Chapter 36: The Best Friend Test
The rooftop bar felt like a different city. Up here, the salt-tinged breeze cut through the usual coastal dampness, carrying the crisp echo of jazz saxophone from a hidden speaker and the low murmur of a weekend crowd. Downtown’s geometric lights spread out below them like a spilled box of glowing jewels. Lesha followed Imani through the clusters of people, his hand on the small of her back. She wore a black dress that clung to every curve and ended high on her thighs, the sheer panels doing nothing to hide the expanse of smooth, mocha skin. Zettai Ryouiki, he thought automatically, the precise band of thigh between her dress hem and the top of her boots making his mouth go dry.
“There she is,” Imani said, her face lighting up.
At a corner table by the glass railing, a woman stood. Petite, with a wild halo of coppery curls, she looked like a flame against the night sky. Her smile was wide and immediate as Imani pulled her into a tight hug.
“Brie! God, I’ve missed your face.”
“Missed your whole damn everything,” the woman rasped, her voice like gravel and honey. She pulled back, her emerald-green eyes instantly flicking over Imani’s shoulder to lock onto Lesha. They were sharp, intelligent, and amused.
“So this is the mysterious Russian,” Brie said, extending a hand. Her fingers were dotted with freckles, her grip surprisingly firm.
“Alexey. Lesha, please.” He shook her hand.
“Brie. I’ve heard things.” Her grin turned wicked as she glanced at Imani. “Mostly from very recent texts that have, frankly, ruined my productivity.”
They sat. A waiter materialized, and they ordered cocktails—something rosemary-infused and smoky for the women, a bourbon neat for Lesha. The drinks arrived quickly, condensation beading on the glasses.
The conversation flowed easily at first. Catching up. Brie’s move back to San Diego from Seattle, her new job in graphic design. Imani’s latest marketing campaign. Lesha listened, interjecting with dry observations that made Imani snort into her drink and Brie’s eyebrows raise in appreciation.
“Okay, he’s funny,” Brie conceded, pointing a straw at Lesha. “I was worried you’d traded personality for, you know, other attributes.”
“Oh, he has those too,” Imani said airily, taking a slow sip. She let the comment hang, a familiar tease threading back into the space between them.
Brie leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So, the dynamic. You two. Imani’s messages are… evocative but cryptic. Enlighten me.”
Imani swirled her drink, the ice cubes chiming softly. “It’s simple. He’s perfect for me.” She reached over and patted Lesha’s knee, her touch proprietary. “He understands my needs. All of them.”
“Which are?” Brie’s gaze was fixed on Imani, but Lesha felt it on him too, a tangible weight.
“To be adored.” Imani’s eyes met Lesha’s, sparkling with private meaning. “To be wanted. To have my fun.”
Lesha felt a flush creep up his neck. He took a swallow of bourbon, the burn a welcome distraction.
“And you?” Brie turned her focus fully on him now. “What’s your part in this… arrangement?”
He cleared his throat. “I adore her. I want her.” The words, stripped bare, felt truer than anything else he could say.
Imani’s smile softened at the edges. She looked back at Brie, her tone casual, as if discussing the weather. “He’s also incredibly conscientious. Like, after I have a date, he cleans me up. With his mouth. Every time. It’s the sweetest thing.”
The world didn’t stop. The jazz kept playing. The crowd kept laughing. But at their little table by the railing, the air turned electric. Brie didn’t blink. Her emerald eyes widened just a fraction, then settled into a deep, knowing gleam. She let out a raspy laugh, rich and unshocked.
“Damn, girl.” She shook her head, a curl falling across her cheek. “You finally found the perfect man.”
Her freckled fingers toyed with her straw, stirring the remnants of her cocktail. Her gaze dropped—not to his face, but lower, to his lap. The thin fabric of his trousers did nothing to hide his immediate, traitorous reaction to Imani’s blunt confession, to the sheer, shameless pride in her voice. Brie’s eyes lingered there for a beat too long before lifting back to his face. She didn’t smirk. She just looked… intrigued.
“I mean it,” she said, her voice lower now, almost confidential. “Most guys talk a big game. They fetishize the idea. But the reality?” She gestured vaguely with her glass. “The reality involves ego, jealousy, a whole lot of messy feelings. What you’re describing… that’s next-level devotion. Or something.” She took a sip, her eyes dancing between them. “You’re both getting something real out of it.”
