CHAPTER EIGHT
HE COULDN’T SWEAR creatively enough. He had just screwed his best friend’s brains out on a couch in her living room. On top of what might be the world’s friendliest, most nonsexual-looking blanket. With a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical on the TV in the background.
And then she had started crying. She had started crying, and she had wiggled out from beneath him and gone into the bathroom. Leaving him alone.
He had been sitting there by himself for a full thirty seconds attempting to reconcile all of these things.
And then he sprang into action.
He got up—still bare-ass naked—and walked down the hall. “Anna!” He didn’t hear anything. And so he pounded on the bathroom door. “Anna!”
“I’m in the bathroom, dumbass!” came the terse, watery reply.
“I know. That’s why I’m knocking on the bathroom door.”
“Go away.”
“No. I’m not going to go away. You need to talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Anna, dammit, did I hurt you?”
He got nothing in return but silence. Then he heard the lock rattle, and the door opened a crack. One green eye looked up at him, accusing. “No.”
“Why are you hiding?” He studied the eye more closely. It was red-rimmed. Definitely still weeping a little bit.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well...you had me convinced that I... Anna, it happened really fast.”
“Not that fast. Believe me, I’ve had faster.”
“You wanted all of that...? I mean...”
She laughed. Actually laughed, pushing the door open a little bit wider. “After my emphatic... After all the yes-ing... You can honestly ask whether or not I wanted it?”
“I have a lot of sex,” he said. “I don’t see any point in beating around the bush there. And women have had a lot of reactions to the sex. But I can honestly say none of them have ever run away crying. So, yeah, I’m feeling a little bit shaky right now.”
“You’re shaky? I’m the one that’s crying.”
“And if I was alone in this...if I pushed you further than you wanted to go...I’m going to have to ask Sam to fire up the forge and prepare you a red-hot poker so you can have your way with me in an entirely different manner.”
“I wanted it, Chase.” Her tone was muted.
“Then why are you crying?”
“I’m not very experienced,” she said.
“Well, I mean, I know you don’t really hook up.”
“I’ve had sex once. One other time.”
He was stunned. Stunned enough that he was pretty sure Anna could have put her index finger on his chest, given a light push and knocked him flat on his ass. “Once.”
“Sure. You remember Corbin. And that whole fiasco. Where I kind of made fun of his...lack of...attributes and staying power in the hall at school. And...basically ensured that no guy would ever touch me ever again.”
“Right.” He remembered that.
“Well, I didn’t really get what the fuss was about.”
“But you... I mean, you’ve had...”
“Orgasms? Yes. Almost every day of my life. Because I am industrious, and red-blooded, and self-sufficient.”
He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the shot of heat that image sent straight through his blood. Anna. Touching herself.
What the hell was happening to him? Well, there was nothing happening. It had damn well happened. On the couch in Anna’s living room.
He could never look at her again without seeing her there, obeying his orders. Spreading her thighs for him so that he could get a good look at her. Yeah, he could never unsee that. Wasn’t sure if he wanted to. But where the hell did he go from here? Where did they go?
There were a lot of women he could have sex with, worry-free. Anna wasn’t one of them. She was a rare, precious thing in his life. Someone who knew him. Who knew all about how affected he and Sam had been by the loss of their parents.
Someone he never had to explain it to because she’d been there.
He didn’t like explaining all that. So the solution was keep the friends that were there when it happened, and make sure everyone else was temporary.
Which meant Anna couldn’t be temporary. She was part of him. Part of his life. A load-bearing wall on the structure that was Chase McCormack. Remove her, and he would crumble.
That was why she had always stayed a friend. Why he had never done anything like this with her before. It wasn’t because of her coveralls, or her don’t-step-on-the-grass demeanor. Or even because she’d neatly neutered the reputation of the guy she’d slept with in high school.
It was because he needed her friendship, not her body.
But the problem was now he knew what she looked like naked.
He couldn’t get that image out of his head. And he didn’t even want to.
Same with the image of all her self-administered, industrious climaxes.
Damn his dirty mind.
“Okay,” he said, taking a step away from the door. “Why don’t you come out?”
“I’m naked.”
“So am I.”
She looked down. “So you are.”
“We need to talk.”
“Isn’t it women who are supposed to require conversation after basic things like sex?”
“I don’t know. Because I never stick around long enough to find out. But this is different. This is you and me, Anna, and I will be damned if I let things get messed up over a couple of orgasms.”
She chewed her lower lip. She looked...well, she looked young. And she didn’t look too tough. It made him ache. “They were pretty good ones.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. It’s just that all of this is a little bit weird. And I’m not really experienced enough to pretend that it isn’t.”
“Right.” The whole thing about her having been with only one guy kind of freaked him out. Made him feel like he was responsible for some things. Big things, like what she would think of sex from this day forward. And then there was the bone-deep possessiveness. That he was the first one in all this time... He should hate it. It should scare him. It should not make him feel...triumph.
He was triumphant, dammit. “Why haven’t you slept with anyone else?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I told you. I didn’t really think my first experience was that great.”
