I burst into laughter, not expecting that response.
“I ought to go back in there tomorrow and buy everything I want.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Big mistake. HUGE!” she says, reenacting the famous Julia Roberts scene.
“You can. You should,” I agree, knowing that she doesn’t have any clothes of her own.
“No, I can’t. I can’t afford it, and I don’t want your money. I meant what I said earlier. I don’t want this turning into some weird sugar daddy shit, or even worse, prostitution.”
I reach out and take her hand in mine. “It’s just money, Maddie. I have plenty, and I’ll make more tomorrow. I know you can use it more than I can. Might as well spoil yourself a little.”
“I don’t wear that kind of shit, Bennet. I’m just fine going to the mall and buying a pair of jeans that cost twenty bucks. I don’t need name brands and labels.”
“Alright,” I agree, driving her back to my house. It’s evident she has a chip on her shoulder about being independent and providing for herself.
I carry her bags up to my bedroom as she throws herself onto my bed. I lay down beside her. “So, how was your night with your brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law.”
“It kind of sucked. I had to sleep on the couch, and now my back is killing me. I wish that check would come in the mail so I could find a new place.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” I ask, rubbing her back. “I have plenty of room. You can stay in the room across the hall, or you could stay here with me.”
She rolls to her side so she can look up at me. “Wouldn’t that complicate things?”
I frown.
“I mean, neither of us wants a relationship. If we’re sleeping together every night, won’t that be like we’re dating and living together?”
“Maddie, it’s a relationship. That doesn’t mean we are getting married or that we are chained to each other but don’t bury your head in the sand. I’m not putting any rules on you. You can come and go as you please and truthfully…” I hesitate, questioning if I want to say the next part. “Truthfully, you can still date whoever you want.”
“So what are we then?”
I shake my hand. “I’m not doing the label thing. I have the room that your brother doesn’t. If you want it, take it. We’ll deal with anything else that comes up later.”
She smiles at me. “Okay, thank you.” She grabs me by my shirt and pulls me down, pressing her lips to mine.
I feel my body relax with relief, hoping we both aren’t just kidding ourselves with this situation.
11
Maddie
“I should probably get back to work soon,” I tell Bennet as we lay in bed with one another, not doing anything but holding each other while talking.
“There’s no rush. Brian is there, so the job is still getting done. And your manager knows your situation. Your job will be safe when you come back,” he says, absentmindedly running his hands through my hair.
“I know, but I need some normalcy. This bouncing from place to place and spending my days doing nothing is going to kill me.” I turn my head so I can look back up at him. “Do you have to go back today?”
“Yeah, I’m going back after lunch. But you could use this time to pamper yourself for Friday night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go get your hair done. Get a mani/pedi. Get a massage. Let me spoil you a little.”
“I don’t know,” I say, feeling a little nervous. “That’s too much. You’ve done so much for me already.”
He rolls us over, pinning me beneath him. “Damnit, Maddie. This, the buying you things and paying for stuff, it doesn’t mean anything to me beyond spending money on someone I care about. There’s no underhanded weird shit going on. Can’t you see that?”
I nod. “Yes, but it does mean something to me. I owe you enough already.”
“You don’t owe me a fucking thing.” He leans in and closes the distance between us, pressing his soft lips to mine. I close my eyes and let his kiss sink in. It warms me up from the inside out. It causes a tingle to swirl around in the pit of my stomach. It steals the air from my lungs and makes my muscles tighten with anticipation. How can one kiss do this?
He breaks the kiss and stands up, pulling me up with him. “Let’s get some lunch. Then I’m going to go back to work, and I’ll have Sarah make you those appointments.”
I groan. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
He laughs. “Not a chance.”
“I can make my own damn appointments!” I shout, playfully tossing a pillow at him as he walks towards the bathroom.
It’s going on eight o’clock, and already I’ve had my hair deep conditioned, trimmed, and blown out. My nails are a soft ballet pink, and my toes match perfectly. I’ve gotten a spray tan and a massage. You’d think all this pampering would relax me and make me feel rested, but it’s quite exhausting. The whole time I wonder how I’m going to repay him. I wonder why he’s doing these things for me, even when I resist. I start to worry that he is getting too close. But then, I realize that all this may be entirely normal for him. I mean, I don’t know if he does these things with the other women he’s been with. He has money, and he likes to spend it. I shouldn’t be making such a deal out of it. Just because it’s big to me doesn’t mean it’s big to him. It’s not like he’s offering to buy me a car or new apartment. I need to trust what he said about it earlier.
I let out a sigh and force the worry in my head to drift away with it. The driver pulls through the gate of the house.
I let myself inside and find Bennet moving around the kitchen.
“Are you cooking?” I ask.
He nods. “I thought I’d show you I’m a man of many talents.” He winks, “So, dinner is on me tonight.” He spins around, and his eyes lock on mine.
“You look…” His sentence drifts off.
“Tan?” I ask, looking down at myself.
“I was going to say amazing, but yeah.”
