Need Me

by Tessa Bailey

  Her hips didn’t still. “Ben, I can’t . . .”

  She couldn’t stop, either. He knew instinctively that was what she was trying to tell him. Which made the situation his to get a handle on. With a tortured curse, he clutched her around the waist and pushed her to her feet. But they were so close that the back of her skirt brushed over his mouth. Jesus. Nothing could stop him from sliding his hands up the backs of her thighs to glide over the flare of her bottom. No material existed between his palms and her firm flesh, telling him she wore a thong. “Tell me this is sore, too, babe, so I can rub it.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice shook. “It is.”

  He molded her ass with his hands, once, twice, before pressing his thumbs into the very tops of her thighs. Then he stroked his thumbs over her cheeks, pushing her tight flesh up in the process. Her answering whimper made his cock throb all the more. “I remember what this ass feels like against my stomach. That’s right where I had it when I fucked you. Huh, babe?” He gave in to the urge to lean in and plant a kiss on her right cheek. Then the left. “Next time, it’ll be bouncing on the tops of my thighs. You know why?”

  A sucked-in breath. “Why?”

  Hating the time constraints they were under, Ben pushed to his feet behind her, giving himself the satisfaction of dragging his ruthless erection up the center of her backside. She stumbled forward a little on a moan, but he laid a hand on her stomach and kept her pressed to him. “Because next time, you’re going to ride me. You’re going to throw those thighs on either side of my hips and work me over.” He circled his hips while humming into her hair. “I’m going to be so hard inside you, Honey. You’ll be able to slide up and down me however you want. Take me deep or ride the tip. Whatever it takes to get you there.”

  Her stomach shuddered against his hand. “Ben, please . . .”

  Must step back. Taking this too far. His intention at the outset had been to remind her of their unbelievable chemistry, how amazing it felt when they touched, but he hadn’t taken into account how easily she stole his logic. Which is what had landed him here in the first place. He needed to get his hands off her before he did something stupid. He planted a kiss on her smooth shoulder and stepped back. “See you in the morning, Honey. Sleep well.”

  He tried not to be insulted when she lunged for the door like a prisoner during a jailbreak.

  Chapter 15

  HONEY WOKE UP feeling oddly well rested. Strange, considering she’d returned to her bedroom after the massage mindfuck with Ben, only to toss and turn for hours. Something felt different about the way she was waking up, but it took her a second to fight through the sleep-induced grogginess to put her finger on it. Shit! Daylight! She’d never woken up in the bedroom of her youth and encountered the sunlight currently filtering in through the gauzy white curtains. Enough to make her squint and hold up a hand to ward it off like a grumpy vampire.

  Her family owned a farm. And when you owned a farm, waking at the crack of dawn was considered sleeping in. Especially now, when they were under a time crunch and her father needed all the help he could get. Honey snatched her Tweety Bird alarm clock off the bedside table and stared at the digital numbers. Ten o’clock in the morning? Why hadn’t it gone off at five? She turned the device over and gaped. No way. Someone had turned off her alarm. Her parents sure as hell wouldn’t have done it. Meaning . . . it had to have been Ben. Ben had been in her room while she’d slept.

  Hot, delicious pressure settled in her belly. She stared down at the sheets twisted around her hips, baring her thin, white tank top and matching boy shorts. Had he seen her like this? Jesus, had she been snoring? A sound from outside broke into her thoughts. The tractor. Her father must be doing her job while she languished the morning away in bed. Not good.

  She propelled herself from the bed, spending a mere minute beneath the shower spray in the bathroom across the hall, brushing her teeth at the same time¸ before yanking on jean shorts and cowboy boots. Brushing her hair would have to wait. It took her only five minutes to get down the stairs and burst through the screen door onto the porch. Where she almost ran smack into her mother’s back.

  Her mother said nothing, didn’t even spare her a glance. She just handed Honey a glass of sweet tea and continued to stare out over the planting field. Honey took the offered glass and followed her mother’s line of sight. The tea paused halfway to her mouth.

