I gulp as emotion tightens in my throat like a rock. “Oh. Thanks. I think I’ll be okay. I don’t know why it hit me so…”
“It doesn’t matter why.” Ben is scowling at me as he sits down on the small sofa against the wall. “Just get your ass over here so I can hold you.”
His grumbled words make me chuckle. Maybe that’s what he intended. Then the amusement turns into something close to tears as I walk over and let him pull me down onto his lap.
He wraps his arms around me, tighter than he ever has, but it’s exactly what I need. I burrow into him, not really crying but trembling helplessly for a long time.
Until finally, finally, some of that internal shaking stops.
Ben doesn’t say anything, but he’s warm and strong and big and steady.
He’s mine, and he’s not going anywhere.
It’s a long time before I’m able to lift my head and meet his eyes. “I don’t know why I keep letting these things get to me.”
“They’d get to anyone. You spent a lot of time pretendin’ that nothing got through your hard shell, but pretendin’ doesn’t make it real.”
“No. It doesn’t. Maybe…” I swallow over the words I was about to say because they embarrass me.
“Maybe what?”
“It’s nothing.”
“I don’t care. Tell me anyway.”
I no longer have it in me to fight the world and resist Ben at the same time. Resist everything I want from him. So instead, I sigh and admit, “Maybe since I’ve started to let a few more softer feelings in, even more is getting through at the same time.”
“Yeah,” he says, a warm, gentle feeling in his eyes. “I think that’s probably right.”
“But I do have to be careful. I can’t be soft. I really can’t. Not if I want to continue in this fight.”
Ben strokes some loose strands of hair back from my face, brushing my skin with his fingertips. “How ’bout this then?” he says at last. “You can stay strong with everyone else, but you can be soft with me.”
I smile, my throat and eyes and heart pulsing with emotion. “Okay. Maybe we can try that. As long as the softness doesn’t bleed into the rest of my life.”
“Why should it? You got the strongest will of anyone I’ve ever known. If you want to make it work, then we will.”
22
The following week,I’m on my hands and knees on the floor of the storage room, and Ben is fucking me hard from behind.
The camp has been tense all day, which is natural since we’re only two days from our attack on the Arsenal. But the heightened nerves have gotten to me as much as everyone else, and I was snippy with Ben after dinner, telling him he could stop hovering when he was lurking behind me as I was reviewing procedures with Vella and Roderick.
He never talks back around other people. He never conveys annoyance or impatience with even the smallest flicker of his expression. He murmured “Yes, ma’am” and took several steps back to increase the distance between us.
But I knew he would address my tone when we were alone.
I did not expect his method of addressing it.
Without a word, he turned me around to face the wall and teased me until I was so hot I was gasping and biting back whimpers. All the while, he was muttering out the hottest remonstrances—about how I should know better than to get this tense without letting him take care of me, without letting him work me up to the release I need, without allowing him to help me let go.
Never in my life would I have believed that kind of talk could do it for me, but it’s worked like magic this evening. Ben took his time, but we’ve eventually ended up here on the floor, me barely holding my position while he pounds into me from behind.
I’ve already come twice, and he’s still talking.
“You gotta tell me if you need it like this.” His cock is thick and tight in my still spasming pussy, and he keeps pushing it fast and hard. “You’re so used to bein’ in charge you forget sometimes you like me to put you on your hands and knees and give it to you like this.”
Fuck. I’m about to come again. It’s rising, throbbing, aching as it grows. I twist my head so I can smother a helpless whine into my shoulder so I’m not too loud.
