“Hi,” he says back, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He looks—I don’t know. Relieved, I guess. Relieved to see me. “Couldn’t get a hold of you today, and I had some news, so I thought I’d come by.”
I dig into my bag, pulling out my phone. Shit, he did call twice. I just forgot to turn on my ringer after my meeting with Harroway. Now I have exactly zero things to be annoyed with him about, which is really ruining my righteous indignation mojo.
“How’s your dad?” I ask.
“He’s all right. He had PT this morning, and they loosened him up a bit. He’s feeling good.”
“Good.”
“I found a plaster guy for you. He can come by tomorrow morning to have a look.”
“I have to work.”
“I figured. But if you’re okay with it, I can meet him here, let him in. If you’re not, no problem. He could come Wednesday after five too.”
“Wednesday,” I say, because I’m still feeling stubborn, not because I don’t trust Ben to be here. Maybe because I trust him to be here, maybe because I trust him more than I’m willing to admit.
He leans back a little to take out his phone and types out a quick message before tucking it back in his pocket. “All set.”
“That’s the news?” This sounds dismissive, sarcastic. I close my eyes briefly, scolding myself.
“Kit.” The way he says my name, it’s a caress, smoothing down all the hackles I have raised. This should annoy me, maybe, this sense I have that he’s handling me in some way, but it doesn’t. It makes me want to sit right next to him on the stoop, to settle myself into the same crook of his body where he held me close on Saturday.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was a rough day at work.” I know already I shouldn’t say this to Ben, whose job it is to look for ways to exploit any unhappiness I might have in my current situation. But I’m tired of fighting the closeness I feel with him. I had a taste of it Saturday, and I just—I just want to feast on it right now.
“I didn’t have the greatest day at the office, either,” he says, surprising me. “The office” is not how Ben usually talks about work at the yard, so he’s got to be talking about Beaumont, and while we’ve spent an awful lot of time talking about how I might be involved there, in general Ben doesn’t say much about the day-to-day of his real job.
“Yeah?”
He smiles up at me. “Yeah. I spoke to my partner about how things are progressing with your case.”
I stiffen immediately, noticing now, for the first time, that I’d slowly been tipping forward a bit, leaning in to him as we’d talked. I should not trust Ben, ever. I should always remember what he came to me for in the first place. It doesn’t matter what’s happened since.
“Kit,” he says again, but it doesn’t help this time.
“Listen. This has been a really shitty day. Every time we’ve talked about Beaumont, I’ve managed to give you calm, rational answers about why I’m not interested. I don’t really have the capacity for that tonight. But my answer is the same. It’s no. I’m not coming to Texas. I’m not going to do the job. Ever.”
“I don’t care,” he says.
“You don’t—?”
“I called my partner to tell him I’m off your case. I’m not able to recruit you.”
I stare at him, unsure of how to process this information. I should be relieved, thinking Beaumont has given up, that I won’t have to field any more of their queries. But all I can think is: Does this mean I won’t see Ben anymore?
“I’m not able to recruit you because I’m involved with you.”
There’s a pause, a lull—and I’m so grateful for the sounds of the early evening, for the faint hum of traffic going by a few blocks away, for the cicadas starting their evening song.
“What does that mean?” I’m intentionally vague with my question. Maybe I’m asking what it means for Beaumont’s pursuit of me. Maybe I’m asking what it means for him and his job. But maybe I’m asking what it means for him and me. Because when I think of being “involved” with Ben, I think about his clothes on my bedroom floor. I think about all his weight on top of me, that chocolate-sweet kiss.
“It means,” he says, looking right at me, looking right through me, really, “that if you say okay, I’m coming in this house with you and finishing what we started. It means I got Sharon to stay with my dad tonight, so I have every intention of taking you to bed and keeping you there all night. It means I haven’t stopped thinking about your mouth since Saturday. It means that right now, I don’t give one good goddamn about anything other than making sure I have you every way I can before you have to go to work tomorrow.”
