I’m on my back on the bed, Ben a planet above me, broad and strong and so hot that I have to close my eyes for a second, catch my breath. Maybe weshouldslow down. I hear a rustle of clothes and I open my eyes to Ben pulling off his shirt, and it’s—wow, it’s all systems go. He looks incredible, hard packs of muscles on his abdomen, the wide expanse of his chest leading to those bunched, sinewy biceps.
“Off,” he says, tugging at my top at the same time his other hand reaches for my jeans, unbuttoning, lowering the zipper. I’d help, but I’m too busy, splaying my hands on his hot skin, arching up so he can remove my top but also so I can open my mouth against his shoulder, taste his salty skin.“Kit,fuck. Get your clothes off.”
His words bring me back to myself, and I take over, tugging my jeans off before pausing.“Oh,” I say, and Ben stops biting and licking at my collarbone long enough to look at me.
“What?” He almost looks panicked, as if we have to stop this he’ll actually expire, and I enjoy that so much that I make him sweat it for a second.
“I’m—Well. I’m not wearing, you know. Really sexy underwear.”
“Are you fucking kidding? Kit. I don’t care.” He bends down again, sucks at the join of my neck and shoulder.“I can’t tell you how much I don’t care. I won’t even look. Just—please. Get naked.” This makes me laugh, the desperate, growly quality to the way he’s talking. I hadn’t expected him to be this way either, all his calm charm stripped away. It’s funny, messy, the way my clothes come off, him pulling my bra off while I push my jeans down, limbs tangling, whispered curses when I remember I have to kick off my shoes. Ben is laughing too, and oh, God—it’s sofunwith Ben, everything is always so fun and easy with him, even first-time sex with him, when usually I feel these whispers of awkwardness being naked with someone for the first time.
There’s no awkwardness when I’m bare beneath him, when Ben presses the long length of his body against mine, letting me feel all that hard heat, the cording of muscle beneath his skin. Between us, his erection presses against the soft skin of my stomach, and I’m hitching a leg around his hip, pressing closer, trying to tell him, without words, that I want himnow. I’ve never felt this close to coming from what we’re doing—deep, hard kisses and Ben’s big, callused hand against my breast, his thumb flicking across my nipple with the perfect pressure, perfect rhythm. I break from his mouth, tilt my head so that I can lick up the side of his neck, nip his earlobe with my teeth, and he rewards me with the lowest, sexiest groan I’ve ever heard. I feel it rumble in that aching, wet place between my legs and I buck against him again.
“It’s good,” I breathe, in relief, in confirmation, in plain, pure happiness to be here with him now—close, naked,together.
He scrapes his stubbled cheek against my neck, all that delicious roughness, drags it down over my chest and licks across to my nipple, sucking it into his mouth and working me over until my breath is coming in quick, reedy pants, until I tangle my hands in his hair and whisperplease, over and over.“Fuck,” he says, resting his forehead against my sternum before looking up at me again.“I don’t know where to start with you—I want to do everything. I’ve thought about this—I want to put my hands on you, in you…” He breaks off, tracing two of his fingers between my legs, around that aching spot where I want him most.“But I want to see how you taste too—and, oh God. I want to know the way you’d feel around my dick…”
“That,” I say, gripping the back of his neck, tugging him up.“That’s what I want, first. Everything else, we’ll do later. Ipromise.”
He smiles up at me, nuzzles at my breast again.“I’m going to hold you to that. If I can remember you’ve said it. I don’t even remember my own fucking name right now.”
“Ben,” I say, pulling him up for another kiss, wet and hungry. He pushes off me, and despite the warmth of the room, I feel chilled with the shock of losing the heat of his body, even though it’s only for long enough for him to grab his jeans and pull a condom out of the pocket. I prop myself up on my elbows, watch him roll it on, loving the way his body works, the way he’s heavy and hard, the way he comes back to me, using his hands to spread me wide as he nestles between my legs.
