THE PLASTIC HANDLE digs into my fingertip, so monumentally weighted are the surprising contents. I swallow past my dry throat, my body heat rising as if I’ve sat too long in the sun. The minute I peeked inside the bag, Neve became a living, breathing sexual being in my mind. I’ve spent nine years avoiding thoughts of her that way. Thinking about sex and my best friend in the same head space...
Nope.
I’m not a masochist and that would have rendered our entire long relationship hellish. It’s bad enough that she’s amazing—kind, smart, funny. Plus, she just gets me. Hence, best friend.
The knock of my excited heart against my ribs mocks the boundaries I’ve used to keep our friendship intact. It’s too late to un-see the sex toys. Too late to switch off the torrent of erotic images featuring my astounding Neve and her gorgeous body.
I grit my teeth and keep my eyes away from the tiny red bikini I want to rip off so I can complete the Neve jigsaw. The triangles of fabric concealing her best bits remind me I’m not supposed to wonder what she looks like naked. But my imagination is intent on torturing me.
I focus on her pretty, familiar face as the silence pulses around the room. She’s panting, flushed, realisation dawning. I stare into her eyes, because that bikini fried my brain the minute she stepped from the bathroom and I can’t think of a single non-sexual thing to say to my friend. At least this red offering is better—and by that I mean worse—than yesterday’s white one, which was hard enough to ignore. Or maybe she’s actually growing sexier day by day...
Of course, a gentleman would have ignored the bag on her bed. Even a degenerate would have discreetly closed it on discovering its contents. But I’ve been labelled worse—womaniser, lothario, playboy—my reputation is renowned. Just like my father’s.
More seconds, more silence.
Part of me wants her to deny that this bag of dildos and vibrators belongs to her, to say that she found them in the wardrobe, anything that might stop me imagining her using them. The very idea sets me on fire, balls first.
At last, she lifts her cute, slightly upturned nose in defiance. ‘It’s a bag.’ She crosses her arms under her breasts, pushing them up and accentuating her cleavage, all seen with my highly evolved peripheral vision. Because I’ve perfected looking indirectly at Neve’s forbidden zones.
I release a curse in my head for the thousandth time today and it’s only ten in the morning. I’ve seen her in a bikini before. What’s changed? Why am I struggling with the line, a heavily policed line I put in place nine years ago when I realised she was different and some smart corner of my primitive, immature brain decided to keep her as a friend? My first instinct was to shag her of course—she was striking, beautiful in that girl-next-door way, nerdy just like me and with a sense of humour dry and dark enough to make me forget all my troubles. Upon meeting her, my day went from shitty to ‘it’s going to be okay’. No mean feat, considering I’d just been through my one and only heartbreak and learned some valuable life and love lessons from my asshole father.
But despite fancying her I instantly knew she was too good for me—a messed up, commitment-phobic charmer with a bad reputation and an embarrassing family. I’d selfishly wanted her in my life, the act of keeping my hands off my proudest moment.
Of course, I’d tarnished my mature conduct by sleeping with Neve’s then-roommate that night, but I am the son of a rock-and-roll has-been.
‘Did you look inside?’ she says at last, her cheeks darkening while she waits for my answer.
‘I might have looked inside,’ I say, fighting the urge to smile, because this is serious. How will I spend the rest of the week, with her in those barely-there bikinis, knowing the intriguing and highly informative contents of this bag? Knowing the girl I made asexual in my head, to keep me sane, is all grown up and likes to play?
Damn, could she be any hotter?
I shift my hips, trying to get comfortable while my shorts garrotte my dick.
‘Okay, I lied,’ I say, giving free rein to my smile. ‘I definitely looked inside.’ I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know the lid to Pandora’s box has flown off with this discovery.
The idea of my beautiful, funny, sweet Neve using sex toys does strange and wonderful things to me. Dangerous things, because now I just want to get my hands, mouth and dick on her.
Will I ever be able to contain my desire for her again?
This is the first time I’ve seen her this naked while she’s been single. Since she dumped her latest serious, hoity-fucking-toity boyfriend who wasn’t good enough for her. What was his name... Liam? Yes, that’s it. I christened him Limp Liam.
Not that I’m good enough for her either. The opposite, in fact. Otherwise I wouldn’t be snooping in her bag of dildos more turned on than I’ve ever been in my life. For a woman who’s always been there for me, always believed in me, even when I didn’t value myself.
Finally snapping into action, Neve stamps closer. ‘Don’t mess around—you have no personal boundaries.’ She snatches the bag from my hand.
I grab the bottom of the bag in an immature game of tug-of-war, my fist curling around a phallic object inside.