Lesha shifted in his seat, the ache in his groins a persistent throb. The non-judgment in Brie’s tone was more disarming than outright shock would have been. It normalized it. It made their strange, intense truth feel seen, and accepted.
“He is devoted,” Imani said, her hand sliding from his knee to his thigh, squeezing. “Sometimes I think he likes the aftermath more than the main event.”
“I can see why,” Brie said, her expression turning thoughtful. “The reclamation. The intimacy of it. It’s… profound, in a seriously fucked-up way.” She laughed again, draining her glass. “God, I’ve missed you. Only you would engineer this kind of beautifully complicated love story.”
The conversation shifted again, turning to lighter topics, old college stories that had Lesha laughing despite himself. But the undercurrent remained. Brie’s eyes would find his occasionally, holding a question he couldn’t quite decipher. Approval? Curiosity? A desire to understand the machinery of their desire?
As they stood to leave, Brie hugged Imani tightly. “He’s a keeper, Im. Seriously.” She turned to Lesha and gave him a quick, surprising hug too. “Take care of her. And let her take care of you, however that looks.”
On the ride down in the glass elevator, the city rising up around them, Imani leaned into Lesha’s side. “She liked you.”
“She didn’t seem surprised.”
“I told you, I prepped her.” Imani nuzzled his neck. “Besides, Brie’s seen me through every weird phase and failed relationship. She gets that ‘normal’ is overrated.”
In the quiet of the car, driving back towards the ocean and their dark apartment, the events of the evening settled over Lesha. The bourbon warmth in his gut, the scent of Imani’s perfume mixing with the night air from the open window, the vivid memory of Brie’s assessing gaze.
“Did it turn you on?” Imani asked softly, her hand on his leg. “Telling her? Her knowing?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Good.” Her fingers traced the inseam of his jeans. “Because thinking about you sitting there, hard for me while I said those things to my best friend… that’s going to keep me awake tonight.”
She said it plainly. A simple statement of fact. And in that moment, driving through the neon-lit canyons of the city, Lesha felt it all click into place with a terrifying, exhilarating certainty. It wasn't just their secret anymore. It existed in the world now, reflected in the green eyes of a petite redhead. It was real.
It was real.
The word echoed in the silent car long after Imani spoke, a solid weight in his chest that felt a lot like truth. She kept her hand on his thigh, a warm, possessive pressure all the way home. The apartment welcomed them with familiar shadows and the lingering salt-air from an open window. She dropped her keys on the entryway table with a sharp clatter that seemed to finalize something.
“She really liked you,” Imani repeated, kicking off her boots. They thudded against the wall. “I could tell.”
“She didn’t run screaming.” Lesha locked the door, the deadbolt sliding home with a satisfying chunk.
“Screaming’s not her style.” Imani walked into the living room, the black dress shimmering under the moonlight from the window. She pulled out her phone, the screen illuminating her face with a soft blue glow. A notification chimed. “Speaking of… it’s her.”
She smiled, a private, curling thing, as she typed a quick reply. Her thumbs flew over the screen. Lesha watched her, leaning against the doorframe. The anticipation was a live wire under his skin, humming from the evening’s revelations. He didn’t need to ask what came next. The script was written in the curve of her spine, the deliberate way she didn’t look at him.
“She says we’re a fascinating case study,” Imani recited, her voice low and amused. “And that you have very kind eyes for a deviant.” She laughed, a single, breathy sound. “Come here.”
He pushed off the doorframe. She didn’t move towards the bedroom. Instead, she backed up slowly until her legs hit the edge of the wide, low sofa. She sat, sinking into the cushions, and spread her knees. The hem of her dress rode higher. The ambient city light from the window caught the smooth skin of her inner thighs.
“Take these off.” She wasn’t asking. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her own underwear, a scrap of black lace, and slid them down her legs. She tossed them aside, a dark flutter in the dim room. Then she looked at him, her eyes gleaming. “All of it. Now.”
He obeyed, his own clothes falling in a heap on the floor. The cool air prickled his skin. She held out a hand, and he took it, letting her guide him down onto his back on the thick rug. The fabric was rough against his shoulders. She stood over him for a moment, a silhouette of power, her phone still glowing in her hand.
Another chime. She glanced down, her smile widening as she read. Then she lowered herself, not onto his cock, but higher. She settled her weight over his mouth, facing his feet. The world reduced to the scent of her, the ocean-clean musk of her from the beach now layered with the subtle, complex perfume of her arousal from the entire teasing evening.
