Page 37 of The Snuggle Is Real

Now I can’t decide if rebuilding it was optimism or masochism.

We both look at it.

Then Malcolm leans over, grabs several pillows, and pitches them into the corner with excessive force.

"Well," I say. "There goes that."

Malcolm laughs, low. Then he closes the door behind us and leans against it, and I realize he's waiting.

Of course he's waiting. He has spent his whole life making sure he never takes something that isn't offered. He wants to be sure. Wants me to be sure.

I take off his jacket. I lay it over the back of the armchair, slowly, smoothing the shoulders, because I need something to do with my hands. Then I take off my earrings. Little gold leaves I bought specifically for this weekend because I'm a hypocrite who claims she hates weddings and then accessorizes for the theme. I set them on the dresser, one, two.

When I turn around, he's still against the door.

"Are you going to stand over there all night?" I ask.

"I'm trying to be sure. That this is what you want. Not the bourbon. Not the band. Not my aunt yelling at us." He swallows. "Not the pact."

And there it is. The thing I have been afraid of since the dance floor. The change this will bring to our friendship.

"Rule one," I start, half-joking, because joking is what I do when I'm scared.

"No." He says it so sharply it surprises us both. He pushes off the door, finally, and crosses the room in three strides, and stops right in front of me. Not touching. Close enough that I have to tip my head back. "Not rule one. Tell me you want me. Tell me you want me to fuck you."

I have known this man for fifteen years.

I have watched him correct a statistics professor, fire a distributor over the phone without raising his voice, and cry exactly once, at his grandfather's funeral, standing in the back of the church where he thought nobody could see.

He’s always, and I mean, always in control.

Yet he does not look in control now. He looks like he’s holding back with the very last thread of restraint he has.

I have never seen him look at me the way he's looking at me now. Like he wants to rip my dress off and punish me for tormenting him for a decade. I had no idea he could get alpha bossy in the bedroom and it has my inner thighs very, very wet.

"I want you," I tell him. My voice isn’t steady. "I've wanted you since the singles table, you idiot. Since before. Since you corrected my standard deviation."

And then, because in a way, my response was still avoidance, my default setting with him, I take a deep breath. I’m a straightforward woman. Malcolm is my best friend. I can tell him anything. Be totally honest with him.

Give him, and therefore me, exactly what we want.

There’s nowhere left to hide emotionally.

“I want you to fuck me,” I say, and it comes out husky and raw and compelling.

His nostrils flare. He closes his eyes, very briefly. Like he's filing that away for later.

Then he kisses me.

Or more like he takes my mouth and makes it his own.

It's different from the dance floor. That kiss was a question. This one is an answer, and it goes on and on, and somewhere in the middle of it I back into the edge of the bed and we both nearly go down over the pillow wall.

"Hold on," I gasp against his mouth.

He holds on. To me, mostly.

I turn and sweep the remaining pillows off the bed with one arm, and they tumble onto the floor in a heap of plaid and corduroy and the weird little pillow shaped like an acorn.