CHAPTER 14
Driven by what she’d decided to call spring fever, Sara was organizing her cottage. She had exactly fourteen mismatched mugs, three chipped plates she couldn’t bring herself to throw away, and a rabbit Other sitting on her couch looking like he belonged there.
The last item was the most disorienting.
“You’re staring,” Ben said without looking up from the book in his hands—some battered paperback about home brewing he’d found on her shelf, when she sighed and sat down on the other end of the couch.
“I’m appreciating.” She tucked her feet under her, cradling her tea. The mug was hand-painted with crooked sunflowers, a gift from a student three schools ago.
His ears twitched, swiveling towards her even as his eyes stayed fixed on the page. “Appreciating what, exactly?”
“The view.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. His grip on the paperback tightened almost imperceptibly. After three weeks of this—of dinners and walks and evenings spent in each other’s space—she had learned to read the subtle signs of Ben’s control. The way his shoulders went rigid when she got too close. The deliberate steadiness of his breathing when the neckline of her dress dipped a little too low. The barely audible rumble in his chest when she laughed at something another man said.
He wanted her. She had zero doubt about that.
He was also driving her absolutely insane with his refusal to do anything about it.
“You’re going to overheat that book with the force of your concentration,” she said.
“I’m reading.”
“You’ve been on the same page for twenty minutes.”
His eyes finally lifted, shockingly blue in the lamplight. “Maybe it’s a very good page.”
“It’s a chapter about barrel aging.”
“Fascinating subject.”
Sara set down her tea and shifted closer on the couch. Ben’s entire body went taut, his nostrils flaring as her scent reached him. She watched his pupils dilate, watched his fingers dig into the paperback’s spine like it was the only thing keeping him anchored.
Good, she thought.Suffer with me.
Three weeks of dinners. Three weeks of his hand on the small of her back when they walked through town. Three weeks of kissesthat started sweet and turned devastating before he inevitably pulled away, leaving her breathless and aching.
Three weeks of waking up alone in a bed that smelled faintly of him because he’d sit with her until she fell asleep and then disappear like a particularly stubborn dream.
She understood why he was holding back; she really did. After everything he’d told her about his past, about his fear of losing control, about needing to be sure, she understood. And part of her was genuinely touched by his restraint. He cared enough to want to do this right. He respected her enough to not just take what his instincts demanded.
But another part of her—a growing, increasingly vocal part—wanted to grab him by those ridiculous ears and demand he stop being so damn noble.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” he said. His voice had dropped an octave, the way it always did when she pushed too close. “I can practically hear the wheels turning.”
“I’m thinking about how I’m going to have to buy new throw pillows if you shred that book.”
He glanced down at his hands, at the deep punctures his claws had made in the paperback’s cover. “Damn.”
“It’s fine. I never actually planned to brew my own beer.”
“Then why do you have—” He stopped, setting the damaged book aside. “Never mind. I’ll replace it.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I want to.” His eyes met hers, and something in his expression softened. “I want to replace it.”
The moment stretched between them, warm and weighted. Her frustration eased slightly, replaced by that dangerous flutter of hope she kept trying to suppress. This was what made the waiting bearable—these glimpses of tenderness beneath his gruff exterior. The way he looked at her sometimes, like she was something precious he was afraid to break.
