Chapter 12
AARON
Oliver lasted a whole twenty minutes before he passed on with his head on my shoulder.
I sat through two episodes of the crime show he picked out before the TV started asking if I was still watching.
The drama was better than I thought, so I’d happily sit here a while longer, but the remote is just out of my reach.
There’s no way I can get it without disturbing Oliver.
Clearly, he needs the rest. I do, too. I work early tomorrow morning and need to get up and run so that I can join Oliver later in the evening.
He’s more than capable of doing it alone, without me shouting at him to slow down, but it’s our time together.
A weekly tradition that I look forward to and plan around.
If I move right, I could lay him down on the sofa without him noticing. As soon as I shift my weight, he lets out a soft whimper and buries his head in my neck.
Nope.
The worst part of it is that I don’t want to leave. If I had my way, I’d carry him into the bedroom and spend the rest of the night holding him close.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop comparing my relationship with Oliver to my other friends.
Not once in my life have I considered snuggling up with Matthias for the night.
I’ve slept over at his house and his parents’ house numerous times, some even in the same bed.
I never once had the urge to lean in and sniff his hair.
Oliver’s locks always smell like lavender.
This late in the evening, it’s hardly noticeable.
After our runs, when he sneaks off to take a quick shower, the scent follows him around for hours.
It’s constantly in the air while we sit on his couch crocheting, side-by-side for the remainder of the evening.
Now, anytime I catch a whiff of anything remotely lavender scented, I instantly think of him.
“Oliver,” I whisper, shaking his shoulder gently. In response, he huffs and snuggles into me, wrapping his arms around my waist. Fuck. He’s not going to make this easy on me. “Oliver. It’s time to go to bed.”
This time, his dark eyes flutter open. It takes several seconds before he seems to grasp the situation.
“Shit. How long have I been asleep?”
I mourn the loss of his closeness as he sits up, peeling his head and hands off of me. God, I’d almost forgotten how incredible it was to have him touching me.
“Not long,” I lie. He’s self-conscious, and I don’t want to make him feel bad.
If he needs to know, he can look at a clock.
I’m sure he’ll send me a hundred apologetic text messages later.
“But it’s getting late, and we’ll both regret sleeping like this.
” My back and neck aren’t twenty anymore.
Anything short of a premium mattress and feather pillows means days of trying to sort out sore muscles.
“Yeah, of course. I didn’t mean to keep you; I know you need to get home.” He stands up and grabs our half-empty beer bottles from the coffee table. “Thanks for spending the evening with me.”
“I’m sorry about your date.” I wish I had something more to offer him. I can’t imagine how anyone would ever stand him up. Oliver’s a catch. If things were different…
“It’s fine. Guess it wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t really like him that much anyway.”
“Then why were you going out with him?”
“Um… I needed something.” He shifts his weight, clearly uncomfortable.
“Sex?”
“A distraction.”
Now I’m uncomfortable. “From what? Is something going on?” He talks a lot about his siblings, but not much about his job. Maybe someone’s being an asshole.
“From you.” Oliver gets up and walks toward the kitchen.
Um… what? “Hey, come back.” I walk into the kitchen to find Oliver bent over the counter, head in his arms. “Did I do something wrong? I thought we were okay.”
“We are, it’s just… fuck, this is embarrassing.”
I’m not sure whether I should say something or wait him out.
“It’s you. I know we said we would be friends, and we are, but that hasn’t kept me from developing a massive crush on you.”
Well. “I…”
“Look, you don’t have to say anything. I’ll get over it, really. I thought maybe if I started seeing someone else, it would be easier.”
There’s that feeling again, the gnawing in my stomach when I picture him with someone else. Jealousy rarely rears its head inside me. Usually, it’s over something professional. A promotion or award that someone else gets. Lately, it’s been happening a lot more.
Particularly around Oliver.
“That’s what you want? To date someone else?”
There’s a long moment where Oliver stares at me. There are flashes of something I can’t place in his dark eyes.
“Fuck it.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he has me pressed against his kitchen island.
