Page 19 of All Bets are Off
“Pull down your shorts.” While he does, I shove my track pants to my ankles and kick them to the floor. Then I take both our cocks in my hand and begin to stroke. “If you fucking get up and run, I don’t know if I can forgive you,” I say.
“Nothing’s getting me off this bed short of a nuclear blast,” West mutters, eyes pinned to the movement of my hand before he lifts his gaze to mine.
The intimacy of staring each other in the face as our arousal mounts is something I’ve never experienced before. The closest moment I can compare it to is the connection I felt to him when, certain that at any moment our lives would end, our gazes met as we crouched in a ditch in Helmand province after a bomb detonated during a patrol several years ago.
Desire building, neither of us looks away or even blinks. I break first, the fingers of my free hand curling into the firm muscle of West’s upper arm as wave after wave of pleasure wash over me. It’s a struggle to hold West’s gaze during the onslaught, but I’m determined to witness the moment he comes. I’m rewarded seconds later when he sucks in a sharp breath and stiffens, color suffusing his cheeks and eyes widening before he gradually goes lax, sagging into me on the mattress.
As we lie together, breathing erratically, my hands roam over the hard muscles of his back and tears smart in my eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
West
Holy mother of God, I feel as though I’ve been turned inside out.
Naked from the waist down, half my body pressed to Logan’s and half against the sweat-soaked sheet, I blink unseeingly while trying to get my breathing under control.
When I finally manage it, I turn my head to find Logan staring at me, eyes wet.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
His smile is fond. “I’m good. What about you?”
I take a moment to assess before answering. I just had sex with my best friend. A man. Surprisingly, I feel okay about it. And Logan seemed to have wanted it.
“You’re okay with what we just did, right? I mean, I didn’t, uh, make that happen when you didn’t want to?”
Logan makes a face. “What the fuck, West? Of course I wanted it.”
Reaching for his hand, I squeeze it, and he visibly relaxes. I realize all the weird signals I got from him were because he really thought I might cut and run.
“I’m sorry for being such a douche-canoe these past few months,” I say.
Logan’s brows shoot up. “You realize you were being a douche-canoe?”
Flicking his head with my fingers, I sit up and arrange the pillows so I can lean against them and look down at his face, which at that moment is suffused with pink.
“You look cute,” I say. “To answer your question, yeah, I know I’ve been a real ass, making that bet and then bailing like I did—of course I know it. After we talked about it at Christmas, I really thought everything was okay. But…” I leave off, thinking back.
“But you were freaked.”
I swallow. “Yeah. I really was. And I hid it from you.”
Logan sits up. “And?”
“And lately I realized these feelings weren’t going away and that I had to talk to you about them.”
Logan studies me. “What is it you want from this?” He motions between us.
I didn’t exactly think things through before I acted today, but one thing’s for sure—I’m not going to go running in the other direction. No matter what happens, Logan and I are going to work it out together.
“I don’t know. Is that okay? Because that’s all I’ve got right now. But I do know that I won’t let anything come between us. At the core, we’re best friends. That’s not going to change.”
“I agree,” Logan says softly, trailing his index finger down my arm, leaving gooseflesh in its path.
Mesmerized at this side of him, all I can do is stare. As friends and teammates, we’ve never spoken to each other this way. Other than one exception I can think of when we were in the middle of hell, and I was hurt and in a great deal of pain, the level of tenderness in Logan’s voice and touch is entirely new to me.
“I’m a little out of my element here,” I say.