Clean Slate

by Holley Trent

  He let out a low chuckle. “Two of your bosses know where you are. I think it’ll be okay. Besides, it’s late to be driving on those wet roads.”

  He had a point.

  He pulled his legs in and swung them around to brace his feet against the floor. “Come on. I think you’ll be more comfortable in the guest apartment. Bed’s made.”

  “I’m okay here.” She wrapped her arms around a throw pillow to indicate such.

  He shook his head. “You’ll wake up with a huge kink in your neck from the sofa arm and will spend your day at work cranky.”

  “I’m never cranky.”

  “Ja, let’s not start now.” He grinned and held out a hand.

  She wedged the pillow next to the sofa arm and placed her hand in his.

  As she followed him through the back door and across the yard to the garage, she wondered when the last time another man had held her hand was. Prom in front of the photographer? No, her wedding when Barry had dragged her down the aisle during the recessional. That had been the last time, but that hadn’t felt special. It was just Barry moving her from one venue to the next as quickly as possible so he could get to the keg his father bought them as a wedding gift. But Ben holding her hand was different. Maybe it was the gentle grip or the way he kept looking back at her as they navigated the dark path, but there was more affection in that touch than there’d been in any of Barry’s kisses or hugs or…anything.

  He led her upstairs and closed the door behind them.

  “Bed’s made. Your clothes are in the dryer. I can bring you an alarm clock if you need one.”

  She shook her head and indicated the pocket of her borrowed sweatpants. “I have my phone. I can use the clock on it.”

  He trailed her into the bedroom and together they turned down the covers. As he headed toward the exit, her impulse control seemed to slip away a bit and she called to his back, “Are you going to be at the barn tomorrow?”

  He stopped at the door and turned around. In the dim light his blue eyes looked black. “For a while. Either Jerry or I will have to go get Mother in the afternoon. Possibly both of us, but I think Nikki’s going to want to debrief about the trade show.”

  Oh, shit, the trade show. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. If what Trinity had said was true, Nikki was going to snap her fingers and demand new ideas to develop. Nothing she had in her arsenal would be good enough. She should have gone home after dinner and worked something out, but she’d been having too good a time. She flopped against the pillow and groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Nikki’s going to think I’m a one-trick pony.”

  “You’ll be fine. That’s what brainstorming’s for. You don’t have to come up with everything on your own. That’s what being on a team is about. Trust me, I was a relay swimmer.” He laughed.

  She opened her eyes and found him grinning there in the doorway.

  “Sorry again for getting you muddy. Goodnight.”

  He started to move away, but she sat up and said, “Uh, you know, having some time between then and now, it actually seems kind of funny.”

  “Oh?”

  She shrugged. “I can imagine what I must have looked like. Total dork, right?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Dork. That’s…”

  “Sorry, uh…” She clucked her tongue while considering a suitable synonym. “A dork is a person who lacks certain social graces. A person with no charm.”

  He moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed near her waist. When he spoke, his voice was a near-whisper. His grin had dissolved, and his lips actually arced a bit in the other direction. “Then that’s not a good word to describe you.”

  She lie down again, and stared at the white ceiling. “I know what I am.”

  “I don’t know if you really do. Can I ask you something, Daisy?”

  The blood in her head seemed to drain at his serious tone. She knew without a doubt he was going to ask her something she had no desire to answer. But what would it be? Regardless of her fear, she nodded.

  “When you said you’d marry me on the bus—why were you thinking that?”

  Oh. That. She squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her grip on the edge of the bed sheet. There wasn’t really a simple answer.

  Her eyelids sprang up. “I guess I’m one of those people who regularly volunteers herself to be the martyr. It’s in my nature to do tough things so other people don’t have to.”

  The set of his jaw went tight. “You think it’d be so bad being married to me?”

  Maybe she’d phrased that wrong. “No, not at all. I just…I don’t actually expect to ever get married again. I heard you and Jerry talking about all the back and forth you do between here and Belgium, and I know how much you two enjoy each other’s company and so…”

  “So you thought that’d help.”

  She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug.

  The tension in his face seemed to ease as he leaned back onto his palms. “You really think you’ll never marry again?”

  That made her chuckle. “I’d be really surprised.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s see if I can sum it up. My ex-husband thought I was an idiot, and I guess he told me enough that I agree with him a little bit. Ever since the divorce, my mother has been treating me like a child incapable of making good decisions. I think she believes I would have been better off with Barry.”

  “Do you think so?”

  She shook her head. “I believe putting him out was the one good decision I’ve made in life. Of course the better one would have been never marrying him in the first place.”

  “So why did you?”

  Another question she wasn’t sure how to answer.

  Now Ben was leaning with his forearms over his thighs, and looking at her sideways from the edge of the bed.

  “He was my first and only and I couldn’t do any better.”

  “I see.” He stood.

  “Yeah, I’ve come to terms with—”

  She was going to say “being alone” but before she could form the sounds, he leaned down and stifled her words by placing his lips over hers.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She was frozen, unmoving, as his tongue probed the seam of her lips. He thrust the tip against the tight seal with more vigor. She opened her mouth with a sigh and greeted his tongue with her own.

