Ben nodded his thanks. He backed out, amid a chorus of awws and party pooper, then found the first-aid room and went in. Mazie was standing at a sink, dabbing at her knees with a wet paper towel. She looked up when he came in, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“You were amazing,” Ben burst out.
She flashed a smile, the first genuine smile she’d given him in what felt like years.
“I kind of amazed myself.”
“Let me take a look at those knees.” Ben was used to injuries. He mopped up the cuts and bruises on his own team, he’d taken sports medicine courses, and he’d even briefly considered going to med school before it had occurred to him it wouldn’t do his patients any good if he fainted every time he had to give someone a flu booster. Needles were his kryptonite.
Mazie sat down on a chair, attempting to keep her torn blouse closed but failing to conceal the fact that she was wearing a lacy black brassiere. She had exquisite breasts, surprisingly full for someone her size. Ben remembered the exact size and shape of those breasts, the perfect way they fit into his hands, how her nipples hardened at his touch. His heart thudded so violently that it pressed against his lungs and he found it hard to breathe.
“You need to take off those fishnet things,” he croaked, dry-mouthed.
“Turn around.”
He wasn’t capable of taking his eyes off her. “Maybe I should help.”
“I can manage.” She warned him off with a look, scooted her butt up off the chair, reached under for the waistband, and peeled the stockings down her legs. He kept getting flashes of her black panties. Peel, flash, peel, flash …
It was as though he’d never seen a woman undressing before. The slow revelation of sweet, bare thigh flesh was unbearably erotic. Ben thought he might faint because every corpuscle of blood was surging from his brain to his Mr. Happy.
Mazie rolled the stockings down to her ankles but—this was typical Mazie and explained why he always beat her at chess—she hadn’t taken off her skates first.
“Here, let me.” Trying not to let her see that his hands were shaking, taking a mental plunge into the coldest, iciest pond he could conjure out of his Canadian childhood, Ben began working on the skate laces. Finally he had them undone and pulled off the skates, furtively inhaling. Even Mazie’s foot sweat was sexy.
“Okay, now we have to—” Looking up, Ben caught the full blue blaze of her eyes, and lost his train of thought. “Uhh … clean the wounds.”
He walked over to the sink, wondering how obvious the bulge in his jeans was. When his dad had subjected him to the Lecture at age twelve, he’d given a scarlet-faced Ben some advice on hiding inopportune erections: jam your fists in your pockets and press down, carry your textbooks at crotch level, make it go away by thinking of something gross like a dead skunk.
It was definitely dead skunk time. Maggots crawling over matted fur, glands stinking, ants crawling over eyeballs, intestines spilling out … by the time he’d pictured the dead skunk to the point where he felt sick to his stomach, Ben had ransacked the cupboard, found what he needed, and temporarily subdued the beast.
Crouching in front of Mazie, he unwrapped a packet of antiseptic wipes. He began dabbing at her knees, starting with the right one, which was so badly scraped that serous fluid was seeping out.
“Sorry,” Ben said, risking a look up at Mazie. “This must hurt.”
He’d caught her gazing at him. She quickly looked away. “It’s okay,” she mumbled.
Resisting the ridiculous urge to kiss her knees—and glimpsing the black triangle, which started up the seismic activity all over again—Ben applied gauze pads and taped them down with athletic tape. Finally the job was finished. To prolong the contact, Ben added some clips to stabilize the tape—completely nonessential, but it made the bandaging look professional and might impress Mazie.
“Let’s look at the rest of you,” Ben said. Her other knee wasn’t as bad and just needed some salve. Her cheek was scratched, and her bottom lip was a bit puffy.
“Your lip is swollen,” Ben said, staring at her mouth. It was a beautiful mouth, the upper lip full and sharply bowed, the lower lip fuller and slightly pouty, a mouth made to be kissed. Why hadn’t he taken advantage of it more often back when that was still possible?
Lips were jam-packed with neurons, Ben recalled from his medical courses. There were more sensory neurons on the lips than anywhere else in the body. Stimulus to lips increased the flow of blood to the pleasure centers of the brain.