I hold up my hands, showing him my nails. “And I have these daggers stuck to my fingers.”
He laughs but pulls me in for a kiss. “You look beautiful,” he says, stepping away.
“It’s going to take some getting used to. What are you cooking?” I lean against the island.
“You’ll see. Why don’t you go relax on the couch, and I’ll get you when it’s done?”
My phone rings and I pull it out of my back pocket to see Damon’s name on the screen.
“Hello?” I answer, walking out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Why? Feel like yelling at me some more?”
He lets out a long breath. “Maddie, I was caught off guard.”
“And?”
“And I never should have yelled at you. I just freaked out because, well, because I know Bennet. He’s not the serious relationship type. He goes out to the clubs almost every night to find a woman to bring home. Then in the morning, he kicks them out and never sees them again. I want better for you.”
“You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know, Damon. Bennet’s been completely honest with me about his views on relationships. We’re not serious anyway. We’re hanging out, getting to know one another. Just like you and Jazz when you two got together. There is no label for us. We’re just two single people enjoying each other’s company. I’m not looking for marriage or a commitment. Is that so bad?”
“Look,” I hear him let out a long sigh. “I’ve said my piece on the matter; what you do is up to you. Jazz just wanted me to call and see if you were going to be staying here.”
“I think I’m fine right where I am.”
“At Bennet’s?”
“That’s right.”
“Alright. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
I laugh. I never know what I’m doing. “I do,” I tell him.
“Alright. Bye, Mads. Wait, one more thing…just don’t bury your head
in the sand about what you’re doing. Things like this…they never end well, Maddie.”
“Bye, Damon.” I hang up the phone and drop it onto the couth.
I lay my head down, thinking things over, and end up drifting off to sleep.
I wake to a soft kiss on my shoulder blade. I groan and roll over with a smile.
“Good morning,” Bennet teases, rubbing his hand up and down my thigh. “Did a day of pampering wear you out?”
I laugh and nod. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Anything is tiring if you’re not used to it. Even being pampered.” He bends over and presses a kiss to my stomach, right next to my bellybutton. I didn’t realize my shirt had been worked up in my sleep.
I nod. “I’m starving.”
He holds out his hand, and I take it to be pulled to my feet.
He leads me to the dining room, where the table is all prepared. I take my seat and pick up the beer that he set out.
“You never told me why you fired Quinn.”
He quickly glances at me but then back to his plate. “She tried to seduce me,” he says in a serious tone.
I can’t hold back my laughter. “What? Seriously?”
He nods, now wearing a small smirk.
“Did she touch you? Did you kiss?”
He shakes his head. “Absolutely not. She just started taking off her clothes right in front of me.”
I shake my head. “I’ll never understand your life.”
“What? You mean that people in your life don’t just strip to get you to sleep with them?”
“No,” I say around my laughter.
“Does that make you jealous?”
“What? That she tried to seduce you or that you have people throwing themselves at you every day and I don’t?”
He snorts. “If you only paid attention.” He shakes his head.
“To what?” I ask, smile still in place.
“Do you not see the looks you get when you walk through the office?”
“What looks?”
“I bet almost all of the men in the office would fuck you if you’d let them.”
I purse my lips together. “Really? Well, I may need to rethink our arrangement now that I know I have options,” I tease.
He lets out a quiet chuckle. “You have more options than you realize.”
I’m not sure what that means, but I let it slide, opting to eat the delicious dinner in front of me that he prepared.
“Where’d you learn to cook?” I ask around a mouthful of the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had in my life.
“My mom made sure I knew how. My dad was born into money, but she didn’t have much of anything growing up. She had to cook and do laundry and all of it. So, when I started getting old enough to do things, she made sure that I would have the skills I needed in life.”
I smile. “She sounds like a smart woman.”
He nods. “She is. I have no idea what in the hell she sees in my dad, but they’ve been happily married for nearly forty years now.”
“Maybe only she sees his soft side. I’m sure if you asked around the office, nobody would know this side of you.”
He laughs.
“What?”
He shakes his head as he chews his food. “I just thought about my dad having two different lives: one for work and one for play. I never thought of it that way.”
“Guess it runs in the family.”
We sit and have a nice dinner where we talk and share things from our past. I tell him about some of my childhood stories growing up with Jazz and Damon, about the parties we wormed our way into, and the trouble we caused. He tells me some trouble he got into himself. We laugh and drink for most of the night, never leaving the dining room table. Talking to him is easy, much easier than it used to be. He used to intimidate me. First, by being the badass boxer he is, and then by turning out to be my boss and the person that could fire me. But now, he’s not either of those things. He’s just Bennet, and I love spending time with him.
“What do you say to a swim?” he asks, finishing off his beer and setting it down.
“It’s a little cold outside, isn’t it?”
“I have an indoor pool. And it’s heated.” His green eyes hold a gleam of amusement.
“I don’t have a suit,” I say with a shrug.
“Neither do I,” he replies, standing and taking my hand.