I don’t wait for him. I can’t wait for him—now that we’ve started this, it hits me how long I’ve really been wanting it with him, wanting the chance to be this way together. I reach between us, guide him to my entrance, lift my hips to him, and he’s licking into my mouth, grunting his satisfaction, and then—oh, he’s there, one hard, forceful thrust that tips my head back, that takes my breath away in the most perfect way, and I amlostto him. I hear him in my ear—Kit, So good, You’re perfect—and I think I’m talking back. I think I’m telling him how good it is, how full I feel, how close he has me already, but my body and brain have never felt so disconnected. In Ben’s arms, I am only the sensations he stokes in me. I am nothing but sweat and movement and frantic, pulsingneed, and it’s only when my orgasm breaks over me, only when I release a desperate, threaded cry that a single thought breaks through, before I can stop it.
He feels like home.
* * * *
It’s later—much, much later, when I’ve fulfilled the promises Ben didn’t forget, and even some I hadn’t made—and I’m lying on my side, naked, a sheet tangled about my legs, Ben stroking those rough, blunt fingertips up the curve of my thigh, over my hip, down the dip of my waist, and up, again, over the light, curving bones of my ribcage. He does this again and again, learning that curve, and the way goose bumps chase his caress. My eyelids are heavy, my body sated and tender from everything we’ve done.
“I haven’t been up this late in forever,” I whisper. It’s lovely to be up this late with Ben. I’m hearing whole new sounds of the house at night, seeing the way light from the moon tracks across my bedroom window. After the second time we’d made love—surprisingly fast on the heels of the first time, Ben still eager, intense—we’d foraged in the kitchen, me swimming in Ben’s t-shirt, apologizing for the shameful contents of my refrigerator. But we’d managed with slices of apple and generous pieces from a block of cheddar, peanut butter on toast that tasted so good I’d licked the crumbs from my fingers.
Which Ben found very, very distracting.
“Want to sleep?” he asks, leaning down to press his lips against my eyelids.
I murmur my entirely unconvincing dissent, tilting my head up so I can kiss him. I don’t want the night to be over. For the first time in the years since I started my job, I consider a personal day.
“You know what I thought, when I first saw you?” he asks, his face pressed into my neck, his voice muffled.
“Was it about my goggles?” I say, pinching his side lightly.
“No, but I loved your goggles. You look great in goggles. Maybe that could be the first dirty picture you send to me, you in those goggles.”
“I’m never going to send you a dirty picture,” I say, laughing. But then I’m whispering again, in his ear,“What did you think, when you first saw me?”
“I thought,what a goddamn shame I’m here for someone else. And I know that’s not right, because Iwasthere for you. I was just an idiot that day. But I wanted it to be you.”
I think we both know the issue isn’t who he was there for, butwhathe was there for, and it’s hard not to think of it now, as determinedly as I’d been avoiding it for the last few hours.
“Was it bad?” I ask.“I mean, with your partner. Is it going to mess things up for you?”
We’re so close together that I can feel him stiffen slightly, but he masks it, rolling on his back and pulling me with him so I’m cradled in in the crook of his arm. He takes a deep breath.“I don’t know,” he says, tightening his hand on my hip.“Jasper is my best friend too. And we had—there were some plans we were working on, which I’ve probably messed up. So it’s business, but it’s personal too.” He pauses, then says, with conviction that seems entirely borne of self-preservation,“It’ll be all right.”
I shift away from him, enough to put an inch of air between us. I’m glad he’s being honest, but this is hard too. It puts into sharp relief that what we’ve done herecan’tonly be a simple hook-up. It’s not that I want it to be, but it’s that Ben doesn’t really have a choice now that he’s sacrificed something important at his job for this. Even if he leaves to go back to Texas next month and we don’t see each other again—a thought that makes my mouth go dry—it’s not as if he won’t be taking back with him the baggage associated with fucking up his work for me. The sex was incredible, yes, and I like him so much that probably at any moment I could tip right over the tightrope I’m walking and fall into a raging, white water river of love. But to him, what does this mean?
“Kit,” he says, tugging me back against him.“Come on. Don’t do that. It’s my choice.”