  She was tentative at first, but when he wrapped his arms around her shoulders to tip her shoulders up from the bed, she engaged him more readily, even wrapping her arms around his back and drawing him closer.

  At that angle, Ben’s choices were to either fall on her or pick her up. He compensated by straddling her waist before moving his fingers up the back of her neck, and grabbing a hold of the end of her long braid with one hand.

  She whimpered as he applied light pressure to her bottom lip with his teeth and pulled, while raking her hair free of its plait.

  “I think you can do better,” he whispered, grazing his lips across hers as he trailed his arms down her sides to the hem of her shirt.

  She sucked in some air and put her head back to give him easier access to her long, creamy neck. “It’s sweet you think so. You don’t have to inflate my head.”

  “I don’t waste words on untruths, Daisy.” He eased her upright and nudged her T-shirt up and over her head. He’d forgotten how her bra still draped over the shower door and was taken momentarily off guard by her exposed breasts, mottled with goosebumps, and nipples pert from the cool of the air conditioning.

  He didn’t touch her, and it took a wealth of reserve he hadn’t known he had not to. He just looked, then wrapped his fingers around her ribs and eased her onto her back.

  She watched him warily as he pulled the covers down.

  He maneuvered himself down her legs, taking the sheet and bedspread with him, and she sucked in her middle when his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her sweatpants.

  “Ticklish?” h
e asked, wiggling the band down in a side-to-side motion while keeping his eyes locked on hers.

  “I didn’t think I was.”

  “Hmm.” He edged off the foot of the bed and eased her pants past her knees, ankles, and down to the floor.

  She lay very still as he studied her, from her billowing hair splayed against the stark white pillow down to the arm she pressed over her breasts, to her perfect innie of a navel, and to where her thighs crossed in an attempt to cover her sex.

  Still, he didn’t touch. Just looked. Smiled.

  “You’re aggravating my complex,” she said, and sat up to reach for the top of the bedspread.

  “Stop,” he said. He walked to the head of the bed and kissed her, sweetly at first, then rougher the longer they touched. She was like putty, warming to his touch and responding however he urged. He could have probably pushed her far and made her enjoy it, but he didn’t think that’d be wise right off the bat. She’d been put through the ringer before, so the least he could do, at least this first time, was play it safe—observe her cues and respond.

  He laid her back down again, and she stared up at him with eyes slightly unfocused and lips parted as she caught her breath.

  It was obvious. She’d never been made love to. Not really.

  He peeled his shirt off, dropped it, and paused to study her expression as her eyes cast down from his chest to his crotch, which by that point was behaving in a manner that was far from modest.

  Slowly, he unbuttoned his shorts and let down the zipper. He’d had the good fortune of having spare underwear in the apartment, so when he stepped out of his shorts, there was another layer between him in the air, not that it hid much.

  He grabbed the hand covering her chest, and carefully moved it away to let her breasts fall where they may. Even with the dim light, he could see her face reddening at the exposure.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, lacing his fingers through the ones of the hand he’d moved away and reaching for the other one. He pressed her hands out to her sides against the bed, thereby preventing her from squirming too much, and lowered his head to her breasts.

  He pulled first one nipple into his mouth, then the other. Lapping around the beaded flesh and dragging the skin out between his teeth elicited little moans from her that only increased his arousal.

  “Breast man?” she whimpered.

  He mounded her breasts, squeezing them together to lick from one to the other in a repeated sequence. “No. Why do you ask?”

  She moaned.

  He laughed as he backed down her legs once again until he was positioned over her knees. Raising himself up onto his own knees, he urged her legs uncrossed and forced her knees apart. “I’m actually a thigh man.”

  “Thighs?” she asked, forehead furrowing with her confusion.

  “Mm-hmm.” He trailed his fingertips up the insides of her legs from knees to the crux where her thighs came together, and let them linger there. “My favorite place is right here, where your legs touch.” He leaned down and kissed one side then the other, satisfied at how her cunt clenched at his proximity.

  “That’s an odd place to fixate on.”

  “That’s because you don’t get to see it from the angle I do. It’s perfect.” He prodded his tongue against the inside of her top left thigh, just beneath where her satiny thatch ended. “Soft.” He trailed the tip of his tongue up her leg further to where her panty elastic would have covered. “Sexy.” Higher to the fleshy mound, and inward to her lips. “Feminine.”

  He let go of her hands so he could manipulate the quivering bits. He gave her clit a little flick that made her clench her knees around his waist. “Do you have any boundaries, Daisy?”

  It was an awful time to ask, and he knew it, but at least now, her guard was down a bit and perhaps she’d feel somewhat less inhibited. He wanted to know her desires and her limits. Sometimes the two things blurred, but he was cautious.

  “Don’t pull my hair,” she whispered.

  “Anything else?”

  She moved her torso in what he supposed was a shrug, but it was hard to tell because she’d begun to come apart at the insertion of his fingers into her cunt. She was so wet and judging by the way she milked his fingers with her tight passage, she was ready.