He had to do it; he was helpless against the urge. Leaning in, keeping his hands on the arms of the chair, he touched Mazie’s lips with his. A mere brush, a tickle, a Hello, I’m here. A pause, eye contact, a beat long enough for their pheromones to mingle, have wild, passionate sex on the beach, and produce offspring. Then a longer, lingering kiss that deepened into an open-mouthed kiss with twining tongues, the kiss of two people who, as a cruel punishment, had been deprived of kissing. Lips only, no other parts of their bodies touching, the most erotic kiss Ben had ever experienced and all the more arousing because it was illicit; they were no longer a couple; they were not supposed to be doing this.
Without quite being aware of it, both of them slowly rose, lips to lips, and now their bodies clung, pressed together like drunks holding each other up. He was drunk, Ben thought—drunk with love and longing. He wove one hand through Mazie’s hair and pulled her toward him. Her hair was wet with sweat and that was erotic, too—why did women ever wash their hair? Mazie clamped her hands on his ass and pulled him to her, making him gasp with pleasure, turning him to granite, and he was afraid that for the first time since he’d been a teenager, he was going to jump the gun.
Ben took a ragged breath to get himself under control. He tugged Mazie’s ripped blouse down, exposing her shoulder, kissing the sweet vulnerable flesh just below her collarbone—he’d forgotten how he adored her shoulders—bird-wing bony and plump at the same time. He ripped her blouse all the way open, roughly thrust up her brassiere, cupped her breasts in his hands. Mazie’s breasts—God is in his heaven! He stroked and kneaded and thumbed her nipples, and when Mazie moaned in pleasure, a bolt of heat shot straight to his balls. He had to have her, right here, right now—right on that cot covered with trusses and wrist braces.
“Ben, I’m not sure this is such a—”
He stopped her objections with an open-mouthed kiss. Do it first, worry about consequences later: the guy credo. Scooping her up into his arms, he carried her over to the cot, swept all the medical gear off, and set her down. He had her undies off in seconds, and she was so incredibly gorgeous—skirt up around her waist, breasts bare, that he couldn’t breathe. But who needed to breathe, anyway? Just so long as the important gear worked.
He should lock the door, but that would take precious seconds; this was much too urgent. He let his hands roam over her, and when she moaned he had to clench his jaw and exert every ounce of willpower to slow down because he wanted to make it good for her. He moved his hands across her stomach, along her silken thighs. He kissed her swollen lips, then moved his hand between her legs, discovering that she was wet and waiting. He stroked her clitoris as she arched herself against his hand, panting and making small moaning noises that drove him insane with need. Kneeling by the side of the cot, he unbuckled his belt, slid his jeans and shorts down to his knees, and freed his penis.
“Ben,” she breathed.
He’d wanted to say things to her, tell her how he’d missed her, how he adored her, how she was the only woman for him, but he let his hands speak for him, teasing and nudging and caressing, trying to control himself as she writhed and gasped beneath him. At the moment he sensed she was about to explode, he entered her in one hard stroke, knowing he was only seconds away from climaxing. He tried to slow down, but his body wasn’t taking orders from his brain, and he continued to thrust. Now he could feel her clenching around him, and she was convulsing, her voice hoarse as she cried out, and it was so good so good so good
oh God so sweet, so searing, so unbearable, rocking his entire body, taking him beyond pleasure into ecstasy and for a brief moment into oblivion.
Afterward they were both quiet for a moment as they caught their breath, chests heaving. A pile of elastic truss boxes collapsed onto Ben’s shoulder. He shifted to take his weight off Mazie, noticing that her neck and chest were flushed and her pupils were dilated. It was the way her body responded to an orgasm. Ben pulled out, feeling extremely pleased with himself, hoping he’d given her a fraction of the pleasure she’d given him. His brain reasserted control and he recalled that he’d intended to say something important. “Mazie,” he began, “I—”
There was a knock on the door, a man’s voice. “Mazie,” someone called. “Are you in there?”
“Oh, God! Get dressed!” Mazie yanked her skirt down and her shirt up. Ben pulled his pants up and tried to zip his zipper, which pinched his penis, which hadn’t yet gotten the memo that they were closing up shop.