I make a sound—I think it’s probably some combination of a whimper and an unf—and lean against the porch railing, trying to catch the breath Ben stole with that speech, which is actually the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me, and this includes the time my college boyfriend said he thought I’d win a Nobel Prize someday. Ben’s posture is as relaxed as it has been since I got home, but there’s some kind of new tension underneath, an energy I feel pulsing beneath his skin. “Okay,” I breathe, and he stands up before I have it all the way out.
“Inside,” he says, and that one word is hotter than the speech.
I go inside, Ben right behind me.
* * * *
Being with Ben is a reminder of the limits of my imagination.
Because while I’d thought of this, late at night, alone in my bed, I hadn’t had much of it right, other than the fact that I’d suspected it’d be good between us. I hadn’t expected that we’d come together the way we are now—greedy, a little clumsy, him against my back as I drop my bag, spinning me around so he can get his mouth on mine, open and searching. I hadn’t expected that I’d so quickly wrap my arms tight around his neck, one of my legs hitching up around his hip, and I hadn’t expected that he’d so quickly, so fiercely, grab on, pulling my other leg around him so that he could carry me up the steps, our kiss frantic, bumpy, his teeth nipping my upper lip, my tongue seeking his lips even as I reach up to pull off my glasses.
“God, Kit,” he says, when we get into my bedroom, “We’ve got to—”
“Don’t. Don’t say slow down.”
I’m on my back on the bed, Ben a planet above me, broad and strong and so hot that I have to close my eyes for a second, catch my breath. Maybe we should slow down. I hear a rustle of clothes and I open my eyes to Ben pulling off his shirt, and it’s—wow, it’s all systems go. He looks incredible, hard packs of muscles on his abdomen, the wide expanse of his chest leading to those bunched, sinewy biceps.
“Off,” he says, tugging at my top at the same time his other hand reaches for my jeans, unbuttoning, lowering the zipper. I’d help, but I’m too busy, splaying my hands on his hot skin, arching up so he can remove my top but also so I can open my mouth against his shoulder, taste his salty skin. “Kit, fuck. Get your clothes off.”
His words bring me back to myself, and I take over, tugging my jeans off before pausing. “Oh,” I say, and Ben stops biting and licking at my collarbone long enough to look at me.
“What?” He almost looks panicked, as if we have to stop this he’ll actually expire, and I enjoy that so much that I make him sweat it for a second.
“I’m—Well. I’m not wearing, you know. Really sexy underwear.”
“Are you fucking kidding? Kit. I don’t care.” He bends down again, sucks at the join of my neck and shoulder. “I can’t tell you how much I don’t care. I won’t even look. Just—please. Get naked.” This makes me laugh, the desperate, growly quality to the way he’s talking. I hadn’t expected him to be this way either, all his calm charm stripped away. It’s funny, messy, the way my clothes come off, him pulling my bra off while I push my jeans down, limbs tangling, whispered curses when I remember I have to kick off my shoes. Ben is laughing too, and oh, God
—it’s so fun with Ben, everything is always so fun and easy with him, even first-time sex with him, when usually I feel these whispers of awkwardness being naked with someone for the first time.
There’s no awkwardness when I’m bare beneath him, when Ben presses the long length of his body against mine, letting me feel all that hard heat, the cording of muscle beneath his skin. Between us, his erection presses against the soft skin of my stomach, and I’m hitching a leg around his hip, pressing closer, trying to tell him, without words, that I want him now. I’ve never felt this close to coming from what we’re doing—deep, hard kisses and Ben’s big, callused hand against my breast, his thumb flicking across my nipple with the perfect pressure, perfect rhythm. I break from his mouth, tilt my head so that I can lick up the side of his neck, nip his earlobe with my teeth, and he rewards me with the lowest, sexiest groan I’ve ever heard. I feel it rumble in that aching, wet place between my legs and I buck against him again.
“It’s good,” I breathe, in relief, in confirmation, in plain, pure happiness to be here with him now—close, naked, together.
