by Alam, Donna
‘Only, we’re not kids anymore, are we?’ The husky tone of his voice sends shivers shimmering across my skin, turning my nipples to hard points beneath the worn cotton of my scrubs.
‘Stop, Ben. Just . . . just don’t do that.’
‘You’ll have to be more specific.’ With his sharp diction, it almost sounds like a command.
‘Don’t get cocky with me,’ I retort.
‘There was a Freudian slip if I ever heard one.’
I suddenly want to lick that smirk off his face. Yeah, lick, not smack. Lick it slowly, backward and forward, like a delicious lolly.
‘You can’t keep doing this. What happened to nice Ben? Where did he go?’
‘I can be nice, Nell. Like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘You’ve barely been here a week, and already, you’re affecting my blood pressure as it is.’ God, I sound like a scold. And old, dried-up scold.
‘You affect more than my blood pressure,’ I think he says to the ceiling. As he lowers his head, he looks resigned. ‘I was doing laundry, and that’s it. You were the one perving.’
‘I’d been grocery shopping,’ I answer, drawing the words out as though I’m speaking to an imbecile. Why do I sound like I’m twelve?
‘You definitely got more than you bargained for,’ he replies with a smirk.
‘I sure did.’ My retort is very uncomplimentary. And disingenuous because, hello, hottie alert!
‘You didn’t clear your throat or make a fuss. You were as quiet as a mouse as you watched.’ I open my mouth to protest, to tell him he’s wrong, but I can’t. Because he’s not wrong at all. ‘Admit it, Nell. I saw your reflection in the window.’
‘I . . . I . . .’ Want the floor to open and swallow me whole. Busted. So busted. I was staring, and it was wrong. Yes, it was also wrong for him to expect privacy in a kitchen—the heart of any home—but more the careless kind of wrong, not the moral kind. Like stumbling in on someone getting undress without announcing your presence. Oh my God. I’m perverted.
‘Good job I like being watched.’
Out of the thousand things I would ordinarily say, a thousand responses more typical of me, I find myself taking a chance. Treading a different path. A path that’s sure to leave me a little bruised and broken but one I can’t resist.
Chapter 8
BEN
‘W-what else do you like?’
Not in a month of Sundays could I have anticipated her answer. But as Granny Catherine used to say, you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
‘I like it . . . rough.’ A jolt of something pure and exhilarating sweeps through my insides as, from the other side of the kitchen, Nell’s gaze flares.
‘What kind of rough?’ she asks, her voice a little ragged around the edges.
I swallow deeply, trying to keep my mind on this moment and away from the familiar images in my head. Where she’s under me. Where her nails are scoring the skin of my back, my mouth on her breast. She asked, so I’ll tell her, even if I only imagine her doing those things.
‘I like to be bitten. Scratched. I’d like to hold you down.’ Tease and torture you until your throat is hoarse from calling my name. My eyes travel over her face and down the elegant column of her neck. I bet her skin would taste so sweet there. I can feel myself stiffening under the tea-towel I’d pressed haphazardly to my groin in deference to her modesty, and there’s fuck all I can do about it. Truthfully, I want her to see. I’d shock her onto her knees if I could.
‘I can’t believe we’re standing in the kitchen talking about this,’ she murmurs, bringing a hand to her face.
‘This? About sex, you mean? Honestly, I’ve had a chub in stranger places than this.’ True story. ‘Often when I’m thinking about you.’ Somehow, the one thing she picks up in my confession is the ridiculousness.
‘A chub?’ she asks, her brows drawing in.
‘A semi,’ I add, though her expression stays the same. Adorably unsure. ‘A partial hard-on,’ I qualify, and as Nell’s mouth falls open and her gaze dips south, I realise the it’s not quite a semi anymore. As her gaze snaps back to mine, her cheeks are wonderfully flushed. ‘You thought I was kidding.’ Jesus, her expression. Has no one ever been forthright with her? Whispered dirty things in her ear while sunk so deep she doesn’t know where she ends or begins, or called her up just to say they couldn’t wait to get their tongue on her?
