by Liz Durano
EVERY BREATH
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE NOVELLA
LIZ DURANO
Every Breath: Sarah and Benny Copyright © 2018 by Liz Durano
Cover Design by James at GoOnWrite.com
Published by Velvet Madrid
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or scanned in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is purely coincidental.
v. 2019_01_29
A Different Kind of Love Series
Everything She Ever Wanted: Dax and Harlow (An Older Woman Younger Man Romance)
Falling for Jordan: Addison and Jordan (One-Night-Stand Romance)
Breaking the Rules: Sawyer and Alma (Friends to Lovers Romance)
Friends with Benefits: Caitlin and Campbell (Brother’s Best Friend Romance)
Every Breath: Sarah and Benny (Slice-of-Life Valentine’s Day Story)
FREE IN KINDLE UNLIMITED
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Other Books by Liz Durano
About Liz
Chapter One
“Nizhóní.”
I feel Benny’s mouth on the back of my neck, his beard tickling my skin. I giggle, his arms tightening around my waist as I playfully struggle to pull away. I love it when he calls me beautiful, which is every morning—and when he’s horny like this which is often.
As I open my eyes, I see the time blinking from his bedside clock. “Isn’t your flight in two hours?”
“Hmm.” He nips the skin behind my ear and I shiver, goosebumps dotting my skin.
“You’re going to be late, Benny.”
“Just one more kiss,” he murmurs. “For the road.”
“One more kiss that’ll lead to one more–”
“Are you complaining?”
I turn my head toward him just in time for our mouths to meet. Of course, I’m not complaining. Why would I? I need to take what I can get for he’s leaving again and for how long, I don’t know. One would think after twelve years as an environmental protection scientist, he’d get to stay in one place for good but with another complaint of radioactive waste leaking onto Navajo land, he’s been called in as a consultant. Again. And just like the others before this one, whatever recommendations he’ll propose will only get mired in government red tape.
But I push the thought away, rolling onto my back as my lips part and his tongue slips between my teeth. My belly tightens as his kiss deepens, his tongue sweeping and tasting, making the butterflies in my belly come alive. Funny how twelve years since he first kissed me, not much has changed. Benny Turner still makes me weak in the knees with just a look, a touch, a kiss. And that’s just the parts I can talk about.
I run my fingers through the skin of his back, the faint indentations of the ropy scars on his skin from a long time ago that he never talks about. And just as it happens every time, Benny takes my hand and pulls it away. His scars are his own and no one else’s.
“Shijéí Bóhodínínil,” he murmurs against my ear and I shiver with anticipation as he interlaces his fingers with mine, pressing my hands down on the bed.
“Looks like your heart isn’t the only thing I light on fire, Benny,” I giggle as his cock presses against my inner thigh, hard and hot like a steel rod. My knees part to give him access, always access.
“You love it though.” He kisses me again, little nips on my upper and lower lips, his beard tickling my chin. The hairs on his chest feel rough against my breasts, his taut flat belly hard against my own. I love it when he sleeps naked… no, when we sleep naked for there’s nothing to stop us from doing the things we do to each other.
But only when we’re at his house.
Forget my house where Nana and Dyami can hear everything. No, at Benny’s house in the city, we get to do everything we’ve ever dreamed of, and I don’t need to muffle my cries.
“Shiʼáád,” he murmurs as I shudder with anticipation, his mouth leaving my lips to lay claim on the sensitive skin of my neck and then my breast. I love the way his voice lowers, almost gruff in his intonation, his possession of my heart and soul evident in every word and every syllable.
Shi’áád. My woman.
Already I’m wet, and he pulls away to watch me with heavy-lidded eyes, letting our bodies do the talking this time. There’s no need for anything else. He knows I want him inside me. He knows I need him.
But of course, he doesn’t give me what I want, not right away. Benny blazes a trail of kisses down my neck, sucking one nipple into his mouth and then the other. He continues down my belly, letting go of my hands as he positions himself between my legs, his fingers sliding between the soaked lips of my pussy. He plants a light kiss on my clit, following it with a lap of his tongue.
“Benny…”
Time stands still as he kisses and licks and sucks until my body shudders with its first orgasm. And when he moves up to kiss me on the mouth, letting me taste myself, I feel the head of his cock push against my entrance and I gasp when he roughly thrusts himself in my wetness. I love it when he’s rough like this, reminding me who commands my heart and my body.
I want to hold him but Benny holds my hands down again, his head lowering, his mouth on my neck as his teeth leave his mark on my skin. At least, it’s winter and I can keep it covered with a scarf or a turtleneck. If all else fails, there’s always makeup.
With the dawn light slipping between the blinds, the only sounds in the room are of our bodies, our breaths, whispered words he knows I crave to hear from him. My woman. My heart. Precious girl.
Benny lets go of my hands to stroke my side, one hand gripping my hip as he thrusts a few more times, groaning against my neck as he fills me completely and I cry out, my fingernails digging into the skin of his shoulders. Why do these types of couplings always seem desperate, an attempt to appease a hunger that never seems to be satisfied?