Neither of us makes a move beyond that. I know what comes next.
I should make an excuse and leave. Tomorrow, we can sort out the details and salvage what’s left of our friendship.
Maybe a week or two apart will help us cool off.
Instead, I lean in slowly, waiting for Oliver to push me away. When he doesn’t, I do exactly what I’ve been thinking about for the last several weeks.
The first touch of our lips is purely experimental. I’m still convinced he’s about to kick me out or push me away. Tell me I got it all wrong. Even with his confession, I still can’t believe he’s interested in me as more than a friend.
He’ll get tired of it, but until then, I could get lost in the way he kisses me.
Like I’m the only person in the world. Oliver slides his hand under my t-shirt.
I love the way his skin feels against mine.
My hands are rough, a professional consequence.
His are baby soft as they graze against my sides and back.
We kiss until we both need to come up for a little bit of air. Fuck. That’s not what I came here for tonight. Or maybe it is. Either way, it wasn’t in the plan.
“Hop up,” he says, motioning toward the counter. I start arguing with him, after all, it’s not sanitary. This is where he eats. “I want to taste you.”
I scramble up on the countertop, pulling my pants partway down as I go. If we’re going to do this, we should do it right. The linoleum is a little cold, but warms up quickly. “Are you just going to stand there?”
“Shut up. I’m trying to decide what I want to do first.”
“I have a few suggestions.” Honestly, right now, I’d take anything.
“Yeah, you want to boss me around?”
“No, I just want you to do something.” Sitting here with my dick out waiting for him is killing me. I wrap my fist around my cock and give it a couple of strokes to help take the edge off.
“Hey, that’s mine.” Oliver knocks my arm away.
“Then you’d better hurry up.” Apparently, those are the magic words to get him moving. He leans in and pushes me back, giving him more room to work.
Slowly.
Oliver spends an ungodly amount of time tentatively licking little stripes all over my cock. It feels incredible, but it’s never enough. Each time my cock jumps, I anxiously wait for him to suck me in.
When he finally does, it’s such a shock that I nearly fall off the counter.
“Steady,” he says, pulling off. I swear, if he doesn’t go back to what he was doing, I’m going to explode. And not in a good way.
“Then suck my dick. Please.”
This time, he doesn’t test my patience. Instead, he goes right back to what he was doing, sucking me down his throat like I’m his favorite lollipop.
“Fuck, just like that.” I weave my fingers through his hair so I can guide his head.
Even with me doing that, he still refuses to go at any pace but his own.
It’s infuriating and a significant turn on.
I love it when he takes charge in these situations.
It makes it so I don’t have to think, just feel.
The way his tongue presses against the head of my cock. Or how his throat feels when he swallows around me, his muscles constricting.
Before long, I’m right on the edge. Oliver must sense the slight shift because he doubles his efforts. When his finger slides under my balls and presses against my hole, I’m done for. I erupt into his mouth, feeding him shot after shot of my cum.
He takes everything I give him, not letting a single drop escape. When I’m spent, he licks me clean until I become oversensitive and pull away.
“Fuck. Oliver.”
OLIVER
If someone had asked me earlier today, I would’ve told them that I didn’t stand a chance with Aaron. Afterall, the two of us had drifted into the friend space with ease. The fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about getting him back into bed was a minor inconvenience.
Now, he’s sprawled out on my kitchen counter, his softening cock hanging out. This is going to make things between us more complicated, but I don’t care. Complicated might as well be my middle name.
My siblings would agree.
“Hey,” Aaron says as he sits up and pulls my hands in, kissing up my palm until he gets to the six tattoo on my wrist. “You want to stay out here? Or we could move to the bedroom?”
“Here,” I say quickly. First, because I’m horny and don’t want to wait for us to get down the hall. Second, because my room looks like a hurricane went through it.
That’s not an exaggeration. It’s laundry week. Not day… week. I’m catching up on all the laundry I didn’t do earlier this month. What’s already done is piled on one side of my bed, waiting to be put away.
“Good, then I get to have you faster.”
