Page 3 of Ripe & Ready (Friction Fiction #1)

T he jungle’s quiet at night.

Not silent. It’s never that. It’s a full-blown symphony of bugs, birds, and God-knows-what else rustling outside the hut, probably plotting to claw their way in and maul me to death while I lie here in nothing but gym shorts.

The sounds don’t come one by one. They rise all at once, this chaotic wall of white noise. It’s loud, sure, but weirdly soothing if you let it be. Honestly, compared to how loud my brain is right now, it’s practically peaceful.

I can’t sleep.

Not with Derek lying right next to me in the dark while the mosquito netting wraps around us like we’re in the steamy, bug-infested version of a honeymoon suite. It’s slowly melting my brain.

We’re both on our backs, side by side, basically on top of each other. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually, if we’re counting that moment earlier when he said gorillas love deeply and held my gaze like he hadn’t torn my heart from my chest.

I can’t stop thinking about it. The way he talked about their bonds, so full of awe and tenderness. It made something twist inside me. Made me want to know what it would feel like if he loved me like that.

Now, every inch of me is on high alert. There’s the way his knuckles brush mine under the blanket, and then there’s the casual nudge of his foot. Every little graze sets off an alarm till my brain is flashing emergency protocol and my body is flat-out ignoring it.

My dick? Absolutely betraying me. I swear, if anything does break into this hut tonight, I’m gonna have to fight it off fully hard and humiliated.

Killer animal versus boner? My money’s on the animal.

I’m internally yelling stand down, soldier, this is a platonic sleepover, while simultaneously losing my grip on reality.

It’s not like we’ve never shared space before. We grew up together. We’ve crashed on couches, been squished in tents, even shared a sleeping bag once during a poorly planned ski trip. But that was years ago. Back when I was better at pretending.

I have to tell him. It’s eating me alive.

How do people live while quietly yearning? I don't know how to survive it. There’s this gravity between us, pulling me in, and I’m either gonna combust from the heat or we’re gonna crash into each other and leave nothing but emotional devastation behind.

“What are you thinking about?” Derek whispers, voice rough and laced with sleep. It startles me, and I flinch.

“I’m sleeping,” I blurt, way too fast.

His amusement breaks free in a quiet, amused chuckle. “You think louder than anyone I’ve ever met.”

I hum in response. Talking feels dangerous. Like if I say the wrong thing, the thin thread holding me together might snap.

He turns his head and even if I can't see it, I can feel when it his gaze lands on me. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie.

He doesn’t push. He never does. He lets the silence stretch between us like something sacred.

After a beat, I murmur, “What if I get eaten by a gorilla?”

He snorts. “I’d film it. Monetize the footage. Make you posthumously famous.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t worry. I’d also give a really moving interview to Good Morning America.”

“Oh good. I’d hate for my untimely death to not come with a media tour.”

A low laugh slips from his lips as he shifts closer, and everything in me leans further toward the gravity of him.

The moment passes.

I could say something. Maybe I should. It’s only three tiny syllables. It should be easy. It should fall out of me like breath. But I don’t say anything. Not yet.

For now, I lie there in the dark, heart pounding, and I let myself imagine reaching for him. Just enough to know how it would feel. I let myself have his closeness and his warmth and this impossible almost.

“I really think you’re gonna love it,” Derek muses somewhere in the dark.

“Standing 10 feet from a gorilla? What’s not to love?”

He laughs quietly. “No, I mean… all of it. Being here. Doing something new. You’re good at more than you think.”

I blink up at the ceiling, or where I think the ceiling is. “That’s debatable.”

“It’s not,” he says simply. “You have to stop convincing yourself you’re not built for things like this.”

Easy for him to say. Derek was born for adventure. For leaping without looking. For throwing himself at the world and trusting it’ll catch him.

“You know I came for you, right?” I say angling my body toward him.

The silence stretches long enough that I assume he’s asleep, until he whispers, “I know.”

“You’re worth it,” I say, hoping somehow through the dark and through the quiet his eyes can still find mine.

After a pause, I feel his hand brush against mine under the blanket. Just barely. Just enough.

“Goodnight, Andy,” he says.

I lie there, buzzing with everything I won’t say. I want to be brave. I want to be honest. But I’m neither, so I murmur, “Goodnight.”

It’s not much, but I hold on to the little hope tucked away inside me, promising I’ll get there one day, and when I do, I want it to be in the light.

