Three Little Words

by Jenny Holiday

  But what about last night? Where had it started and stopped? She’d come twice, and he’d had the world’s most earth-shattering orgasm, yes. But what about the part in between, when they’d pressed their bodies together and he held her while she cried? Had that been sex? There had certainly been…caring involved. He’d been gutted by her confession, by her pain. In awe of how vulnerable she’d made herself, when that was clearly not something she did very much of.

  She must have sensed the relentless churning of his brain, because she stirred. He loosened his hold on her slightly, intending to let her settle before grabbing her again, but she kept moving. “Bennett?” Her voice was muffled by his chest, and she sounded adorably bewildered.

  “Shhh. It’s not morning yet. Go back to sleep.”

  He had no idea what version of her he’d get when she fully woke up. Would she be pissy and defensive, like he’d seen her before? Embarrassed about her confession?

  Would she sleep with him again? Would he be able to talk her into breaking her stupid “two times only” rule? He’d broken his rule to be with her, so maybe he could convince her to do the same.

  She sighed and snuggled against him, and he held her as she drifted off.

  So many questions without answers. He did know one thing with certainty, one unsettling thing. He didn’t want this to end.

  * * *

  Waking a guy up with a blow job worked better in theory than it did in practice.

  The way it was supposed to work was that Bennett would be all sleepy and cozy, and she would wrap her lips around his already-firm morning wood and proceed to blow his mind.

  Gia had woken up before him, and he was out cold. It was weird, waking up next to him. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had her share of mornings after. Even though she liked to keep sex casual, she wasn’t one of those slam-bam-thank-you-sir types. If she liked the guy enough—and she generally only slept with people she liked—she’d stay over. She wasn’t above some postcoital coffee and conversation.

  So it wasn’t waking up with a guy that was inherently weird; it was waking up with a guy who knew her as well as the girls did. Hell, maybe even better, as impossible as that seemed. She hadn’t told the girls about her increasing issues with food, for example.

  She had never cried in their arms.

  The really weird thing was that she wasn’t panicking. She wasn’t defaulting to her usual defensive postures after someone had witnessed an uncomfortable truth about her. Maybe the difference was that usually when that happened, it was accidental—like Bennett seeing her losing her shit at the airline employees. Last night, she had, of her own volition, revealed an uncomfortable truth. Maybe that made all the difference.

  Or maybe it was just Bennett.

  Which did kind of freak her out. Yet at the same time, she was suffused with gratitude toward him. He had reacted in exactly the right way to her big confession. He’d heard her, but he hadn’t talked at her. Hadn’t lectured or dismissed. Had simply held her like she was important. And then blown her goddamned mind. Twice.

  Awake before him, she had sighed and shifted a little, hoping it might “accidentally” wake him up. In addition to all these confusing emotions, she was horny. That, at least, was familiar. Actionable.

  He was out, though. She didn’t blame him. What a day they’d had yesterday, dodging storms and confronting demons.

  So down she went, under the covers.

  But there was theory, and there was practice.

  When she took him into her mouth, he jumped about a foot, shouted, “What the fuck?” and almost kicked her in the face.

  She cracked up as she tried to extricate herself from his legs and the covers.

  As soon as he realized what was happening, he started apologizing. “I’m sorry! Are you okay? Oh my God, I’m such an idiot.”

  “I’m fine.” She couldn’t stop laughing. “I was just trying to…wake you up.”

  “What happened to the two-times rule?” he asked, helping her get free of the tangled sheets.

  She plopped onto her back and turned her head to look at him. He was adorably disheveled. And stubbly. And delicious. “Well,” she said, casting about for a loophole, “I’m counting the first time as a half, because you didn’t come. You didn’t even take any clothes off, so…”

  “So that means you don’t get to come if we go at it again?” He furrowed his brow. “I don’t think I can be down with that.”

  Damn, he was adorable. The chivalry just never ended with this guy. It was ingrained in him, probably from some combination of his southern upbringing and his compulsion to atone for the mistakes of his youth. She still thought he needed to let up on the atonement, but in this particular instance it was working to her advantage.

  She bit back a grin. “So what you’re telling me is you don’t want me to blow you. Okay.” She hopped off the bed, pretty certain of how he would react.

  His hand shot out and clamped down on her arm. “Hang on now.” Then he pulled her back onto the bed, and they got all tangled up, limbs entwined as he tried to kiss her but couldn’t quite reach. “I’m just saying you might need to be a little less stringent with your math.”

  “Nope,” she teased, though she was fully prepared to blur the rules this morning. She squirmed out of his reach even as he kept trying to kiss her, aiming for her prize. He fought her, but only half-heartedly. She was tall, but he was a lot bulkier than she was, and could have her flipped over and pinned on the bed the moment he decided to. Which was kind of hot. But not her goal right now.

  When she finally worked her way down his body and got her mouth around him again, he gave up the struggle, falling back flat on the bed with a surrendering groan.

  Kneeling between his legs, she stroked him a few times with her mouth, then paid some attention to his balls to see if he liked that. And…yes, he did, judging by the way he sounded like he was being tortured even as he gasped her name.

