Best Friends With Benefits (Most Likely To) (3 page)

He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. No matter how goddamn hot she was now, he wouldn’t. She was not just some woman he could fuck and leave. She was the one person who’d made his life livable in high school—the one person who knew all his secrets and didn’t judge him now.

He couldn’t fuck that up with sex.

And who said she was interested anyway? He might be able to get any woman he wanted, but that didn’t mean he could get Valerie. She hadn’t taken him seriously in high school and there was no way she would now. She was out of his league—beautiful, successful, driven, and, most importantly, his best friend.

She seemed to ponder his suggestion. “Who?”

Fuck my stupid man-advice. Now we’re doing this.

“It doesn’t matter, really.” He took another swig from the flask in the hopes it might make his words appear genuine. “But since I’m here, I’ll help you pick him out.”

“Won’t you be too busy finding someone for yourself?”

“I’m not here for them, Val. I’m here for you.” The way her eyes dampened let him know he needed to keep talking. “It’ll be fun.” If she wanted his help, he would give it to her. Get her a guy to make that faraway look disappear, if only for the night.

“Finding me someone to
fuck
the Mr. Peanut out of me will be fun?” She smirked.

He knew she was only repeating what he’d said, but hearing her voice around that word was something he felt in every cell in his body, every beat of his suddenly off-the-charts pounding heart. “Do you want to get him out of your system or not?” he asked, trying to shake the hum in his veins.

She reached for the flask and took a long swig. “Looks like I’m going to need a necktie for our doorknob.”

Chapter Two

Val was wobbly as they headed inside the hotel. She should never have told Alec about Charles. It was embarrassing—a man who she’d given years to running away rather than granting her forever. There must have been something seriously wrong with her.

Considering Alec thought she needed help getting laid, was there any doubt?

But fine, she’d accept his assistance. Maybe it was the vodka talking, but she could definitely handle some casual sex. Especially since it was one of the only things on her mind since Alec arrived—since she saw that
Rolling Stone
cover.

Better it be with someone who she never had to talk to again after this weekend.

They found the ballroom where the Opening Night Dinner was being held. Out front a table was littered with the remnants of name tags. Valerie spied hers and was thankful it was spelled correctly:
Valerie Barkin
.

Some of the popular kids had started calling her
Barking
freshman year, as in
woof woof
, as in dog, as in ugly. The addition of just that one letter had turned her into an easy target.

Nice flute solo, Barking; your turn at the board, Barking; you dropped your pen, Barking
. She shuddered. She was usually able to push the memories out of her mind, but not when she was about to face some of those people again.

She ran a hand through her hair, popped a mint in her mouth, and said a little prayer as they walked into the ballroom.

The dinner had pretty much dissipated. The tables were cleared, and the bar was empty. Only a small group of their ex-classmates sat in a circle toward the front of the room. Valerie was surprised to see people from every clique gathered, including her good friend Cynthia from band, who had also played flute.

She and Cynthia caught up while everyone fawned over Alec. Cynthia was a music teacher now—divorced, but happily. The blond hair she wore like Rapunzel in high school was in an asymmetrical bob, and her navy blue eyes were blurry with drunkenness.

Turned out everyone was drunk, and after a few sloppy hugs and squeals, the attention was off of Alec and back on the game they had interrupted: Seven Minutes in Heaven.

She waved to Cynthia. “I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.”

Alec grabbed her arm, whispered, “This is your chance.”

“Now?” Sure, she’d accepted his offer to help, but they’d been here ten minutes. “I’m tired,” she added when he still hadn’t released her arm.

“Cock-fucius say,
fuck first, sleep later.
”

She glanced around the circle, reading the name tags of the men who used to be boys. None of them had been more to her than a body in the hallway during high school. She supposed any one of them could just as easily be a body in the dark.

She shrugged. Might as well get it over with. She grabbed a chair and pulled it into the circle. She’d take Alec’s suggestion, but she was not sitting on the floor in a tan skirt.

“Alec,” Randy Tines slurred, indicating the bottle in the center of the circle, “you take a spin. I’m sure all these ladies want a piece of the famous rock star in the dark.” Randy had been the high school yearbook photographer, and he took his skills to manage a bank.

“With a lady in the dark is my favorite place to be.”

Valerie wanted to scoff, but she couldn’t. The way his voice deepened around those words made her shiver, her abdomen contract.

“But I think Val should go first,” he suggested. Alec stared at her, his eyes impatient. He was taking this Cock-fucius thing way too seriously.

