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“I’m fine, West,” he said without opening his eyes. “Nothin’ a little time won’t heal. Stop beatin’ yourself up about it. I can hear it from over here.”

“You psychic now?” I asked, reaching down to pull off my boots.

“Yep,” he replied without missing a beat. “You got your weird dick from your mom, I got psychic powers from mine.”

I laughed again, shaking my head as I put my boots off to the side. Forcing myself up, I started to undress. I hung my hat over the lamp and switched it off before pulling off my shirt and eventually my jeans. There was almost no light in the room with the lamp off, the window curtains already drawn tight against the handful of streetlamps in Sagebrush. I pulled both blankets back before crawling in next to Rhett, then covered us both.

“You sure you’re okay?” I asked once I was settled. “I’m not takin’ up too much space?”

“You’re fine,” he muttered back, his eyes still closed. “Stop worryin’.”

“Okay.”

“West?”

“Yeah, Buttercup?”

He paused for a long moment. “Can… Can you hold me?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. I just wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close, being careful of his ribs.

“As you wish.”

Chapter 8

Westley

The first thing I noticed was the light, gray and thin around the edges of Dolly’s curtains, telling me it was somewhere close to dawn but not quite there yet. The second thing I noticed was Rhett’s ass pressed snug against my crotch, and the fact that I was hard as a fence post.

A shot of panic surged through my system.

I lay real still, staring up at the water stain on the ceiling that looked a little like the shape of Texas if you squinted right, and tried to talk myself down. It was just morning wood. Every man on the planet woke up like this some mornings, didn’t matter who was lying next to him. Didn’t mean a damn thing.

Except my arm was already curled around his waist, my hand resting flat against his bare stomach where his sweatpants had ridden down some in the night. I could feel every breath he took, slow and even, proving he was still fast asleep. His hair was tickling my chin. He smelled like the bar soap from Dolly’s bathroom and something underneath that was just him, warm and familiar in a way that I’d known all my life. Something about that made my heart do a little skip.

There was something there under the surface, a feeling that didn’t seem exactly unfamiliar. I’d always liked Rhett. We’d been best friends for as long as I could remember. But I’d never found myself in a situation like this before with him. I always thought he was handsome, objectively. But never in a sexual way.

But now that I was here with my arm around him, my fingers practically in his pubes, and my cock rock hard against his ass, I found myself wondering some… things. Things like what it might feel like to be inside him right now.

My heart began to race.

I told myself it was the stress. God knew I had enough of it piled up to bury a man twice over. Lost my home, lost my daddy in every way that counted even though he was still breathing two miles down the road, and lost the only life I’d ever known. A man’s body did strange things when his mind was enduring that kind of turmoil. That’s all this was. Some leftover panic looking for anywhere to go, and it just so happened Rhett was the only warm body in the bed. If he’d been a woman, I wouldn’t have even questioned it. But I’d never had those thoughts about a man before, and especially not about Rhett.

Was that entirely true though? If I actually looked at the facts, there were at least a couple of things that stood out. I was far more physical with Rhett than I was with anybody else I’d ever known. Even Jennifer didn’t cuddle with me the way Rhett did and even if she did, I never felt actually comfortable with her. Rhett, on the other hand, could be curled up in my lap and I’d never think twice about it. I even caught myself running my fingers through his hair sometimes without thinking about it.

None of that bothered me at all either. However, I didn’t know a single man in my life that acted that way with other men. I thought since we were childhood friends that we were just closer than most people. He was there when my mama just up and left one day without a word. And I was there for him when his parents died. We’d been through a lot together, so being that close and comfortable just seemed… natural, I guess.

But now that I was sitting here picturing those blue eyes of his looking up at me while his lips were wrapped around my cock, or the way he might moan out my name when I found that perfect angle… I couldn’t help wondering if there was more to our friendship than I’d realized.

One thing was for sure though, my morning wood wasn’t going away. In fact, I was only getting harder. And I was pretty sure I could feel myself leaking pre-cum through my underwear onto his lower back.

I shifted my hips back an inch, careful, slow, trying to put some distance between us without waking him. It didn’t help much. My cock throbbed like it had a mind of its own, and every little movement just seemed to rub me up against him worse.

“Mmph.” Rhett stirred, mumbling something incoherent into the pillow, and pressed back into me instead of away, chasing the warmth like he always did in his sleep. My breath caught in my throat as his ass pressed against my dick once more.

“Christ, Rhett,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “C’mon now.”

He didn’t wake. His breathing stayed slow and even, that same soft snore he always got right before he fell into a deeper sleep. I lay there frozen, my heart hammering loud enough I thought it might wake him up on its own.