I’d lain beside Ben that night, imagining how I wanted him to touch me. What had I manifested?
He laughed, though it sounded a little desperate. There was a long, stretched-out span of silence. My heart beat so hard and so fast I was afraid he could hear it.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, tension cracking each word. “What did you do to me? No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about you. I can hardly breathe. Why am I like this?”
His voice sank under my skin, electrifying me, causing a charge to build, low in my body. He still wasn’t looking at me, but I could read him: there was an urgency burning right under the surface. He was hanging on to control by a thread.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t resist. I was officially a terrible person because even though I knew it was a bad idea, just looking at Ben—here, in his car, where I’d stolen a million glances at him, wanted him a million different ways—pushed me over my limit. Making bad decisions was who I was, after all. Why keep fighting it?
I stopped thinking, leaned over the console and kissed him.
I could feel Ben’s surprise in his sudden intake of breath. But it was only for a second, and then he unleashed, kissing me back with such searing urgency I rocked back in my seat. He followed.
It was weak, but I’d wanted him so badly, and now I wouldn’t hold back. I opened my lips against the warm, delicious pressure of Ben’s mouth and tasted him, stroking his tongue with mine, every touch lighting the nerve endings between my legs, until I lost control.
Ben gripped each side of my face, twisting me to deepen the kiss. Desperately, I touched every part of him I hadn’t been allowed to: his strong, square jaw, the soft place on the side of his mouth where his dimple flashed, his thick, arched eyebrows, the curls looping in his hair.
He groaned softly into my mouth, and an electric thrill shot through me. I kissed him harder, pulling him closer with two hands on his throat. Closer, closer, closer—he’d been too far away for too long. Ben made another sound of need and seized my waist, lifting me in one smooth show of strength over the console and into his lap.
I straddled him in the driver’s seat, heart pounding, blood rushing to the surface of my skin, making every inch where Ben and I touched so sensitive I ached with pleasure.
The way I was sitting, flush against him, I could feel him hard as steel between my legs. He gripped my hips and rubbed me up and down, pushing me over him.
I broke from his mouth with a gasp, and he twisted one hand in my hair, keeping the other on my hip to guide me as I ground against him. He angled my head back, exposing my throat, and then his teeth scraped my neck, mouth hot as he closed his lips over my skin.
With my head canted back, eyes closed, I spoke my only thought. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” he said, voice raw, kissing the words into my throat. “More than I—”
Suddenly, he stilled. And withdrew his mouth.
I looked down at him. Ben’s dark hair was wild and messy, lips raw and cheeks flushed from kissing, making him more handsome than ever. But the look on his face was something else entirely: he looked stunned. It froze me.
“What’s wrong?” I could barely speak.
“What am I doing?” His voice was low, disbelieving. “I told myself I wouldn’t.”
Shit.Shit.I’d known this was a bad idea, and I’d done it anyway. I leaned back to put distance between us. “It was just a moment, Ben.” I waved between us. “This doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Exactly,” he said. “It doesn’t to you. You and I are different. And I swore to myself, never again. But here I am, right back where I started, kissing you in the middle of a parking lot like an addict. What’s wrongwith me?”
“Relax,” I told him. “Stop making everything so serious. I told you, it doesn’t—”
“If you say it doesn’t mean anything one more time—” Suddenly, he switched to his calm voice, the quiet one that brooked no arguments. “Actually, just—please get off.”
This was the voice he used when he’d made up his mind. I had a terrible flashback to the tail end of our breakup—to the part that had truly undone me, when he’d simply cut me off. No more calls, no more texts, and then one day, without warning, no more Ben. The memory unlocked a feeling of panic, of inevitability, like I knew where this was going.
“Wait a second,” I said, desperate to derail.
“Lee, don’t.” Without waiting for me to move, Ben lifted me and placed me back in the passenger seat. His touch was gentle, but it did nothing to stop the stab of pain.
“I thought you said you forgave me for the past.”
Ben had been in the process of unlocking his phone, but at my words, he froze. A tense silence fell over us.
“I do,” he said finally. “I just can’t do it again. I’m sorry, Lee.” With that, he went back to his phone. “I’m calling an Uber to take you home, okay?”
He couldn’t stand to be around me. Now there were a million stabs of pain. “What about you?”