“She can just go after you, Alec,” Jenny Gordon pressed. She was an ex–volleyball star, current gym teacher, who looked like she’d had two fully inflated Spaldings implanted in her chest since graduation. She hadn’t even known Alec’s name in high school.

“Whatever, someone go.” Randy Tines spun a finger in the air.

Alec smirked at Valerie, his damn dimple coming out. She felt like she might melt, a puddle on the chair in just her button down and knee-length skirt.

“Fine,” Valerie proclaimed. She took a deep breath and spun. Watched the bottle go from Randy to Kenneth to Jacob to Alec to Paul back to Randy and on and on in a kinky kaleidoscope she had no control over.

When it finally landed, she almost fell out of her chair. It pointed right in the middle of the crossed legs of Alec’s distressed jeans. Her cheeks lit up, and her heart knocked against her rib cage as if it were asking if anyone was still alive in there.

Jenny looked like one of her implants had exploded. Even though Valerie was dealing with her own inner meltdown, she said a silent
woo-hoo
.

Cynthia covered her mouth, but it was clear she was smiling.

“Let’s go, you two,” Randy pushed.

Valerie waited for something, for anything. Sure, she’d been thinking about touching Alec, about Alec touching her, but this was real. This was happening.

“Maybe I should spin again,” she suggested, her heartbeat drowning out the sound of her own voice.

“The bottle chooses,” Jacob Riedel, ex high school soccer star, current sports equipment store owner, said, shaking his head. “We don’t choose.”

Clearly this decree had been tossed to a couple already who had been unhappy with their result, but no one sitting around this circle had as much to lose by going into that closet together as Valerie and Alec did.

“Rules are rules,” Alec said with a shrug.

Even
he
wasn’t going to help her.

The room whirled at the speed of that damn bottle, but when Alec finally stood and held out his hand, to Valerie’s surprise, she took it.

…

“What the hell was that?” Val’s eyes were shiny in the half light of the janitor’s closet. “You should have let me spin again.”

Alec leaned against the closed door. “Those guys were assholes. None of them deserves to breathe on you, let alone fuck you.” He smelled peppermint and sensed the heat of Val’s body. It was an unsettling combination—alluringly unsettling—ice hot.

They’d always talked to each other about everything. She could give him shit like no one else, but there was something bubbling below their usual ribbing, their usual heart to heart— want, need,
this
.

“You’re the one who said I should play, Cock-fucius,” she spit.

The friend in him had suggested it, but when the bottle spun and one of the guys in that circle got that much closer to Valerie, the man in him won out.

“What are we supposed to do now?” she asked.

It was the question in his head, too, and he forced himself to keep asking it, because the only answer that kept lighting up,
give in to the whole heaven part of this game
, could not happen. So why was he tempting himself?

“We don’t have to do anything.” Though with nothing between them but anticipation and air, he wasn’t sure how long that might last.

“I probably couldn’t have gone through with it anyway.” She chuckled with relief. Her throaty laugh was dizzying, beckoning.

“With anyone?” He edged closer. His heart thumped, roared like a lion with each increasing inch.
What the hell am I doing?

Having her in the dark, alone, was like giving him permission. The fact that she stood her ground as he stepped closer was giving him a purpose.

He shouldn’t want this. She was his best friend. But he couldn’t stop.

Even in the dark, he could sense her curves. Ample breasts just begging for a skimpy tank top, her ass plump in that tight little skirt and insistent for a strong squeeze, or a smack if she was being naughty.

The way her gaze locked and her breath met the speed of his own as he erased the last bit of space between them, he was sure she was naughty. Very naughty. That she would welcome the palm of his hand.

And just like that, his best friend had made him hard.

“I don’t hear anything in there,” Randy Tines yelled from outside the door.

“I think we’re supposed to be kissing,” Alec said, his cock so rigid he thought she could feel it through his pants.

“You mean each other?”

“We could just make kissing noises,” he suggested, thinking of his lips teasing along the inside of her collar, biting off button after button of her shirt and spitting them out like watermelon seeds.

Hell yeah
, he wanted to kiss her, her lips and her neck and the little spot behind her knee that she had been kneading as they drove here. He knew it was crazy, he knew it was wrong, but he wanted to be the guy to fuck Mr. Peanut out of her.

“Like this?” She pressed her hand to her lips and pretended to make out with it, her eyes on him as her tongue slicked over her skin.