‘You’ve always known I’m an arsehole—it’s genetics,’ I say, waggling my eyebrows. ‘Tell me, do you always travel with such an extensive toy collection?’ I don’t want to tease her, but it comes out dripping with playful challenge. Because that’s the way I’ve always skirted my attraction to her. But something inside me, the part seeing Neve in a whole new and sexy light, doesn’t want to play games. I want to know more about her sexual side.
And I always get what I want.
My blood thrills, hot and laced with adrenaline. She’s so close I can see the delicious flush of her neck and the tiny teardrop-shaped imperfection of her right pupil with which she was born with and that makes her uniquely Neve.
‘I’m not ashamed of my needs,’ she says, lifting her chin. It’s an adorable display of grit that’s at odds with her petite stature and freckled nose...and the fact that I know her so well I’m certain she’ll forgive me for this indiscretion. Damn, she’s so sweet. I fight a smile at the fact she’s wearing two pairs of glasses—her regular pair and her sunglasses perched on her head.
‘Quite bloody right.’ But now I’m incandescent with curiosity. Does she use them all? Every day? In the shower?
Bile hits the back of my throat—did she use them with Liam? Or with the dick-wad boyfriend before Liam—Tristan? Or, as I liked to call him, Tris Tosser? The one who disliked her girlfriends, Brooke and Grace, and suggested she try a carb-free diet... He’d been heading for a rendezvous with my fist, right before Neve dumped him.
Then it hits me, my lusty sluggish brain fitting the pieces together. The noise coming from the bathroom when I came in. It wasn’t an electric toothbrush.
My cock surges against the fabric of my shorts. If she happened to look down she’d see how inappropriately perverted I am. Lusting after my only true friend. The only person who knows the real me and all my fucked-up family bullshit. The only person to unconditionally, unselfishly care about me—not for my famous father or because I can get free tickets for his reunion tour.
My precious Neve.
But I can’t resist. I have to know.
‘Were you just using one of these? When I knocked on the door?’ I tilt my head towards the bathroom, my eyes burning with the effort of steering clear of her delicious body.
She flushes a deeper shade of puce. ‘I might have been—your timing sucks, by the way.’ She snatches the bag free of my grasp and tosses it into her open suitcase. ‘I’ve been single for way too long.’ She braces one hand on the curve of her hip. ‘In fact, I’ve finally downloaded that dating app Brooke recommends. After eight months, it’s time to get back out there.’
She over-talks when she’s nervous. But this little nugget of information is like a slap in the head. Neve’s past boyfriends have all graduated from the school of Serious Boring Fuckers—or the SBF Club, as I like to call it—but at least she met them in person, got to know them, dated them for a while before making it official. Not that any of them had particularly taken to me, of course, even though I was no threat—I’ve never laid one finger on her in a sexual way. A few of her exes even tried to break up our friendship or insinuate themselves into it by throwing a sister or cousin at me in the hopes the four of us could double date.
‘What...?’ I drop my voice from the squeaky pleading that tries to escape. ‘Dating apps aren’t the way to go. I know. I’ve used them.’ As far as I’m aware, she’s not into one-night stands. She’ll be eaten alive in the shark tank of the dating app scene. She’s way too kind and sweet.
‘Why not?’ She holds eye contact, waiting for my explanation, but my brain is still mush from the knowledge that I interrupted my sexy goddess friend taking care of business with a battery-operated phallus.
My flesh-and-blood phallus throbs.
‘Because...’ Comprehension kicks in. She’s back on the market. Actively seeking the next wanker who’ll probably wind up hurting or disappointing her. I was certain the last one would have the balls to pop the question, but I’d known almost instantly he wasn’t man enough for Neve...
But the next one might be. And then what? A husband won’t have the tolerance that a boyfriend might for me in her life. We’re close and I don’t want that to change. But, as this current little pantomime proves, I’m selfish, inappropriate and lack boundaries. She’d choose, and I’d lose. Lose my Neve.
I swallow hard, the razor blades slashing through the lust gripping my throat.
‘Do you have a better suggestion?’ She offers a nervous laugh and looks down at her pretty painted toes in that way that tells me she’s feeling vulnerable. ‘Any dishy single friends who want to date a woman who works ten hours a day running her own business and prefers a night in with her cat watching baking shows to an evening out on the town?’
My thoughts turn murderous at the idea of any of my single friends with Neve. I want to rush to the bathroom, scoop up as many towels as I can find and cover all her gorgeousness from view in case any other single wedding guest gets any ideas.
‘Don’t put yourself down,’ I say. ‘Any guy would be lucky to have you—you’re intimidatingly intelligent and have a wicked sense of humour.’ The Neve I first met used to compare herself unfavourably to her younger sister, who’s a professional swimmer, although I’ve never understood why; Amber bores me to tears.
Neve sighs, shoving a beach towel into her bag. ‘Look, I know it’s not the best way to meet someone, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m heading towards my thirties—’
‘In a year,’ I scoff.
