“Please,” I begged.
“Please, what?” she asked. It wrecked me.
“Please let me touch you.”
“No. We are friends, remember?”
I suddenly hated this song and dance.
I’d rather be between her legs, not laid bare before her, head turned to watch her touch herself when it should be my hands on her.
A low growl escaped me while my hand remained painfully still.
“Keep rhythm with me. Not a stroke more.” She let her digits slip back into herself with a low moan—her hair mussed and cheeks flushed from the heat of the fire. She didn’t look an ounce embarrassed to keep barreling down this path. “Don’t make me tell you again. Stroke yourself, pet.”
I obliged with a groan, and she reacted with the most delicious gasp of her own that nearly broke me. “You keep making that sound, and I’m done for,” I said, matching her pace with another stroke. Purposefully disobeying my plea for mercy, she moaned.Her damn sounds.
I watched her, wishing my tongue could replace her fingers or that I could catch her gasps in my mouth. With her knees open wide for me and her chin thrown up, she stared at me from behind lowered red lashes.
I tried my hardest to justify how aroused I was as her pace quickened—tried to convince myself that I didn’t so badly want to be inside of her, doing things that friends most certainly didn’t do.
That last thread of restraint wore so thin. When she broke around her own fingers, her head slammed back against the couch as she cried out, “Emmerick, now.”
A groan escaped me. I stroked myself faster and followed her into the swell of pleasure. Making a mess of my stomach and the quilts below me, I came on a guttural cry.
Elsedora rode her fingers through her last moments of bliss with her back arched. Sources, she was gorgeous. It was no wonder she could seduce the pants off anyone she pleased. Myself included.
Perspiration gathered on my furrowed brow. These moments of stillness with her staring at my bare body with lust and longing were the sweetest torture. I’d already let this go too far.
This had been reckless. Undoubtedly enjoyable, but reckless.
I reached over with my clean hand to grab a small throw blanket and offer it to her. She took it and, to my surprise, collapsed beside me before covering herself. It felt like there was a mile between us, which I dared not cross. Despite the satiated look of awe she cast in my direction, guilt rocked me.
I cleaned myself with my discarded tunic and shimmied my breeches on, leaving the belt off.
I’d just taken a hammer and chisel to my deepest friendship.
I’d ruined it.
Already.
“What in Sources’ names have we done?” I threw my arm over my face again.
“Ah. That would be the lust leaving your body and the smarts returning.”
“I am so sorry, Else—”
“Emmerick, no fretting about this.”
I could feel her shifting onto her side. “But I really—”
“Shhh,” she soothed. “Bodies are nature—you have nothing to apologize for with me. And it seems we have solved a problem for you.”
When I let my arm drop away, she was staring down at the tent in my breeches where I was still erect, with her head tilted and lips curved up at the sides.Shameless temptress.
I sighed. “I will never live this down, will I?”
She smirked. “Live what down?” She seemed to enjoy seeing me reel from the moment, and her tone held amusement.