She wriggled, positioning herself, then leaned forward. Her hands braced on his shins. She hooked her heels under the back of his head, the arches of her feet applying a firm, inescapable pressure. She pushed his face deep into the warm, giving heat of her.
The angle was overwhelming. There was no finesse, no gentle exploration. He was buried, his mouth and nose sealed against her, his tongue forced into immediate, intimate contact. She sighed, a long, contented sound that vibrated through him.
Then she began to move. It was a lazy, rocking grind, a slow tide against his immobilized face. She used the leverage of her heels to guide the rhythm, to press him exactly where she wanted him. He could only submit, his hands finding her hips to steady her, to feel the muscles working as she rode him.
His senses drowned in her. The taste was primal and familiar, salt and her. The sound was her breathing, hitched and soft, mixed with the wet, obscene sounds of his own devoted work. The scent filled his lungs. He was a tool for her pleasure, an instrument she played with her whole body.
A phone chimed. Then another, rapid-fire.
Imani gasped, her hips stuttering for a second. A giggle bubbled out of her, a genuine, surprised laugh that shook her whole frame. She reached forward, fumbling for her phone where she’d placed it on the floor near his leg.
“Oh my god,” she breathed, the words strained as she continued to rock slowly against his mouth. She tapped the screen. “Brie is… she’s sending memes.” Another giggle, this one lower, more wicked. “About… about diligent… ah… maintenance workers.”
She typed one-handed, her body still moving in that relentless, languid rhythm. Her focus split between the physical and the digital, her pleasure and her shared joke. Lesha felt a dizzying spike of arousal at the absurdity of it, at her ability to multitask her own peak while texting about it.
Lesha’s lungs burned, a sharp, animal panic that cut through the haze of arousal. The heavy, intimate scent of her filled every desperate inhale he tried to take, but her weight and the press of her thighs against his head sealed him in a warm, wet vault. He tapped her hip, a staccato signal of distress.
She lifted herself a fraction, granting him a gulp of air that tasted of her and the salt of his own sweat. "Oops," she murmured, not sounding sorry at all. Her thumbs flew over her phone screen again, the glow lighting the sweat-slick curve of her back.
Before he could draw a second full breath, she settled back down, harder this time. The world dissolved into a blinding, suffocating focus.
"Brie wants visual proof of my claimed territory," Imani said, her voice strained with effort and amusement. She raised the phone, angling it down over her shoulder. The screen’s light washed over the back of her thighs, the ridge of his nose buried against her, a sliver of his scrunched, desperate eye.
The camera shutter sound clicked, absurdly loud in the room.
She grunted, a sound of finality, and her body went taut above him. A wave of tremors rolled through her, a sharp, silent convulsion that squeezed his face tighter. He could feel the pulse of her, the intimate clench and release against his tongue. He stopped trying to breathe. He simply existed as her instrument, anchored by the sheer physical fact of her climax.
The tremors subsided into a slow, rolling aftershock. She sighed, a long, satisfied release of breath, and finally pushed herself up and off him.
Cool air rushed into his lungs, harsh and shocking. He coughed, dragging in ragged breaths that scoured his throat. His vision swam, blotches of color swirling in the dark room.
Imani slid off the sofa to kneel beside his head on the rug. She looked serene, wiped clean of everything but a lazy, post-orgasmic glow. She brushed damp hair from his forehead. "You okay, baby?" she asked, her tone genuinely concerned for a fleeting second.
He nodded, still incapable of speech. His chin was slick.
Her phone chimed again. She glanced at it, and a new, different giggle escaped her—sharper, more triumphant. She turned the screen toward him.
It was the photo she’d taken. The composition was brutally intimate, all shadow and suggestive curve. You could see the strain in his visible eye, the absolute surrender of his position beneath her.
Below the image, Brie’s response was a single line of text: “Well. That’s devotion. Tell him he’s a good boy.”
Imani’s thumb hovered, then typed back: “He knows.”
She dropped the phone onto the rug and looked down at him, her expression softening into something that looked like reverence. She traced his lower lip with her thumb. "You really are," she whispered. "My perfect, weird man."
She leaned down and kissed him, a deep, slow kiss where she could taste herself on him. It was a reclaiming, a loop closing. Then she broke the kiss, her playful smirk returning. "Now," she said, pushing herself to her feet. "I need a shower. You should probably breathe for a bit."
She walked toward the bathroom, the black dress still rucked up around her hips, leaving him spent on the floor, the ghost of her weight still pressing him into the world.