Clint pushes into me again with more force, the mattress frame hitting the plaster wall and probably making a dent.

"You like that?" He growls in my ear. I feel the steamy wetness from his breath as he buries his cock deep inside of me once more.

All of this should turn me on. My sex-on-a-stick fuck buddy/best friend is plundering my treasure trove. But sadly, I just can't get out of my own head. This isn't happening to me. It can't be.

I give a non-committal shrug and Clint looks hurt for a split second before pulling out and flipping onto his back.

"Ride me." His long, lean body takes up most of his king size bed. Sweat glistens on those abs I usually like to lick, and his massive stiffy sticks straight up, waiting to be mounted.

I comply, psyching myself up and trying to focus on the sapphire eyes piercing my body right now. My thighs straddle his, and they're so big that my knees barely touch to the bed I'm spread so wide. I let myself slide down as Clint grabs my hips, digging his fingers in, and we both gasp at the fullness.

"It’s your saddle, cowgirl. Show me what you can do."

Damn, he's even taking dirty talk to the next level to get me to come. I appreciate his effort, but as soon as I grind myself back and forth a couple times, I know it’s not going to happen.

I hang my head as I prop my hands up on his chest. "This never happens. Fuck."

I'm fully aware I sound like a teenage boy unable to get any wind in his sails. But it just doesn't. I always come during sex, whether it’s with the help of my partner or not. I've never had a problem. Then again, I've never not been able to focus on the one thing I'm really, really good at.

"What can I do?" Clint senses my distraught.

"Talk to the orgasm gods and tell them to give me mine back?" I joke as I collapse onto his chest, his dick still fully buried inside of me.

"Well, it seems like you've taken coming off of the table. What's up?" Clint's hand rubs up and down my back. He uses his other to brush my red locks from my eyes and tip my head up to look into his.

"I don't know!" I whine like a pissed off child. "I can't get out of my head. Believe me, I want to do you until we're both screaming from orgasmic bliss. But my fucking brain won't turn off."

He smiles, and I feel his tool twitch inside of me at the word orgasmic. I roll off of him, aware that I'm probably not helping by straddling his fully-hard member.

"What's on your mind?" Clint was always so patient with me.

"Nothing..." I huffed, crossing my arms over my very naked body.

He rolls up onto his side so that we were now laying face to face. Jesus, he is fucking hot. If only my vagina would detach from my brain. Clint raises on eyebrow, telling my silently to spill it.

"Ugh. I don't know. This whole year has just been a mess. With my family that is. If family is even the word for it. After Africa, I just thought I would never have to deal with my parents again. And then my mom came along today and dropped this huge fucking bomb on me. I’m talking Hiroshima type bomb. She has information, or someone has information, that could affect my life forever. And I just don’t know if I can handle it. Or if I even want to." Clint stroked his fingers up and down my arm as I talked, causing a wave of goosebumps to move down my flesh. "It’s just not fair. I didn't ask to be born with sucky parents."

Those aqua eyes filled with amusement. "Not getting what you want doesn't happen to you often, does it?"

I considered his words and shook my head. "No, not really."

He chuckled. "Life isn't fair, Roo. And lots of people looking at yours, they would be jealous as hell. Did you know that I grew up almost dirt poor?"

I'd suspected that Clint didn't come from a long line of Rockefeller's, but his words made my jaw drop.

He went on. "That's right. My mom and dad worked two or three dead end jobs to put Goodwill clothing on me and my brothers' backs and crappy food on our table. I slept on a couch for most of my teenage years. We ate whatever my parents could afford, which was usually crap fast food. Speaks volumes about the price of good nutrition in this country."

I hugged my body tighter. I wanted to reach out and hold Clint, but thought it would be too intimate. That would be something a girlfriend did.

"But you know what life did give me? A wicked good arm and the knack to read a baseball field. I changed what I could, my weight namely, but accepted where I came from. I accepted that my parents were always going to live the way they did, and I made peace with all of that. Out of anyone, I think you would understand that life is too short to hold onto things. Life is fucking unfair. But all you can do is change what you can, and let go of what you don't want."

An odd sensation rippled within the walls of my chest. Admiration? Compassion? Love. The word flitted across my brain before I could stop it. No. That's not what I felt for Clint. I loved him as a friend. That was it. This melting in my chest had nothing to do with the fact that he saw me right down to my soul. That he had just perfectly summed up the way I should view the world. I had to get out of here.

"Who knew you, the big dumb jock, was so wise?" I wink and sit up, searching the room for the oversize t-shirt he had pulled off my body half an hour ago.

"Kels, stay with me." Clint's eyes begged me, his whole body strained toward me like he might make a grab for me as I tried to escape.

