What Comes After Dessert

by Ren Benton

  Which was fine, until he went off script and stopped her from palming his dick. She hadn’t rehearsed a routine that put the spotlight on her. She wasn’t prepared to perform a solo, and stage fright spoiled the nice bit until he got back with the program. Only after he let her do her part and distract him from his scrutiny of her was she able to loosen up again and enjoy being explored.

  The pleasures varied — smooth little pebbles and rough, round stones and sharp-edged bricks — all piled into a quivering tower, threatening to collapse. She squeezed her legs together to keep it intact, continue building, but his body was in the way, immovable, and then he shifted and spread her open wider, the better to massage her clit with his thumb while two of his fingers pressed deep inside her in a way she didn’t have the reach to pull off herself, and that was one level too many to sustain. The tower toppled, scattered, flew in a thousand shattered pieces at a velocity that made her want to scream. She bit her lip and smashed her mouth against his shoulder to stifle the sound threatening to erupt.

  She survived the fall, relatively unscathed, just breathless and limp.

  Ben wasn’t in any hurry to extract the fingers buried inside her. “Christ, you are so wet.”

  She was, and something more substantial than digits to squeeze would feel wonderful. She couldn’t have what she wanted, but she could take him pretty close. “Give me that hand.”

  He stroked and swirled as he backtracked, so she was squirming by the time his fingertips grazed her belly. She released his cock so it rested hot and heavy against her stomach while she took hold of his drenched fingers.

  He buried his face in the curve between her neck and shoulder when she reclaimed his dick, slick fingers sliding down his shaft. “You feel tighter than that.”

  She adjusted her grip accordingly, and he made a strangled sound. “You’re killing me, Tally.”

  Her tongue forged a trail up his neck to the hollow behind his ear. “If you think that’s good, wait until I get you in my mouth.”

  His breath hissed between his teeth. “Can’t. I need to come.”

  She tightened her legs around his to hold him in place when he tried to move away. “I wash.”

  His hips jerked in prelude to a hot splash against her belly. She milked him dry while he recovered, resting his forehead against hers, chest heaving as if he’d run a hard mile.

  She was messy with sex and sweat-sticky, and for the first time in her sexual history, she felt no urgency to run to the nearest shower. Maybe his lack of enthusiasm about coming on her made it less porny. Maybe having an orgasm just made her unusually agreeable. Whatever the reason, she was content to stay scrunched up on the seat of a truck, wet and shirtless and smothered by him, for as long as he’d let her.

  Five minutes of feeling better had turned out way better than anticipated. Mission accomplished — no failure.

  Satisfaction reciprocated — no debt.

  Precisely the relief she’d needed. She closed her eyes and savored it while it lasted.

  His thumb brushed her stomach. “I made a mess of you.”

  “I’d like to think I’m at least partially responsible.”

  “You were a lot slower about it than I would have been.”

  A corner of her mouth tugged upward. “Right back at you, Fielder.”

  “It was my first try. There’s a learning curve. What’s your excuse?”

  It was the first time she hadn’t been entirely focused on pleasing him. Likewise on the learning curve. “I was being heckled.”

  “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

  He pressed a kiss to her lips before reaching down to the floor to grab his shirt, the hem of which he used to clean up her stomach and hand.

  Tension crept back from the fringes to which it had been banished. She hadn’t said the right thing to him all night. She could only screw it up from here. One of the benefits of a postcoital shower was that it gave the guy the opportunity to leave and skip the rest of the awkwardness.

  Ben propped his head on his hand, the weight of his body pinning her in place. “You still can’t wait to get away when it’s over, can you?”

  Her throat went dry. Apparently, she could screw it up without saying a word. “That was really great?”

  He nodded in agreement. “But it’s been a long day and your milk is getting warm, so you really should be going.”

  She breathed out a little of the strain. Even if he had the reasons wrong, he was being good-natured about it, as usual.

  She took his cue to keep it light and smacked his butt. “Right, so get off me so I can drive your sweet ass home.”

  A few bumped heads, elbows, and knees and a cringe-inducing beep of the horn later, they returned to their respective corners.

  She’d lost a flip-flop. The ridges on the brake pedal abraded bare toes as sensitized as the rest of her skin. She felt more than naked, exposed to her marrow. “Can I have my shirt?”

  He looked her over while contemplating the request. “You can, but I don’t know if you should. If you get pulled over for your lead foot in your haste to be rid of me, what you’re not wearing will save you from a ticket.”

  “I could be rid of you by shoving you out the door, and you could walk the rest of the way home.”

  “There’s no need to get testy.” He tossed her the shirt. “Don’t come crying to me when you get points on your license.”

  No chance. She’d cried to him enough in one night to last a couple of lifetimes. “I promise to obey the speed limit and get you back to your mama in one piece.”

  “Except for my virtue, which is in tatters.”

  “Your virtue is only slightly more threadbare than when you got in this truck. I’m not sure what base that was, but I know you did not slide home.”

  “God, that sounds dirty.”

  Given what the metaphor described, she imagined that was the point. “Your ears will wash, too.”