  He wanted to linger there, working her over with his tongue until she melted into the sheets, but he suspected neither of them would have the stamina after the afternoon they had to come more than once. He was a generous lover, but this time he wanted that first explosive orgasm of hers to be with them nose to nose—forcing her to stare into his eyes while they both came.

  For him, sex wasn’t just about getting off. It was an intimate thing, and without that intimacy—the awareness of each other—what was the point?

  He slipped his fingers out of her, and rubbed her wetness onto her clit. When he eased off the bed, she sat up and covered her chest again.

  “Stop it,” he said. He pushed down his underwear.

  Eyes locked on his cock, her lips parted as he came nearer. She offered no resistance when he uncovered her breasts once more. “That’s better.”

  She leaned back against the pillow.

  “I promise to be gentle.”

  She nodded, so he eased her knees apart and settled between her legs.

  He wrapped her legs around his waist, and leaned in, sucking in some air of his own when she wrapped her fingers around his shaft and angled him down to enter her.

  She drew him in farther, tightening her legs’ grip around his waist, and squeezing his cock hard as he eased into her. Her breath shuddered as he drew out.

  “All right?”

  She nodded with eyes closed, her body already beginning to quiver from only a few of his well-angled thrusts.

  This was a woman who’d gone too long without a real man’s attention.

  Damn shame.

  When he pressed his lips against hers once more, he was surprised to feel wetness on her cheeks, and propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “No. I can’t help it.”

  Help what? he wondered, though he didn’t press.

  She’d tipped her chin back again and sighed as she dragged her fingertips down his ribs.

  He felt the bite of her nails in his back, urging him on, so he resumed his previous slow, calculating thrusts.

  It didn’t take long to bring her, and when she came with a violent shudder, he wound his fingers through the back of her hair and tickled her jaw with his thumbs, forcing her attention to his face as she gasped. When she opened her eyes, he came, too, savoring the feel of her softness pressed against his torso, her now-weak arms draped around his back, the smell of his shampoo in her hair.

  She collapsed back onto the pillow, staring at him with lips parted, breathing ragged, and skin flushed. “Oh my God.”

  He lay beside her and pulled the covers up over them both. “You regularly pray after sex, Daisy?”

  She took a moment to catch her breath before confessing, “No. I used to pray before it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Why are you so late?” Momma asked from her and Daisy’s shared workbench.

  Daisy, more than three hours tardy for work, tried to ignore Momma as she unpacked her bag. She carried her lunch, which it was nearly time for, to the staff kitchen and stowed it in the refrigerator. Fortunately, she didn’t pass too many staff members on the way through the barn. She’d already dodged Jerry, since he was working from home. Trinity, she didn’t care so much about. In fact, it was Trinity who’d woken her up. It was the rest of the staff she was concerned about. What must they be thinking? Daisy was never late. She never called out unless she was on death’s doorstep.

  “Daisy!” Nikki called the moment Daisy turned her back away from the kitchen.

  Shit.

  She spun on her heel and tried to fix her face into a smile, but couldn’t manage it. When she reached the office door, she paused at the threshold, wri
nging her hands.

  “Why are you limping?”

  She swallowed hard. “Am I?”

  Nikki shrugged and made a beckoning gesture with her hands. “Come in and close the door.”

  Daisy looked behind her, saw her mother on the other end of the barn staring through the office window over the tops of her glasses at her, and turned around again. She stepped in and pushed the door shut, taking one of the seats in front of Nikki’s desk.

  When Nikki wasn’t immediately forthcoming with the expected berating or anything else, Daisy looked up from her shoes and said, “I’m sorry I’m so late. I—”

  “I don’t care,” Nikki interrupted. “You’re not one of my problem employees. I’m not going to bitch over a couple of hours. Besides, Trinity called and told me you were running late. Said you were working on some secret ideas before coming in.”

  “Oh…” Lie. Actually, after rolling out of the bed and realizing she was not in fact dreaming and that she had spent the night with Ben, she’d driven home—mortified—and tossed her cookies the moment she stepped into the bathroom. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Was what she’d done slutty? It didn’t matter how good the sex was, and how wanted Ben had made her feel when he was holding her. The fact of the matter was they were practically strangers, and while enjoyable, what they’d done wasn’t much more than a one stand. Oh yeah, and she’d fucking cried.

  “I should hook you and that guy up more often.”

  Daisy zoned back in to the conversation. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “You and Ben? Stroke of genius on my part sending you two to that trade show. You really represented the brand well.”

  Daisy sat a bit more upright and cocked up an eyebrow. “We did?”

  Nikki closed her eyes and nodded. “Mm-hmm. No offense, but you’re not all glitz and glamour. You’re quiet and your beauty isn’t ostentatious. It’s just there without you having to work at it too hard.”

  “I don’t work at it at all.” Daisy adjusted her baseball cap, which had shifted from the bulk of her drying curls.

  “Exactly. You look like you use our products.”

  “I do.”