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ she chastises. ‘Of course, I thought you were kidding. You’ve done nothing else since you arrived. You have my head spinning.’
I like the sound of that. Nell, dizzy on me.
‘I never joke about my dick,’ I reply. Fuck it all to hell, this girl makes me feel a little unhinged. Makes me want to tell her things, and not just the dirty things I have in mind for her body but real things. Feelings and shit.
When I get back from a tour, I’m always a little desperate to rut and fuck where, God forgive me, a girl is less than a hookup and little more than a receptacle. But this time, I don’t feel the same. I’m not the same animal, hungry for the blind ecstasy of a warm body and a release. I still hunger but only for her. She brings out the boy in me, the boy who wants to fuck with her, but she also brings out the man who wants to kiss her for hours, who wants to spread her out under him, to drag his tongue the length of her body just to learn all her sounds. So yeah, she brings out the man who wants to fuck her, too. God, how I want her. I want to be inside her more than I can remember ever wanting anything.
‘Come here.’ I hold out my hand, gesturing her closer as my heart hammers in my chest. In answer, she shakes her head, her eyes seeming a little dazed.
‘Come on. Trust me.’
‘Says the wolf in no clothing,’ she whispers, addressing her words to the vicinity of my crotch.
‘I have only good intentions, I promise.’
‘Yeah, but which of us are those intentions good for?’
I close my eyes for a beat. She really doesn’t have a very high opinion of me.
‘Please,’ I ask softly. ‘I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.’
‘It’s not your hands I’m worried about,’ she replies with a frown. A beat later, I realise she’s crossing the room, and a thrill courses through my veins. The object of my teenage fantasies, here in the flesh, drawing closer . . . and closer. ‘Just remember,’ she says, stepping over the spilled apples. ‘I know how to use a scalpel.’
My deep burst of deep laughter surprises us both, and then she’s there, in front of me, her chin tipped upwards, her dark amused gaze suddenly boldly holding mine. For all the quirk of her brow and the hand she props on her hip, the pulse tripping in her neck belies what’s going on in her mind.
‘Closer,’ I murmur, holding out my hand.
‘All the better for you to see me?’
‘I don’t just want to look at you. I want to get my teeth on you.’ Her eyes flare, but she warily lets me take her hand, and as I pull her against my side, those dark eyes flick unconsciously down my body again. ‘You’re allowed to look,’ I whisper, making to move the tiny towel.
‘No, stop,’ she begins quickly. Her soft pink lips open in shock, and it takes every ounce of my restraint not tilt my head and press my lips to hers. Instead, take her hand. It’s strange how pleasurable just holding her hand can be. I couldn’t have done this when we were kids. She wouldn’t have allowed it, firstly. But now? Now she’s looking at me. Seeing me. Oaky, seeing quite a bit of me.
‘Did you engineer this whole naked in the kitchen thing just to—’
‘No, but I think it’s only fair that you get to see my backside after I shoved snails down your bikini bottoms just so I could get a peek of yours.’
‘You were a little pervert,’ she says, trying to take back her hand, not that I’ll let her.
‘And now I’m a big pervert.’ I pause before carrying on. ‘I still dream about you, you know.’
‘Ben, stop,’ she says softly. ‘Maybe you shouldn�
�t say those things.’
‘Even when they’re true? When I’m cooped up in some desert shithole, and I need cheering up, I just have to close my eyes and conjure you up.’ Before she can speak or pull away, I place her palm over my heart. ‘Shush.’ My eyes fall closed, and I tip my head back. ‘Feel here. Feel what you do to me.’
I inhale and release a deep breath as I press Nell closer to my side. The day I’d arrived, while standing at the doorstep, I’d desperately wanted to pick her up and spin her around. I know it’s been years, and that I barely know her, but I feel like I’ve already lived half a lifetime with her. In our childhoods. My dreams.
As she coughs—a delicate clearing of her throat—I open my eyes. ‘I can also see,’ she whispers.
‘See what?’ I ask a little distractedly.
‘I can see what having me close does to you.’ And my heart almost stops as her gaze dips, and her hands moves.
