Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I snapped out of my daydreaming. “Yes. Sorry. I sort of can’t believe that this is happening, though. It’s a little overwhelming. If I can be honest.”
He took his palm away from where it was resting on my cock, and I missed it immediately. Instead he laced his hands around the back of my head, pulling me in close.
“If I’m being honest, my mind is going a million places right now, too,” he said, pressing small kisses to my collarbone in between his statements. “But they’re all places that are inappropriate for an air mattress in the middle of a bar. Which also happens to be my workplace.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “You’re right. You’re very right. We can’t do any of this here.” I slid off of him, lying next to him again, hoping my insistent erection would finally settle down.
“Hey,” he said, shimmying toward me and wrapping his arm around me. “I didn’t say I don’t want to be close to you right now. I… part of me feels like my body craves yours.”
“Jesus Christ, Mitch, you are not helping my hard-on go away,” I blurted out, readjusting my cock between my legs.
The same proud little smile appeared on his lips. “I’m pretty sure mine isn’t going to, either.”
I groaned. “This is torture,” I said.
He only snuggled up against me closer. We lay like that for a while, and he ran his hand along my arm, slowly and methodically.
“So…” he finally said, quietly. “Jess bought Zach a ticket to Chicago for the three-day weekend, next week. He’s going to be gone all weekend.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
“Come over.”
I swallowed hard. How was I already nervous about that? “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “We can… hang out.”
“Hang out.”
“Like friends do,” he said. “I need some help moving the old upright piano into the spare room, anyway.”
“I can help you move a piano,” I said. “I have to tell you something, though.”
“What’s up?”
“I actually have a date scheduled for Friday night. I can totally help move the piano, and I’ll be around the rest of the weekend. But I’d already told this guy on an app that I’d meet up with him…”
“Oh,” Mitch said, freezing for a moment. “Okay. Cool. No biggie.”
“You sure it’s no biggie?”
“Why would I care? That’s great for you. And… you can still help me move the piano. And then… then we can do other things, if you want.”
I gasped as his finger gently made a circle around my nipple, and my cock throbbed again.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“Sorry I’m torturing you,” he said. “I’m a little horny, if you couldn’t tell.”
“Believe me, I can tell,” I said. I swatted his hand away from my nipple and moved in to cuddle close to him. “I’ll come over next weekend.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, burying his nose in my hair, wrapping his arm around me again.
There was reason number 473 why Mitchell Price was an expert at breaking my heart. Lying here on a wonky air mattress on the floor of Red’s Tavern, I had both everything and nothing I really wanted.
Because I wanted this forever. I wanted all of this without the knowledge that one day, Mitch would decide his little “no labels” experiment was over, and I’d just be the best friend again when he found a new wife.
And at the same time, I couldn’t possibly say no. I couldn’t say no to this feeling. Or his arm around my body, or getting to hear his light breathing turn deeper as he slowly fell asleep right next to me.
The snow had stopped falling by the next morning. Red, Mitch, Grace and I hesitantly opened the front door of the bar, discovering a thick layer of white over the entire outside world. The sky was still lightly grey, but otherwise, the bitter cold had settled.
“Well, only one way out,” Red said, disappearing into one of the back supply closets in the bar and returning a minute later with shovels. The four of us gathered out front, each of us with a shovel in hand.
“I give up already,” I said with a groan. “We’re going to die in this snow.”
“It has to be at least eight inches,” Mitch said.
“That’s what I tell the guys every time,” Red joked.
Grace grinned at us, shaking her head. “He never stops. Doesn’t matter if it’s eight in the morning.”
“C’mon, Ev, it isn’t so bad,” Mitch said, already digging his shovel into the metric fuckton of snow in the parking lot.
“Not for you it isn’t,” I said. “Your biceps were made for this.”
For the next hour and a half, the four of us plodded along, clearing the whole front lot of Red’s Tavern. I was amazed to see a snow plow going down the street ahead, too—I had figured it would be at least a day before the town got its act together and began plowing. But as time passed, more and more people started emerging from the other little shops on the quiet street. By the time it was ten o’clock, the lot and road were in a nearly driveable condition.