Just to Have You (Blackwood & Friends #3)

Chapter Seven

***Updates sudden and simultaneously delayed at once because Drunk Ash had a splurge of inspiration clearly and left Sober Ash to clean up and edit the mess she made of the story over the weekend. 

TW- swears a lot in this chapter.

Chapter Seven

Ben: "I have never had a friend like you, Griff. I feel like I could cut myself open and reveal the deepest and darkest parts of my soul and you would still like me and see me for who I am."

Griff: "If you mean ridiculous, then yes-" interrupted due to a friendly tackle into a hedgerow.

(B & G conversation on the topic of friendship 5 years prior)

She should have gone with her mother.

Oliver knew this the moment she had stood before a blooming hydrangea bush on the side of the road and turned to glance at him. She was wearing a soft off-white frock that had turned a ruddy grey with the damp and humidity of the air post-rain and the material hugged her curves... accentuated them. She had looked so pretty framed by the pink and violet petals of the flowers behind her, her curls soft and darker as they hung damply about her heightened-coloured cheeks and shoulders, he had a moment realisation of the tingling awareness of her, the dormant stirrings of attraction suddenly making themselves known.

She was curvaceous and not at all slim, and he acknowledged and recognised every curve and found that he appreciated them, not that he ever felt differently, or at least he couldn't recall if he had. Soft, feminine, lovely. Applied to all that was Griff... he was losing his mind and he blamed the liquor and subsequently the sherry Heather had left them. He blamed the weather, he blamed the proximity to her in the carriage now, the way that damn mind-fuckery of gown clung to her thighs as she sat on the leathers opposite him, the way the material dipped and valleyed so that he was forced to acknowledge a place between her thighs.

Fuck.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe this was the worst idea he had in the history of ideas.

But this was his best damn friend. For God sakes, what had changed suddenly that he was so aware of her, so attuned to her? Oliver forced the notion from his mind as it was simply unthinkable. She would laugh aloud if she knew what was running through his mind. How could he forget pulling his shirt over his head in front of her the evening before, those luminous cinnamon eyes almost lambent as the only shard of moonlight to show face the entire evening graced their presence right then and there... and there had been desire as her bottom lip dropped open... a perfectly normal, sweetly shaped bottom lip... in fact her lips were small in comparison to most girls he knew and entertained as lovers, yet hers managed to quirk and shape like perfect little bows, perfect little curves and swoops.

Mentally, he screamed.

"Here," she said, her little chin wobbling as she shivered irrepressibly and located a heavy throw that was on the seat beside her. They had finally succumbed to the interior of the carriage, Amy's mother having been deposited into another carriage that would take her to London. Leaving Amy with Oliver... at her insistence.

"I'm fine."

There were dark ribbons dribbling over the ripe contours of her cheeks, and her lashes were clumped and thickened by the damp from the downpour that had suddenly and unexpectedly opened upon them, which had compelled both Amy and Oliver to seek refuge in the only available carriage and shelter left to them.

"Ben," Amy admonished, her smile trembling while she hugged her waist in a vain attempt to quell her shivers. He even imagined a faint plume of steam to emerge from her lips... the lips he thought were quite nice. Quite proper and delicate and faintly quirked and rosy.