*Lokela

Ray whispering the word bedroom played on repeat in Lokela's head. When he tore out of the house, he'd had the good sense to grab his surfboard and head for the beach. Surfing kept him sane for an hour, but now he was home in the outdoor shower behind the garage unit, shielded from view by wooden screens. He dropped his head forward under the spray, bracing one hand on the back wall. Water pummeled his shoulders.

With a groan of relief, he grasped his steel-pipe-hard erection in his other hand. He eased down the length to cover the end and then ran his hand back to the base again several times, skimming over the wet skin. He panted as if running a marathon. He'd been holding this in all morning, not letting himself remember Ray's naked beauty and the feel of being between her legs. Sure, his shorts and her towel had kept them from skin to skin, but the mound of her sex pushing on his dick had already been driving him wild.

He was close to bursting after thirty seconds of jacking off. He grasped himself harder and quickened his movements, working his shaft. Excitement coiled in the base of his cock, through his tightened balls. Sensations mounted. He was going to cum.

Bedroom...Her voice whispered in his head.

He pumped his fist faster.

Her lips on his, his arm around her waist as he carried her to her room. They fell on the bed together.

He smothered a groan.

"Hey!" Someone banged on the flimsy shower wall. "Lokela, is that you in there?"

Lokela folded in half, hand still on his hard-on, just at the big moment was about to happen. He couldn't talk. He choked out a weak yeah.

Outside, Travis said something about the waves on the beach that morning. Then asked, "You want to ride with us to pick up some stuff at the hardware store? We're getting things started today."

He still couldn't talk. He held his painfully hard erection, praying to every god, saint, or demon who was listening to make his roommate leave him the fuck alone. He swallowed, coughed, and cleared his throat. "Later, right?"

"We're leaving in about ten. My brother is coming by with his truck since we'll need the pick-up bed in back. See you then!"

Silence.

Did Lokela just accidently sell his soul for ten minutes of peace so he could finish this and walk like a normal person again? Maybe he did. He picked up speed again and in seconds his orgasm hit him like a ton of bricks.

Selling his soul was worth it.

He gasped for air. He clung to the wet wall for support. His knees nearly gave out. Collapsing against the wall, and shaking the flimsy thing in the process, he had to hope no one else was in the back yard to hear him barely survive that very necessary trip to Wankville.

He finished rinsing off and made sure the shower stall was presentable for next person. It might be Ray, after all. He could never let her know what she did to him. He wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped onto the stone path to the back door.

Miller was relaxing on the lanai with a book, straw hat on his head. He didn't bother looking up from the pages as Lokela passed.

"If you didn't clean up in there after that, I will hunt you down and beat your ass," Miller said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lokela said, still walking.

"Hope you feel better. Maybe you should try talking to her instead of working out your frustrations alone."

Lokela pressed his mouth closed and kept walking. He didn't say another word all morning as he and several of the guys picked up renovation supplies. In fact, he hardly spoke another word all day.

He had a late morning class, and several afternoon ones, where he couldn't focus. Luckily, he had already learned who to sit behind in order to copy notes in all of his classes. The droning professors explained economics and business models, but Lokela's mind was elsewhere.

Bedroom...

It didn't change the fact that she was virgin who might be dating his best friend. He had no right to make a move, especially a fast one.

Let's pretend this never happened...

The computer screen of the girl sitting in front of him—the one he'd been copying notes from—went out of focus. He leaned his head down to touch his forehead to the cool desk.

"Mr. Kāne," the professor barked. "Are we boring you?"

Lokela jerked upright. "Nope. I mean, absolutely not, you aren't boring me. You never bore me."

Muffled laughter erupted in several spots of the room. The nerdy girl in front of him heaved an annoyed sigh, and finished writing the last key words from the current slide.

Class, and life, continued as if everything were normal.

In fact, he didn't know it at the time, but Ray managed to pretend their kiss never happened for the next two whole months.

Two months of being near her everyday, but not being able to touch her.

Two months of writing in his notebooks and journals and then hiding his words.

Two months of nothing but friends.

***

*Ray

The flutters never stopped every time she happened to think of Lokela or walk too closely by him at the store or in the house. Ray told herself she was being completely unreasonable, that it was just a weird association effect of his being Zach's friend.

