Ten Thousand Hours

by Ren Benton

  He reached for her hand. “Cop a squat before you collapse.”

  She sank to the floor and snuggled against his side. She was wiped out, and she had years of experience dealing with multiple sick kids. It had to be harder on a novice. “You have a big day at work tomorrow. You should go home and get some sleep.”

  “You’re not this concerned with my state of rest when you’re using me for sex.”

  The kids were in the grip of a deep, recuperative sleep that rendered them deaf to softly voiced mentions of the S-word, which she vaguely remembered having in the days of yore. “I am far less demanding than four sick kids.”

  “Your demands are more fun to meet, but you’re every bit as tiring.”

  His chronic complaints about being depleted by her made her feel deliciously empowered. She did her best to look contrite. “Sorry.”

  “Mm. I can tell.” He rubbed her back while she burrowed against his warm, sturdy chest. “What will you do about work tomorrow?”

  “Use a sick day.” Unpaid, since she worked on commission, but she had penalty-free days off left in her account. The management job came with fifteen days per year of paid time off and eleven paid holidays, which might even be enough to use a day or two for fun instead of reserving every single one for emergencies.

  “Any word on Holly?”

  “No.” The hand on her back made it impossible to knot up at the mention of her sister for a change. “I pestered Wes so much, he started sending me ‘no news’ texts twice a day to keep me from interrupting.”

  “Wow. He must really like you to be that chatty.” His chin pushed into the top of her head as he yawned. “At least there’s no bad news.”

  She didn’t know what bad news would look like at this point. Bad for Holly and bad for the kids weren’t necessarily the same thing. Not knowing, though, imprisoned them all in a state of suspense that made peace of mind an impossibility — a cruel sentence for four innocent children.

  As soon as her mood turned, Griff’s other arm came around her like scaffolding, supporting her no matter how structurally unsound she felt.

  His lips grazed her forehead. “I’ve missed you.”

  That admission tugged at her insides. Being missed wasn’t as good as being together, but it was a hell of a lot better than being out of sight, out of mind. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  He scanned her upturned face. “You make it so hard to be unselfish.”

  And that admission caused savage glee. She reduced her whisper to barely more than a breath and confided another deep, dark secret. “Once in my life, I would love to be the object of a man’s selfishness.”

  Ivy had hinted that no man before him ever had the sense to pursue her with any discernible passion. Sitting on the floor with her thigh hooked over his, gazing into deep, dark eyes that beckoned him to come hither, Griff had to wonder what defect afflicted those men. He would follow her through whatever treacherous wasteland she led — and not merely because her purse held all the necessary survival gear.

  She continued her confession for his ears alone, each word stripping away another coat of his civility. “I would love you to be greedy for me, to be unable to stay away no matter how bad for you I am.”

  If she put I would love you in front of to wrestle a shark, he would go find a shark. Showing her his need, by comparison, should have been easy, not a trial he agonized over. He’d been mangled physically again and again without slowing his mad dash toward the next risk, but one emotional accident made a bystander of him.

  These were the guts of the primitive male fear of being powerless. When a man didn’t have the power to direct his own life, who did?

  Surrendering control, thereby acknowledging vulnerability, required trust he’d thought amputated years ago. It was weak and shaky from disuse, and he dreaded putting too much weight on it too soon, but if he didn’t use it, it would never get stronger.

  Letting Ivy go had been the worst possible move. Apart from losing time he could have spent with her, apart from wounding her feelings, he had let her doubt he wanted her and set a precedent that she was easy to walk away from.

  Present circumstances limited his ability to demonstrate just how selfish he’d like to be. “If we weren’t surrounded by campers, I’d prove just how greedy I am.”

  She bowed her head, denying him reading rights to her expressive face, so he had no warning when she abruptly stood. The warmth along his side where she had nestled evaporated in an instant, leaving him ridiculously bereft.