Afterward, as I lie in his arms, our fingers interlacing playfully, he kisses my forehead, my eyelids, my lips. Tender now, gentle.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” he murmurs.
“You know how these trips make me nervous,” I say. “When you say you’ll be gone for a week, it usually ends up being three or four. Dyami gets restless. He reads the news.”
Dyami is our eleven-year-old son, a precocious boy who looks just like his father. Intense dark eyes, dark hair, but he has my smile. He loves his father like it’s no one’s business. He’s proud to have his father’s Navajo blood even if Benny’s half Navajo which makes Dyami a quarter Navajo, as he calls himself. But he has the spirit of a Navajo warrior like his great-great-grandfather. Already, his grandfather wants Dyami to spend the summer in the Navajo Nation so he can learn how to be a man complete with some puberty ceremony.
“It’s only for three or four days, Sarah. But I’ll talk to him.”
Benny’s phone buzzes from the bedside table and excusing himself, Benny reaches over me to retrieve it.
“Work?”
He shakes his head, returning the phone to the table and pulling me in an embrace. He buries his f
ace in my hair. “My mother.”
I pull away, studying his face. While Benny isn’t exactly close to his mother, he’s not one to avoid her either. She lives on the Navajo Nation just outside of Shiprock, about three hours west of Taos and once a month, he and Dyami spend the weekend with her and her parents where they teach Dyami the ways of the Navajo. “Why didn’t you answer?”
“Have you seen the time?” His tone is teasing, but he also knows I get uncomfortable being around when his mother calls.
“It could be an emergency.”
“She’s probably asking about the spill. That way, she can tell everyone that her son is such an important man to be called over there on short notice. You know how she is.”
Yes, I know how she is. Like how she never liked me, I almost add as Benny kisses my forehead and then my lips one more time before removing his arm from under my head and sits up. Now he really needs to get ready to go to the airport.
“Will you be staying there the whole time?” I ask instead, the silences growing longer between us again. It always happens when he’s about to leave and he and I don’t quite know how long he’s there for. Some spills require his presence for only a few days while others have him staying for weeks at a time, sometimes butting heads with protesters who show up and think he’s working for the big corporations instead of the federal government overseeing tribal lands. And it’s not like such things can be sped up. Spilled radioactive waste doesn’t get cleaned up in a day, certainly not when it happens on tribal land. There’s just too much red tape.
“Yes, but I’ll call you when I get there.” He gets up and heads to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running. I get up and take a peek at his phone which buzzes again. This time it’s a text message.
Noelle is in town. She said hello.
My chest tightens, my throat turns dry.
Noelle.
I know that name.
I get up and walk out of the bedroom, making my way to the guest bathroom so I can wash my face and brush my teeth. Twelve years since we first kissed, why on earth am I still letting Noelle bother me?
But then, why not? She and Benny grew up together on the reservation. She’s also the woman he was supposed to marry, something that was prearranged between their families. The wedding only got delayed when he won a scholarship in the East Coast where he majored in Environmental Sciences. He returned to New Mexico after graduation but instead of getting married, he opted to pursue his Doctorate.
That’s where I come in, setting Benny’s path a totally different direction from the one his mother had hoped for. I was completing my Bachelor’s in Nursing at UNM where he was working on his dissertation on Environmental Biology when we met and the next thing everyone knew, we were inseparable and I had Dyami, a strong and beautiful baby boy with Benny’s eyes and a lustful cry that could wake up the neighbors.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, droplets of water clinging to my skin. Blue eyes, creamy skin and dark-haired, I’m what people have always called a curvy girl. Broad shoulders, wide hips, big boobs. Far from the ideal woman that many men I’d met in New York held on to when I went back there for my first two years of college.
How I wanted so badly to leave the quiet of Taos then, flying back to New York ten years after Dad uprooted me from everything I knew so Mama could live in Taos again. I thought I’d fit right back in like I never left it.
Only I’d changed.
What I thought I wanted—the hustle and bustle of Manhattan along with the status that came with it as Daniel Drexel’s oldest daughter—had faded into the tired rumblings and exhaust fumes of the city that never slept and a father whose affection for his only daughter turned into an expectation of perfection.
Too bad I was far from perfect and still am.
But at least, Benny loves him a curvy girl with something more than skin and bones to hold on to. You’re more than just curves that drive me crazy, Sarah Drexel, he’d say teasingly. There’s a woman in this body. My woman.
Shi’áád.
He just hasn’t put a ring on it, not since he first kissed me twelve years ago and promised to be mine forever.
Chapter Two
After Benny leaves, I arrive at the house where I grew up just in time to wake Dyami up and get him ready for school. It’s a crazy situation, with Benny living in one place and me and Dyami in another but given how small Taos is, it’s not really a stretch.
