Page 12 of Out in the Country

“What are you doing?”

I place my hands on either side of his head and cage him in with my body. His eyelids flutter shut when I shift my hips so he can feel how hard I am for him. Leaning in, I let my nose graze the column of his neck as my lips ghost over his fluttering pulse.

“Ev…I can’t…” He swallows and then pushes me back enough to look me in the eyes. “I can’t lose you.”

6

HAYDEN

Holy shit.

Holyfuckingshit.

My best friend kissed me—my verystraightbest friend—and now he has me pinned against the brick wall outside Harper’s wedding reception.

This is how heart attacks happen, I’m pretty sure.

“You’re not going to lose me.”

“I’m pretty sure that we can’t recover from my dick being inside your mouth,” I hiss. At the mention of my dick, Everett rocks his hips into me, and I feel him grow impossibly harder where we touch.

Wow.

I groan because he fucking feels like heaven, and I’m probably going to strangle him before I ever have the pleasure of his glorious length inside me.

“You have to be drunk.”

Rather than reply, his mouth crashes over mine again, and this time he holds nothing back. He ravages my mouth while his body pushes me tighter against the wall. His hands don’t move to touch me, but I still feel him absolutely everywhere.

The moan that escapes is unintentional, and he smiles against my lips. It’s worse than I feared—everything about this moment is going to ruin me.

I’ve known I was gay pretty much my entire life. I was a teenager when I came out to my family and friends. Everyone welcomed me with open arms and thanked me for trusting them with my true self. I was lucky—so damn lucky—and I never took that for granted.

Through it all, Everett never left my side. He was my best friend, and he didn’t care who I dated or loved, and I loved him for that. He’s always been my rock and I have been his. But in order for me to effectively do that, I had to push my attraction to him into a very deep, locked-away part of my soul.

Did I recognize that Everett was more handsome than any man had a right to be? Absolutely.

Was that something I dwelled on normally? Definitely not.

I allowed myself special occasions to appreciate him in a sexual way. Today, for instance—Everett in a fitted suit was something that would make me hard in an instant. So into the box it went.

There was no fantasizing about my best friend. He is straight and I respect the hell out of him. I refuse to throw away close to two decades of friendship on whatever this is.

“You—”

“I. Am. Not. Drunk.”

My dick twitches with each punctuated word. He’s so sexy all riled up like this, but it absolutely cannot last.

In the entire time I’ve known Everett, he’s never so much as asked me what it felt like to have my hand around a penis that wasn’t mine. There have been no signs. No questions or curiosities—not even a lingering glance.

A niggling in my memory has me replaying the way Everett acted in Nashville—the way he touched and held me longer than he ever had before. I blamed it on the alcohol and the effects of meeting his favorite band but…

His fingertips brush against mine, and the jolt of electricity that zips up my arm has my breath coming in pants. God, I want this. I wanthimso bad, and it’s only now that I’ve blocked out every possible flirtation since our trip because self-preservation and all.

My mind might have blocked them, but my body hasn’t.

“Then what are you doing?” I whisper even as I arch slightly into him.

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