My Favorite Half-Night Stand

“Sex toys.”

“No,” I say, kissing her again, “I translated that. I mean . . . you have an entire drawer of them?”

“It’s not a huge drawer.” Her mouth comes over mine, firmer now, and then she grins into the kiss. “But yeah. It’s full.”

Wow, her lips are unbelievable—playful, soft, immediately addicting. It takes almost no time for her to transition from Millie, my friend into Millie, sexpot, and for a tiny flicker, I desperately hope that we can transition back just as easily.

But then her hands come up under my shirt, and I hope instead that time snags on this night, so it doesn’t ever end.

Her palms are soft slides of heat, up over my stomach, to my chest. Fingernails teasing, fingertips mapping every inch of me. Her sounds vibrate against my lips, into my mouth. My shirt is up and gone. Her hands work madly at my belt, my button, my zipper, until my jeans are a puddle of black at my feet.

All the thoughts we shouldn’t have about our friends are unleashed—how she kisses, what sounds she makes, does she take charge, is she fun?—and by her grin I can tell the same thing files through her thoughts. What a relief to find all the unexpected ways we’re compatible.

I like her little gasp when she digs into my boxers and feels me. I like the sneaky smile that presses against mine. “Reid. I’m touching your dick.”

“I know.”

“I like it,” she whispers.

“Coincidence? I do, too.”

She giggles, pulling her hand out of my boxers and cupping her hands at my waist while she walks backward, leading me down the hall to her bedroom. She kisses my collarbones, my neck, my jaw.

Millie is easy to undress: just a tug of fabric up over her head, and then she’s standing there in nothing but her underwear. I’ve always semiconsciously suspected she had a great chest, but now I get to confirm with my eyes, and hands, and mouth. I’ve always appreciated that she likes to swim, that she eats pretty well—but now I get to see the definition along her arms, her stomach, the strength of her thighs. Her hair is a mess; her mouth is a little swollen from me already. I haven’t had sex in months, and I’m momentarily overwhelmed—a starving man at a buffet, unsure where to start.

“You’re overthinking something,” she says, and then moves closer, hooking her thumbs into the waistband of my boxers. “Don’t think.”

I twist a strand of her hair around my index finger. “Should we establish some ground rules?”

When Millie pulls away slightly, her eyes are dark and heavy. “If you want?”

“I just feel like we should.”

Her lips return to my neck, sucking. “Okay, one, we both come.”

I pull back and look at her. “Seriously? That needs to be said?”

A wry curve tugs at her mouth. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

“I’ve got you,” I say, kissing her smile. “But my rule is we don’t tell the guys.” Ed is so genuinely optimistic, he’d probably be happy for us even if it’s just one night of fun. But Alex is a smart-ass who would give us unending shit and Chris would be horrified.

It’s her turn to pull back in surprise. “That needs to be said?”

“I feel like they’d be jealous, I guess.”

“Of me, obviously. Clearly everyone wants to bang Reid.”

This makes me laugh. “Clearly.”

“So, you’re not telling Chris? You tell him everything.”

She’s right, but he would never be on board for this kind of impulsive decision. Chris is the most intentional, cautious person I’ve ever known. “I swear I won’t.”

Her hand slides over my stomach, and a fingertip traces the line of hair above my boxers. “Any other rules?

“I have condoms,” I say. “But they’re in my car.”

“I have some in my drawer of sin.”

I can hear the smile in her voice, but the blunt mention of something so physically related to the act makes her neck go warm under my mouth.

Her bra comes off with a little slip of my fingers, and I lose even more of my plan to savor this when I fit my hand around the warm curve of her breast. “What do you like?”

“Everything,” she says, quickly adding, “except anal.”

“Wow.” I pull back, looking down at her. “Never mind. If that’s off the table then I gotta go.”

She pinches my nipple, laughing at my high-pitched shriek.

“I was kidding.” I punctuate my point by pushing her underwear down her hips.

“I know.” Her mouth slides over my shoulder. “But I wasn’t.”

“I’m not really into it, either.”

“Really?” she says, and I love the genuine way she searches my eyes. I’ve never been this close to her before, and she’s certainly never looked at me like this—with the combined tenderness of best friend and lover. “I assumed you were into everything.”

“When did you assume this?”

Her hand comes around me, stroking slowly, and my mind goes all wavy. “You know. Just . . . random Reid thoughts.”

“While we were at Gio’s last week, you looked at me and thought, ‘Huh. I bet he likes anal.’ ”

“I think it was when you were eating a club sandwich at lunch Wednesday,” she jokes.

I laugh, and it fuses with a groan when she leans forward to drag her teeth along my neck. “I swear, Ed needs to never wear that shirt again.”

“The white one?” she asks. “Chest hair extravaganza?”

“It’s just so thin . . .”

I bend to kiss her throat, her shoulder, and then I forget what I was saying because she’s pulling me down onto the bed, and her nipple is in my mouth and she’s stroking me and I probably couldn’t remember my own name if asked.

“Is this weird?” I murmur into her skin. “Why are we talking about the guys while I’m doing this?”

“I like talking,” she says, and digs her free hand into my hair. “I like talking to you while—”

Her voice falls away when I suck.

I half expect it to be like this the entire night—easy conversation like we’ve always had, but through kisses, touches, even through the sex itself. But when her hand finds a certain rhythm, it shifts something over inside me, something more instinct than conscious thought. I make my way down her body, she later makes her way down mine, and when she finally comes back up over me, on top of me, she looks directly into my eyes as she sinks down and I wonder during the first gasping burst of sensation why we haven’t been doing this every day for the past two years.

I leave Millie’s around two, when she’s fast asleep and starfished across ninety percent of the mattress. I kiss her cheek when I go; it feels weird to leave after only half a night together—but I have to think it would be even weirder to wake up with your best friend naked in your bed.

I didn’t have much to drink, but the next morning I feel hungover anyway. It’s a cocktail of the light-headed relief that comes on the heels of a night of great sex . . . mixed with the nauseating anxiety over a fight with a friend.

Not that Millie and I are fighting. I mean, I can’t even imagine Millie angry. She wasn’t that drunk, but if there’s anything that could piss her off, it’d be the perception that I took advantage of her last night.

Chris’s office is in the building next to mine, and just inside the entrance closest to the campus coffee kiosk. This proximity means that he’s lucky enough to be able to slip out and back in for coffee without running into fifteen colleagues in the hall, but it also means that people are constantly walking past his office, on their way to or from the kiosk, interrupting his workday.

Like I do now, stepping through the open door and into his office. “Hey.”

For a chemistry professor, Chris keeps his office impressively tidy. There are no teetering stacks of dusty lab notebooks or piles of outdated textbooks being used as makeshift tables. He has a small plant on his desk, a jar of pencils, a few molecular models here and there, but—much like the man himself—Chris’s office is much more put-together than any of the rest of us seem to manage.