"I'm tired, dude. Need my beauty rest." I plastered my panty-dropper grin on my face. "I'll make this up to you, promise."

I heard him mutter, “I don't care about the sex," as I scampered from the room like a coward.

Once I was back in my makeshift room, I face-planted onto the bed. I was such a stupid fucking chick. Catching feelings for a dude I was hooking up with? No matter who he was, friend or not, this was not acceptable. As my mother said, unconditional, everlasting love doesn't exist. I wasn't taking any chance ending up like the two monsters who had created me. Or ruining Clint because of my fucked up view on love. No, thank you ma'am.

I needed to end this with him. It had gone on long enough. Almost two months hooking up with the same guy. No other screwing around? That was practically a relationship in itself to me. And even if there was a way we could be together, I knew I would inevitably screw it up. I had no head space to add my first official boyfriend to the list as well.

But to stay friends, I had to convince him this was his idea. That we should go back to the mainland of Friends and leave the island of Benefits. And I think I had just the way.

I'm in the kitchen the next day making a snack plate for Clint and I's Netflix marathon when Parker walks in.

"Hey, dude.” I try to act friendly.

Parker gives a non-committal sound and slinks over to the sink. Marnie struts in and begins to rub up against his legs. Traitor.

"Or not." I mutter to myself. I was getting sick of his bitchy attitude.

"Why are you still here?" He turned around and basically spat at me.

Well, well, well. I'd flicked the sleeping beast. The devil on my shoulder winked at me and laughed. I was not-so-secretly loving this.

"Um...I live here?"

He slammed the plate he was cleaning down on the counter. "Actually, you don't. You've been freeloading off of us for six months and fucking with my best friend's head. But no, you don't live here."

My mouth was so wide that if a fly threw down my throat, I probably wouldn't notice. What the fuck had he just said to me?

"Excuse me? Owen and Clint have no problem with me being here. And I carry my weight. Making dinner for you all, cleaning up, and paying my share of the utilities. And if you're jealous that your roommate is getting ass and you're not...well then I don't know what to tell you. Use your hand. Or maybe perk up a bit and some girl will want to fuck you."

Parker starts laughing his head off like I'm the best female comedian in all of Grover. I shift uncomfortably. I do not like being the butt of jokes. I hate the sensation of someone teasing or schooling me, because it didn't happen often.

"Are you blind or just dumb? Or just really selfish. My best friend, Clint, is not simply getting ass from you." He uses his fingers as air quotes when he says getting ass. "Have you even taken the time to ask why he lost all of the weight? Probably not since the world revolves around you. Especially his world. From the day you stepped foot in this house two years ago, he's been batshit crazy, head over heels in love with you. Anyone with a pea for a brain can see it. Christ, Kelsey he bought you a fucking kitten! And you're a bitch for exploiting his feelings just so he can be the next notch on your very long bed post. So yes, excuse you, you freeloading piece of crap."

If my mouth was wide before, my jaw had now definitely detached and was laying somewhere by my feet. Shame and heat crept through my system in a slow burn, and a lump of unshed tears formed at the back of my throat.

"What do you mean 'Why he lost the weight?'" It was the one thought I was allowing to penetrate my brain. The rest of Parker's insults were too raw for me to take right now.

He had turned back around and spoke over his shoulder without addressing me. "Seriously? The first time you met at that party when you girls were still in high school? He was like a puppy following you around, and you wouldn't give him the time of day. Eventually you let him into the friend zone, but even then you didn't give him a passing glance if some guy with a six-pack was nearby. He wanted to be good enough. For you. Lord knows why. That's why he's been eating grass and doing two-a-days in the gym until he almost passes out. So that you would finally look at him."

Parker looked back at me in disgust. "Guess it worked. Your shallow self took notice finally.”

I felt like I'd been whacked upside the head with a two-by-four. He changed who he was, what he looked like, for me? I backed out of the kitchen, away from Parker and his scathing accusations.

Clint called out from his room. "Be there in two seconds Roo!"

Shit. I couldn't sit there and have a movie night with him. I ducked into the bathroom and tried to get my breathing under control.

Was I really that bad of a person? Parker spoke to me like I was worse than scum, and right now I definitely felt like it. He was right. I hadn’t taken notice of Clint, not in a sexual way, until he looked like he did now. I had put him in the friend zone, only allowing him to be of best friend status when I was in Africa. And so he’d changed. He’d killed himself to get me to notice. I was such a bitch.

And was I really too blind to notice that he was in love with me? Of course I wasn’t. Deep down I’d known it all along. Guys like Clint didn’t do hook ups and friends with benefits. He’d been trying to turn this into something permanent from the start, and I’d been too selfish to cut him loose, let him down at the beginning. Secretly, I liked that he was in love with me. It meant I was a person that could be loved, at least by someone.