The door burst open. Ben snatched up Mazie’s panties and stuffed them in his pocket.
A man walked into the room and stared around, blinking stupidly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The intruder had a round, cherubic face, a loopy smile, and a haircut so bad, it made Ben’s own unruly hair look designer-trimmed. A pair of specs dangled crookedly from his nose. He was peering around nearsightedly, trying to adjust his glasses, because it hadn’t seemed to register that he was seeing two very guilty-looking people who were still pulling on their clothes.
Whoever this numbnuts was, he’d just interrupted the most important speech of Ben’s life and needed to be killed; it was the only reasonable response. “Who the hell are you?” he growled.
“Lester Pfister.” The man blew on his glasses, rubbed them on his jacket sleeve, and put them back on. “I’m Mazie’s date.”
“You’re joking.”
Mazie rounded on Ben. “It’s not a joke, Ben.” She limped over and stood next to the sap, as though to protect him. “Lester, this is Ben Labeck. He was just giving me”—there was a hitch in her voice as she chose from a smorgasbord of options: Tonsil-to-tonsil resuscitation? Wet underpants? A toe-curling orgasm?—“first aid,” Mazie finished, blushing and gesturing toward her bandaged knee.
“Oh,” Lester said. “That’s good. That’s really nice.” He bent and inspected her knee. “Wow—very professional looking.”
“I always try to do a job that leaves my patients smiling,” Ben said, smirking.
Mazie scowled, shooting him a warning look.
This had to be a pity date, Ben figured, because this guy was not Mazie’s type. Her type, he remembered grimly, was Gomer Fucking Hoolihan. He scrutinized Lister Blister, or whatever his name was, more closely, feeling more kindly disposed toward him now that he saw that the schmo wasn’t a threat. But someone had evidently liked Lester, a whole hell of a lot. He had lipstick imprints on both cheeks, his tie was yanked down to his navel, and his big hound-dog eyes were glazed.
“I wandered into the ladies’ locker room looking for Mazie,” he explained. “Those Derby girls are wild. They were all over me. A couple of them gave me their phone numbers, do you believe it? I was popular!” He pulled a red brassiere out of his pocket. “One of them autographed this and let me keep it!”
“Looks like you were more than popular,” Mazie said, cracking a smile.
“I just wanted to tell you we should go now because the last bus leaves at ten fifteen. That is, if you’re up to walking to the bus stop, Mazie. Your knees must hurt a lot. I could carry you—I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
“Bus?” Ben asked.
“The city bus. The number forty-five,” Lester explained. “Of course, we could pick up a forty-nine, but that’s not an express.”
“Why don’t I just give you a ride,” suggested Ben, not fooling himself that he was doing this out of innate kindness. He was doing it so he could scam Mr. Popularity into letting him have some one-on-one with Mazie.
“No, thank you,” Lester said. “I get car sick.”
Whatever voodoo Ben had just worked on Mazie was rapidly losing its magic; he could see the lust-dazed look rapidly evaporating. “We’ll take the bus,” she said.
“Oh, come on, buddy.” Ben flung an arm around Lester’s shoulder and shepherded him out of the first-aid room, Mazie trailing behind. “I can take care of that car sickness for you.”
They reached the parking lot. Most of the Derby crowd had gone and Ben’s Jetta was one of the few cars left. Mazie eyed Ben suspiciously, knowing he was up to something.
“I’ll sit in the back,” Lester said. “That way, if I throw up, it won’t get all over your dashboard.”
“Let me show you something,” Ben told him. “Take off your jacket.”
Lester looked at him, obviously alarmed. “You’re not going to pummel me, are you? I—I know Mazie used to be your girlfriend, but I swear I haven’t laid a finger—”
“Who told you that?” Ben asked.
“Lady Whambamya. I mean Juju. The two of us were talking.”
“I promise I’m not going to hurt you.” Ben choked back a laugh. This guy was weird, but in a kind of likable way. “Give me your arm.”
“How come?”