  No, she was seeing things. Had to be. Her tweed-wearing English professor wasn’t shirtless on top of the family tractor, handling it like a certified professional. First of all, no one without Perribow blood running through their veins had ever succeeded in handling the temperamental piece of farming equipment. Second of all? Second of . . . all. What had she been thinking about? Sunshine bounced off Ben’s perspiring chest, arms flexing as he turned the tractor around and headed back in their direction. He was wearing jeans. Low-riding jeans. The kind that sat a good three inches below the navel and clung to strong thighs like a hungry lover. Hungry. I’m so very hungry.

  She shot her mother an incredulous look. “What is happening—?”

  “Shh.” Her mother held up a finger. “Don’t question it.”

  “You really are standing here shamelessly ogling a man half your age. Aren’t you?”

  “Just appreciating. Nothing wrong with that.” Her mother tipped her head in Ben’s general direction. “And don’t look now, but I think he’s found a way to end your fight.”

  Honey scowled at him, even though he was concentrating and not looking at her. “By being shirtless, useful, and . . . and way more muscular than I’d originally thought?”

  “Effective, ain’t it?”

  They both took long pulls from their sweet tea. When Ben saw her standing on the porch, his mouth spread into a smile. Her mother mumbled something under her breath that sounded like Lord help you before heading back inside and leaving Honey alone. Ben cut off the tractor and hopped off in an irritating and sexy-as-all-get-out show of masculine grace. She stood there for a few seconds, watching him approach in slow motion, but decided she better meet him halfway so her mother couldn’t eavesdrop on this conversation.

  “Ben Dawson.” She came to a stop, crossed her arms, and cocked a hip. “You can’t just go around sneaking into people’s rooms and turning off their alarm clocks.”

  “Honey Perribow.” He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, leaving it slicked back. Damn. “You’re lucky your mother is watching us from the kitchen window, or I’d kiss that sulk right off your face.”

  “You run a tractor for one morning and all of a sudden you’re talking like a Southern boy.” Her arms dropped to her sides. “How did you get it working, anyway? It only works for a Perribow.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “There’s the professor again,” she murmured. “Which one are you?”

  “Maybe I’m both.” He eased into her personal space, smelling like salt and earth and man. “I read a guide to classic tractors this morning, that’s how I figured out how to work it. Everything can be found in a book.”

  “The town library doesn’t open this early.”

  He took off his glasses, wiping away a smudge with his thumb. “I’m not a caveman, Honey. I own a Kindle.” The snobbery in his tone drew a laugh from her. Ben’s head popped up at the sound, his gaze zeroing in on her mouth. “You were talking in your sleep this morning when I went it to turn off your alarm.”

  Oh God. “What was I saying?”

  “You must have known I was there.” His attention dropped to the hem of her shorts. “You told me I’d . . . made it hurt again. You also mentioned something about tweed. I didn’t get the correlation.”

  “Well.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Never you mind.”

  “Oh, I mind. I fucking mind.” He grazed her tummy with a knuckle, dipping it into her belly button and pressing. Such a simple move shouldn’t have made her insides quake, but it did. All the way down to her boots. “I’d like to mind you on your ha
nds and knees out in that field.”

  “Ben, stop.”

  His eyes were heated as they searched hers. “Why?”

  She didn’t know why. Only knew that every word out of his mouth confused her body. Her mind kept trying to reason with it, but her body kept giving her mind the one-finger salute. There was a reason she hadn’t already jumped his bones, and she needed to remember that. He’d only gotten here last night, and she was already considering sleeping with him. The way she’d felt on the flight to Kentucky, or after the scene in the bar back in New York, hadn’t faded in her mind, though. Even if the reasons for those painful feelings dimmed whenever she was around him. She felt certain about one thing, though. She didn’t want to be confused by him the next time they were physical. This enigma that was Ben needed solving, and she wanted that to happen before he made her his shameless love slave again. So she threw up a barrier, a bluff, even though she really didn’t want to. Maybe part of her wanted to see if he’d work harder. If he really wanted to know her, too. “If all you want is to have sex with me, you should have just said so.” She stepped closer to toy with the button of his jeans. “There’s a wildlife preserve not too far from here. We can take my truck and park somewhere private. Fog up the windows.” She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “We’d be back in time for lunch.”