  She fumbled with her malfunctioning buttons. Oh, right. They didn’t work when the shirt was inside out. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves.

  He smirked. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

  “You wish.”

  He waited until she’d turned the shirt right side out and fastened half the buttons before dangling another scrap of fabric between them. “Want your bra?”

  Oh god, why did it have to be the dingy granny bra? What a seductress. Face hot, she snatched the offending garment from his fingers and jammed the corner of it into the back pocket of her jeans. “You just want me to take off the shirt again.”

  “Damn. I was trying to be subtle.”

  There were few things Ben didn’t excel at. Subtlety put itself on the list twice to make sure it wasn’t overlooked.

  “Want a drink?”

  She grimaced at the bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper he’d retrieved from the floor between his feet. The hiss as he cracked the seal masked any unladylike gagging noise she might have made. “No thanks. I never understood how you can drink that stuff.”

  With relish, judging by the size of the gulp he took. “It tastes like my first love’s lips.”

  In that case, his first love tasted like cherry ChapStick — artificial fruit flavor and petroleum byproducts. No surprise he’d found it at the gas station.

  Which of the girls had been his first? The gum chewer seemed the likely candidate. Then again, Sarah Bruton used those scented markers like lipstick on more than one occasion, and Jules had a thing for cherry ice pops.

  Hell, it could be anyone. Ben probably didn’t even remember which one, beyond her unfortunate flavor. Some mysteries were better left unsolved.

  Tally buckled her seat belt and looked pointedly at his.

  He was watching her again, head tipped to the side, a grin toying with those delectable lips.

  Her nipples tightened in response to a look. Broken-in flannel felt like sandpaper against them; her one good decision of the evening had been not stuffing them back into cheap po
lyester blend. “What are you staring at?”

  “The girl I’ve wanted to be alone with since the first time I saw her.”

  What a line. “We were five.”

  “I would have let you play with my Legos all day.”

  She would never again see an ad for Legos without thinking about erecting Ben Fielder, and his widening grin suggested he knew it. “Buckle up, pervert.”

  “Anyone else would have to buy me dinner before I agreed to bondage.”

  File seat belts under the heading of dirty subjects, too.

  In the five minutes it took to drive him the rest of the way home while adhering to all state and local traffic laws, she discovered that when he applied himself, he could make even the most innocent comments about rental cars, football, and just about anything else that came out of his mouth sound absolutely filthy.

  She parked in the street in front of his mother’s house with the engine idling. No porch light on here. “Are you sure you can get in?”

  “Would you take me home with you if I said no?”

  Her insides her got sloppy at the thought of stretching out with him all the way for a whole night, but the reasons that had never happened still applied. “No, but I would lean on the horn until your mom opened the door to tell me to go to hell.”

  “At least you wouldn’t leave me to perish in the cold.”

  “It’s eighty-five degrees.”

  “Must be the chill of abandonment I feel.”

  She knotted her fingers in her lap to stop them from petting him and encouraging this melodrama. “If you take that sad story door to door, I’m sure a neighbor would take you in for the night.”

  “But I don’t want to heckle Mrs. Schofield to earn bed and breakfast.”

  “You should be so lucky. She’s gotten twice as stingy now that she’s on a fixed income. You’d have to heckle her extra for the breakfast, pretty boy. I hope you don’t have any carpal tunnel problems.”

  He shook the creepy-crawlies off his shoulders. “This is the third time tonight I’ve felt like I’m living a horror movie.”

  Tally tried for four. “Her parrot died.”

  “Couldn’t have happened to nicer hell spawn.”

  Captain Cracker, as the bird had been called, escaped from the house once, and a fleet-footed neighbor boy with good hands had been called upon to capture him. Ben would always bear the scar where the unappreciative fugitive had nearly bitten off his thumb when apprehended.

  “She had him stuffed. He’s perched on her headboard.”

  “There are better gifts than a lifetime subscription to the Nightmare of the Month Club, you know.”

  She’d been trying to bestow the gift of perspective. “Probably easier to deal with your mom than to seduce Dolores.”

  “Debatable. I have a key, I think. And if that doesn’t work, I know my way around the latch on my bedroom window.”

  After one hour with her, his shaggy hair stood out in tufts, he had come on his shirt, and he was talking about breaking and entering to sneak in after curfew. She had destroyed his virtue.

  He made an adorable degenerate.

  And he’d be gone in a few days.

  The warm bud in her chest withered. He wasn’t for her to keep this time, either, but she could have this moment, when he leaned across the seat and kissed her.

  Her mouth softened under the warmth of his. Only when completely pliant did she realize how much tension she carried in her lips, always keeping them clamped so nothing slipped out.

  She put everything into the kiss, holding him by the hair with both hands, trying to leave him with a decent memory of her, saying goodbye. You were always the best thing in my life. I’m sorry. If only I’d been half as good as you.

  Artificial-fruit-and-petroleum-byproduct flavor wasn’t so bad when administered via Ben’s mouth. When she let him go, his breath was labored again and she was resolutely not blinking. She managed a smile for his benefit — halfhearted but genuine, as far as it went.

