Page 21 of Bending The Rules

I sniffed, then nodded. “I love you too, Jus.”

He grinned. “I mean… how could you not, right?”

I laughed at his silliness, and he joined in, but as our laughter died down… I couldn’t help noticing… I was still in his arms. For some reason, that realization made me hyper-aware of how close our bodies were. We’d hugged a million times – maybe a million and one. But today… that proximity made heat build between my thighs, and I wasn’t sure it was possible that he couldn’t feel my nipples pressed against his chest, growing harder by the second.

When I looked up, he was already looking back at me. His gaze skirted down to my lips, and… was he getting closer?

Is he about to…?

“You kids back here?” My mother called from the door to the storage room, and Justin and I practically jumped away from each other. I pressed a hand to my chest as Justin answered, letting her know we were in here, and she called back. “Bri-Bri says she’s hungry. She wants to know if it’s okay if she can have a slice of banana bread from the bakery counter.”

“I love banana bread daddy remember?” Bri’s little voice called, and I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face.

“Go see about your baby,” I told him, trying to keep from getting too close while my body was still tingling from his touch. “We’ll talk.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” he said, walking backward to hold my gaze. “We have some catching up to do.”

I nodded. “Okay. Bye.”

He smiled a smile that wasn’t supposed to affect me like it did, making me hot all over again. “Bye.”

And then he was gone.

Leaving me to wonder how, exactly, a single conversation had brought so much understanding between us… and a whole new level of confusion.

Was he about to kiss me?

I shook my head.

Despite the sex-drought fueled horniness that had me thinking abouthimin ways that were anything but platonic, I could count on Justin to keep things in their proper place. If we were moving forward, we still had a friendship to rebuild, and that would take time.

Justin, kissing me?

Hah.

That was just plainnuts.

… or was it?

Five.

“Man… Toni really did mess around and get fine as hell,” Jason mused, sitting back as he looked at something over my shoulder. The three of us – me, him, and Joseph – had the rare chance to have lunch together, so we’d met to get sushi at one of our favorite spots, Roll Play.

I looked behind me, following Jason’s gaze to the front counter, where Toni was standing while she spoke to a server on the other side. Blood drained from one of my heads to the other one, leaving me with just enough presence of mind to look away from her, so I wasn’t staring.

Tonididlook good.

She was dressed for running, in gray leggings that clung to thick thighs, and the curves of her hips and ass – none of which I was supposed to be thinking about touching, and yet… here I was.

“I thought Toni was supposed to be like family to you, why are you looking at her like that?” I asked Jason – an admonishment to myself as much as it was to him. “And besides that, don’t you have a girlfriend?”

Jason shrugged, then swallowed a mouthful of food. “I keep trying to tell you fools that having a girlfriend doesn’t make me blind. Fine is fine, and Toni is that. And “like” family doesn’t make us related. Squats have done that body very well. Am I lying Joey?”

Beside him, Joseph peeked around me to look at Toni, then shook his head. “Not at all, little bro. Not. At. All.”

“It’s okay to admit it, Jus,” Jason teased, his eyes bright with laughter. “Unless…you’re scared it will open the door to something else.”

I sucked my teeth. “Man,hell no.It’s nothing like that.”

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