“You could’ve given me the choice and not made it for me.” I don’t know if the water on my cheeks is rain or tears.
“I had a choice too.” He cracks his knuckles and I know he’s agitated. “I couldn’t be that person.”
“So why have you been fucking me now?”
He doesn’t flinch at the words.
“Because I wanted you. Like I couldn’t have you back then.”
“And you don’t anymore? Because it can’t go anywhere?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Who says you have to? I don’t want to hurt you…” I remember Isaac. The kiss, the meal, the way he could make me burn too. “I kissed Isaac.”
“I know.”
My mouth opens but no words come out. I want to apologise, I want to wrap my arms around him and touch, feel something from him, apart from the distance between us.
“Blair, it’s okay. It’s a kiss.”
“I was mad at you.”
“You don’t have to explain.” He steps closer. “I’m not upset.”
“I am. I want you to be. I don’t want you to be okay with me being with someone else, even if it’s just a kiss.”
“It’s Isaac.”
“You don’t care about me kissing him?”
His hand stretches out and cups the back of my neck. “It was once. And maybe he’s better for you than me. He isn’t Goldsmith.”
“I don’t want us to end. You’re sounding like this is it ending.”
He doesn’t answer. His lips meet mine and the kiss is sweet, taking me back to when we were younger and all we did was kiss and touch and feel. Somehow we end up under the tree, taking shelter from the worst of the rain that’s now pelting down on the ground.
Our lips are fierce, taking what they can. As if this is the last time.
It can’t be the last time.
I push my hands under Ben’s T-shirt, remembering the first time I did this, how his body felt then. I feel him shudder as I run my hands over him, feeling smooth skin and muscle. He tenses, and I want to be able to smooth those knots and tell him that everything will be okay.
Ben’s hands slide under my top, pulling it up, and we break the kiss while he strips me of my clothes, my nipples hardening as he exposes them to the cooling air and then his mouth.
I dig my nails into his skin as he sucks and bites, moving from one breast to the others, taking his time. I’m wet already, skin and between my legs, and if he stripped me of the rest of my clothes he’d be able to enter me now. I know he wants to.
We shift so I’m straddling him as he rests his back against the oak. We were here years before, this same place and position, him toying with my tits, my centre pushed up to his erection.
He starts to push down my shorts; I shift so he can pull them down, along with my panties, his hand cupping my sex, then inserting a finger, adding another, his thumb playing with my clit.
“I want to see you come.”
I hold his shoulders and let myself go, wanting to give him his wish, and mine. His words tell me how I look, feel, how he could do this forever and I want to ask him to do this forever with me.
Just us, in our maze.
I come violently and loudly, sobbing out the orgasm. I’ve barely registered that I’m on my back with my legs spread when he’s over me and freeing his cock, pumping it a couple of times before he’s pushing into me.
