Unfriended(Love in New Highland Book 1)(24)

Asher: I wanted to push your panties aside and look at you.

Asher: I've been going crazy wondering if you're curly or straight down there. Curly? Straight. Curly? Straight.

Asher: Will you like it when I pet you?

Asher: Do you like coming as much as you like eating? I want to watch your face when the big O hits you.

Asher: Very important question: How wide can you get your legs apart? Because I can get pretty acrobatic.

Asher: Also will you hold up your breasts for me?

Asher: They're little but you'd be so cute offering them to me. It's the thought that counts, not the size of the gift.

Asher: I'm naked here, BTW.

Charis: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

Asher: I know this one. *hand flies up* I want you bad, Sloane.

Charis: Damn you Asher I'm ENGAGED TO YOUR BROTHER.

Asher: Only until I talk you out of it. Then it's open house night and I'll be the first in with the teacher.



The wait was long enough after that corny line to make me nervous, but finally she responded.



Charis: I'm not going to leave Karl in the lurch.

Asher: Marrying for pity now. Awesome idea.

Charis: Just tell me one thing. Did you sext like this with Aura?

Asher: Not like this. Why?

Charis: Because I think deep down you're using me as a substitute for her.

Asher: If anything you've got it backwards.

Asher: I fucked Aura every way there is. I tied her up, spanked her, fucked her from on top, sideways, behind, upside down.

Asher: It was SEX. For a long time it was nothing more. That's what sucked about it. Capice?

Charis: Holy crap dude I didn't need to know all that.

Asher: I'll happily do all that with you.

Charis: That is supposed to appeal to me … why?

Asher: Because we have a fucking good time together whatever we do. Sex would take it to a new level.

Charis: Well so I have a good time with Karl. Maybe he and I will do all that when we're hitched. We'll go up a level.

Asher: You said that.

Asher: You actually said that to me. Now I get to imagine you and my brother

Asher: FUCK NO

Asher: Are you trying to make me berserk? Because that's not cool, no joke.

Charis: Well I didn't want to know what you did with your girlfriend.  I've spent years trying not to think about it. It's none of my business  what you got up to with her.

Asher: Ah sweetness.

Charis: Don't call me that.

Asher: Why not? It's a good word for you. Feels right.

Asher: FYI, I never went to a family funeral with her. Or got lost in  the Blue Mountains with her. Or hell just laughed with her.

Charis: Not relevant. I was not your girlfriend. She was.

Asher: And there in a nutshell is the problem. I fucked up.

Charis: I won't argue with that.

Asher: If it means anything, I don't want her. As in, I really, really don't want her.

Charis: It doesn't. Mean anything. I'm engaged. And I'll believe it when I see it.

Charis: Can I erase that last sentence?

Charis: Crap, I now apparently have no morals. Merely by continuing this conversation, I, who teach philosophy, have no morals.

Charis: This has been … interesting. I will even say tempting. You have no  clue how sinfully tempting. But I can't do it. It's wrong on so many  levels.



Sinfully tempting?

Oh, hell, yes. That settled it. Charis Sloane was mine.



Asher: A problem easily solved. Break off the fucking engagement.

Charis: Asher, I don't want to see you for a while.



Wait, what?

The fuck.

I stared at her last text. Waited, but that was it. With a sick certainty in my gut, I knew there was no point in replying.

I'd lost, and there wasn't going to be a Round 2.





CHAPTER 15





One Year Ago-The Bad Day



Charis: I just realized something amazing.

Asher: Yeah?

Charis: You're my best friend.

Asher: Took you a while.

Charis: You know, it never occurred to me in a million years my bestie  would turn out to be a dude. Wait, I didn't mean that like it sounded.  I've always known you were naturally born with testicles that fully  descended. I mean, oh, shit …

Asher: Go on. Do. Go. On.

Charis: I'm really serious. You're the best. Thanks for what you did yesterday, Asher.                       
       
           



       

Asher: Not a problem. Everybody has some bad days.

Charis: Yeah, well, I'm not used to locking the keys in my car, getting  stood up, losing my wallet and knocking my skull on a garbage dumpster  all in the same crappy twenty-four hours. You really came through, even  though you were dragged from a most excellent date at Emmenders.