  Maybe she had to pee. Maybe it was her turn to throw up because she hadn’t been taking care of herself well enough to fight off whatever bug the kids had been incubating. She wouldn’t be shy about rejection if that was her intent, so there was no need for him to whine like an abandoned dog.

  She stopped at the mouth of the hallway to give him a brow raise that asked, Are you coming or not?

  He had the self-possession to not clamber over the back of the chair in his haste to pursue, but just barely.

  She wasn’t moving fast enough to suit him, so he crowded her. She responded by stopping entirely and pushing back, the curve of her ass cushioning a hopeful swelling that rapidly evolved into a raging hardon at the contact. He wrapped his arms around her, binding her to him across her chest and waist, and shuffled her to the end of the darkened corridor, where her bedroom awaited.

  He turned on the light and held his hand over the switch, daring her to challenge the illumination.

  She closed the door, which failed to latch because of the deformity inside the knob he’d noticed during his last visit. “It’s been so long, I’m not going to waste time negotiating terms. If you see something you don’t like, just close your eyes and persevere.”

  “There’s nothing about you I don’t like.” Except her anxiety about any part of her being unworthy of adoration, but telling her to stop worrying tended to have the opposite effect, so he’d work around whatever level of self-consciousness she gave him.

  “I should warn you, when I do selfish things, there’s retribution.”

  “Uh-huh.” He’d come into this room earlier to appropriate her blankets but had stuck to the task at hand. Nosing around then would have been an invasion of her privacy. Now that he was here by invitation, he felt free to examine her sanctuary like an archeological site.

  Every other part of the house bore evidence of kids — scattered toys, stray tiny socks, artwork by Crayola, fish-shaped crackers under the sofa, a toddler throne in the bathroom.

  Ivy’s bedroom was tidy. Defiantly so. The smooth cotton of the fitted sheet stretched over the mattress looked as spare and crisp as a regular part of the decor. Her jewelry was boxed. Her books were shelved by size in uncompromising, upstanding order. Her clothes, hidden in their drawers, were probably folded into origami masterpieces.

  It was the lair of a woman rigid and uptight, which was not the Ivy he knew. His Ivy threw clothes on the floor and clawed the corners of the sheet off the mattress in abandon after adding meringue to the thread count.

  He slid open the top dresser drawer and was rewarded with a staggering array of lingerie, arranged by color. No wonder she hadn’t objected to destroying one pair of panties. “Do you have any toys in one of these drawers?”

  “No.”

  She was pink from the drooping neckline of her sweatshirt to her hairline, and he wasn’t sure whether it was discomfort from his question or deceit from her answer. “Why don’t you have anything to make you feel good, Ivy?”

  “I have you.”

  “Not every night.”

  “The rest of the time, I have fingers and a vivid imagination.”

  His balls tightened at the thought of her lying here, touching herself, biting her pillow to muffle all the moans and sighs pleasure wrung from her throat. She did say she excelled at masturbation. “Tell me something you imagine.”

  “Recently, that I’m a guard in a Mexican jail tasked with getting a confession from an American don
key thief.”

  He pushed the drawer closed. It was stupid to look at her underwear when he could be peeling them off her body with his teeth.

  She wiggled her fingers near her temple. “It’s tricky to visualize because you had nothing to do with the theft, of course, and I don’t know what your friend looks like.”

  He sat on the edge of her bed. “It was all me. I planned and executed the entire heist.”

  She came to stand knee to knee with him, looking down at him with a stern frown. “The last time we spoke, you claimed amnesia.”

  “The last time we spoke, I wasn’t competing for a starring role in your fantasy. I’ll fabricate all the culpability you want.” He spread his legs and pulled her closer. “I’ll even tell you where to squeeze and with what to make me talk.”

  “Griff, please.” She squeezed his face between her hands to make him stop talking. “We don’t have time to play. The clock is ticking.”

  He would tease her about her impatience if not for the urgency pounding through his veins, too.