  A groan rumbled in his throat. “Nice try, Lolita.” He tipped her chin up. “If I gave you the impression I only want to get inside you, let me clear it up. I want to be your boyfriend. I want to take all those thoughts you put on paper for class assignments and hoard them, just for me. Make you say them while you’re wrapped around me in bed. Fucking or not. I want to know your favorite movie, restaurant, and sexual position. All of it. I want it to be mine.”

  What was that thing you needed to go on living? Oh, right. Oxygen. With a concentrated effort, Honey reminded herself to breathe. Never in her nearly twenty years on this earth had she ever expected to be spoken to in such a way. A way that made her bones feel like microwaved Play-Doh. He’d meant every word, too. She could see the evidence of that in the hard lines of his shoulders, the way his expression dared her to contradict him.

  “My favorite movie is Bad News Bears and I like Cracker Barrel. They don’t have one in New York, and I miss the pancakes on Sunday mornings. I try to match the recipe, but it never comes out right.”

  She could see his mind working behind those glasses. Receiving information and cataloguing it like the hottest librarian that ever lived. “I’m waiting on your favorite sexual position.”

  “If you finish your chores by dinnertime, maybe I’ll tell you.”

  He growled at her as she sauntered away, forcing her to duck her head to hide her smile.

  THE DAY PASSED slowly for Ben. Not because he spent hours riding the sputtering tractor, dragging the three-furrow ridging plow through the fields, creating rows to plant potatoes and onions. Not because Honey’s father dragged him to the edge of the property to repair a damaged fence, then laughed as he literally chased down the sheep that made it through the hole. And not because a chicken had tried to peck him to death while he’d collected her eggs.

  No, it moved slowly because Honey was everywhere. All the time. Reaching up to unpin a bedsheet from the laundry line, giving him a glimpse of her flat belly. Exercising the two horses they owned, tanned thighs hugging the animal’s flanks, hips moving in a hypnotic rhythm. Since this morning, he’d only been within a hundred yards of her once, when she’d brought him a glass of lemonade. She’d had her shirt twisted up and tied under her braless tits like some twenty-first-century version of Elly May, leading his thoughts into dangerous territory. Dangerous because her mother and father were watching him like a hawk, even though it had to be obvious at this point that he was patently obsessed with her. It wasn’t something he could hide. Or put into words that might reassure her parents that he wasn’t some creep with bad intentions. Why yes, I’d like to bottle your daughter’s cinnamon and sugar smell so I don’t need to go a single second without it. Probably wouldn’t be well received.

  Nor would it be well received if he told Honey his cock had been rock solid since this morning when he’d walked into her room with the most honorable of intentions, hoping to give her time to sleep and recover. But she’d thrown her arms up over her head, thighs falling open as she’d whispered his name in a sleepy, sex voice. The kind he wanted to give her from screaming too much. He’d been given no choice but to dive out of the room into the hallway before he did something unforgivable, like push her thighs wider and use his mouth to wake her up the best way possible.

  On cue, Honey cut across the driveway, carrying a bucket in each hand. He could practically hear saxophone music accompanying her seductive strut all the way to the barn. His instinct told him to follow her, but he couldn’t. After the day he’d spent fighting a constant erection, if he followed her into the barn, his first course of action would be pinning her to the nearest wall. But she’d thrown down the gauntlet earlier by insinuating he only wanted sex. To be honest, he wanted sex with Honey like a motherfucker. He wanted to sink between her thighs and fuck an orgasm out of her. And he wanted it bad. He’d meant what he said, though. All or nothing. The problem with that being the fact that he was having a hell of a time concentrating on the all when he’d been without her so long. It blew his mind that they’d only had sex once. How had he survived this long on once?