He scrapes his stubbled cheek against my neck, all that delicious roughness, drags it down over my chest and licks across to my nipple, sucking it into his mouth and working me over until my breath is coming in quick, reedy pants, until I tangle my hands in his hair and whisper please, over and over. “Fuck,” he says, resting his forehead against my sternum before looking up at me again. “I don’t know where to start with you—I want to do everything. I’ve thought about this—I want to put my hands on you, in you…” He breaks off, tracing two of his fingers between my legs, around that aching spot where I want him most. “But I want to see how you taste too—and, oh God. I want to know the way you’d feel around my dick…”
“That,” I say, gripping the back of his neck, tugging him up. “That’s what I want, first. Everything else, we’ll do later. I promise.”
He smiles up at me, nuzzles at my breast again. “I’m going to hold you to that. If I can remember you’ve said it. I don’t even remember my own fucking name right now.”
“Ben,” I say, pulling him up for another kiss, wet and hungry. He pushes off me, and despite the warmth of the room, I feel chilled with the shock of losing the heat of his body, even though it’s only for long enough for him to grab his jeans and pull a condom out of the pocket. I prop myself up on my elbows, watch him roll it on, loving the way his body works, the way he’s heavy and hard, the way he comes back to me, using his hands to spread me wide as he nestles between my legs.
I don’t wait for him. I can’t wait for him—now that we’ve started this, it hits me how long I’ve really been wanting it with him, wanting the chance to be this way together. I reach between us, guide him to my entrance, lift my hips to him, and he’s licking into my mouth, grunting his satisfaction, and then—oh, he’s there, one hard, forceful thrust that tips my head back, that takes my breath away in the most perfect way, and I am lost to him. I hear him in my ear—Kit, So good, You’re perfect—and I think I’m talking back. I think I’m telling him how good it is, how full I feel, how close he has me already, but my body and brain have never felt so disconnected. In Ben’s arms, I am only the sensations he stokes in me. I am nothing but sweat and movement and frantic, pulsing need, and it’s only when my orgasm breaks over me, only when I release a desperate, threaded cry that a single thought breaks through, before I can stop it.
He feels like home.
* * * *
It’s later—much, much later, when I’ve fulfilled the promises Ben didn’t forget, and even some I hadn’t made—and I’m lying on my side, naked, a sheet tangled about my legs, Ben stroking those rough, blunt fingertips up the curve of my thigh, over my hip, down the dip of my waist, and up, again, over the light, curving bones of my ribcage. He does this again and again, learning that curve, and the way goose bumps chase his caress. My eyelids are heavy, my body sated and tender from everything we’ve done.
“I haven’t been up this late in forever,” I whisper. It’s lovely to be up this late with Ben. I’m hearing whole new sounds of the house at night, seeing the way light from the moon tracks across my bedroom window. After the second time we’d made love—surprisingly fast on the heels of the first time, Ben still eager, intense—we’d foraged in the kitchen, me swimming in Ben’s t-shirt, apologizing for the shameful contents of my refrigerator. But we’d managed with slices of apple and generous pieces from a block of cheddar, peanut butter on toast that tasted so good I’d licked the crumbs from my fingers.
Which Ben found very, very distracting.
“Want to sleep?” he asks, leaning down to press his lips against my eyelids.
I murmur my entirely unconvincing dissent, tilting my head up so I can kiss him. I don’t want the night to be over. For the first time in the years since I started my job, I consider a personal day.
“You know what I thought, when I first saw you?” he asks, his face pressed into my neck, his voice muffled.
“Was it about my goggles?” I say, pinching his side lightly.
“No, but I loved your goggles. You look great in goggles. Maybe that could be the first dirty picture you send to me, you in those goggles.”
“I’m never going to send you a dirty picture,” I say, laughing. But then I’m whispering again, in his ear, “What did you think, when you first saw me?”
