My Brother's Best Friend's One-Night Rule

Avery

The click of the electronic lock was the loudest sound in the quiet hallway. I barely had time to process it before the hotel room door was yanked open from the inside. A hand, rough and warm, closed around my wrist and hauled me across the threshold.

The door slammed shut, plunging us into near-darkness, save for the faint city glow bleeding around the edges of the curtains. Before I could gasp, his mouth crashed against mine.

It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim.

His lips were insistent, demanding, his tongue sweeping past my own with a hunger that stole the air from my lungs. I melted into him, my hands flying up to clutch at the hard planes of his shoulders. Logan. After four years of stolen glances, of silent, aching want since I was eighteen, he was finally here. My brother’s best friend. My secret obsession. The taste of him—whiskey and mint and pure, unadulterated male—was a drug I’d been dreaming of.

A low groan rumbled from his chest, vibrating into mine as he backed me against the wall. The cool plaster was a sharp contrast to the furnace of his body pressing into me. His hands were everywhere, mapping my spine through my thin dress, tangling in my hair, cupping my jaw to angle my face for a deeper kiss. I arched into him, a soft whimper escaping my throat. This was it. The fever dream I’d replayed in my head a thousand times was finally real, a frantic, blurry release of every what if I’d ever tortured myself with.

“Logan,” I breathed against his lips when he finally broke for air, my voice shaky.

His answer was another searing kiss, his hands sliding down to my hips, gripping me hard. He walked me backward, our mouths never parting, until my calves hit the edge of the bed. We tumbled onto the crisp duvet in a tangle of limbs.

The shadows in the room hid his expression, but I could feel the intensity of his gaze. His fingers found the zipper at the back of my dress. The sound of it sliding down was obscenely loud. He peeled the fabric from my shoulders, his lips following the trail, burning a path along my collarbone. I fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, my fingers clumsy with need, pushing the material aside to feel the hot skin and solid muscle of his chest.

He shrugged out of the shirt, and for a moment, we just stared at each other in the dim light. The years of silence, of him treating me like a kid sister, evaporated in that look. There was nothing brotherly in his eyes now. Only a dark, possessive heat that made my stomach clench.

He lowered his head, his mouth finding the lace edge of my bra. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin just above it, and a full-body shiver wracked me. “God, I’ve thought about this,” I whispered, my fingers threading into