Chapter 9
PENNY
Ben inhales a sharp breath when I trail my fingers down his chest and over the hard, ridged planes of his stomach, air stuttering from his chest as I graze the trail of downy hair. The refrigerator hums and birdsong and sunlight spills in through the open window at our backs, but as I tug on the towel and Ben exhales a long curse, I’m aware of nothing else but him. Still, I can’t quite believe I’m doing this, but I tell myself the fabric isn’t really concealing anything. Not the way it tents.
Of course, I’m curious. Curious to see if my fleeting glimpse was correct. Curious to touch him. To taste. Or maybe I’m just going mad. Maybe sleep deprivation has finally driven me over the edge. So much for my hiatus from men. But looking doesn’t mean—
‘Oh, my,’ I whisper. I wasn’t seeing things earlier. ‘You’re definitely not little Ben anymore.’
‘I was never really—’
He gasps again as I draw my fingers across his length, from root to tip, muttering a harsh fuck as my thumb rubs his silken head. As I take his hard cock into my hand, I’m not sure where I want to look most—at the straining veins and vulgar beauty I hold in my hand, or maybe his face as his sharp breaths disturb the curls on my head. As I chance a look up, I know I’ve made the right choice. I don’t think I’ve ever had a man look like this at the result of my touch.
The mixture of agony and ecstasy, of rapture and relief.
But what of the right choice? What does that mean to me? Ben groans, my thoughts falling away like October leaves as I tighten my grasp, the sounds that he makes almost unravelling.
‘Harder,’ he grunts. ‘I like it hard.’
He groans again as my grasp tightens. His next breath is a long, measured exhale. Maybe the result of my hand on him or maybe preparing himself for what he does next. His index finger tips my chin, his eyes searching every inch of my face as though making sure this is real. As close as we were, he dips his head, and at that moment, we’re kissing. Soft, tentative lips and little gasps. I’ve never been this close to him ever, not physically. I’ve never noticed the gold in his green eyes, or the tiny scar just under in his lash line.
It seems there are so many things I didn’t see in Ben.
‘Don’t stop.’ The raspy sound is more breath than words, but did he say it or did I? Not that it matters because I can’t stop, greedy for more as I press my lips firmly against his as I continue to explore the weight in my hand. I can smell the mint of his toothpaste and what smells suspiciously like my shampoo as need builds in my veins, demanding I seek more. More kisses, more sensation, more Ben. Then I seem to have a stroke of genius as I suck his bottom lip into my mouth, releasing it only to sink my teeth into the soft flesh.
His responding moan is taut and desperate, his body seeming to vibrate with restraint. A restraint that’s as tenuous as my previous resolve as he moves so quickly, the kitchen counter is at my back.
‘I’ve wanted this—you—forever,’ he growls, feeding his hands into my hair. ‘Tell me I can have you. Tell me I’m not dreaming still.’
‘Ben . . . ’ I’m not sure what the answer is supposed to be, but I hate how pathetically needy I sound. This might be the worst idea in the world, but as his thumbs stroke a path along my cheekbones, all thoughts of right or wrong dissolves. Maybe my answer is written in my expression or my fingertips, or maybe he makes the decision for me as he bends his head to kiss me again, deeper and wetter. His hands remain in my hair, his body and elegant arc over me.
‘For the longest time,’ he whispers into the kiss, using his thumbs raise my head to give him access to my jaw. ‘You in your pyjamas, your nipples hard under the worn cotton, your arse hanging out of the shorts. It’s a wonder I didn’t go blind from touching myself.’
‘Pervert,’ I rasp out, my smile directed at the ceiling as his kisses work along my jaw and neck, his stubble abrading every inch of my skin.
Suddenly, Ben spins me to face the window, my hands slapping the countertop as he grabs my hips in his hands, feeding one up my body to grasp the nape of my neck. ‘That’s right, sweetheart. I’m the biggest fucking pervert as far as you’re concerned.’ As though to emphasise the point, he flexes his hips, pushing his bare cock against my ass. ‘This arse has taunted me many a night,’ he rasps, his mouth a whisper from my ear. ‘Kept me awake. Kept me hard.’
