Page 90 of Friends with Benefits

If Theo were brave, he’d ask her to finish that sentence.

No.

If Theo were brave?

He’d say,We don’t have to be an impossible thing.

He doesn’t.

Those words are the opposite of casual.

Casual is letting Evelyn stand, pull him to his feet, and change the subject. She leads him out of the mixing room to give a proper tour of a Foley stage. Demonstrates how various props can be used in various ways. Plays a clip of Sarabeth popping out her retainer and tells him that Sadie used uncooked lasagna to replicate thatpop. Has strong feelings about which objects make, quote,the most fantastic squeaks. Theo learns it’s a toss-up between the cranks of a vintage coffee grinder and an Ice-O-Matic, and it feels like a privilege to see the super specific way Evelyn’s mouth quirks when she’s excited about a sound.

She holds out a pair of snow boots. “Your turn.”

On the monitor, she resets theSarabeth & Jackblizzard sequence. Evelyn made it look so easy. It’s not easy. There’s no music. Your body has to find the beat in silence. Feel the rhythm of a scene and commit it to memory.

Theo tries.

Evelyn fails to stifle her laughter as she records his attempts. He ends the recording, then successfully stifles her laughter with his mouth. And it’s fun. Today. Yesterday. His life.

“Home?” she murmurs.

“Yeah?”

Evelyn nods. “I want…” Theo breaks the kiss, brushing his lips along her jaw, down her throat, against the sensitive spot where her neck meets her shoulder, and the sigh that she exhales is so soft. Incredibly sexy. “Theo.” She rakes the curls at his nape. “I… I need to be able to look Sadie and Charlie in the eyes tomorrow. So. You need to take me home.Now.”

“Or what?”

“Theodore.”

He smirks. “Let’s go.”

Theo is obsessed with a flustered Evelyn. Could be undone by the way she says his name. As he drives toward Pasadena, he’s unable to get her words out of his head.Take me home. It’s not the home—not thelife—Theo imagined for himself at eighteen and that once felt like such a loss. Now? He considers that maybe he moved back because of the worst reason, but he stayed for the best one, and today, this moment, Theo is exactly where he’s supposed to be.

“Bed?” Evelyn says, asks, demands the moment they’re home.

Done.

Theo carries her toward his bedroom as her nails scrape against his skin, mouth moving from his throat up, up, up. “Hey.Wait.” Her breath tickles his ear. “My room?”

There’s a tentativeness, a question mark, a vulnerability in the question. Theo and Evelyn have been casual all over their apartment—the kitchen, the shower, his bed,the fuckingfloor—but not in her bedroom. It’s a boundary they haven’t crossed. An unspoken thing. “Yeah?”

She sucks on his earlobe. “Yes.”

Evelyn untangles her legs from around his torso, then weaves her fingers through his and pulls him across the invisible line into her room. His pulse spikes. She pushes him onto the bed and crawls onto his lap. “Is this okay?”

Always, she asks.

Theo nods, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her thighs as she removes his glasses, places them on her nightstand, then pulls off her tank top before leaning in and kissing his jaw. Evelyn kisses him softly. Grinds against his hardness slowly. As though they have all the time in the world. His hands settle on her hips, thumbs skimming the band of her underwear. Light. Teasing. Her teeth gently graze his bottom lip in response. Learning what her body responds to, how she responds? It’s so much. A lifetime of wondering and now he justknowsand he’ll nevernotknow what makes his best friend come and this is casual, they arecasual, but…

Is that even what he wants?

Casual?

Evelyn pulls back. “Pause.” She dismounts and Theo watches the shape of her stand on her tiptoes and reach for a box,thebox that has just been chilling on the top shelf of her closet. Theo would be a liar if he denied ever thinking about that box. How comfortably she’d dug through its contents. How casually she’d dangled a butt plug in his face. How inexperienced he felt in comparison.

Evelyn returns to his lap, her cheeks flushed. “We don’t have to. Obviously. But I’m… well, if you’re open to exploring the world of sex toys and light kink? I’m down for that.Like…” She reaches into the box and pulls out a set of hand restraints. “If you wanted to use these? I’d be into it.”

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