She shrugs and flashes her playful smile at me, the one that kicks me in the gut every time. ‘Yes, but my toy habit is pretty expensive—time to find a real live substitute with enough staying power that I don’t need a truckload of double As.’
Of course my accountant friend would balk at the cost of her sex-toy addiction. She has a spreadsheet for every occasion, including her grocery list. ‘Wait, are you saying Limp Liam...?’
‘Don’t call him that.’ Her eyes flash with censure.
I ignore her outrage. ‘Are you saying he was lacking in the bedroom?’ I bite down on my glee that the patronising, toffee-nosed Liam with his old Etonian judge father was somehow flawed, even while my chest clenches with sympathy for my wonderful Neve, who deserves all the good things, including well-hung, attentive boyfriends with extreme stamina.
I think I’m going to puke.
She shrugs. ‘Not so much lacking... I guess it was largely down to me. Why are we talking about this? Let’s go snorkelling.’ Neve develops a sudden fascination with her outfit: a shift of a bikini strap here and retightening of her sarong knot there.
What the hell...?
‘Nuh-uh, no way.’ I shake my head and lean back on my hands to show her I mean business. At least these latest revelations—that she’s joined a dating app and that her relationship with Limp Liam wasn’t all roses and screaming orgasms—douses the heat in my shorts, shrinking my hard-on quicker than a cattle prod to the arse.
‘What was down to you?’ I can’t let this go, torn between arousal and jealousy of the exes who saw a side of her I can only dream of.
She looks down, thinks better of it and slams her eyes back to mine. She’s ballsy and brave even if we’ve never skated this close to deeply personal—read sexual—details before. At least, not her sexual details. Mine tend to make it into the celebrity gossip headlines thanks to my reckless teens and the example set by my ageing-rocker father. Stories which feature me apparently out-debauching him with beautiful women seem to sell twice as many newspapers and magazines.
‘I’m saying that amazing sex, mutual, perfectly timed orgasms—angels singing, stars bursting and unicorns prancing—don’t happen for everyone.’ She sighs. ‘Not that you’d know anything about that with the amount of practice you’ve had.’ Her eyes roll with derision.
My shoulders hunch with tension. I knew it. Those are the sex toys she used with Limp Liam... I’m going to have to bleach my brain once this conversation ends.
‘Hey,’ I say, holding up my hands in supplication. ‘I have no beef with however your ex got the job done.’ I just don’t want those images in my head. Images of Neve pleasuring herself, on the other hand, I can surely keep for later personal use.
‘In fact,’ I add, ‘I’m quite impressed he was man enough to buy you sex toys.’ I nod in the direction of the bag, which might as well be filled with snakes. Green snakes. Their venom fuelling my envy. ‘He didn’t seem the type.’
Neve huffs. Collapses into a chair and narrows her eyes behind her glasses. ‘I bought them myself. And I didn’t use them with him.’ She nibbles her lip and examines a fingernail. ‘He was a bit insecure in that department, to be honest.’ She flushes, as if she can’t quite believe she’s telling me all of this.
I’m a little gobsmacked myself, truth be told, my body veering wildly between excitement and sick, twisted fascination.
‘So what do you mean it was down to you?’ Creepy-crawly legs skitter up my spine. Part of me dreads her answer in case it fundamentally changes something between us, although haven’t things already changed? Like me allowing myself to look at her in a way I’ve spent years shying away from? My inexplicable jealousy over the dating app? The idea that she might have been short-changed by the men in her past...?
‘Well...you know. I...’ She covers her mouth with her hand, as if holding in some terrible secret, and then blurts it out. ‘I never had an orgasm with him.’
‘What the hell?’ I clench my jaw when I realise I’ve actually said this aloud. But I’m livid enough to crack my own teeth. I hold up my hand. ‘I’m not judging you. It’s his fault, not yours. If he didn’t know his way around a woman’s body, and he was insecure about using toys, that’s on him.’
I fume inside; I knew he was a dick-wad.
Instead of nodding in agreement or telling me to shut up, like she usually would, she turns pale, her vulnerable stare cutting me to ribbons. ‘Thanks for being so loyal, but it can’t be him, because it’s happened before.’
I curl my fingers into fists to stop myself pulling her into a hug and holding her until that look fades from her eyes. We’ve hugged a thousand times—brief, platonic hugs, preferably where her breasts don’t come into contact with my chest and my boner doesn’t show—but this time I wouldn’t stop. I’d kiss her. Taste those soft lips she habitually nibbles when she’s pretending she’s not upset. Kiss that ticklish spot on her neck. Stare into her mismatched eyes until we both feel better.