Friend...would go through her head and her Mary Jane went to pieces.

For two months, though, she was on a semi-permanent-relationship-status-hiatus with Zach. He texted her all the time. He told her he loved her. He would send pics of himself, usually at home, but sometimes near the California beach he spent all his free time at, or from the ice-cream parlor, saying he wished she was there with him.

Her heart thrilled each time. But not like her body thrilled when Lokela walked in the room. She could not cool down around him. All she could do was put up an act that nothing had ever happened.

Which clearly worked for him, too.

After their rocky start and his grumpiness when they first met, she never could have imagined how he was now.

He was a solid gold friend. Priceless.

Friend...

The sex advice from Naia echoed in Ray's head at odd moments, like at the cook-out the whole house had after they painted the kitchen and reworked the cabinets. The kitchen reeked of wood stainer and paint, so they took their plates and hamburgers to the pit-grill in the backyard and hung out on the lanai until nearly midnight. Lokela wound up sitting across from her the whole time. Firelight lit his face and hands in warm, dancing light.

What would he say if she asked him to be her first?

But that would be cheating on Zach. Even if they weren't truly official, they were acting like they were together. At least, Zach thought they were together. Ray had no idea what they were, and whenever she brought up their status, Zach turned on his puppy-dog eyes.

I love you. I'm going to make everything up to you as soon as I get back. You are my girl. My only girl.

It was sweet when he talked like that...but where was the poetry and passion that knocked the air from her lungs that had been in the letter?

After two months of turning the question in her head, she decided to get some straight answers and talk about the letter.

With Lokela.

Ray was careful to knock before entering his room, but she might not have been able to wait for his answer before barging in. But he'd seen her basically naked—worse—with her leg up on the counter, so fair was fair.

She burst into his room. "Hey, Lokela, what's going on?"

"Jesu—" He scrabbled to cover the papers on his desk, blocking them from her view. Which made her super curious. "You knock and then you wait for an answer, I thought we talked about this."

She pursed her lips a moment. "I'm pretty sure we talked about you knocking and waiting for an answer, but that was a long time ago and I don't remember it clearly. What are you working on? It must be fabulous if you have to hide it like that. Secret operations? Spy tech? Are you holding out on me? Moonlight business making millions?" She peered over his shoulders, first going to one side and then the other of the desk.

"An essay. A paper for class that's so boring it might blind you to see it. Would you sit? Please?" He waved at his bed.

She plopped onto his bed, grinning.

"Did you have something you wanted to talk about or...?" he asked.

She loved his room, although she had only been in there once before when she brought him a smoothie after a long day at work once. It was incredibly tidy for a guy's room—not many decorations, but with an understated, island chic in faded colors and small collections of seashells at his windowsill.

"It's nearly December," she said.

"Yes, it is."

"Normally, in Colorado, it's freezing and snowy now. But here it's warm and sunny."

"Yes, it is. Is there a question there or a problem with the weather?"

"My point is, I want to do something a little bit wild, with you, outside, that I couldn't do in Colorado."

He gulped, seeming confused. He glanced at the open door and then at her on the bed, and she didn't know if he wanted to bolt or join her there.

An image of him leaning over her, kissing her flitted through her head, then went straight down between her legs. Again. At the same, her heart did that flippy-thing it did when she accidently remembered him kissing her.

"Something wild? Outside?" he asked.

A wave of heat rose through her chest.

Not now. Wrong guy!

Crossing her legs (so her Mary Jane would stop demanding things that were not going to happen), she nodded. "I think you and I should go, together and get ice-cream at the Aloha Tower. On our bikes, wearing shorts at the end of November."

He blinked. "Ice-cream?"

"Ice-cream." She nodded in confirmation. "And there was something I wanted to talk about, too, but everything is better with the cold, creamy goodness of ice-cream, don't you agree?"

"Talk. All right." He hauled her off the bed with a strong pull. For a second, her feet were off the ground, and only his hand held her. She landed in front of him, head spinning and heart pounding. "Let's get wild."

For some reason, she couldn't back away and for several long heartbeats, they stood face to face, chest to chest.

*** Take care, my lovelies, and thank you as always for reading. You know what to do to that star... ***