“What are you—” I’m cut off when he hops down, pushing me back a little, then sinks to his knees. “Oh, fuck.”
Aaron pulls down my pants and gets my cock out without any delay, sparing me the frustration I put him through.
I’m sure I’ll pay for it at some point, but I’m grateful not to do that right now.
He tries to take me in quickly, gagging and pulling back.
“Hey, go slow.” I stroke his cheek. “It feels amazing if you focus on the head.” This isn’t the easiest angle to work with, either.
He backs off a bit, using his tongue to give my cock the attention it needs.
I tilt my head back, getting lost in the sensation.
This is so much better than any of the fantasies that have been going through my head.
I try to memorize the way his lips feel as they wrap around my shaft, how he sounds as he sucks and licks every inch of me.
“You can—oh fuck—play with my hole. If you want. You don’t have to. Ugh.”
Apparently, Aaron had been waiting for permission. A few seconds later, a spit-slicked finger presses against my entrance. “Shit. Yes.”
He slides his finger in, and I nearly lose it. We should be in a bed doing this, in a position where we’re both more comfortable, where he can really get to me. Even like this, with his finger barely inside me, he has me lit up like a Christmas tree.
“I’m close,” I tell him, tapping him on the head in case he didn’t hear me.
Aaron makes no effort to pull off, instead keeping up his steady rhythm.
“Gonna.” The force of my orgasm cuts me off.
My knees give out, and I have to grab the refrigerator handle to keep from toppling.
For his part, Aaron does a spectacular job of swallowing my cum, even when I nearly collapse on top of him.
In the post-orgasm clarity, questions start to circle my mind. What exactly does this mean? Are we doing it again, or was it just another one-time thing?
“Hey,” Aaron says, breaking the swirling thoughts in my brain. “Was that okay?”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, like… okay?”
“If you’re asking for a review, I’d say it was spectacular. Twelve out of ten.” He laughs a little as he pulls his pants up.
“That’s good to know. I meant it more as a question of whether you wanted it.”
“Aaron.” I stop my search for the disinfecting wipes for the counter. “You know I did. I told you, I’ve been thinking about you.”
“That’s not the same.” He shakes his head and grabs my hand. So much for clean up. “Thinking about something and doing it are different.”
“Okay, then I greatly enjoy both of those. With you. Or about you.” Fuck, words are hard.
“Would you maybe want to do it again?”
“Now?” My recovery time is pretty good, but I’ve had a few drinks tonight. I could probably make it work, though. My cock gives a half-hearted twitch.
“I’m not sure I have that kind of stamina. I was thinking more about adjusting our friend arrangement a bit. Turn it into friends-with-benefits.”
“Right.” Admittedly, I’ve never had that kind of friend before. Not really. There were a couple of guys I was friends with, and then we tried dating, but it never really took. No chemistry.
In this case, Aaron and I have enough chemistry to open our own lab supply company. But we’d still be friends. Not dating. Not boyfriends. Friends.
That familiar tightness in my chest slowly returns. I remind myself that having any part of Aaron is better than having none of him. Even if all we do is blow off a little steam together, it’ll be fun. Maybe we’ll manage to fuck it out of our systems. That’s a thing, right?
“Yeah, okay. So, we do all the things we did before, but we can just have sex after? Or before.” I’m tired after running. It’s not my dream come true, but it’s a little bit closer.
“Exactly. We can run, crochet, and do that.” He looks toward the still dirty counter. “Maybe in a bed.”
“Perfect.” That means I’ll need to work on the whole laundry and cleaning thing, but it’s worth it if I get to keep sucking Aaron’s perfect cock.
“Great, it’s a deal then.”
I watch as Aaron gets his stuff together—after he insists on cleaning the counter for me.
It’s painful to watch him leave, like a knife twisting in my chest. I want to ask him for more than friends-with-benefits, but I already know what he’ll say.
His voice echoes in my mind enough; I don’t need to hear him say it out loud.
Besides, once he’s let himself out, I remind myself there’s always a chance that this could turn into more.
A small one, but it still counts.