“Dinner’s ready,” Benji says quietly, voice small. He reminds me of a baby bird, terrified of its impending first flight. Good thing I can shove him off the edge without a care in the world.
I take a seat at the dining table with a perfectly respectable grin. Benji falters slightly as he sets the bowl down in front of me, but then he moves to sit opposite me with his own dish of food.
“Thanks, honey,” I say before digging in.
Benji’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t reply to my dig. We eat mostly in silence for a while. The food is good, savory and covered with a layer of cheese that I didn’t even know I had in the fridge. Usually the housekeeping service stocks it on Sundays, tosses everything I didn’t eat the week before, then stocks it again. A repeating cycle of waste. But this is good, and I eat almost half the bowl before falling back in my chair with a groan.
“Who taught you to cook? It’s good.”
Benji licks sauce away from his lip and my stomach clenches with need. Asshole. “My moms.”
“Moms? Plural?” I ask.
Benji nods as he pushes his own plate away. “My moms are lesbians. Mom is Piper and Mama is Juniper.”
I blink slowly at this piece of Benji knowledge that I’ve been gifted. “The lesbians part is cool as hell but those names sure are something.”
Benji chuckles, although the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “They’re old-school hippies. They had me when they were already in their forties.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
Asking Benji about himself is easier than letting him know anything about me. Although, all the details about me are scattered all over the internet. All he has to do is google Nolan Hastings and there’s a feast of information for the entire world to know. Nothing about my life is secret. Except maybe my proclivity to get fucked rough by escorts, but that’s not because the label says I can’t be gay. It’s because maybe, sometimes it’s nice to have something just for myself that not everyone else knows.
“I grew up on a commune in Georgia,” Benji answers easily.
“Come again?”
Benji stands from the table with both of our plates, and heads towards the kitchen to do the dishes. “I said they were hippies.”
“A commune? Like a cult?”
Benji shakes his head with a shocked laugh. “No, not a cult. Just a group of likeminded people that wanted to live the same kind of life. I was homeschooled until I was a teenager and begged to go to the local public school.”
“Huh.”
Benji’s biceps bunch as he scrubs at the plates and suddenly I’ve had enough chitchat. Enough of us playing like we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen this weekend. Pushing back from the table, I stalk over to him with a single-minded mission. I carefully reach around him to slowly turn the faucet off. A smile twitches at the corner of my lips at his light, eager sigh. Bingo.
“Benji,” I say softly.
“Hmm?”
“Can you fuck me now, please?”
Benji turns around between my arms, pressing the small of his back against the counter. He sneaks his hands to my waist, his thumbs pressing hard against my hip bones. Without a single word, he dips down to take my mouth in a gentle, but thorough kiss. The night shifts around us, going from mellow, to knowing, to flat-out needy as I wrap my arms around his neck to tug him closer to me. Benji moans into my mouth and nips hard at my lip, pulling a moan from me.
“What’s on the list this time, huh?”
My brain barely boots back online to understand his question. “What?”
“Well,” Benji says, thumbs sweeping at the skin just under the waist of my sweatpants, “what do you need? Want me to fuck you so hard you can’t remember your own name? Want me to bite you all over until you’re covered in bruises? Want me to fuck you on your hands in knees in front of the fireplace in your bedroom? What does Nolan Hastings want from his escort?”
Rage rolls through me at the use of my full name. Fuck. Some emotion must flicker on my face because Benji’s hand comes up to curl in the hair at the nape of my neck, tugging my head back so I have to fight to keep my gaze on him.
“Maybe you want me to decide?”
“I want you to shut the fuck up,” I tell him, teeth gritted in annoyance.
Benji smiles softly. “No can do. Gotta do a lot of talking to keep fucking for money safe and sane.”
