by Maisey Yates
How was that for unfair?
“So, your method was just to not deal with it?”
“I’m a guy.”
“Sure. But you’re the guy that I usually talk to about everything. And something pretty big happened between us, and if we can’t talk about it then... I don’t have anyone else, Bennett. Which is why this was probably a really bad idea.” It was why confessing that she was in love with him was unthinkable. “We need to be able to deal with this. We need to be able to come to some kind of resolution. I can’t have it be an unspoken thing between us. I can’t have it be something that comes between us at all. Bennett, you’re my best friend. You were the first person who made me feel like there was some value in me. I’m not being dramatic. We moved all the time until we came here. Until I met you. And my parents cared more about the last drop of whiskey and a bottle than me. They still do. If it wasn’t for you, if it wasn’t for your family, I would probably be somewhere drowning in a pool of liquor and futile existence. All by myself just like them, because I would never have known that there was another life possible. Your family showed me that there could be something else. You showed me that. And you’ve been my closest friend ever since. I will be damned if sex messes that up.”
“Kaylee, nothing could mess us up,” he said, those dark eyes so serious and honest it made her breath catch. “We’re bigger than one night. We’re long summer nights out at the ball field watching cheesy minor league games and eating stale pretzels. We’re cold winter nights around a Christmas tree, and cool spring morning trail rides up a mountain. One night of sex in a truck could never erase all those nights. Ever. It’s a new night, the kind we’ve never had before, I know that. But it doesn’t undo all that history.”
“But it feels like it could,” she said, feeling small and fragile. She closed her eyes, emotion welling up in her chest. “I just can’t stand the idea that...that I was thinking about this. All night, all day and...if it didn’t matter to you I couldn’t stand it. Being that wrong about it. It reminds me...” Her face got hot and scratchy. “It reminds me of when we moved here.”
He looked at her, his face turning to stone. Like he was bracing himself for a blow.
“It’s not that bad,” she said quickly. “It was me being stupid. It’s just...where we lived before, I had this friend who had...my dream bedroom. It was all frills and lace and a canopy bed. I loved it. But I could never say that. I always...pretended I hated that stuff.”
She swallowed hard, her throat dry. Bennett reached out and grasped her hand, and it made her want to cry. She wished he wouldn’t touch her. But she didn’t have the strength to pull away either.
“When my parents said we were moving and getting a new house, and I was getting a new room...I somehow thought... I just thought maybe somehow...it would be that room. That there would be a new bed in it, and the wallpaper would have flowers. That I’d have a canopy. Really, I thought...I could move and be different.” She blinked heavily. “I’ll never forget opening the door, and the room was empty. And then they brought up my same mattress. The same ugly blanket. It wasn’t new. And neither was I.”
“Kay,” Bennett said, his voice rough. He pulled her into his arms, up against his chest. “I had no idea.”
“It wasn’t the missing lace and canopy. It wasn’t that the walls were oatmeal and not flowers.” Though that was some of it. “It was feeling so stupid over hoping like that, and being so wrong. I couldn’t stand it if this ruined us and I was so lost in the feeling good that I missed it.” She closed her eyes. “I couldn’t stand being so wrong about us.”
“No, honey,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I couldn’t think about what happened last night because I had to get through this morning in front of my kid without an X-rated film playing in my head. But it...it matters to me. You matter to me.”
“What if this gets all messed up? What if we mess this up?”
“Then we’ll make a plan. We’ll make a plan and be damn sure we don’t mess it up.”
That was her Bennett. He wanted plans of action. He wanted to control the situation by laying out the details of what would happen next. And what wouldn’t.
And she was just...willing to let him. Because she had no idea what she wanted to do with this. She knew what she felt. But she didn’t know what was possible. For her. For them. And the unknown of it all terrified her.
If she could just let go and let Bennett be confident for the both of them then that might actually work for her.
She wouldn’t have to take the risks. She wouldn’t have to make the choices.
A pushy move, maybe. But she was feeling a bit wimpy. So, there it was.
“What do you suggest?”
“I enjoyed last night,” he said, his dark eyes serious on hers. “I mean that. But I would never take what happened for granted. I would never assume that it was going to happen again. You don’t owe me a damn thing, Kaylee. And you don’t ever have to feel like we need to do that to keep my friendship.”
She frowned. “Why would I think that about you?”
“I just want to make sure that’s clear.”
“It’s clear,” she said, “because I know you. If you had wanted to use me for sex you would have done it a long time ago.”
“That was before. I just want to make sure you know that I would never hold anything over your head.”
“Bennett,” she said, “if I thought you would do that, then you threatening to take away your friendship wouldn’t be so much of a threat. Because I wouldn’t want to be your friend. I know that you aren’t going to expect anything from me. You don’t need to go over-the-top knight in shining armor here.”