  In an effort to keep from following her into the barn, Ben decided to take a break. He walked to the porch and fell onto the top step. A minute later, the screen door opened behind him. Ben turned at the sound of crutches touching down on the creaky floorboards. One look at the young guy easing into the porch swing behind him told Ben it was Honey’s brother, Teddy. After all, there was only one person in the house with two broken legs, but they hadn’t formally met yet, since he’d been sleeping when Ben arrived the night before.

  “Hey, man,” Teddy greeted him affably. “Let me let you in on a little secret. When you work too hard, they keep expecting you to work up to that level. Like, every damn time.”

  Ben laughed under his breath. “You’re probably right. Good thing I’m only here for a week.”

  “That’s what you think.” Teddy dug in his pocket for something. “If you actually succeed in winning over my sister, you’ll be back. She can’t stay away for too long.”

  His comment made Ben’s smile slip. “What do you mean?” When Teddy didn’t answer right away, Ben turned toward him. Teddy gave him the international gesture for wanna smoke? Pinching his index finger and thumb together and holding it up to his lips, eyebrows raised. Ben waved him off, so Teddy shrugged and lit up a joint, right there on his family porch, before continuing the conversation as if illegal drugs weren’t being smoked.

  “I mean, she’s only been gone two months, and she’s already back.” Teddy blew a stream of smoke toward the sky. “No need for it. My father could’ve hired some hands in town for cheap. She’s here because she’s got Kentucky in her blood.”

  Ben’s stomach sunk to the bottom step of the porch. What if he wasn’t just down there to convince her to come home with him but to come home at all? “You don’t think she likes New York?”

  “You haven’t asked her that yourself?” The question must have been rhetorical, because Teddy coughed and kept going. “She’s got all the expectations I could never live up to on her head. Carrying them for both of us, my sister. I’m not sure if she’s there because she wants to be or thinks she has to be.”

  Ben stood without thinking. He needed to be proactive. Needed to do something. Say something. Maybe it was premature to worry about Honey not liking New York enough to stay, but he wanted to head it off at the pass. If she needed a reason to come back, a reason to love the city, he’d give it to her. Now. He’d already started toward the barn when Teddy’s voice stopped him.

  “Hey, I didn’t even get to give the obligatory don’t-hurt-my-sister-or-I’ll-hurt-you speech.
” Teddy glanced down at his injured legs. “Although I guess it’s a moot point, so I’ll just say please.”

  Ben nodded. He wanted to laugh, but he was too distracted with the urgency to find Honey in the barn. This dancing around each other wasn’t working for him. Especially not now, when he felt like a noose had been tied around his neck. God, if she wasn’t happy in New York, had he made it that much worse? Pushed her a little closer into leaving?

  She looked up as he entered the barn, the expression on her face reminding him of the evening in the deserted classroom when she’d been half excited, half deer in headlights. All perfect. When he got within ten feet of Honey, giving her no indication that he planned to slow down, she dropped the bucket she was holding, some type of feed spilling out onto the floor. Ben hooked an arm under her ass, dragging her up against him as he backed her into an empty horse stall. Her thighs wrapped around his waist like they’d been conditioned to do so. He planted his hard cock between those gorgeous limbs and ground against her in a rough twist of his hips, just managing to get a hand over her mouth, capturing a moan that would have easily reached the house.

  He pressed their foreheads together and looked her in the eye. “Listen to me.” He waited for her nod. “You’re going to take me somewhere now where I can see you without your panties on. I’m going to get you off good and hard, maybe a few times. And then, Honey, we’re going to talk.” He bucked his hips into her twice. “But first, I’m going to fuck you so dirty, you won’t be able to look anyone but me in the eye afterward. Have you heard everything I’ve said?”

  He removed his hand so she could answer. “Yes. Okay, Ben.”

  “Good. I’ll be at the truck.” He stepped back, letting her slide down the wall. “Tell them whatever gets us out of here.”