His stomach rumbled in pure sexual hunger. One thing was for sure—all that flute practice had been good for a lot more than music.

“That sounds completely fake,” he scoffed. Though considering the way his cock fought against the fabric of his pants, that was not entirely true.

Her bottom lip lay open against the inside of her palm. “You think you could do better?”

He yanked her hand to his lips before she could protest, before he could consider. He kissed it lightly at first, soft and drugging, slid the tip of his tongue up to her wrist, until he hit the buttoned cuff. “Maybe it should be me.” The words spilled out against the soft-as-sin fabric.

“What?”

“Maybe I should be the one to fuck you like you deserve.”

Val didn’t reply, just breathed out more peppermint, hot peppermint against the skin of his face. Her eyes smoldered with want. It was clear she felt it, too, the heat between them, the confusing, beautiful, delicious heat.

He grabbed her forearm and drew her closer, slanting in to her chest. The shock of their bodies against each other caused them both to freeze. Not even a breath passed between them, but he knew exactly what he needed to do. He clenched the back of her head, and his lips dipped to her neck, dripping down her skin like melting ice. Fuck, he had to taste her. He opened his mouth, and his tongue lapped at her tender skin.

“Alec,” she breathed.

“Follow my lead.” He couldn’t stop, though she certainly didn’t seem like she was asking him to.

If anything, she was yielding to him. He trailed a finger down the center of her neck, playing with the top button of her shirt, pausing so he could think. Ten years. He could have gone to see her so many times. He hadn’t at first because of how they’d left things after graduation, and then because their careers got in the way and they had both gotten into the routine of being like pen pals, but maybe he had really been avoiding their attraction.

There was no avoiding it now. There was no thinking. She needed this, and he was going to give it to her.

His hands rushed to her chest, undoing one button then another until her shirt was open and her pale pink bra was visible—her tits pumping up and down with deep, unsteady breaths.

Her fingers played with the bottom of his shirt.

“Take it off,” he directed.

She heaved it over his head and ran her nails down the curves of his chest, her scratch creating an insatiable itch.

He slid his tongue against her clavicle, the hardness of it mirroring his own. The skin tasted like she smelled, like flowers in a vase, petals floating on water. He cupped his hand around her breast, and she yelped.

“Did I scare you?”

“Yes.” She slipped her tongue into his ear. “Scare me again.”

He teased at both her breasts, the delicate lace fabric in delicious opposition to her hard nipples. He circled his fingers around them slowly at first, then faster to meet her increasing gasps. She let out a slight moan like a whisper, like she was saying please.

Please.

She was so polite, even in her need.

He kissed the vertical line of her neck and continued to travel up. He still hadn’t savored her lips.

The word “friend” should have stopped him, but they were in too deep now, and the word on his mind hadn’t been friend—it had been fuck.

Fucking her—now.

“Two minutes,” Randy yelled from outside the door.

A growl raged deep within. If he only had two more minutes, he was going to make the most of it. He clutched her ass with one hand and forced her skirt up with the other. The whine in her breath made his already hard cock throb.

Less than two minutes. Not enough time to fuck her properly, or even kiss her properly, but he couldn’t stop.

And she couldn’t, either. She thrust herself against his hand. Her movements were all instinct, all want. Just like his.

He trailed his fingers along her drenched lace panties. Holy fuck was she wet. He longed to slip them to the side and slide his cock deep. Take her slow, so slow they both wouldn’t be able to stand it, before he slammed against her so relentlessly her breath broke. The whine at the back of her throat spiraling into a beg, a shriek, his name.

But this was Val, and they had a suite to share and a whole weekend together. Did he really want to fuck her in a broom closet?

Hell yeah, he did, but she was his best friend.

But she was also a woman soaking through her panties for him, and he was a man holding what felt like the whole of the Capitol Records Building in his pants for her.

But she was also his best friend.

“We can do this, Val. But I need to hear the words. Do you want me to fuck you?” he rasped, pressing two fingers against the fabric over her clit.

Her breath vibrated on his lips, and she forced her hips closer so his fingers grazed her again.

“I can already feel how badly you want it. How wet and ready you are for me—”

“Alec,” she interrupted, her voice begging.

With anyone else it would have been enough, but with her he had to hear it.

“Say it. Say you want me to fuck you,” he insisted, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his cock against her thigh so viciously he could barely see.

Her mouth opened. She licked her lips, an eagerness in her eyes that made him want to enter her before she even had a chance to speak.

There was a knock at the door.