“I thought, what a goddamn shame I’m here for someone else. And I know that’s not right, because I was there for you. I was just an idiot that day. But I wanted it to be you.”
I think we both know the issue isn’t who he was there for, but what he was there for, and it’s hard not to think of it now, as determinedly as I’d been avoiding it for the last few hours.
“Was it bad?” I ask. “I mean, with your partner. Is it going to mess things up for you?”
We’re so close together that I can feel him stiffen slightly, but he masks it, rolling on his back and pulling me with him so I’m cradled in in the crook of his arm. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he says, tightening his hand on my hip. “Jasper is my best friend too. And we had—there were some plans we were working on, which I’ve probably messed up. So it’s business, but it’s personal too.” He pauses, then says, with conviction that seems entirely borne of self-preservation, “It’ll be all right.”
I shift away from him, enough to put an inch of air between us. I’m glad he’s being honest, but this is hard too. It puts into sharp relief that what we’ve done here can’t only be a simple hook-up. It’s not that I want it to be, but it’s that Ben doesn’t really have a choice now that he’s sacrificed something important at his job for this. Even if he leaves to go back to Texas next month and we don’t see each other again—a thought that makes my mouth go dry—it’s not as if he won’t be taking back with him the baggage associated with fucking up his work for me. The sex was incredible, yes, and I like him so much that probably at any moment I could tip right over the tightrope I’m walking and fall into a raging, white water river of love. But to him, what does this mean?
“Kit,” he says, tugging me back against him. “Come on. Don’t do that. It’s my choice.”
“Yes, but…”
“But it’s”—he lifts his head from the pillow, cranes his neck to look at my nightstand— “it’s two thirty in the morning. My higher order thinking skills are compromised. Can’t talk.” It’s my turn to lean down, kiss across his brow, his closed eyes, those high, cut cheekbones, and he murmurs his pleasure, tugging me over so I’m forced to straddle him, and just that quickly I’m wet again, still surprised by the way my body reacts to his.
“What about it being two thirty in the morning?” I ask, rubbing against him, his hands tightening on my hips to hold me close.
“Don’t need higher order thinking for this,” he says, already reaching for the strip of condoms we’d stuffed under one of
the pillows after the first time. “Wait,” he says, stilling my hips with one of his hands, looking up at me with a furrowed brow.
“What?”
He lifts up, the motion crunching the stacked muscles in his abdomen. His arm bands around me, pulling me close so my head tips forward onto his shoulder. Then he whispers in my ear, “I’m just wondering if you brought those goggles home.”
And it’s like that, laughing again, that he takes me one last time, before we collapse into a perfect, heavy sleep.
Chapter 14
Ben
I sleep like the dead, even on this too-soft mattress, but when I wake up to the sound of Kit’s alarm, my body still feels completely drained. I’m sacked-out, empty-headed, unable to think about anything but Kit lying next to me, the smell of her sleep-warm skin, the way she looks, her lips still swollen from the pressure of my mouth on hers, a pink trace of beard burn on her chest, probably on her thighs too. I wasn’t kidding when I’d said I’d planned to keep her up, but it’s not the fact that we’ve had sex of all kinds for the last twelve hours or so that’s got me feeling this way. It’s that it had taken a herculean effort to wait so long to come to her. From the minute I’d left her on Saturday, this is what I’d wanted, and I’d barely slept all weekend for thinking about her. But I’d been determined to come to her honestly, determined to deal with Jasper first.
I don’t want to think about that now, though. Now all I want is to sleep and eat and fuck her again, not necessarily in that order.
Kit’s swiping at her alarm, letting out a string of curses I’ve never heard her use before. When she finally manages to shut it off, she raises a limp arm in the air, a clenched fist. “You’ll pay for this, Tucker,” she says, then lets her arm drop over her eyes.
“You’re so fucking cute,” I tell her, leaning over to press a hard kiss over her mouth.
“Coffee,” she whispers against my lips. “I don’t care who you have to murder to get it.”
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