I don’t know when I drifted off or when Derek decided that personal space was a myth, but at some point in the night, his arm looped around me and now I’m fully spooned. Like... aggressively spooned. Every inch of him is pressed against every inch of me and I mean… Every. Single. Inch.

My eyes crack open to a world still cloaked in pre-dawn gray and the first thing I register isn’t the jungle sounds or the mosquito net brushing my shin.

It’s him. The warmth of him at my back, the weight of his arm across my waist, and the very firm, very awake situation pressed right against my ass.

Good morning to me, I guess.

I remind myself that it’s early and we’re two best friends sharing a small bed in a hut in the middle of the Congo, even if his dick is saying otherwise.

Blindly fumbling I grab for my phone on the nightstand, and squint at the screen. 4:30 a.m. We don’t have to be up for another thirty minutes, but there is no universe in which I survive thirty more minutes of this.

He’s pressed up behind me like a weighted blanket that fucks.

His cock is nestled perfectly between my ass cheeks and I’m doing that thing where I try not to breathe too hard, like if I stay completely still it’ll trick the universe into thinking this isn’t the best and worst moment of my entire life.

I can admit that I’ve dreamed of this. Teenage me would’ve sold his soul for this. But adult me? Adult me is teetering on the edge like the opening scene of a very regrettable porn.

And then it happens.

Oh God. He ruts against me.

Not a twitch. Not a fluke. A full, intentional grind.

Every system in my body logs off. My cock is already hard, pressed against my waistband and his hand is hovering dangerously close to the danger zone.

I have to leave. I have to get out of this bed before I ruin everything with a single, embarrassing moan and a pair of stained shorts. Because if he wakes up and realizes what just happened there’s no jungle deep enough to hide me.

I ease his arm off me, careful not to wake him, and slip out of bed slowly. My shorts aren’t doing me any favors, so I cup myself with one hand as I tiptoe to the bathroom like that’ll somehow disguise the full-blown problem I’ve got going on.

Once inside, I shut the door quietly, even though not slamming it won’t exactly restore my dignity. I brace myself against the sink, crank the faucet, and splash cold water on my face in an attempt to reboot my nervous system. It doesn’t work. Nothing about me resets.

One glance at the mirror confirms it. I’m a walking hormone and a half. Flushed, wide-eyed, and very clearly not okay.

I push my shorts down enough to breathe. Enough for me to think. It doesn’t help. Now my cock’s just out. Hard and exposed, and demanding attention.

My whole body is still thrumming from the way Derek’s warmth had wrapped around me, from how his hand had hovered so close to where I needed him. How he shifted against me in his sleep. How it felt like a dream until it wasn’t.

Gripping the counter, head down, I try to breathe through it. A quiet, frustrated groan breaks the silence. Maybe getting it together isn’t happening.

I’m definitely not going back out there until I pull myself together. One way or another.

So… I’ll do what any panic-stricken, love-addled man would do. I’ll fist my dick like it’s personally wronged me.

I spit into my palm, grip tight, and chase the high that’s been simmering in my gut since the moment he touched me. It’s quick. Desperate. Years of holding back bursting all at once. I pump harder, breath quickening, forehead slick.

I’m so close to the edge, and an unexpected knock at the door tips me straight into it. The surprise tears through me, raw and electric, like my organs are trying to claw their way out. I gasp, spine arching as pleasure tears through me, and I paint the damn bathroom like it’s a Jackson Pollock.

Caught somewhere between panic and denial, every part of me goes rigid

Hand still wrapped around myself, my release streaked across the sink, the counter, the goddamn mirror.

I want to die. Right here. Evaporate into the jungle mist only to exist as some cautionary tale they tell new guests at check- in: Don’t jerk off next to the mosquito soap, or you’ll be cursed forever. The man you love will definitely hear it!

“One minute!” I croak, voice embarrassingly high-pitched.

My legs go weak with panic as I scramble for anything remotely cloth-like. A hand towel? Great. It’s that or sacrifice my shorts and deal with the shame when I face him. I swipe frantically at the sink, the mirror, my stomach. Everywhere my disaster decided to decorate.

“Everything okay in there?” Derek’s voice is muffled through the door, still groggy.

“Yup! Fine! Just… uh… pooping!”

He pauses, and I swear there’s a quiet laugh before his footsteps retreat.

I sink down onto the closed toilet lid, still half-hard, mortified, and deeply aware that this man, this beautiful, perfect man, is twenty feet away and moments ago I came thinking about him.

And just to make it worse I think he heard the whole damn thing.

Regret? Immediate. Relief? Questionable.