I don’t have an answer beyond the rapid sound of my breath and the thudding of my heart banging against the countertop. I grasp blindly behind me, though trying to grab what piece of him I’m unsure. All I know is I need him closer, harder, more.
‘Shush, sweetheart,’ he rasps. I hadn’t realised I was making any noise and thought the chant of please, please, please was just an echo in my head. ‘Soon.’ His mouth moves from my ear in hot biting kisses down my neck just as his hand lifts from my hip to my front, pushing between the softness of my belly and the hard edge of the counter. Ben fumbles with the waist tie of my scrubs, giving up almost as quick to begin feeding the hem of my top up my spine instead. If I wasn’t concerned about the window, the daylight, and potential gawping neighbours, I think I might be now. At least, until my top comes up over my head.
I pull it from my arms, moving the curls from my cheeks as his lips find the slope of skin between my shoulder and neck. His lips, then his teeth. Oh, God, who knew it could feel like this. My legs almost give out as my insides explode in a succession of tiny sensory fireworks.
Holy fuck, I’ve never been bitten. No wonder he likes it.
‘I need you, Ben.’ My voice sounds hoarse as I reach around, definitely trying to grasp his cock this time.
Everything stills—his hands on my body, his lips on my skin. Everything except my heart, that is, as it stutters as cool air touches my skin. He’s moving, pulling away. He draws my body up from the countertop, his hand at the crook of my elbow as he turns me. I’m almost frightened to look at him as he pushes the wildness from my face, tipping my chin.
‘Say it again,’ he says. Not a whisper or a demand. The sun behind me brightens the flecks of gold in his gaze. ‘Say it again. Say it for me, Nell.’
‘I need you,’ I whisper.
‘Now I know I’m not dreaming because those are words I never imagined you saying.’ His long fingers hold my face as he leans closer, a press of lips against lips, the feel of his cock against my hip—something I can’t ignore as he kisses me thoroughly, tenderly, a kiss of passion and care.
His whole body appears to tremble as he pulls back, his eyes wide open and reflecting my own face. Ben’s hands move from my face down my neck, his long fingers spanning my collarbone. His left pinkie finger finds the beauty mark near my shoulder, and for some reason, this makes him smile. His large hands move farther over my shoulder, sliding the straps of my plain cotton bra down my arms.
His fingers move from my arm, pushing into the soft cup of my bra as a groan escapes me, husky and desperate, my nipple pebbling under the attentions of his thumb.
‘Hello, old friends,’ his deep voice rasps.
‘My breast
s aren’t your friends, Ben.’ I try for chastisement, though fall short, coming off as girlish and flattered instead.
‘Shush, you’ll hurt their feelings,’ he mumbles, not looking up from where he takes the fullness into his hands as though they have the capacity to be offended or are in need of his protection. ‘Me and these beauties go way back. I remember the year they arrived.’ To emphasise the point, he flicks my nipple with the very point of his tongue, staring up at me through those thick lashes with a look that borders on depraved.
If it’s possible, my nipples stiffen further.
‘You do not,’ I retort a stutter and a little too late.
‘You were seventeen,’ he murmurs, sliding his hands behind me to loosen my functional bra. Without issue.
My cheeks heat at a sudden deluge of memories—the things I googled and subsequently did, all in an effort to get them to grow. As far as cup sizes go, I was barely filling espresso cup for the longest while. How could he even have—
‘They were pretty fucking gorgeous before, perky and so friendly.’
‘Really?’ I scoff, a little embarrassed, a little thrilled, and a lot turned on.
‘So perky they were apt to make their presence known through your T-shirt in the cool kitchen.’
‘You little—’
He quirks a brow as though to say, little? Not even then. ‘But the year you turned seventeen,’ he continues, ‘they were like, hello!’
‘My face is up here, you know,’ I reply, my words coming out as a carefree chuckle.
‘Just give us a moment.’
‘Us?’ I tease. ‘They’re just tissue and subcutaneous—’ My protests halt, words replaced by a carnal groan as Ben lowers his head, bending to suck one stiff nipple into his mouth.
