For that moment, the only thing I felt was pure, white-hot desire.
And fuck, I liked it.
Sawyer was kissing me hungrily this time, letting his tongue slide out against my lips. His tongue tasted faintly of beer still, the beer that I’d brewed, that I’d poured hours and hours into perfecting.
All right there, on my best friend’s lips. I didn’t know where he belonged or I belonged or any of that, in the grand scheme of things, but I knew damn well that in this moment with him, this felt like home.
I let my tongue slide out against his. His teeth came down around my lower lip and I groaned deeply, almost rutting my cock up against his thigh.
Fuck. Fuck.
I didn’t just like this too much.
I liked it so much that I could see, crystal clear, a future where I fucked up our friendship from wanting more, more, more.
And I wasn’t willing to live in any world where I fucked up the best friendship I’d ever had.
I pulled away from him, putting my hands on his shoulders and breathing a deep gulp of crisp night air.
“Jesus Christ—”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I looked right into his frustratingly gorgeous eyes. “You can’t keep doing that.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t know if I wanted to sock him or pull him right back into another kiss.
Why not? Why couldn’t he understand why not? Because I’d spent our entire friendship knowing that nothing like this would ever happen, and eliminating it entirely from my mind.
Because he had no goddamn clue what something as “casual” as a kiss could do to me, when it was from him.
“I…” I started to say, not knowing how to complete the sentence. My head was spinning. “Sawyer, you mean the world to me, so I’m just going to tell you the truth.”
“Please. The truth is all I want.”
“You can’t kiss me like this because it turns me on. It turns me on too much, and I don’t know what kind of friends give each other little kisses, but I know when you kiss me like that it makes my body do things I can’t control.”
“It’s okay if your body does things.”
I let out a sigh. “But I think both of us know why that’s probably a bad thing. Right?”
My heart hammered in my chest.
Sawyer paused for just a moment, as if he was deciding something in his mind. He reached out, taking my hand, and pushed it up against his groin.
And it felt like I’d just taken a shot of the highest proof, fiery liquor I could find, heat blooming down the center of my chest.
Sawyer was rock hard. Just as hard as I was.
I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, giving me a tiny nod. “Apparently it turns me on, too,” he said, his voice a little raspy.
My cock jumped. Sawyer had been saying everything in his world felt upside down lately, but now it was my turn to feel that way.
No way. No way in a million years he felt as turned on by a fucking kiss as I did.
He let my hand drop, and the moment bloomed between us, tension in the air like some inflatable that could pop at any time.
“So it’s not just about mint chip ice cream, huh?” I said softly.
After a beat, Sawyer started to smile, which turned into a real laugh.
“God, I love you,” he said, shaking his head at me. He smoothed out a lock of his hair with his palm, looking at me like a teenager who’d just discovered something new. He reached out gingerly, running his thumb across my lips and taking another step closer to me again.
“I love you too,” I said, my voice going a little low. “More than anything. But I don’t know what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want either,” he said, his eyes dancing across my face. “I know it feels good, to do that, though.”
I clenched my jaw as fear came at me like a speeding train.
Why did it have to be like this?
Here he was, stroking his hand gently on my hair, my lip, my beard. For the first time, Sawyer wanted to do this. He was willing to do physical things with me, the kind I’d always felt guilty for imagining.
But that didn’t mean he wanted more than that. He’d said it plainly: he didn’t have any answers.
And I was pretty damn sure the answer wasn’t ever going to turn out to be the one I wanted. In my darkest thoughts, I wanted to pull him into my bed and fuck him until he was an incoherent mess, begging for more. I wanted to look into those eyes while I came. While he came.
…I was not supposed to be thinking those thoughts.
Panic rattled around in my chest like a caged bird, even as his eyes lingered on my lips. I could tell he wanted to kiss me again, and every cell in my body wanted to claim him.