect with the momentum I so desired. And oh, did we connect. The feeling of our bodies entwined like that, skin against skin providing the kind of delectable friction I’d been imagining moments before, it was almost too much.

“K,” I said. “You might need to slow down a bit.”

Not that I didn’t want to keep enjoying this devastatingly wonderful moment in time. I just wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on, knowing that I wanted her. Knowing how achingly close to coming I already was. She’d been meeting my thrusts with her own roll of her hips, each of us moving in tandem, completely synched in our rhythm.

But now, Kaycee, grinned even more sinisterly.

“That so?” she said, laughing a little.

I knew I was in trouble.

She sped up, adding a mind-blowing twist to her hips’ movement, my nerves screaming for release, my eyes screwed tightly shut from the effort in staving off explosion.

“Let me make you feel good,” she said. “Don’t hold back like that.”

I hesitated, pulling back a bit as if I were uncertain whether she meant it. I didn’t want it to end even as I longed for my own climax.

“I want you to come,” she said. The huskiness in her voice, so sensual and thick with desire, pushed me over the edge. It was all I needed, the knowledge that she wanted me to follow through to the end, to twitch and gasp and be propelled over that cliff, moments later. Each of her tantalizing movements caused another roiling, electric wave to rush through me.

Until finally, I was spent. I collapsed onto the bed next to her, completely and totally satisfied in a way I couldn’t have been from my own imagination.

This was really too good to be true. But there she was, my beautiful Kaycee, her vivid hair mussed and tangled into a flaming halo around her, porcelain skin glowing with a thin sheen of sweat. Even as satisfied as I was, I still longed to touch that skin.

She sidled up next to me, wiping her brow and trying to regain some control over her hair.

“Nicely done, Win,” she said. “I haven’t come like that in ages.”

“Greg not up to the task?” I said, a sharp pang of anger rising up in my chest. How could she have lived with him, if he didn’t make her feel wanted? Satisfied?

“He was ok,” she said.

As if that explained why she’d moved in with a guy who apparently never made her scream out during sex. I’d never liked Greg, and now I had even more reason to back up my grudge. The idea that Kaycee had wasted time with a jerk who, in addition to being a boring, lousy lay, had also cheated on her and blamed her for it, made my fists clench despite my full body relaxation.

“Fuckin’ Greg,” I cursed.

She laughed, petting a hand down my abs.

“Isn’t that my line?” she said.

“Hey, I can hate the guy, too, right?”

“Sure, but I think I have first dibs on Greg-related anger.”

“Fair enough,” I said. But I couldn’t let it go. She’d moved in with him. They’d seemed serious. What was wrong with Kaycee’s life that she’d let that happen, gone so far down the relationship line with someone who was clearly unworthy?

It wasn’t my place to ask. I wasn’t sure if I ever could, knowing her as well as I did. It would be too cruel. Too presumptuous. Besides, I was a little suspicious that my own motivations were muddied. Maybe it wasn’t “why him?” so much as it was “why not me?”

Because I felt it now. Clarity.

Staring at a flushed and satisfied Kaycee, her face so familiar, so close to mine, I had found it. I hadn’t even been looking, but there it was: I had feelings for her. It wasn’t just sex, wasn’t just friendship. I wanted to date my best friend.

Kaycee sighed. “Ah Win,” she said. “I really shouldn’t have done that.”

And my blood ran cold.

“Me, you mean?” I said.

“Yeah,” she continued. “The last thing I wanted was for you to be my rebound guy. I’m really sorry. Freddie made me jealous, and, well, you know.”

I wasn’t sure that I did. Know, that was. Because apparently despite the mind-altering awesomeness of the sex we’d just had, Kaycee was on a completely different page than me. Here I was, having emotional revelations like a goddamn sucker, and she was whirling in a regret over using me like a random off the Internet.

Shit.