“Okay. Then I want to do it again.”
The words hit her like a punch to the gut.
“You do?” That whole time he had been justifying and protesting so much she had assumed that he wouldn’t want to go there again.
“Yes,” he said. “I should have gone after you last night. But I let Dallas being at the house serve as an excuse for putting this off. Because I knew once wouldn’t be enough, and I wasn’t ready to figure out what that meant. Then this morning I had to put it out of my mind for a little while. I had to deal with Dallas and when I think about us...” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, his throat working up and down. “It’s all I can think about. The way that it felt. Kaylee...” He opened his eyes, the uncertainty in them clashing with the desire in her.
“I didn’t get to see you,” he continued. “Not really. And I want to.” He closed some of the distance between them, reaching out and cupping her cheek. “You’ve been my friend for a long damn time. And I’d be lying if I said I never thought of you as a woman.”
“You...you would be?”
“I know you’re a woman. And lately... I don’t know if it’s just because of everything that’s been happening in my life, or if it’s just inevitable.”
She wasn’t sure she liked either excuse. That his desire for her was the result of the chaos in his world. But she realized it didn’t really matter what reason he gave her. It only mattered what reason he gave himself that he could handle right now.
“I want to see you,” he said, his voice like gravel. “Your body.”
“What parts of it?” She almost cringed when she spoke the words, but instead, she managed to school her face into some kind of bland expression. Just bland enough that she could stand by those words. Maybe they were sexy, maybe they weren’t. She wasn’t sure she knew how to be sexy. She knew how to be tough. She knew how to act like things didn’t matter. But this moment mattered. She wanted to be...something other than what he was used to her being. Something other than his capable sidekick, his trusty business partner. A woman who could fix the fence and throw a punch and beat some of the guys down at Gold Valley Saloon at arm wrestling. A woman who couldn’t wear high heels with most
of the men in town because she would tower over them.
She wanted more of what he had made her feel last night.
And so she waited. Waited until the expression in his dark eyes turned sharp. Until she could see that he was tugging at the edge of his control.
His face, that gorgeous face that had been so familiar to her for so many years, suddenly looked foreign to her. Like a stranger. There was a ferocity there, an edge that had certainly never been directed at her. And it made her shiver all the way down deep in her belly and between her legs. Made her want in ways she’d never thought possible.
“I want to see if your nipples match your lips, Kaylee,” he said, his voice going deeper, resonating inside of her. “I want to see those pretty red curls between your legs. And then I want to see all of you. I want to spread you wide and see how pink you are. That’s what I want. I want to taste you and take my time. And I want to watch your face when I make you come. Knowing full well that I’m the only man who’s ever done it. That’s what I want. Do you think you can handle that?”
She had no damned idea if she could handle that. She thought she might melt to the floor. Hearing Bennett say things like that to her. Explicit things, dark things that called to gloriously erotic places inside of her she hadn’t known she possessed.
Dark erotic thoughts that she hadn’t been aware Bennett had possessed.
That was the most shocking thing. Standing there, having him look at her like she was something delicious he wanted to eat. Having him say those explicit things. Bennett. Her Bennett, who was everything good and restrained and steady in her world, knocking it off its axis with a few filthy words.
She had known that he was sexy. She had known that she wanted him. But she hadn’t known that he would be...like this.
And she really hadn’t known that she would respond to it. That was the funny thing. She had fantasized about Bennett. A lot. And being with him last night had been incredible. But this...this was something else entirely.
Having her friend stand there in front of her and look at her like a lover. A stranger and a friend all at the same time. The man she knew but more.
Something about it was almost more erotic than what had come before.
“I want to have you in my bed,” he said, his voice rough. “All night. That would be something.”
Something a lot like panic fluttered in her breast. “Well, you can’t. Because of Dallas.”
“I know. I just wanted to make sure you knew that I would. That I wanted it.”
She wanted it too. To be between the sheets with him. On a mattress. Another thing that seemed so intimate. Another thing that—in spite of their close friendship—they had never shared. Obviously. A bed.
She had been in his bedroom just to hang out. Ever since they were teenagers, she had been in his room. She had sat on the edge of his bed. She had never been in bed with him.
She ached for that. For that casual intimacy that would come from something like that. Casual and heavy all at the same time.
But it was also relationship stuff. And...
Given everything—her feelings, his situation—it was a dangerous idea.
Bennett was her very best friend. And now, he was her very best sex. She just needed to keep everything in its own neat little box.
To put the sex in one place, and the friendship in another. To keep everything from becoming too big. Too unmanageable.
Hoping for anything more was hoping for that bedroom all over again.
She didn’t think she could put herself through that again.
And so she would have this. Another Bennett compartment in her life. Friend Bennett, and sexual Bennett. That seemed...good. Whatever it was, it was more of him. And that could never be a bad thing.