  He thumbed her lower lip and whispered, “See you soon.”

  He collected his gas from the bed of the truck and was swallowed by the dark.

  Alone again, she made the short drive home. She let herself into the house and turned off the porch light. Her dad had gone to bed, so she didn’t have to worry he’d take one look at her, know exactly what had made her so late getting back, and go fetch his pellet gun.

  After stowing the milk in the fridge, she scrawled a note on the message board advising him of the bank balance so he wouldn’t suffer the indignity of insufficient funds before payday. The chalk hovered over the board for a good minute before she added Couldn’t afford pills to the bottom, letting him know the situation without telling him what to do about it. He would do whatever he had to do in order to get through tomorrow, no matter how much he hated the idea of the prescriptions.

  She collapsed onto her sagging bed but jackknifed upright before the springs had a chance to settle. She still had to do laundry.

  Exhaustion shoved her back down. No way. Not one more thing. Not tonight. She would just have to wear another one of her dad’s shirts tomorrow.

  Her body still thrummed from sex, little-used nerves resisting going back into hibernation, but they had no choice in the matter. That hour with Ben had been an aberration. Lack of money and sleep and time and goodness was her reality, her life, every day. Fantasies were for children who hadn’t yet learned they couldn’t have everything they wanted. Adults got by with what they had. Wanting what they didn’t have only made it harder to do without.

  If there was one thing Tally did well, it was without.

  Chapter 15

  A note propped against the coffee pot informed Ben that it was his mother’s poker night, so his plans for the evening shouldn’t include her. He wondered if poker night had changed from Thursday to Monday for some reason other than avoiding him, but he didn’t take it too personally. People other than his mother needed talking to today.

  He whistled in the shower after the bathroom mirror revealed a bruise on his shoulder and scratches on his flanks, little badges of honor declaring, I made Tally Castle come.

  He whistled on the drive to Sterling, fueled by one outlook-improving gallon of gas. He whistled while he topped off the tank at the gas station and headed across the street to the grocery store.

  By the time he made his way to the checkout counter, he’d toned it down to humming to himself in response to a couple of sour looks from customers who obviously didn’t know what an awesome day it was going to be, poor bastards.

  Officer Beaver fell in line behind him and eyeballed the items on the conveyor belt. “I take it you don’t need that gas anymore.”

  “I bummed a ride from a neighbor last night and got a gallon. If you’d been quicker, these could have been your thank-you steaks.”

  “You’d have to add an awful lot of thank-you booze before you got to use those thank-you condoms on me.”

  Heat rushed up Ben’s neck. He’d always been careful to keep Tally’s reputation from being dirtied along with his, which had been exaggerated beyond any resemblance to the truth in high school. She was a grown woman now, and he still cringed at exposing her to judgment. He’d rather Shane thought the helpful neighbor was Dolores Schofield and all the implications thereof.

  After a brief deliberation, he decided against lying to a cop. At least Shane wouldn’t be cracking jokes if he had any interest in Tally. “It’s always nice when a man wearing a gun is a good sport.”

  “I don’t have any claim on Tally.” Shane placed a Dutch apple pie and a four-pack of energy shots behind the divider bar. “Besides, time is on my side. You’ll be gone in a few days, and I’ll be right here, steady and reliable.”

  He obviously didn’t share Ben’s reluctance to hurt the feelings of a competing suitor, flat out declaring victory in the long run, confident he had the superior strategy.

  Ben suddenly understood the barbarism of jousts, duels, show
downs, and fistfights. When a man told you he intended to take what you valued most, he became the enemy, regardless of how long he’d been a friend prior to that moment.

  What kind of asshole bought stale supermarket pie instead of giving Tally’s bakery some much-needed business? He swung a metaphorical mastodon femur at the enemy’s skull. “How’s that divorce coming along?”

  Shane acknowledged the blow with a nod. “That problem will resolve itself, but likely not before you’re back in Seattle.”

  Ben stopped himself before maybe Tally will be there with me fell out of his mouth. She wouldn’t appreciate being the target in this pissing contest.

  But once in his head, the idea stuck for the entire drive to her house.

  He hadn’t woken up euphoric this morning because last night had gotten Tally out of his system.

  He ran into former girlfriends from time to time and had a variety of reactions, depending how ugly the relationship had ended, but he never felt the urge to reload after a crash and resume from the last good save point. When it was over, it was over. He didn’t cling and daydream about what might have been. He moved on — the sooner, the better.

  Tally was different, and not because she was the one who got away. They’d all gotten away. She wasn’t even the only one who’d left without an explanation, denying him closure.

  She was different because she was the one.

  Being near her again had healed something long injured in him. In the minutes between deciding to avoid her and lifting her garage door in a display of manly strength and usefulness, his broken heart had downgraded to a flesh wound, to a scratch, to no real harm done. Whatever had gone wrong before could be fixed. For her, he would buy a tie, get a haircut, remember to shave, be home for dinner every night, eat quinoa and kale, watch Say Yes to the Dress, give up Halo, change anything she wanted to become the man she needed him to be, and he wouldn’t resent it because he needed to be the man she stayed with.