Ben took Lester’s arm in his left hand and, with his right, applied pressure on the underside of Lester’s arm, an inch above the wrist joint, between the two tendons. He had to press hard because Lester had a thick arm, but there was some muscle in with all that flab. “Okay,” Ben said. “Now I’m going to take away my hand, so you need to keep the pressure on yourself, as long as the car is in motion. Oh, and keep your eyes closed.”
Lester got in the backseat. He closed his eyes. “This isn’t like a snipe hunt, is it? Because this one time in Boy Scouts—”
“Hey!” Juju hollered at them from across the parking lot. “Mazie—you forgot your clothes.” She dashed over, holding an ice pack to her head with one hand and Mazie’s jeans and T-shirt in her other—presumably what she’d worn before being shanghaied into the game. Mazie was still wearing the slut schoolgirl uniform. Except for the panties.
The thought gave Ben a boner that could have operated the gearshift all by itself.
Juju told Ben she needed a lift, too. Somehow it worked out that Juju ended up in the back next to Vomit Boy and Mazie was in the passenger seat, trying to keep her skirt pulled down. The knowledge that she was wearing nothing underneath was so distracting that Ben was momentarily as impaired as a driver who was drinking, texting, and trying to find his favorite radio station all at the same time. He nearly sideswiped a utility pole before they’d even left the lot.
“Why are you pressing on your arm?” Juju asked Lester.
“So I don’t throw up.”
“Oh, car sickness, huh?” Juju said. “I used to get sick as a dog every time I’d set foot inside a car. Then I discovered the secret and never got carsick again.”
“What?” Lester asked.
“Inhaling newspaper ink. There’s something in printer’s ink that helps with nausea.”
Lester laughed nervously. “Oh, I get it—you’re pranking me.”
“No—seriously,” Juju said. “I’ll prove it. Ben, you got any newspaper?”
Mazie found a crumpled copy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the front seat and tossed it back.
Lester held the newspaper up against his face and inhaled.
“Keep doing it,” Juju said.
Lester breathed deeply several more times. “You know what?” he said finally. “I actually feel better. My stomach feels great. In fact, I’m kind of hungry. How about the rest of you? We could all go for a pizza—it’d be sort of like double-dating—like in the Archie comic books I read when I was a kid. Not that I ever double-dated. I never even single-dated back then. But it always seemed like something that would be fun.”
“Lester,” Ben said. “You are a fucking genius.”
“Thank you. I don�
��t like to brag, but my IQ is one hundred seventy-seven. And … no offense, Ben, but I don’t think you should use bad language in front of ladies.”
“Sorry,” Ben said, grinning at Mazie, who tried to stifle a laugh.
They went to Pizza Man on North Avenue for pizza, and it was fun, although Ben’s scheme to get Mazie alone again was thwarted because Mazie and Juju were doing a sleepover at Mazie’s flat, an evening of pedicures, facials, popcorn, and old movies. Ben did not grasp the concept. Did guys have sleepovers at each other’s apartments? Hey, Bob—wanna get together Saturday night? We can trim each other’s corns, compare different brands of jock itch powder, and watch reruns of the Super Bowl.
Ben ended up driving Lester home.
He wasn’t sure if he’d gotten Mazie back, but he’d gained a new buddy.
“Maybe you and I could hang out together sometime,” Lester said nervously. “Do guy-type things. Drink beer and watch games. I mean, sometime when you aren’t busy and don’t have anything better to do.”
“Deal,” Ben said.
“Really?”
Ben reached across the car and cranked Lester’s hand. “Lester, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Lester grinned. “Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains. Can I be Bogie?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“How did your date with Lester go?”
Mrs. Pfister must have been waiting all morning because she yanked open her front door before Mazie was even up the steps.
Mazie shook a finger at Mrs. Pfister, mock-scolding. “Pretty sneaky, the way you set that whole thing up.”
Mrs. Pfister looked sheepish. “You’re right, dear.” She held the door while Mazie entered with the Vittles Van lunch box. “I deserve ten lashes with a wet noodle. Did you have a horrible time?”
Mazie smiled. “Not at all. We had fun.”
Mrs. Pfister’s penciled-on eyebrows rose. “You had fun? What did you do?”
The Sexiest Man Alive: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 15