  She loved that, the way he said her name so often when they were having sex. It wasn’t that unusual, she supposed, but the way he said it. It was like he was surprised and honored and turned on all at once that it was her, specifically her, he was with.

  As if to punctuate her thought, he said it again. “Gia,” The pleading urgency in his tone inspired her to get serious. She went back to his cock and took him in as deeply as she could, letting her senses fill with him. Pouring all those heavy, unnamable emotions into it, reveling in the way he kept gasping her name as his hands stroked her head.

  It didn’t take long for his hips to start jerking. She let him push her off him but held him with her hand as he climaxed, long ribbons of come painting his chest.

  Her hand went to her clit. Jesus, that was hot.

  He grunted. “You got that right.”

  Oh, shit, had she said that aloud?

  Well, whatever. It wasn’t like it was a secret. She kept her hand moving. She couldn’t not. She was wound up, and looking at him like that, all spent and sated and immobilized, was only fanning the flames.

  “Just…need…a second,” he panted, his drawl extra thick as he lifted his head to look at her with what seemed like enormous effort.

  “You stay where you are,” she instructed, an evil scenario taking root in her imagination.

  She usually masturbated lying down, but she arranged herself on her knees so as to maximize his view. She let one hand drift up to cup a breast as the other stayed on her clit.

  “Oh fuck,” he said.

  She smiled. That was another thing he said a lot—when he wasn’t gasping her name. She liked it. It was as if there was no intermediate degree of arousal for him when they were together—no oh damn, much less any mmm, that feels good. He went right to fuck, which made her feel like she cranked him up to eleven every time.

  Which begged the question of his maybe being…right? Could she have been missing out on some kind of sexual nirvana by never having been with the same person continually?

  She s
hoved the question aside for later, because she wanted her little show to blow his mind, and because she was so turned on herself that thinking was becoming difficult.

  She heaved a big sigh. It wasn’t manufactured, but Bennett’s obvious appreciation of it—he closed his eyes momentarily like she was too much to look at—inspired her to perform a second one, except this time what began as a sigh ended up as a moan.

  His gaze was riveted to her fingers, which she moved in the circles that always did it for her.

  “You paid attention,” she said, nodding down at her fingers. She’d never had a man figure out such a surefire route to her pleasure so quickly, at least not without some coaching.

  He smirked. “I have my faults, but I’m a quick learner. You like a medium-pressure swirling kind of motion.”

  “That’s exactly right. Usually I have to…give instructions.”

  “Not with me. I learn quickly, and I remember stuff.” He made a move toward her, but she shook her head. Took her hand off herself and held up a censuring finger. When she was satisfied that he was going to stay where he was—she was enjoying the hell out of this little performance—she let her hand slide back down her body. Both of them, this time, in fact. She returned the pads of two fingers to her clit and let a finger from the other hand slide inside.

  He made a strangled noise, and she couldn’t help letting loose a triumphant laugh.

  “What do you think about when you touch yourself?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly.

  She smiled. He liked a little bit of dirty talk, didn’t he? Also something she filed away for later. Assuming there was a later. Which there might not be.

  Which there probably wouldn’t be.

  But there she went thinking again. And “I’m talking myself in circles trying to decide what it might mean if I let myself have sex with you again,” was probably not the kind of dirty talk that was going to turn his crank—and that was her aim here: maximum crank turnage.

  So she told the truth. “When I’m by myself, I think about someone fucking me from behind. Hitting my G-spot. I have a pretty good vibrator at home. It has a curved head.” She glanced down at his dick, which, amazingly, was growing hard again. It was perfectly shaped for such an endeavor. “There’s no better orgasm than a G-spot orgasm.”

  His eyes flared. Then he shocked her by getting up. Bolting into the bathroom.

  “Hey!” she protested. But then she heard something. The crinkling of a wrapper.

  “Oh,” she whispered, her desire receding even though she continued to stroke herself. It was as if her own touch wasn’t enough anymore.

  When he came out of the bathroom, he was erect and sheathed in a condom.

  “G-spot, you say?” His gaze was hot and challenging.

  The way she’d arranged herself, she was facing the bathroom, which meant she was now facing him.

  They stared at each other in silence for a long moment, a standoff—though she didn’t know why, because she was always going to surrender. She just liked playing with him, she supposed. Which she had to grudgingly admit was probably also a benefit of sleeping with the same person on the reg.

  Yet another thought for later. For now, she licked her lips and let her eyes rake slowly down his body. It was the first time she’d really seen it, all of it at the same time, in the light of day. His torso was gently sculpted, his chest lightly sprinkled with dark hair that picked up again under his belly button and ran in an orderly line down to that cock that the universe—or God, if you took his quasi-religious view of things—had given the perfect curve.

  Then, slowly, so slowly it almost pained her, she turned around. Shot him a glance over her shoulder. And just in case her intent wasn’t already crystal clear, she lowered herself to her hands and knees on the bed.