“So...”
“We’ll work it out,” he cut her off. “As soon as possible. I’ve got to be inside you again.” Her cheeks went bonfire hot, and Bennett’s lips curved up into a smile. “Did I make you blush, Kaylee?”
“Yes,” she said. “You’re being dirty.”
“Why do I get the feeling that you like me dirty.”
“I do,” she said, the words coming out a whisper, even though she hadn’t meant for them to.
“More fun for me,” he said.
“Suddenly...I’m very curious.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“It’s the weirdest thing. I’ve known you since we were thirteen. But I don’t know about this part of you.”
He wrapped his arm around her, pinning one arm behind her back, grabbing hold of her wrist with his other hand, and then he pressed her palm to the front of his jeans. He was hard. For her.
“This part of me?”
“Yes,” she said, rubbing him through the denim. “But not just that.”
There was no guidebook for having a conversation with your best friend while you had your hand on his dick.
Maybe she would have to write it when all this was said and done.
“What else?”
“We talk about a lot of things. But not really about sex. I told you about the guy I lost it to when I was seventeen.”
“Oh, the minuteman?”
She laughed, which seemed absurd when she was touching him so intimately. Or maybe with Bennett it was just right. “Yes. The minuteman. You made me feel better about how horrendous it was.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“But we don’t talk about our sex lives much at this point and I... I’ve certainly never seen you...being sexual before all this. It’s... I have a lot of questions.”
“Go ahead and ask.”
“What do you like? How many women have you been with?”
He grimaced. “You don’t go easy.”
“I never have.” Truthfully, she’d had these questions before, but they had been kind of an amorphous blob of sexual wonderment. Now it was... A lot more concrete. Because of those words he had just spoken to her. Words that indicated the depth and need in him that she hadn’t fully appreciated before.
Really, she was just so fully confronted with the fact that he was a man. And everything that meant.
Also, she was confronted with how limited her own sexual experiences had been. All the sex she had ever had had been—in many ways—about Bennett Dodge. Trying to forget him. Trying to want someone else. They hadn’t taken the time to really explore each other. Hadn’t spent a lot of time discussing what she liked. And she hadn’t really cared what they liked.
Not really.
She wanted to know everything about Bennett. Every vaguely dirty thought he’d ever had. What it might mean. What she could do to be the fulfillment of it.
“Right now it’s safe to say I like you,” he said.
“Right now,” she said, ignoring the pain in her chest and trying to smile.
“The evidence is in your hand.”
“So it is.”
“And how many... I don’t readily know. Not that many, but enough that I kind of stopped counting.”
“Well,” she felt perturbed, “that’s a fuzzy number.”
“How many men have you been with, Kay?” His tone was gentle, but there was an underlying note of steel that made her feel electrified. She couldn’t quite explain it.
“Four,” she said easily. “That’s including you.”
“That’s it?”
She shrugged. “I told you. Sex hasn’t been all that mind-blowing for me in the past.”
“You’ve dated a hell of a lot more men than that.”
She shrugged. “Yeah. But I’m choosy.”
“I suppose if I asked what you liked...”
“You. Right now.”
He smiled. “Touché.”
“Bennett, you’ve always had a
plan. And I’ve always gone along with that plan. It’s never steered me wrong. It’s why I graduated high school. Went to college. It’s why I have a career. What’s the plan here? I need to know.”
Bennett tightened his hold on her. “We get each other through. Until a new plan comes along.”
She could do that. Even if it made her heart feel like it was cracking in her chest. This was more of him than she’d ever thought she’d have.
The sound of a horse whinnying outside broke the moment. Bennett released his hold on her and took a step back. As if he just remembered that there was someone else on the property. It was a good thing he remembered, because she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all.
“I should... I guess I have to get to work,” he said.
“Me too. I closed the clinic.”
“To come down here and yell at me?”
“In fairness, I closed it so that I could go get a burger. At least, that was my intention. Then I started thinking about you, and I got mad at you.”
“And I owe you a hamburger, don’t I?”
“A hamburger and an orgasm.” She grinned at him, gratified when his jaw went tense, his eyes looking deeply interested. “Tonight then?”
He winced. “I just remembered that I promised Wyatt that Dallas and I would have dinner over there tonight. But I bet if I call ahead I can arrange for it to be burgers. Do you want to come over to the ranch for dinner?”
She should have known that she wasn’t getting a dinner date out of Bennett. Not with the way things were for him right now. And actually, she didn’t really care. She loved Get Out of Dodge. She loved Bennett’s family. There was no downside to spending the evening with them.
“All right,” she said.
“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll share dinnertime with you. But after dinner is all mine.”
Her heart fluttered at the very intentional promise in his voice. “Okay.” Lordy. She sounded like a silly high school girl fluttering over her first date.
