Page 10 of Gracefully Yours

She shook her head. “Okay, if I haven’t met anyone by the time you turn thirty… we’ll get married. A marriage pact.”

She did always like to remind me I was older than her by a year and a half.

I cracked a grin. “Good.”

“Now, can we get back to the show?” She rolled her eyes. “I like this part.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about what it had been like to kiss her the year before. How much I wanted to kiss her again, how easy it was to just be with her. I liked her presence in my life, from the pink to the ballet shoes tossed on my floor after she finished practice and came over to hang out. Even the smell of her champagne-and-berries perfume she always wore, and the glitter that seemed to follow her even when she wasn’t wearing it. My life felt a little brighter because of her.

If I could spend the rest of my life basking in her happiness, I would be content.

And I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to make her happier than she could ever dream of being.

But she was my best friend—and I couldn’t risk that right now.

I just couldn’t.

CHAPTER1

Charlotte

MANY YEARS LATER…

My pink dress fluttered to the floor as a pair of muscular arms wrapped around me from behind, cupping my breasts as he pulled down the tops of the lacy cups.

“Charlotte,” he groaned in my ear as his fingers brushed over my hardened nipples.

I’d never felt anything like this before. Had never been so desperately turned on. Maybe it was the few glasses of wine I’d had during the reception. My friends infamously acknowledged me as a lightweight—or maybe it was simply the fact that it washim,but I was soaking wet.

And then there was the fact that no one had ever touched me likethatbefore.

He pressed his erection into me—ohGod,I practically whimpered—as he nuzzled into my neck.

“Daniel,” I gasped when he kissed across my shoulder.

Daniel—my best friend for the last nine years—the man whose lips were currently searing into my skin, like a brand I never wanted to get rid of.

What was I doing? What werewedoing?And why did it feel so good that I didn’t want to stop?

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. I’d never been more sure of anything. I was sure that of everyone, Daniel was the person I wanted to take my virginity. Twenty-six years old, and I’d never slept with anyone. Truthfully, no one had gotten past second base. I hadn’t known what I was saving myself for—not until tonight.

Not until Daniel pressed his cock into my back.

But I wanted him. Wanted him to take me—to teach me. Wanted to get it over with, because I was tired of waiting.

He unclasped my bra, pushing the straps off my arms as he let the fabric join my dress on the floor, and then he spun me around, and I hoped he couldn’t see the blush on my cheeks in the dim lighting of our hotel room.

I tried to use my hands to cover my breasts, but he shook his head, pulling my hands away.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, reverently, his eyes mapping every inch of my bare skin, the only garment left my panties, covering the place where only my fingers had explored. “You don’t ever have to hide from me, okay?”

I let his gaze hold mine instead of looking away this time, letting me drink in those beautiful brown eyes of his. “I know,” I whispered, giving him the truth I’d known for a long time.

It was the reason it was so easy to give myself to him like this. I knew I was safe with him. Nine years of friendship made me comfortable telling him almost everything, and even then, this was new.

I hadn’t kissed him since my sophomore year of college, and somehow that felt impossibly long ago, and also like yesterday.

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