‘So you’ve had a couple of dud boyfriends.’ I shrug, torn between utter horror for my friend and a gleeful delight that the intimidating, serious number-nerd arseholes she’s dated in the past were lacking in the most crucial department. The urge to kiss her builds, a furnace in my chest. There’s no way I’m introducing her to any of my single friends now.
She’s special. She needs a special guy, one who’ll worship her the way she deserves, treat her right and rock her world.
No. Don’t think about your friend orgasming. That’s shit you’ll never erase from your brain...
Then again, none of those exes of Neve’s dragged her into the gutter by splashing her picture all over the tabloids in some salacious story like Latest Squeeze of Layabout Son of Rock Royalty! or On Again, Off Again Girlfriend of Serial Philanderer Oliver Coterill! The consequence of our friendship.
Guilt makes my skin crawl.
‘It happened with all of them, Oliver. All.’ She stares, her green eyes huge and mesmerising. ‘I’ve never once had an orgasm with another person.’ She stands now, as if she can’t contain the tension her confession has produced and needs to move. I, on the other hand, am shocked to stillness, gaping like a stunned mullet.
She pulls on a T-shirt as if she wants to hide. My horny and flabbergasted brain recalls how we’re supposed to be going snorkelling. She’s supposed to be taking clothes off, not putting them on.
My entire body is aflame now, my eager dick twitching in my shorts. Neurones fire. One single coherent thought emerges: I could give her what others failed to do, now I’m a man. I’m not a teenager with no control over his poor decisions or his dick, like I was the day we met.
What the hell? No, no, no, no...
‘So it must be me,’ she says with a sad little laugh. ‘Perhaps there’s something wrong with me...’ She looks away, her lip taking a thrashing from her teeth as she fiddles self-consciously with the hem of the T-shirt.
‘There’s nothing fucking wrong with you—I can assure you.’ Her back is to me so I indulge in a quick perv of her arse, a cute heart-shape that does things to my pulse. Even though it’s covered by a sarong, I can picture the way the bikini bottoms disappear between her cheeks, exposing her glorious globes in an adorable, lopsided way. I want to lick and suck...
‘How do you know?’ she hurls over her shoulder.
My ire rises, drowning out testosterone and propelling me from my slouch on the bed so we’re standing face to face. ‘Tell me, do they work?’ I point at the open suitcase and the bag of toys, praying my hands aren’t shaking with the adrenaline pouring through my blood. I want to touch her so bad. Just once.
She splutters, her mouth opening and closing, making me notice her perfect little kissable Cupid’s bow. ‘What?’
‘Do they work? Can you make yourself come with your bag of tricks?’
Stop talking. Walk away.
‘Yes, but—’
‘Well, then,’ I say, my hands on my hips. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ My fists clench, my heart jackhammers in my throat and lust boils in my belly at the very idea of Neve making herself come with a dildo.
For the first time in the nine years I’ve known her, I free myself to look at her the way I want, my stare travelling her body.
From her green eyes, gawping at me as if I’ve lost the plot, to her lush lips, parted so her breath can gust in outrage. Down the slope of her neck to her freckled shoulder, which has escaped from the wide opening of her T-shirt. The swell of her generous breasts straining against the fabric, with her laboured breathing and curvaceous hips screaming ‘woman’, right down to her pretty toes painted with purple nail polish.
The release, the euphoria, the freedom fills me in a rush so deep-seated I want to groan aloud and fall to my knees.
I feel the vacuum created by her indrawn breath.
Force myself to look up.
Our eyes meet.
This is hallowed ground. Forbidden territory. A no-going-back moment. I watch her lips, which seem to tremble, waiting to hear her thoughts.
But now I know her secret, know the rough deal she’s had with the SBF Club, there’s no way I’m allowing her to meet some jerk from some app who wants nothing more than to get his rocks off.
I stare at her lips. If she asked me to kiss her now, I would.
But, oh, the price of that kiss. Just one foot over that line could ruin everything...
But didn’t I already ruin her long ago—her reputation, at least—by simple association? Hasn’t she already paid the price for being my friend? Not that she ever complains, so steadfast is her loyalty—which I don’t deserve.
‘This conversation is getting weird,’ she says in a breathy voice, ignoring the fact I’ve just ogled her, with lust, from head to toe. Her gaze flicks to the door, to escape, but it’s back before I can draw breath.
‘I think we bypassed weird a long time ago,’ I manage to say past my constricted throat. ‘I’d say we’re well and truly in outlandish territory. I’m not happy, Neve.’
Her eyes widen, her plump lips pressed together in a line. ‘Why not? It’s my situation. I don’t see how it’s your problem.’
Her point is valid on every level except for one rather crucial and burning logic.
I take a calming breath, fully decided on my course of action. Exhale. Stare deep into that unique pupil so she senses the import of this moment.
‘What if I want it to be my problem?’ I say.