“So you just never...”
“I’m also emotionally dysfunctional, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
A shocked laugh escaped his lips. “Right. Same goes.”
“I don’t know. Sex kind of weirds me out. It’s a lot of closeness.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he pointed out. It felt like a weird thing to say, though, because what they’d done just now had been the epitome of closeness.
“It just all feels...raw. And...it was good. But I think that’s kind of why it bothered me.”
“I don’t want it to bother you.”
“Well, the other thing is it was you. You and me, like you said. We don’t do things like this. We hang out, we drink beer. We don’t screw.”
“Turns out we’re pretty compatible when it comes to the screwing.” He wasn’t entirely sure this was the time to make light of what had just happened. But he was at sea here. So he had to figure out some way to talk to her. He figured he would make his best effort to treat her like he always did.
“Yeah,” she said, finally pushing her way out of the bathroom. “But I’m not really sure there’s much we can do with that.”
He felt like he was losing his grip on something, something essential, important. Like he was on a rope precariously strung across the canyon, trying to hang on and not fall to his doom. Not fall to their doom, since she was right there with him.
What she was saying should feel like safety. It didn’t. It felt like the bottom of the damn canyon.
“I don’t know if that’s the way to handle it.”
“You don’t?” she asked, blinking.
Apparently. He hadn’t thought that statement through before it had come out of his mouth. “Yeah. Look, you kissed me yesterday. You gave me...oral pleasure earlier. And now we’ve had sex. Obviously, this isn’t going away. Obviously, there’s some attraction between us that we’ve never really acknowledged before.”
“Or,” she said, “someone cast a spell on us. Yeah, we drank some kind of sex potion. Makes you horny for twenty-four hours and then goes away.”
“Sex potion?”
“It’s either that or years of repressed lust, Chase. Pick whichever one makes you most comfortable.”
“I would go with sex potion if I thought such a thing existed.” He took a deep breath. “You know there’s a lot of people that think men and women can’t just be friends. And I’ve always thought that was stupid. Maybe this is why. Maybe it’s because eventually, something happens. Eventually, the connection can’t just be platonic. Not when you’ve spent so long in each other’s company. Not when you’re both reasonably attractive and single.”
She snorted. “Reasonably attractive. What happened to me being a damn miracle?”
“I was referring to myself when I said reasonably. I’d hate to sound egotistical.”
“Honestly, Chase, after thirty years of accomplished egotism, why worry about it now?”
He looked down at her. She was stark naked, standing in front of him, and he felt like he was in front of the pastry display case at Pie in the Sky. He wanted to sample everything, and he didn’t know where to start.
But he couldn’t do anything about that now. He was trying to make amends. Dropping to his knees in front of her and burying his face between her legs probably wouldn’t help with that.
He could feel his dick starting to wake up again. And since he was naked he might as well just go ahead and shout his intentions at her, because he wouldn’t be able to hide them.
He couldn’t look at her and not get hard, though. A new development in their relationship. But then, so was standing in front of each other without clothes.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, unable to help himself.
She wasn’t as curvy as the women he usually gravitated toward. Her curves were restrained, her waist slim, with no dramatic sweep inward, just a slow build down to those wide, gorgeous hips that he now had fantasies about grabbing hold of while he pumped into her from behind. Her breasts were small but perfection in his mind. More would just be more.
He couldn’t really imagine how he had ever looked at her face and found it plain. He had to kick his own ass mentally for that. He had been blind. Someone with unrefined, cheap taste. Who thought that if you stuck rhinestones and glitter on something, that meant it was prettier. But that wasn’t Anna. She was simple, refined beauty. Something that only a connoisseur might appreciate. She was like a sunset over the ocean in comparison to a gaudy ballroom chandelier. Both had their strong points. But one was real, deep. Priceless instead of expensive.
That was Anna.
Something about those thoughts made a tightening sensation start in his gut and work its way up to his chest.
“Maybe what happened was just inevitable,” he said, looking at her again.
“I can’t really disprove that,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “You know, since it happened. I really need to put my clothes on.”
“Do you have to?”
She frowned. “Yes. And you do, too. Because if we don’t...”
“We’ll have sex again.”
The words stood between them, stark and far too true for either of their liking.
“Probably not,” she said, sounding wholly unconvinced.
“Definitely yes.”
She sighed heavily. “Chase, you can have sex with anyone you want. I’m definitely hard up. If you keep walking around flashing that thing, I’m probably going to hop on for a ride, I’ll just be honest with you. But I understand if I’m not half as irresistible to you as you are to me.”
Anger roared through him, suddenly, swiftly. And just like earlier, when she’d thrown her walls up and tried to drive a wedge between them, he found himself moving toward her. Moving to break through. He growled, backing her up against the wall, almost sighing in relief when his hardening cock met up with her soft skin, when her small breasts pressed against his chest. He grabbed hold of her hands, drawing them together and lifting them up over her head. “Let’s get one thing straight, Anna,” he said. “You are irresistible to me. If you weren’t irresistible to me, I would still be at home. I never would have come here. I never would have kissed you. I never would have touched you. Don’t you dare put yourself down. If this is because of your brothers, because of your dad...”
