Lance didn't pull away after he felt it. After they both felt it.
He stayed pressed against Brett in the doorway of the Cocoon, his big body caging Brett's smaller, softer one against the wood, snow falling light around them and melting in his dark hair.
His hand was still on Brett's hip, his thumb stroking slow over the tight black semi-sheer fabric of the bodycon dress, right over the curve where Brett's hip flared out from his tiny twenty-three inch waist.
Slowly, deliberately, Lance rolled his hips forward. Just once. A gentle grind, hip to hip, his hardness pressing against Brett's through the layers of his suit pants and Brett's dress and the delicate black lace panties underneath.
Brett gasped, a sharp, broken sound that fogged in the cold air, his head falling back against the doorframe, his long honey blonde hair spilling everywhere. His hands flew up to clutch at Lance's shoulders for balance in his towering 140 mm patent Mary Jane platforms, his pink nails digging into the wool of Lance's overcoat.
The maximum hormones made everything feel like fire. He felt the hard ridge of Lance through his dress like a brand, and he felt his own body answer, trapped and aching and obvious under the tight black fabric, pressing back against Lance without permission.
"Lance," Brett whimpered, his big blue eyes fluttering closed, his perfect white veneers with their slightly sharpened canines flashing as his full nude lips parted. "Oh god."
Lance groaned low in his throat, his forehead dropping to rest against Brett's, their noses brushing. He did it again, that slow, gentle roll of his hips, grinding against Brett through their clothes, and Brett's knees buckled completely in his heels.
"You feel that?" Lance whispered, his voice wrecked and dark and intimate, his blue eyes black with lust as he watched Brett come apart in his arms. "That's what you do to me, Brielle. After eleven weeks, after one look at you in this dress."
Brett couldn't speak. He could only nod frantically, tears spilling down his cheeks, ruining his perfect smoky makeup, his D cup breasts heaving under the high neck of the dress with every shallow breath.
Lance smiled then, a slow, dangerous, completely unhinged smile that Brett had never seen on his best friend's face before, and leaned in to brush his lips against Brett's ear, his breath hot.
"You're going to have to hide it better than that when you meet my dad," he murmured, his hand sliding down from Brett's hip to cup him gently, reverently, through the black dress, feeling the hard outline of him. "He's old school, baby. He's gonna take one look at you in that dress and those heels and he's gonna know exactly what you're hiding."
Brett sobbed out a laugh, humiliated and turned on and overwhelmed all at once, his hips jerking forward involuntarily into Lance's palm, grinding himself against Lance's hand. "You're terrible," he gasped.
"I'm honest," Lance corrected, and kissed the tears off Brett's cheek, then his jaw, then the corner of his mouth. "You're perfect. Every inch of you. Especially the parts you think you need to hide."
Brett melted, his entire hormone-fueled body going soft and pliant in Lance's arms, his hands sliding up to cup Lance's face, his thumbs stroking his stubbled cheeks.
Lance looked at him for a long moment, at the goddess trembling in six-inch heels in his doorway, at the woman he'd created with a million dollars and eleven weeks of patience, at his best friend with big blue eyes and a dangerous smile and a body that was driving him insane.
Then, slowly, Lance sank to one knee in the snow.
Brett's breath stopped completely.
Lance was still in his overcoat, snow dusting his shoulders, his dark hair windblown from the flight from Singapore, his blue eyes wet and shining as he looked up at Brett towering over him in the black dress and the platforms.
He reached into the inside pocket of his coat with a shaking hand and pulled out a small black velvet box.
Brett's hands flew to his mouth, his pink nails covering his perfect lips, his eyes going impossibly wide.
"Brett," Lance said, and his voice broke on the name, the old name, the true name. "Brielle."
He opened the box.
Inside, on black velvet, sat a three-carat round diamond solitaire on a platinum band, catching the porch light and throwing fire everywhere, so bright it hurt to look at.
"I offered you a million dollars to become a woman for a year," Lance whispered, looking up at Brett like he was the only thing in the world. "That was the dumbest deal I ever made. Because a million was a bargain. You're priceless."
Tears poured down Brett's face now, mascara running in black rivers, his chest heaving under the tight dress.
"I didn't fly fourteen hours to see a project," Lance continued, his own voice thick with tears now. "I flew home to see the love of my life. I fell in love with you over text messages at nine pm. I fell in love with your voice notes. I fell in love with the woman you became when I wasn't even here to watch."
He took Brett's shaking left hand in his, his thumb stroking over the pink nails.
"Marry me," Lance said simply. "Not for a year. Forever. Be Brielle forever. Be mine forever."
Brett stared down at him, at the diamond big enough to pay off his mother's house three times over, at the man on his knee in the snow, at the life he'd never dared to dream of when he was a broke boy in Whitefish.
He dropped to his knees too, his 140 mm platforms slipping on the marble, his tight black dress riding up over his stockings, not caring that his arousal was still obvious, not caring about anything except Lance's face.
"Yes," Brett sobbed, his soft girl voice breaking completely, his dangerous smile watery and perfect and real. "Yes, yes, oh my god, yes."
Lance slid the three-carat diamond onto Brett's left ring finger, his hands shaking so hard he almost dropped it, and then he pulled Brett into his arms right there in the snow, kissing him hard and deep and promising, both of them crying, both of them hard and wanting and completely in love.
Brett looked down at the diamond flashing on his hand, at the man holding him, at the body he'd fought so hard to earn, and thought, through the hormones and the tears and the heat still pulsing between them:
He would have to hide it better when he met Lance's dad.
But tonight, he didn't have to hide anything at all...