He leads me down a long hallway in the back of the house I’ve never seen before. But I’ve only been in his house a few times, and I never snooped. At the end of the hallway, he pushes through another door, and the smell of chlorine hits my nose. I inhale it deeply.
“I’ve always loved that smell,” I say, walking into the room behind him. One wall is solid brick, but the other side is nothing but windows, so you can see into the back yard. The rooftop is also glass. The lights are dimmed low, but the bright lights in the pool illuminate everything. Outside, the landscaping lights are on, spotlighting beautiful flowers and perfectly manicured shrubs.
I reach for the hem of my shirt and start to lift it, but he stops me.
“Oh no, the stripping is for me to do,” he says, pulling my shirt up and over my head. When it hits the concrete floor, his lips find mine. I quickly get to work on tearing off his shirt and unfastening his jeans. He kicks them to the side while he pushes mine down my legs.
“Oh,” I say, breaking the kiss. “I’m not supposed to get wet. It will remove my tan.” I look down at my tan body. Seeing it is still quite alarming to me.
“I like your ivory skin better anyway,” he says, pulling his shorts down and jumping in the pool.
I laugh, strip off my panties and jump in, headfirst. When I pop up out of the water, I can see an off-putting color swirling in the water around me.
“Told ya,” I say, looking down at the water.
He laughs and jumps for me, trying to pull me under the water. I quickly swim away.
“Do you swim laps?” I ask when our roughhousing cools down.
He’s floating on his back. “I used to every morning when I was training.”
“Let’s do it now. Let’s race.”
He smiles. “You’re on.”
We both back up to the far side of the pool.
“On your mark. Get set. Go!” I yell, and we both take off.
For the first half, we’re neck and neck. He swims fast, but I stay strong. It’s somewhere around the second half that I start to lose steam and fall behind.
He smacks the edge of the pool. “I win.” He turns around to see me doggy paddling my way over. He lets out a deep laugh as he reaches for me and pulls me into his arms. “Out of shape?”
I’m breathless. “I haven’t gone swimming for a long time. I did pretty good there at the start. I figured all the boxing would help me, but man, swimming kicks your ass!”
I hold on around his neck and wrap my legs around his waist. His hands land on my ass as he leans in and kisses me. I close my eyes, and the next thing I know, he has me pinned to the corner of the pool. His hands cup my ass, gently massaging as they move up my back and down to my thighs. Somehow, one hand ends up between us, rubbing against my clit.
I break the kiss. “I’m ready for bed,” I whisper against his lips.
He brings his mouth back to mine and holds me against him as he walks us up the stairs and out of the pool. He doesn’t worry about towels or the fact that we’re dripping water all over his house. He carries me all the way up to his room and drops me onto his bed.
12
Bennet
I should care more about keeping the house clean now that I’m in between maids, but when I’m around her, I lose my mind. I can’t think of anything but her and the way she makes me feel: like I’m eighteen again, falling in love for the first time, feeling everything for the first time. It’s intoxicating.
I carry her up to my room, dripping water the whole way. I don’t stop kissing her until I’m dropping her on my bed and crawling up her be
autiful body. Now that all the tan has washed off, she has her radiant ivory glow back. Her cheeks are pink, her lips plump and red. She’s absolutely breathtaking with her dark hair wet and clinging to both our bodies. My hands massage her full tits, and my hips grind against hers. She’s already so wet for me, I slide my fingers between her folds with ease as her breath hitches in her throat and she grips me tighter. All it would take is one rock of my hips, and I’d be sliding deep inside her. But I’m not ready for that yet. I want to taste her.
I work myself down her body, sucking, licking, and kissing my away across her goose bump prickled skin. Her breathing picks up; a small moan tumbles from her lips. When my mouth closes in on her clit, she gasps, and her hand grips the top of my head. Her hips rock against my face, and I have to hold them down to keep her still. Holding her down only seems to tease her more. I let her go with one hand but use it to slide two fingers inside her sheath. She says my name in a moan of approval. As my mouth and hand work her over, her moans get louder with each thrust and lick. Finally, her muscles are squeezing against my fingers while her whole body stiffens. Her nails are digging into the mattress, and my name is all she can say. I wait until I feel her loosen up, then pull away.
“Wait, no,” she says, but already I’m sliding into her, and she can’t argue. My hands hold firm on her hips while I rock against her, giving us both everything we need.
We both finish out the workweek, and I have her in my bed every night. We go to work together every day. I’m starting to understand what Phillip was saying, about always having your best friend with you. It’s something I didn’t even know I wanted, but it’s turning out to be something I need. When Friday rolls around, we leave the office and come home to get ready for the gala—it’s a boring function my father throws every year to celebrate another year of his company being on top. I’ve always hated going, but I have a feeling this year will be much more fun with Maddie on my arm.
She goes into the guest room to shower and dress while I do the same in my room, the room we’ve been sharing. I shower, shave, and dress in my tux. I walk out of the room and knock on her door.
Billionaire With Benefits: Make Her Mine-Book 2 Page 9
