Once the words started, I couldn't stop them. They kept spilling out of my mouth. "I quit my job in Dallas on Monday because I realized that I dreaded going to work. I used to look forward to it, but that's been changing over the last year. My heart isn't in it anymore and my boss was a real asshole, so it made it much easier to see that. I planned to call you as soon as I got back and ask if I could come here so I could apologize for the way I treated you before and tell you that I was wrong. That I did want more from you than just sex." I stopped to take a breath and realized that I'd been babbling for the last few minutes. I couldn't read Ben's expression, but his jaw was no longer bunched as though his molars were clenched together.
"I just..." I trailed off, unsure of what else I could say. If he wasn't already convinced I wasn't playing games, I didn't know what else I could put out there to make him understand. "I just missed you."
Silence fell between us and he didn't move or speak. He was breathing hard, but I wasn't sure if it was from anger or something else.
I fidgeted with the bottom hem of my shirt. "Would you please say something?" I asked.
Ben cocked his head to the side. "I'm trying to figure out if you just told me you loved me in that long, rambling monologue."
My heart gave one hard thump against my sternum. I had. It had flown out of my mouth without a single thought. I'd been so scared that he wouldn't give me a chance to tell him and I'd already blurted it out.
"Uh, well, maybe," I muttered.
Ben shook his head and looked down at his feet, crossing his arms over his chest.
When he looked up, his mouth was slightly curved as though he were fighting a smile. "Is it true?" he asked.
"Which part?"
He huffed out a breath and walked toward me, sweat gleaming on his skin and his muscles flexing with each movement.
Holy mother of God, he was a breathing, moving work of art. And it had been way, way too long since I'd been close to him. Touched him.
He stopped less than a foot from me. "Any part. All the parts."
I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat and rubbed my fingertips together because they were tingling madly with the need to touch him. "Every word," I confessed.
He lunged for me then, hoisting me up with both hands on my ass. I wrapped my legs around him as he moved several steps forward. Just as my back hit the wall hard enough to make me breathless, his mouth crashed into mine.
Who needed to breathe anyway?
This wasn't a kiss. It was a claiming. His mouth was ravenous. Possessive.
Mine.
He was mine and I was his. We belonged to each other. He didn't own me nor did I own him.
It was a gift.
He was giving me a piece of himself and I was giving the same to him.
His lips released mine and I gasped for breath, my chest rising and falling quickly. I hadn't realized how desperate for air I was because my need for Ben far outweighed the need for oxygen.
His mouth found my neck, kissing and nibbling on the skin of my throat. "Put your feet down," he murmured, his lips brushing the spot just below my ear.
I shivered at the sensation and released my grip on his hips with my thighs. His hands slid down my back, fingers dipping into the elastic waist of my shorts and underwear. They fell to my ankles with a whisper and I kicked them off completely.
Then I was up against the wall again, in his arms, and one of his hands went between us to push down his shorts just far enough to reveal his erection.
I gasped as he pressed into me. His hands shifted me against him, lowering me down just enough.
Then he was inside me, moving hard and deep as his mouth clung to mine. I clasped his neck with one hand and reached between us with the other, spreading my fingers apart so I could feel him as he entered me.
He groaned into my mouth and then pulled back just far enough to whisper, "If you don't stop that, I'm going to come."
I had no problem with that but I knew from experience that he would fight the urge and wait until I came and I wasn't quite there yet.
I nipped his bottom lip and moved my fingers upward, circling my clit with two.
