Matt
Two hours later, I know.
“I’m going to kill you.” I glower into the full-length mirror.
Eyes flashing with impish glee, Nichole peeks around my shoulder. “Who me?”
She knows exactly who and exactly why. By her hand, I’ve become Eros, gigolo extraordinaire. We’re talking serious humiliation.
“I tried to warn you.”
“Yeah, not that hard.”
Her eyes roll, and I start fighting images of turning her over my knee.
“As if something as little as skin-tight, cherry-red, spandex, short-shorts could come between us. Where’s your mythological enthusiasm, you hunky god of love, you?”
With a resigned sigh, I pick up the rest of the costume and shrug it on. The three-foot wide wings secure with thick black leather straps across my chest. And perfect, Eros is into bondage.
Only for Nichole would I suffer through this. “I thought the costume was a toga or something. I didn’t realize I’d be so…exposed.”
One slender shoulder hitches against the tilt of her head. “Think of it as a swimsuit, only skimpier.”
“I wear trunks.”
“Talk about a travesty.”
I answer with a growl, but Nichole shakes her head, enjoying this way too much.
“Oh come on. Take a little credit here,” she taunts. “If you’d been some dedicated couch potato, no matter how much I’d still love you—you’d be ineligible for the role. You want to blame someone…blame yourself. Blame that triathlon you knocked out in San Diego last month. I mean I didn’t hone that athletic bod to its current state of perfection.”
My frown is starting to cramp. “You’re right. Get me a bean bag chair and a bottle of corn syrup, stat.”
Shaking her head, she looks me up and down. “Too late, I’m afraid. Next year consider letting yourself go a few months ahead of time.”
Right, like there’ll be a next year.
At my grumbling, she cocks her head. “Matt, it’s Valentine’s day and the opening for Brink. You’re playing Eros. What did you expect?”
“Something that would leave me with a modicum of my pride when the night ends?”
Nichole snickers. “Sorry, you’re going to be shooting sprays of candy flavored rubbers from your ‘chariot’. Pride doesn’t play into this gig.”
Yeah, I’m giving her a hard time, and I don’t love how this bail out is shaping up. But we both know, for her, I’d do it again in a second.
Nikki walks around me, adjusting the fabric of my shorts here and there as her attention drags over every inch of me in scrutinizing detail. It’s unnerving as hell and takes everything I’ve got not to flex just a little.
Spandex snaps against my ass.
“I’d say you pass muster.”
Oh no, she did not…
Except that unrepentant smirk confirms, oh yes, she did. And worse she’s daring me to do something about it. Goading that part of my psyche she knows loves to go head to head with her.
“Nichole…” I stalk after her until the flare of anticipation in her eyes brings me to a stop. No good will come of catching her, that’s for damn sure.
Realizing the chase is over, she backs toward her bedroom door, smiling as she goes.
“Tonight’s going to be great, Matt. You’ll see. Just give me ten minutes to get ready.”
Tonight’s going to be something, all right. The way Nichole is pushing my buttons, I just hope like hell it isn’t a disaster.
Nichole
Retreating to my bedroom, I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, waiting for my heart to stop racing.
Why, why, why can’t I stop this?
Matt is not my plaything. He’s my best friend and the best person I know. And ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time I’m one-hundred percent sure that’s all we’ll ever be.
For more than a decade, the soul deep bond between us has been strictly friendship. A limit imposed by Matt, and one I’ve both respected and adhered to. Back in college, I summoned the nerve to broach the subject of more, and I even got so far as to rest my palm against his chest and ask if he’d ever thought about the two of us together. He shut me down with a single word. No. Then he gave me a hug and walked out of the room.
I’d accepted it and moved on. Mostly. And in those rare moments where my heart got away from my head and I wished and wondered? Well, I learned to stifle those renegade thoughts. Pushing them aside with such ruthless efficiency, it’s all but second nature now. Or at least it was until a few months ago when Matt inadvertently gave me my first taste of more. That taste hit me like a drug, sliding hot through my veins and permeating my senses as it hooked me on a rush so devastatingly addictive, I haven’t been able to stop craving more since.
And it’s killing me. Because being with Matt has always been the easiest, most natural thing in my life. But now, I can’t relax. Suddenly every breath my friend takes is feeding my fantasy file, ratcheting a tension within me I can’t ease alone.
Of course, he has no idea.
He has no idea I had to change my panties after catching him with one arm braced against the freezer door while he drank orange juice straight from the carton. Or that I nearly came when I found him shirtless under the kitchen sink—jeans loose around his hips, his abdominal muscles flexing as he worked the wrench. Cripes. I nearly dropped to my knees right there, and then spent two weeks fantasizing about what I would have done to him with my mouth.
He has no idea I can’t sleep at night because the memories of him— stretching out his shoulders after a game of hoops with the guys or walking around in a towel with beads of water dotting the narrowing trail of curls beneath his navel—leave me trembling with a need that borders on pain. Or that I’ve burned out the motors in enough battery operated buddies to earn a bulk discount from my local retailer.
He has no idea, because we’re friends. Best friends. Lifelong, touchy-feely friends. But still, just friends.
That ought to be the end of it. It would be, if it weren’t for these incredibly rare, possibly imagined moments that make me wonder if maybe that’s not all.
Like this afternoon. There was something different in the way he was looking at me. Fine, the way I thought he might be looking at me. Standing within the circle of his arms, I would have sworn he’d been about to kiss me. That fully awake, conscious of who he held—Matt was a hairsbreadth from taking another taste. That in that moment, on at least a physical level, he’d wanted me.
It didn’t happen, and I’ve been wrecked ever since. My mind hopscotching from one bad idea to another. My heart skipping beats, my mind whirling with what ifs and why nots I’d never normally consider, while my belly churns with anxious need.
But what’s worse is, I’m pretty sure I’ve come up with an idea to handle it… and it involves more than a taste.
I don’t have any delusions about a taste or even a five course meal turning into a lifetime pass to the all-you-can-eat Matt Reeves buffet. And that’s fine. It’s something I accepted so long ago, it’s all but become a part of my mental make-up.
But what about one night?
With a deep sigh, I rest my brow against the door frame, stealing one last glance at Matt scowling that perpetually sexy scowl of his, while he curses the thick leather strapped across his chest.
I bite my lip, the heat of his bare skin and firm resistance of all those layered muscles so fresh in my mind I can still feel them beneath my fingertips—still feel my body’s hungry response to its favorite forbidden fruit.
Once would be enough. I’m not after his forever, I just need to get him out of my system so I can put an end to these ever-increasing frustration-sparked outbursts I keep blaming on PMS. So I can sleep again and act like a normal person rather than some jacked up hormone monster about to slip her leash.
One night. And thanks to my particular brand of romantic dysfunction—the one where I lose interest in every guy I sleep with as soon as the deed is done—after, we’ll finally be able to go back to being the kind of just friends we’re supposed to be.
Heck, we’ll probably be even closer than we are now.
It could work. It has to work. Because if it doesn’t, I’m going to have to move out.