Benny lives in a nice three-bedroom, two-bath condo on Kit Carson Road, close to the Harwood Museum of Art. It’s got everything I could ever ask for except for a backyard. It’s also a condo, something he doesn’t fully own, unlike the house where I live with Nana which has a large garden, a separate casita that Dad uses as his office whenever he’s in town, and even a private well. But maybe that’s why Benny has never popped the question again, not since he did that first time so many years ago. He knows I don’t want to leave Nana alone in the big house, not so soon after Mama died and he’s also too proud to even consider moving in although he stays the night sometimes and Dyami always has a blast. So for now, we stick to our strange arrangement—still together after twelve years but also not.
In the kitchen, Nana is cooking Dyami’s favorite breakfast, a fully packed morning burrito made of scrambled eggs, diced russet potatoes, chorizo, cheese, and green chile sauce. But who am I kidding? It’s everyone’s favorite breakfast—even New York transplant Harlow James—which is why my younger brother Dax still stops by on his way to his workshop to get a few for the road and to take home with him. If Benny didn’t have to leave so early, he’d probably want one, too.
“Where’s Benny?” Nana asks as she assembles the burrito on a large plate.
“He had to fly out to Colorado.”
“I figured they’d call him. I heard it in the news,” she says, tucking the ends of the tortilla and setting it on a plate just as eleven-year-old Dyami walks into the kitchen, his dark hair still wet from the shower and sticking up. “When do you think he’ll be back?”
“He says about four days,” I reply, fixing the collar on Dyami’s shirt. “Good morning, bud.”
“Good morning, Mom,” he says as I kiss him on the cheek. He pulls up a chair and sits down. “Did Dad leave again? Is that what the Colorado thing is about? Does that mean he’s going to miss Valentine’s Day?”
“Oh, you’re right.” Oh wow. I can’t believe I’ve completely forgotten about Valentine’s Day. But then, I was never one to be romantic. I’m too practical that even Benny says I need to let go sometimes.
“Aren’t you and Dad doing anything?” Dyami asks as I prepare to make coffee. To this day, Nana doesn’t own a coffee maker. She still makes coffee in a Moka pot that she sets over the stove.
“Maybe after he gets back. He could be stuck up there depending on the work.”
“Why can’t he fly back here and then fly back? It’s not too far,” he says as Nana hands him his plate, a perfectly wrapped burrito sitting right in the middle complete with a wax paper collar so he can hold it while eating.
“Yeah, but he’s also working, Dyami.”
Dyami takes a bite of his breakfast burrito and chews for a few moments, his brow furrowing. “Do you think we can stop by the store after school? I need to get something.”
“What is it? I can pick it up for you.”
Dyami frowns. “I want to go and pick it out.”
“For what?”
“Is this for Valentine’s Day, mijo?” Nana asks, a playful smile on her face as Dyami’s cheeks turn a bright shade of red. “It’s okay. What’s her name?”
Before Dyami can answer, we hear a truck pull up the driveway. It’s Dax and I know exactly why he’s here. It’s as if news about Nana’s breakfast burritos while she was cooking them somehow made its way all the way outside the city limits to where he lives off the grid because here he is wearing his usual dark t-shirt under a light blue shirt and jeans, his usu
al attire for work. His workshop used to be in Flagstaff where my parents own a house but ever since he got married, he moved half of the workshop to Taos which cuts down his commute although he still heads to Flagstaff once a month. Thirty years old and eight years younger, he’s got me beat in the marriage department.
“Hey, sis. How ya doing?”
“Did you smell the burritos all the way there?” I ask as Dax ruffles Dyami’s hair when he walks past his chair to give Nana a kiss.
“Buenos dias, mijo,” she says, grinning as she places two perfectly foil-wrapped burritos in a plastic container. “I got your message last night.”
“What message?” Dyami asks, his mouth full as he takes his first bite.
“That I was missing my favorite breakfast burritos, dude. What else?” Dax replies. “And no talking while your mouth is full.”
“How are Harlow and the twins?” I ask as the coffee bubbles in the Moka pot and I pull out a mug from the cupboard.
“Doing great. Those two are gonna be Ironman champs soon, from the way they keep us on our toes. At least, they give us a good workout.” He flexes his biceps dramatically as Dyami laughs. “You and your man doing anything for Valentine’s?”
“If you’re needing someone to babysit, I probably will be up for the job.”
“Dad is working in Colorado,” Dyami replies. “Mom says he’ll be there a few days.”
“That sucks,” Dax says, shaking his head. “But no, no babysitting. Nana will be spending the night there, though, so you’ll have the house to yourself in case your man, you know, is back in town by then.” He winks knowingly and I glare at him.
“I’ll be spending the night at Tito Gabe’s, Mom. Remember? Tito Gabe will pick me up from school so you don’t have to,” Dyami says and I sigh, the realization that I’ll probably be alone on Valentine’s day finally hitting me. Gabriel “Gabe” Vasquez is Dax’s best friend and our families are distantly related through my mother who passed away seven years ago. Dyami hangs out with his distant cousins a lot. They’re all roughly the same age and also go to the same school.