  Her sweatshirt was sizes too big for her and came off with ease. He let her deal with his buttons while he tasted the warm, velvety skin over her ribs. She peeled his shirt from his shoulders as he licked his way to the indentation of her navel. He fought free of the sleeves that hindered his arms and pulled her down to the bed, twisting over her, covering her, reminding them both how she felt beneath him.

  Good. She felt very, very good, and her hips rocking in that playtime’s over, time to get serious rhythm of hers told him she agreed, pushing him further than he wanted to be. He wanted this to last, to make it worth her while to let him into her body again, into her bed for the first time, but he also hated to torment her with a delay.

  He slid his hand past the elastic waistband of her pants, beneath another layer of lace, over a mound covered with silky curls. She was drenched and hot below, and her gasp when he circled her clit sawed through him, nearly putting an end to the plan to wait his turn. The tautness of her body hinted she was on the edge of climax already.

  This time, he would let her hurry.

  “What are you doing to Ivy?”

  In an instant, the tension in the fingernails digging into his arms switched to the pole opposite from pleasure.

  A judgmental ten-year-old standing in the doorway put a chill on sex faster than a bucket of ice.

  Griff willed Ivy not to react as if they’d been caught doing something wrong. Fortunately, she seemed paralyzed. “We’re kissing each other. Did you knock?”

  “I live here.”

  The emphasis asserted territorial privilege Griff would acknowledge when the kid started contributing to the mortgage payments. “Does Ivy knock before she invades your privacy?”

  Blake’s face flushed red. “Yes.”

  “Then you should knock before invading hers.”

  Ivy thawed enough to pat his arm, but he wasn’t getting off her while she was topless and his hand was in her pants. At least she was covered in their current position.

  She gave up trying to budge him. “What do you need, Blake?”

  Blake held up the baby monitor she had left in the living room. “Cole’s fussing. I tried to quiet him down, but he doesn’t want me.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  He turned and walked out of the room, only to take a step back and pull the door closed behind him.

  Griff rolled off Ivy and covered his face with his hands — a huge mistake because one of them smelled like her in the most intimate way and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except throb and yearn.

  She leapt from the bed. Her hands shook as she pulled on her sweatshirt. “Thank you. You handled that much better than I would have. Prior experience?”

  “No.” His goals had been protect Ivy and don’t warp the kid too much, in that order, and he had found a way. Maybe not the best way, but they’d sort that out later. “Was it your first time?”

  She looked at him like he’d asked how often she burned down warehouses for insurance money. “I don’t have men here when the kids are staying.”

  For obvious reasons this experience had only reinforced.

  The kids were staying permanently, and the first man allowed in her home with them had led to disaster. What were the chances a cautious, responsible woman would risk it again? “He didn’t see anything, Ivy.”

  “I’m sure he’s seen worse with his mother.”

  He rolled onto his side to track her to the door. “You could let him know there’s more to boy-girl relationships than what he’s seen at home.”

  She paused with her hand on the doorknob, her tight lips and bleached cheeks at odds with her sex-messy hair. “I’ll add it to my to-do list. Right now, I’m letting him know I’ll ignore a sick baby when there’s a man around, exactly like he’s seen at home.” She jerked open the door and left him alone in her bed.

  He wallowed in self-pity for five seconds, then got up to locate his shirt. Atoning for his own mistakes was an endless ordeal, but one he’d brought on himself. Ivy was trying to atone for her sister’s fuckups and terrified to make a wrong move, as if one slip would make her as bad as Holly.

  He had distracted her from the constant vigilance that enabled her to ward off catastrophe and minimize any damage that snuck past her defenses. She would eliminate that threat to her orderly existence as soon as she found time in her busy schedule.

  Fuck that. He jammed his arms in the sleeves and roughly fastened the buttons. Having kids didn’t mean her life was over. Someone to delegate entry-level tasks to would free up some of her time. A bedroom door with a working lock would give her privacy to enjoy that time, with company or alone.

