Page 37 of Friends to Lovers

“I don’t need space,” I say. I don’t, but I can’t explain what I feel. That I want him, but I need to catch up with myself. “I don’t want space.”

“Okay,” he says, but I can tell by the tone of his voice and the tension in his body that he doesn’t fully trust it. He places a hand on my waist, but it’s light, hardly there.

“I don’t want space,” I repeat. “I want you.”

“Okay,” he says again. His hair is messy from where I’d been running my fingers through it, and something about the sight, seeing him undone, only makes me want him more.

“Ren, I want this. I just…” My cheeks heat. I’ve never had to talk to him about something like this before. Not when it’s us. I’ve never really had reason to feel like this around Ren. “I’m embarrassed.”

Ren’s brow lifts. “Embarrassed?” he asks in a rough whisper. “Why?”

“Because I feel like I’m too excited about this. And you’re…” I gesture at him, like I might encompass his whole person, everything he means to me and that we mean to each other. I can’t tell if Ren is as shocked by this turn of events as I am. “Perfect, basically.”

Ren leans back. “Joni,” he says. When I don’t answer, he readjusts, propping himself up on one elbow and taking one of my hands in his. “Joni.”

“Ren,” I say in a low voice, copying his joke from yesterday. It’s a poor attempt at levity, but a thrill speeds through me when his lips twitch into a smile.

“Okay, I’m going to tell you something,” he says.

His mouth flattens, his eyes go serious.

“The amount of time I spend thinking about you like this is actually embarrassing. I have to actively put it out of my head more than I’d care to admit to you.

I want this to such an uncool degree. And…

maybe that’s something we need to talk about, but you wanting this?

” He shakes his head, reaches up to brush my hair behind my ear.

“Not embarrassing in any world, and the best thing to ever happen to me.”

I smile, a small thing that grows. “You’ve thought about this?”

Ren nods sheepishly. “So much. In excruciating detail. Where we’d be,” he says, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “What you’d taste like.”

I curve closer to him. “And?”

He parts my lips with the pad of his thumb. “Amazing.”

My heart starts to race at the picture of Ren wanting this. “What else did you think about?” I can’t help but ask him.

Ren’s smile is slow now. He slips his hand from my lips to my jaw, my neck, over my shoulder. “What you’d feel like,” he says, as his fingers trace across my chest. “All the sounds you’d make.”

“Good?” I ask, my chest rising toward his hand.

“So good,” he murmurs at my neck. My breathing hitches at the contact, and I can feel him smile against me. His fingers sweep my side, then higher, higher, until they brush against my breast. “Everything we’d do.”

The soft moan that comes out of me sets off something in both of us.

Ren’s hands slide behind me, unclasping my bra.

He casts it aside, dips his mouth to my breast, lips parting and tongue circling.

My fingers thread into his hair as he moves down my body, his breath hot against me as he hooks his fingers into the waist of my underwear and pulls them down my legs.

He resettles between my knees, kisses the crease of my hip, trails his mouth lower and lower, until it’s closing over me.

I grasp at the sheets. There’s no coming back from this now.

He holds my body to him with one hand, the other working in tandem with his mouth in patient, deliberate movements. His name rushes out of me as I shudder against him, vision going spotty as something coils low, spreading down my thighs. “Ren,” I gasp as my spine curves.

He positions himself over me again as I blink back into reality, my skin flushed and limbs heavy. I cup his cheek and he turns his face into it, lips warm, before he looks down at me again and kisses me, unhurried, slowly rocking his body against mine.

I reach down to unbutton his pants, his abdomen drawing tight when I wrap a hand around him. We’ve never been bare in front of each other, and for all my disbelief I also feel the weight of it, the distinction of this moment.

Everything off, I push gently at his chest until he rolls onto his back. I swing a leg over him and straddle him, the sound that emanates from deep in his chest sending a new wave of heat through my center. His hands tighten on my hips as he sits up, our bodies fitted together.

“I’m on birth control,” I say. “And there isn’t anyone else, but everything’s clear too, according to my doctor, at least, but if you—”

Ren silences me with a quick kiss. “Me too,” he murmurs. “But I have a condom, if you’d rather.”

I laugh, settling my arms on his shoulders. “Why did you bring condoms, Ren? Were you planning to get lucky this weekend?”

He chuckles, eyelashes fluttering. “It’s been in there for a while.” He pulls me in closer, eliminating all space between us, and I can feel the rough spots on his fingers from years of playing guitar, love how they lightly scrape against me. “I didn’t dream I’d ever get this lucky,” he says.

I press my palm to his chest, count the fast beats of his heart in my head to tie myself to this moment.

One, two, three, Ren smiling at you over the bar at Sublimity, four, five, six, the feel of his chest under your cheek when you hug him goodbye, seven, eight, nine, ten, this, right here, right now.

Before I can slide my hand between us again, he grabs my hips and flips me onto my back, reaching down to hitch my leg up against him.

Then he eases into me, his thumb moving in circles, my hips arching toward it until Ren crushes his body to mine, dipping his forehead to the pillow, rocking just slightly.

When he moves, it’s achingly slow, emptying me and filling me up again.

I would have thought I’d feel nervous. Heart pounding, mind racing, contemplating all the ways this could mess everything up.

But as Ren looks at me with those brown eyes, I feel like everything might have led us to this moment.

Like it was always supposed to happen. Like our friendship was one long precursor to this. Like ours is a love story.

As our movements quicken, he scoops my hips up to him.

My legs tighten around his waist as he sinks fully into me, his forehead against mine, stars bursting behind my eyelids.

I can tell he’s still holding back, waiting for me, so I wrap a hand around the back of his neck, kiss him, and then I surrender to every sensation coursing through me.

With a final push inside me he does too, breath against my neck as we’re pulled under together.

Afterward, I lie with my head on his chest as he traces slow lines up and down my back, the sheet tossed on top of us. His heart beats steadily beneath my ear, the same one I counted earlier, the same one that’s carried him through so much life by my side.

I doze intermittently, ocean air cooling my skin until I startle awake, smiling lazily up at him when I remember where we are, burying my nose against his neck.

I could smell Ren for days and never grow tired of it.

Here is the scent I know so well, and here is the sweat dried on his skin and here is the soap he used earlier and here is something deeper, something new that makes me move against him again, smiling at the sound it draws out of him.

“Joni,” he says against my hair, fingers dancing up my spine. “Should we—”

“Tomorrow,” I whisper, angling my head so I can kiss him.

I wait for him to respond, to tell me we should pause and talk, but instead, the hand he’s had on my back floats up to my head, fingers weaving into my hair as he tugs me toward him.

If we were anywhere near hesitant before, gentle because of how fragile this is, now everything is just shy of bruising, fingers pressing and mouths dragging across skin, and I know, with a deep, yawning ache inside of me, that things will never be the same again.