Asher: You ponied up when Aura's bank account was hacked and she  couldn't reach me. I still have to pay you back the two point six grand.

Charis: Hey, that's right. Oh shit, tuition's coming up next month. Come on-hand it over while we remember.

Asher: Char …

Charis: Yeah?

Asher: Nothing. Just … you're a kinda awesome best friend yourself.



Charis



SPRING BREAK WAS MY problem, that's all. I had nearly a week to kill. I  knew I should drive down to Portland to see my parents, who were home  for a change. Portland is where they'd semi-retired. Mom didn't perform  anymore, but they gave classes, Mom in dance, Dad offering a  leatherworking workshop. They're a couple of bohemian hippies, did I  mention that?

The idea was daunting, though. They'd been doing their artsy circuit for  almost fifteen years. I was proud of their accomplishments. I guess.

But going home means the Jenny and Adam Sloane Show, 24-7. You'll always  find dozens of people hanging around, getting drunk, smoking weed, a  few even popping uppers, and to be honest? It's exhausting.

My idea of a good vacation is hanging out with Asher and maybe getting in some extra visits to the gym.

Asher.

Damn damn damn.

All right, enough. My problem might be bigger than spring break.

I still tightened up inside every time I thought of him, which was about every five minutes.

This whole thing with Asher going on this weird wooing-me trip was frying me. My emotions, my damnable body were out of control.

So here's something most people don't know about me: I'm an emotional  person. It's counterintuitive, I know. I'm not the type to go woe-is-me  all the time and sob on people's shoulders. But I'm kind of fiery. I  keep it from my students, of course, but behind my calm face I can get  pretty angry or freaked out.

Those texts he'd sent-I'd never had anybody do that to me. I was still discombobulated.

It was entirely his fault that I couldn't concentrate on anything. The  texts were why I lay here on the bed fully clothed midmorning Tuesday,  my breasts aching and swollen, writhing around like a kitty-cat in heat.

I mean, really, how pathetic can you get? What he'd said was completely  inappropriate and had essentially morphed me into this nympho form. A  cradle-robbing nympho, let's not forget that.

Yesterday I frigging broke my vibrator. The silicone flaked off on me, I'd used it so hard.

I'd ordered another one online within the hour, blushing like a virgin because I couldn't get his cocky "muches" out of my head.

I jumped up from the bed and started pacing like a caged tigress. My  phone rang half an hour later, while I was still wearing out the carpet,  trapped with all this bottled-up emotional magma.

Already I'd been to the gym and run around the block in the sleet. All I  wanted to do was dash over to Asher's and yell, okay, you win, take me,  Mr. Hotness, I'm yours if you really meant it, which I don't think you  did, I think your brain is screwing with you, but take me anyway and  then rip his clothes from him and drag him down to the floor and …

Weak, weak Charis.

It was Karl, wanting to come over.

I grasped at the lifeline. "Sure."

Karl is such a soothing presence in my life. Until recently, he'd always  been the remote eldest Norrell brother, kind of a Greg Brady if Greg  had been a bad boy.

(Um, this is Asher's fault. Asher's always forcing me to watch his  favorite show. The fact that I secretly catch episodes when he's not  around means nothing. I can quit anytime.)

Anyway, Karl. Since we'd gotten engaged, I hadn't noticed any real  change in our relationship. I still thought of him as not just Asher and  Mel's brother, but mine, the kind of brother I'd have wanted around if  I'd had one.

For sure more than I'd ever thought of Asher as my brother.

"Treat him like you'd treat a little brother," Mel had told me airily  when I'd consulted her about the awkwardness of being Asher's friend  with the age difference between us. "He'll get the message."

Oh, Asher got the message all right. I mean, insultingly fast, given how, well, let's call it single-minded he'd been as a kid.

But whatever. I am what I am. He is what he is. He was only gravitating  to his natural complement when he set his sights on Aura.

I was an aberration in his early, pre-formed life.

But me?

Intellectually I grasped the concept that being four years younger than  me puts a man in the verboten camp. (His sister Ryanna thinks  differently, but then she goes for way older men, like, fifteen years  older. So she's not unbiased here.)