I splashed my face with cold water trying to calm down and get the tears to stop pricking my eyes. This was my mother’s fault. My whole screwed up family’s fault. Maybe if I hadn’t been raised by robots. If I hadn’t been lied to my entire life just because my mother didn’t believe in emotions. If I’d known my real father, if he’d been a decent person.

But I hadn’t had any of those things. And it had led me to be the fucked up person I was now; unable to get too close to someone to ever let them truly hurt me, or truly love me.

If it wasn’t evident I needed to cut this off before, it certainly was now. I took a deep breath, steeled myself and walked out to go shatter the heart of the one person in the world I might actually love.

Parker darted down the hall in front of me, threw me a bitchy glance, and walked out the front door. I knew Minka and Owen had gone home for the weekend to meet with his new agent. So it was just me and Clint. I already felt the guilt begin to roil in my stomach.

“Okay. James Bond or that movie about the guy who follows that band around with Kate Hudson?”

I smile. “Almost Famous? That movie rocks, I can’t believe you’ve never seen it. I used to dream that one day I’d become Penny Lane, going on tour with famous rock bands and making lead singers my bitch.”

Clint laughs. “That would be your idol.”

I bit my lip until I felt blood and then licked it away. I already despised myself for saying what I was about to. Might as well get it over with.

“So listen, I’ve been thinking…it’s time we put my teaching skills to the test.”

“Hmm?” Clint is only half listening to me as he sets up the TV.

“I think you need to fuck someone else.”

He stops, his sharp gaze coming up to meet mine. “If this is a joke, I don’t think it’s very funny.”

“It’s not.” I squirm. “I think you need to experience other things, and I’ve been a stellar teacher so, it’s time to let the baby bird fly free!”

I try to smile and act like this doesn’t feel like I’m taking a knife to my own heart.

“What the…where is this coming from? I don’t want to be with anyone else.”

“Oh come on, Clint, you can’t sleep with your best friend forever. Eventually we need to find you a nice girl to impress with your new moves.”

Clint’s face is pure anger now, his stubbled, sharp cheekbones flooding with color. “I have a girl right here that I happen to like a whole lot, and she seems impressed by my new moves. What’s this about, Kelsey? Let’s get to the truth of it. You always say honesty is the best policy, well let’s have it.”

I feel fragile, like if he raises his voice at me on more time, I might break. “Why did you lose all of the weight?”

Clint pales. And I know for certain it has something to do with me. “You didn’t do it for yourself, right? You were always fine like that before. Did you…did it have to do with me?”

He faces the TV, refusing to look at me. “Where would you get that idea?”

“Parker told me.”

“Fucking, Parker,” he mumbles. “Do you know you didn’t even give me two glances the first time we met? I had to go out of my way that entire first weekend to even get you to remember me? Do you know how hard it was to pester you until you finally even considered me a friend?”

I bit back a sob and tried to keep my face composed. “I always liked you! No matter what you looked like!”

“But you only started sleeping with me when I had this body, right?” He turned to me then.

“I…I’m sorry. Do you want me to admit I’m a shallow, disgusting person? I’ll gladly do that. I’ve never been anything but that, Clint. You should know that. I know we’ve been hooking up for a while, but I haven’t changed.”

That was a lie, but I needed him to want out. I had to break myself off from him now, or soon it would be too late.

“Come on, Kelsey. We haven’t just been hooking up. We’re practically dating! Neither of us has even looked at another person since we started having sex. We eat meals together, we talk on the phone. We fucking live together. That’s a relationship! You can’t deny it.”

“Actually I can. Because I told you from the start, I don’t do boyfriends. This was a friends with benefits situation only. If anyone was lying to you, it was yourself. You wanted to make this into something it wasn’t, I never led you there.”

That was such a lie, and I knew it.

“Don’t do this, Roo. We have come so far from where we were. And I know you feel it too.” He grasped my hands now. “I know this scares you, but we can take it as slow as you want. We can go back to no sex, and see where it goes. Just don’t let yourself cop out on this one. We could be great together. We already are.”

Those aquamarines plead with me. A small sliver of me wanted to say yes, to try and be with him for real. But I couldn’t do it. I’d already caused him pain he didn’t even realize yet, and if I kept doing this, I would only cause him more. Parker was right.

“I can’t. It’s just not me. I’m not built for love, Clint, and I never lied to you about that. We need to stop this, find other people to hang out with. I don’t want to hurt you anymore than I have, and I just don’t feel the same way.”

The look on his face cut me deep. His beautiful, sharp angled features were drawn in sorrow. His built, masculine form wilted like a dried up flower. It was like a blunt knife being stuck into my gut over and over again.

Even so, I managed to get up off the couch and walk out, leaving him.