“It’s my birthday. You can’t fall asleep.” Fi rolls over and glares at me.
“Mmmhmmm.” My lids grow heavy. I start to drift off, but that strange restless feeling returns as soon as my mind wanders. I think I might be coming down with a cold. But that’s not what’s bugging me now. “Fi?”
“What?” she mumbles, her face stuffed into a pillow.
“Can a person…I don’t know…be oversexed when they aren’t having any sex?” The instant the words are out of my mouth my face flames and I want to call them back. As it is, they hang over our heads, dancing around like mocking pixies as Fi’s mouth drops open.
Her stare drills into me, and I resist the urge to squirm. Before I break, she shrugs, all casual as if I haven’t blurted out something ridiculous. “Explain.”
I don’t want to. My big mouth has gotten me in enough trouble. But mojitos have made me warm and loosened my tongue. “God, Fi, where to begin? I think about sex. All the time now.” About cocks. Pushing into me. Filling me up. Sliding into my mouth. Hell. “My breasts feel heavy, my nipples…let’s not talk about those.” It brings back the restlessness, makes them tingle, and I cuddle the throw pillow closer. It doesn’t shut me up, though.
“I ache. So much that my lower belly hurts. Hell, my freaking thighs feel hot.” Annoyed now, I slap a hand against the mattress. “I find myself dreaming of running my thumbs along those grooves on a guy’s abdomen. The ones formed by those muscles right over their hips. You know the ones? That form a V.” My mouth actually waters thinking about them now.
“Oh,” says Fi in an expansive voice, “I know them well.” She grins, all cheeky, her brows waggling. “They bracket Victory Lane on the road to Cocksville.”
“Yesterday,” I tell her on a sigh, “I ended up staring at a nipple for ten minutes.”
Fi’s chokes out laugh breaks out. “A nipple?”
“Yeah,” I say, despondent. “There was this picture of a shirtless guy in Elle—”
“Oh, a guy’s nipple.”
“Of course a guy’s nipple.” I bite my lower lip. “Although I’d probably get turned on by the sight of a woman’s nipple too. I mean, boobs are sexual and all that.”
Fi mutters something under her breath before glancing at me. “Never figured you’d be the type to get enthralled by a dude’s nipple.”
“Apparently so.” Frowning, I pick at the hem of my shirt. “You know, they’re just so tiny and hard, like those rivets on jeans?” I ignore her snort. “And I wonder how one would feel against my tongue. Would the guy like it if I licked him there? Would he make a little groan—”
“All right there, Little Miss Spanish Fly, I get the picture.”
Sighing, I turned to my side to face her. “Fi, this is serious! It’s a problem. I’m hurting here!”
Her cheeks plump on a grin. “Oh, I hear you, Iv. Though I’d say this is more an issue of being undersexed rather than oversexed.”
“Under, over, the point is I’m horny.”
“Then go out and have some sex, already.”
“I can’t.” It’s a pathetic wail. “I’m not made that way, Fiona. I can’t screw just anyone. I need…”
Damn it all, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. My stomach turns with the thought of nameless sex, even as my breath quickens with thought of a hard, male body pressing against me.
“I need to like the guy,” I mumble. That’s the shittiest part about it. I want sex so badly my teeth ache. And yet I don’t have the guts to go out and get it.
“Hmm…” Ice clinks as Fi swirls her glass. “You know who you should talk to about this? Gray.”
“What?” Heat rushes my face. “Please. No.” I wave, my hand nearly slapping my nose in the process. “No way, Fi. Do you want me to die of embarrassment?”
Gray would either smirk and give me the same shit as Fi, or he’d be horrified. Gray has a startling tendency to get prudish on me. God help me if Fi suggests what I think she will. I can’t think about that. I won’t.
“Why not? He knows all about sex. He’s hot as fuck. Maybe he could help you out, give you a little friends-with-benefits relief.” So she went there.
“Fi! How can you say that?”
“Ow! Volume, Ivy. My damn ears are ringing.”
Grinding my teeth as my face bursts into flames, I manage to speak. “I cannot believe you said that.” Did the heat come on or something? I’m going to burn up from embarrassment. Maybe melt into the bed.
“Oh please. He’d do it, you know he would. Everyone knows the guy will do any hot girl that looks his way.”
“Stop,” I snap. “Gray isn’t some cheap manslut.” Never again will I let myself or anyone else belittle him.
“He’s not?” She doesn’t even try to hide her sarcasm.
“No. He’s my friend, and I’ll thank you not to talk about him that way.” I hug my pillow tight. “Never mind that friends-with-bennies has got to be one of the stupidest ideas in history. It never works. Not,” I add, “that I’d even consider it. I don’t…” A breath puffs out of me. “I’m not going there with Gray.”
Just the thought of sex with Gray... Nope, not going to even entertain the idea. Sex with him would only lead to trouble. I’m a relationship gal. And I know it would become too much for me, sharing that sort of intimacy and not having Gray as more than a friend. I cling to that fact like I would a life raft.