She closed her eyes, looking away from him. “Don’t. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it? Why don’t you think you can have this?”
“There’s nothing to have. It’s just sex. You mean the world to me. And just because I’m...suddenly unable to handle my hormones, I’m not going to compromise our friendship.”
“It doesn’t have to compromise it,” he said, lowering his voice.
“What are you suggesting? We can’t have a relationship with each other. We don’t have those kinds of feelings for each other. A relationship is more than sex. It’s romance and all kinds of stuff that I’m not even sure I want.”
“I don’t want it, either,” he said. “But we’re going to see each other. Pretty much every day. Not just because of the stupid bet. Not just because of the charity event. I’d call all that off right now if I thought it was going to ruin our friendship. But the horse has left the stable, Anna, well and truly. It’s not going back in.” He rolled his hips forward, and she gasped. “See what I mean? And if you were resistible? Then sure, I would tell you that we could just be done. We could pretend it didn’t happen. But you’re not. So I can’t.”
She opened her eyes again, looking up at him. “Then what are we doing?”
“You’ve heard of friends with benefits. Why can’t we do that? I mean, I would never have set out to have that relationship. Because I don’t think it’s very smart. But...it’s a little bit late for smart.”
“Friends with benefits. As in...we stay friends by day and we screw each other senseless by night?”
Gah. That about sent him over the edge. “Yeah.”
“Until what? Until...”
“Until you get that other date. Until the charity thing. As long as we’re both single, why not? You’re working toward the relationship stuff. You said you didn’t want to be alone anymore. So, maybe this is good in the meantime. I know you’re both industrious and red-blooded, and can get those orgasms all by yourself.” He rolled his hips again and, much to his satisfaction, a small moan of pleasure escaped her lips. “But are they this good?”
“No,” she said, her tone hushed.
“This is possibly the worst idea in the history of the world. But hell, you wanted to get some more experience... I’m offering to give it to you.” The moment he said the words he wanted to bite his tongue off. The idea of giving Anna more experience just so she could go and do things with other men? That made him see red. Made him feel violent. Jealous. Things he never felt.
But what other option was there? He couldn’t keep her. Not like this. But he couldn’t let her go now.
He was messed up. This was messed up.
“I guess... I guess that makes sense. You know, until earlier today I’d never even given a guy a blow job.”
“You’re killing me,” he said, closing his eyes.
“Well, I don’t want you to die. You just offered me your penis for carnal usage. I want you alive.”
“So that’s it? My penis has now become the star of the show. Wow, how quickly our friendship has eroded.”
“Our friendship is still solid. I think it just goes to prove how solid your dick is.”
“With romantic praise like that, how are you still single?”
“I have no idea. I spout sonnets effortlessly.”
He leaned forward, kissing her, a strange, warm sensation washing over him. He was kissing Anna. And it didn’t feel quite as rushed and desperate as all the other times before it. A decision had been made. This wasn’t a hasty race against sanity. This wasn’t trying to get as much satisfaction as possible squeezed into a moment before reality kicked in. This was...well, in the new world order, it was sanctioned.
Instantly, he was rock hard again, ready to go, even though it’d been only a few minutes since his last orgasm. But there was one problem. “I don’t have a condom,” he said, cursing and pushing himself away from her. “I don’t suppose the woman who has been celibate for the past thirteen years has one?”
“No,” she said, sagging against the wall. “You only carry one on you?”
“Yeah. I’m not superhuman. I don’t usually expect to get it on more than once in a couple of hours.”
“But you were going to with me?”
He looked down at his very erect cock. “Does this answer your question?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then.” He let out a heavy sigh.
“You could stay and watch...Oklahoma! with me.”
He nodded slowly. He should stay and watch Oklahoma! with her. If he didn’t, it kind of made a mockery of the whole friends-with-benefits thing. Because, before the sex, he would have stayed with her to watch a movie, of course. To hang out, because she was one of his favorite people on earth to spend time with. Even if her taste in movies was deeply suspect.
Of course, he didn’t particularly want to stay now, because she presented the temptation that he could not give in to.
“Unless you have to work early tomorrow.”
“I really do,” he said.
“Thank God.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You want to get rid of me?”
“I don’t really want to hang out with you when I know I can’t have you.”
“I felt the same way, but I didn’t want to say it. I thought it seemed kind of offensive.”
Strangely, she smiled. “I’m not offended. I’m not offended at all. I kind of like being irresistible.”
Instead of leaving, he knew that he could drive down to the store and buy a box of condoms. And he seriously considered it. The problem with that was there had to be some boundaries. Some limits. He was pretty sure being so horny and desperate that you needed to buy condoms right away instead of just waiting until you had protection on hand probably didn’t fit within the boundaries of friends with benefits.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
She nodded. “See you tomorrow.”