JUST BEST FRIENDS

"I am starving, Len."

Alex didn't know when the words slipped out, but they hung in the air between them, heavy with a meaning that had nothing to do with food.

Lena was doing something to him tonight. Something dangerous.

For the fifteenth time, she narrated how she'd tackled the intruder to the floor, her voice loud and excited as she paced her cramped living room.

Alex had stopped listening before she even finished the first telling. His attention had snagged on the way her tiny booty shorts clung to her curvy hips, the skin-tight crop top that stopped just beneath her breasts and rode up to expose her bare midriff, the movement of her full lips as she spoke, hitting him with a hunger he couldn't shake.

"Then I just grabbed the lamp and told him if he moved, I'd bash his brains in!"

Her hair was pulled into a messy bun, glasses perched on her nose as she demonstrated some questionable karate move, punching the air with theatrical ferocity.

The way her hips swayed as she paced made blood rush faster through Alex's veins. He shifted on her worn sofa, trying to focus on anything but the movement of her body, strategically positioning a throw pillow across his lap.

"Alex? Are you even listening to me?"

She stopped mid-stride, hands planted on those hips, head tilted in that way that usually made him smile.

"Yeah, of course. Lamp, brains, real badass…" He cleared his throat. "You're killing me here."

Why was this happening? Was he only just noticing how attractive his best friend was after nearly ten years of friendship?

He'd seen Lena in bikinis countless times. Hell, he'd even helped her with that swimwear photoshoot last summer, holding the reflector while she posed in bikinis. Not once had he felt this magnetic attraction that made it hard to breathe.

Maybe it was the way her breasts pressed together in that crop top.

Or how the apartment's warm lighting caught on her smooth thighs when she moved.

Or maybe he was just sex-starved and reacting to any attractive woman in proximity.

But this was Lena. His best friend.

He'd dropped everything when she panic-called at 10:45 PM. It was past midnight now, and he sat in her cluttered one-bedroom apartment, fighting inappropriate thoughts that made guilt coil in his stomach.

"You said you were hungry, right? I could make those nachos you like, or pasta-" Lena was already heading toward her kitchen.

Alex's gaze followed the curve of her ass, the way those shorts pushed them up perfectly and gave them more volume.

The intrusive thought hit him hard: bending her over that counter, painting those thick thighs with his—

He stopped himself, horrified.

Was Lena doing this on purpose? Did she know the effect she was having? Because she was definitely swaying her hips more than usual.

But when their eyes met as she pulled open a cabinet, she seemed completely oblivious to the fact that her every movement was seducing him.