Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“I don’t know. I think it means I’ll suck you off any time you want.”
“Wow.”
I held up my hands, standing up straight again. “I know the deal,” I said. “You don’t want anything serious, and that’s fine. I just want to have fun. God, I missed having fun with you, Ori.”
His gaze was gentle as he looked at me, still melting into the bay window alcove. The words hung in the air for a while, and it felt like the most vulnerable moment of the night, which was saying quite a lot.
It was so hard to tell him how much I missed him.
The night outside the bar had been a fleeting moment of honesty, but right now I was calm. I didn’t feel out of control of my emotions.
I knew I was being vulnerable, and I wasn’t stopping myself.
Nothing felt more precarious than that.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun,” he finally said. “You want me to return the favor at some point?”
I held up my hands. “I know you. I know you start to dislike anything the moment you feel you need to go tit-for-tat. So this isn’t that. I’m satisfied. So I’m going to go to sleep now, and I’ll let you do the same.”
Ori gave me a little smile. “So if I come into your bedroom and find you jerking off again in a few hours, you won’t even want me to hop in and help suck you off?”
“You wouldn’t,” I said. “You’ll be sleeping like a baby anyway.”
“Fine. I won’t come in,” he said, brushing his hair back with his fingers.
I could watch him like this forever. In a relaxed haze after he’d just come, looking like for once, he didn’t have a worry in the world.
“You’re always welcome to,” I said. “You didn’t let me loan you even a thousand bucks to help with your moving costs. So please, consider the blow job a favor.”
“It was good,” he said simply. I could tell he was running out of steam. Not knowing what to say, and probably very sleepy after he’d come.
As I walked to the hallway, I paused to look back at him for a moment. “You know, I’ve always been curious what it might be like to have a friend with benefits, too,” I told him. “So don’t sweat it, okay? Night.”
I made it to my bedroom, shut the door behind me, and took a deep breath before the enormity of the evening hit me all at once.
“Holy fucking hell,” I said under my breath.
Everything caught up with me. The alcohol. The things I’d said.
The way everything had just changed.
All at once I felt elated, like I had just jumped off of a cliff I’d been afraid of all my life—a jump that part of me thought might kill me.
But another part of me knew that the cliff had water at the bottom. That if I took the plunge and fell, I might fall in and find something beautiful.
It was still dark when I woke to the sound of my bedroom door gently opening.
“Mmm,” I hummed, looking over to see Ori’s silhouette in the low light.
“Hi,” he said, padding over to the opposite side of the bed. He pulled back the covers and slid underneath, getting cozy right away.
“Hello,” I replied, shifting in bed, still in a half-sleepy state. All at once a sharp cold hit my arm and I winced. “Fuck. Fuck, Ori, your hands are so fucking cold—”
He laughed softly, squeezing my arm with his ice-cold fingers once before pulling back. “Sorry. I need to heat up.”
“Damn right you do,” I said.
I turned toward him and felt for his hands under the covers. When I found the little blocks of ice, I clasped my hands around them, rubbing quickly and warming him up.
“My personal heater.”
“Is that what you’re using me for, after all?”
“Yup,” he said. “Our whole friendship has been a ruse so that I can get you to warm my limbs up whenever I want.”
I chuckled, giving him a little shove. His hands were approaching a normal temperature now, and I pulled back, taking a deep breath.
I felt that gentle tug throughout my whole body as I smelled Ori in bed next to me.
Goddamn, it felt good having him in here with me.
“You said you wouldn’t end up in my bed.”
He hummed, and a moment later I felt his fingers on my back, gently scratching it. It was a slice of fucking heaven.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I lied.”
Well you can lie to me all you want, if it feels this good.
I was sinking back into sleep quickly, relaxed by his touch and the weight of him next to me in bed.
I liked sleeping next to somebody.
More than I liked to admit.
He warmed up next to me, and the same feeling from earlier flooded me.