  “Gia,” he groaned, and then, without preamble, his hands were between her legs, roving around, checking if she was ready. And yes, she was. Just in case the slickness he found there wasn’t enough of a signal, she looked over her shoulder again and said, “Please.”

  “There’s no better orgasm than a G-spot orgasm?” He slid right in. “I thought you said the best orgasm you ever had was two nights ago.”

  She laughed, then gasped as he started to move. “Best non-G-spot orgasm,” she panted, even though it wasn’t precisely true. It wasn’t like she was keeping score, and even though the intensity of the physical sensation of a G-spot orgasm could be, for her, huge, there was something about Bennett that…well, he was kind of in his own category, no matter what type of orgasm he was dispensing. But she wasn’t about to tell him all that, so she defaulted to teasing. “Best non-G-spot orgasm I ever had.”

  He seemed to take it as a challenge, which was what she’d intended. He pressed her down onto her stomach, but not before reaching a hand around and sweeping it around in that now-practiced way of his. Then he draped his whole body over hers, so that every inch of the back of her body was covered by the front of his.

  She was wedged between his hand and his body, and it. Was. Glorious.

  She moaned, as loudly as she wanted to, and then she did it again, louder. He was rubbing perfectly against that spot inside her that made her lose her goddamned mind. Pleasure hurtled toward her.

  “You like that, do you? You like being filled up?”

  She nodded frantically.

  “I like it, too,” he rasped. “I’m so deep inside you, and you’re so tight.”

  Gia tried to push back against the oncoming tide.

  “I think you like my cock more than your stupid rules,” he said, and she couldn’t argue the point.

  “You always make me come too fast,” she complained, even though complaining was the last thing she should be doing right now. But stupidly, she couldn’t just agree with him that yes, she liked his cock more than her “stupid rules.”

  “Oh,” he said, low into her ear, and then he bit down on her earring like he had last night. “Oh, should I stop then?”

  “No.” She moaned when he started to pull away. “Keep going.”

  Then he surprised her by dropping the dirty talk. “I don’t have that much experience with G-spots. I’ve only ever found them a handful of times, and it was always with my hand. How will I know if I’m hitting it?”

  Correction: he’d dropped the intentional dirty talk. His frank, unabashed admission and question turned her on as much as anything between them had. Most guys she knew would never admit ignorance of something like that.

  But then, most guys she knew weren’t capable of making her feel like this.

  “You’re hitting it,” she assured him, and then she shrieked as he thrust extra hard and then stayed buried in her, grinding around. “I think it’s possible your dick was made to hit it.”

  He let loose a string of fucks as he continued to grind inside her. The hand wedged against her clit couldn’t make his usual light circles because she was lying on top of it, but he pumped his whole hand, effectively forcing her to hump his arm while he kept grinding into her, dragging his cock back and forth over her sweet spot.

  “Oh my God!” she shouted.

  * * *

  Bennett’s last thought before Gia exploded underneath him was that she was right. His dick was made for her G-spot. Or made for her or some shit like that.

  And his last thought before he exploded was that this wasn’t over.

  Fuck her rules. Fuck his rules. They could call this whatever she liked that made it okay: casual, a hookup, a booty call.

  Because this was not over.

  No fucking way.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Gia got to the Applebee’s across the parking lot from the hotel, there was a single egg lying on a plate in the spot across from Bennett.

  She’d sent him ahead after their post-sex shower—he had insisted she shower first, but then climbed right in with her, being all sweet and considerate as he washed her hair and as she stood stunned under the spray.

  It had been t
oo much. She’d needed a moment, so she’d shooed him away after he got dressed, telling him she needed some privacy to get ready.

  And just when she’d worked herself up to face the fact that the fun was over—they’d be in Florida by the end of the day, and more than that, she needed to retreat from him for her own well-being—he’d gone and ordered her a goddamned egg.

  “Soft-boiled,” he said as she sat down.

  Of course it was. What had he said in bed this morning? I learn quickly, and I remember stuff.

  “I hope it’s okay. I had to explain it to them. Soft-boiled isn’t really in the repertoire at most places in the US.” He twisted around to flag down a server and order her a cup of coffee, so he didn’t see her blink back tears as she picked up a spoon and cracked open the egg.

  That stupid egg was the perfect gesture.

  It said not only that he hadn’t forgotten that she took her eggs soft-boiled, but that he hadn’t forgotten the big confession bomb she’d detonated in his arms last night.

  But also that he wasn’t going to make a federal case over it, at least not now. It was like he somehow knew that would be the quickest route to her shutting him down. She wouldn’t even want to, necessarily, but it would happen automatically, in the daytime with her defenses engaged.

  “Thank you,” she said when the server set down her coffee. She was looking at Bennett as she spoke, though.

  He smiled. “I was thinking about something before you got here, and I have a question for you.”

  Well, shit. So much for no federal cases. Here they went.

  “Does your driver’s license expire today because today is your birthday?”

  She blinked. She’d forgotten. Well, she hadn’t forgotten forgotten. She knew when her own birthday was. She had been well aware of it yesterday as she fought him for control of the car keys, arguing that she was still legal to drive for one more day.