  At worst, children were hurdles, not insurmountable obstacles. She didn’t have to martyr herself to take good care of them.

  He wouldn’t let her martyr herself, dammit.

  He followed the light to the bathroom. She was trying to administer a dropper of pink medicine to the baby balanced on her hip. Cole’s pursed lips and snaky neck wanted nothing to do with it.

  Griff placed his hands together at an angle, folded his fingers, and squeezed so the air trapped between his tightly sealed palms squeaked out like a fart. As a man in training, Cole had no choice but to respond with a gleeful exclamation, which Ivy took advantage of to squirt the contents of the dropper into his mouth.

  Cole looked at Griff as if he’d committed treason.

  Sorry, bud, but when you give my lady a hard time, the gloves come off — the better to make hand farts. You’ll understand when you’re older.

  Ivy rinsed the dropper in the sink. “I didn’t do this earlier because it’s better to let a fever do its job if it’s not too high. Too uncomfortable to sleep justifies medicating, though.”

  Griff leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Are you telling me this for future reference or because you think I’m judging you from my completely uneducated position?”

  Her strained reflection in the mirror indicated nerves rather than a long view of their future.

  Exercising his trust was only half the rehab they needed. Hers was atrophied, too. He was at a loss as to how to proceed, so he heeded motherly advice. “What do you need from me?”

  She screwed the lid on the medicine bottle with one hand and returned it to a high shelf in the linen closet. She didn’t look at him. “The kids have had a lot of men come into their lives for a day or a week. If I reinforce that pattern, they won’t believe me when I tell them it doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “That’s a very sad story.” He would have critiqued it in greater depth if not for the unmistakable sound of retching coming from the living room. “Do you want to make the toast or clean up the puke?”

  She closed her eyes. “I want to make toast, but—”

  “Heather barfed on Lily!” Blake reported.

  Horror peeled Ivy’s eyes wide open.

  The news bulletin cleared up Griff’s indecision
about which action to take. “I’ll clean the living room. You clean the girls. Blake can supervise Cole.”

  He grabbed the tank of the carpet cleaner from the tub. “We’ll talk about toast later.”

  18

  Ivy jerked awake. Her neck ached from being twisted at an angle against the arm of the sofa.

  Voices and the aroma of maple syrup drifted from the kitchen. She shambled in that direction to investigate.

  Griff stood at the stove, manning two skillets in which pancakes bubbled. He smiled when he saw her. “Morning, gorgeous.”

  She’d seen her morning reflection often enough to avoid mirrors until after a shower. He was being very kind.

  “We used up all the bread last night and couldn’t find another stash of soda” — he flipped one pancake after another to reveal unblemished golden surfaces — “so we’re battling yucky stomachs with pancakes and syrup.”

  She thought she’d hallucinated him staying after the second round of vomiting. She really didn’t know what to make of letting her sleep in and making breakfast on top of that. “Smells delicious.”

  “I’m informed they’re not as fluffy as yours, but they taste okay.”

  She pinned Blake with a baleful stare.

  He held up a fork to present a triangle of evidence speared on the tines. “They’re not as fluffy as yours. They taste okay. These are facts. I told him thank you.”

  “And asked for seconds, but now that you’re up and about, these are for you.” He slid one pancake onto a clean plate.

  “I can share.” She didn’t want to deprive Blake, but she also didn’t want him testing the limits of his stomach so soon after tossing it.

  Griff passed her the plate and slid the other pancake in front of Blake.

  She tore off a piece and ate it with her fingers. Her favorite breakfast was one prepared by someone else. “These are fantastic.”

  Griff stared, the fork he’d gotten out of the drawer for her clutched in his hand.

  Oh, well. He was bound to find out sooner or later she was less a morning person, more a morning wolverine. She stuffed another chunk of pancake in her mouth and asked, with her mouth full, “How gorgeous am I now?”