Sweet Sizzle: A Red Hot Valentine Story (5 page)

A hint of foreboding crept across his features. “Yes?”

“Shut up and fuck me.”

Relief banishing his apprehension, he wrestled with his belt and kicked off his wingtips. Zipper freed, he tugged
down his khakis and boxer briefs in the same motion and stepped out of the pool of clothing. He dug inside his jacket pocket and fetched his wallet, locating a sealed condom packet in one of the dividers.

She grimaced. “Was I that much of a foregone conclusion?”

“No, more like a wish and a prayer on my part.”

That at least made her feel marginally better. The second Ben ripped the foil open with his teeth, all other trivialities fled her mind. She dipped her attention to the rigid length of his cock. Not all men could claim ownership of such a superbly crafted organ. Back in her college days she’d listened to her girlfriends giggling over the strangeness of such a weird and ugly body part being able to provide so much fun and pleasure, and her secretly wondering if perhaps Ben was a freak of nature in that his penis was beautiful and a freakin’ power tool when it came to dishing out her orgasms. Since then she’d landed on the conclusion that while Ben might not necessarily be the sole beneficiary of the only perfect cock in existence, he certainly was one of the few she’d been lucky enough to personally experience.

Craving that first taste of him sans the undesired funky flavor of latex, she jumped down from the table and crouching in front of him, ran her tongue up along the prominent vein on the underside of his shaft. His abdomen tensed then quivered as she closed her lips around the mushroom-shaped cap and sucked him softly. “Aw, fuck. Ro, Jesus, so good.” His shaky hand brushed aside her hair so he could watch her bobbing motions. The rate he thickened in her mouth filled her with feminine pride. Who knows how many women he’d been with these last ten years, but no way any of them affected him like this. Determined to remind him of that fact, she increased her suction, her cheeks hollowing.

“
Goddamn
. Baby, stop. I don’t want to blow this by coming in your mouth.”

Letting him slip from her lips, she peered up at him through her eyelashes. “I’m sorry, did you say something about blowing?”

The noise rumbling from him somewhere between a laugh and a growl, Ben secured the condom in place and hunched over and tucked her into his arms. Hiking her legs high up around his waist, he swiveled and sat down on the edge of the table. She clutched at his shoulders, her panic at getting dropped on her head outweighing all else for the moment. He kneaded her buttocks. “Relax, I’ve got you.” Before she could question the legitimacy of that assertion, he effortlessly lifted her, positioning her directly on the straining head of his shaft. She was awarded the barest second to bask in the hedonistic sensation of that thick gland teasing her labia, and then she was sinking in a slow, wet glide onto his cock. Down, down, until he butted against her cervix. His size and the overall fullness was overwhelming. The desire to push him out combated with the equally powerful need to take in more of him. But aside of him burrowing into her womb, that last feat felt like an implausibility.

His fingertips drifting along her spine, he fed her sweet, reverential kisses, allowing her the time to adjust to him inside her. Pulled under the tow of his caresses, she melted into their union with a blissful moan. He began moving, unhurried little rolls of his hips that lodged him deeper and rubbed her clit against the ridge of his pubic bone. Her skin flushed, the familiar heat flooding her cells with exquisite sensation. His lips brushed her earlobe. “So amazingly tight. You’re gonna come again, baby, aren’t you?”

Speech impossible, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as the wave of ecstasy crashed into her. Sobbing, she shook uncontrollably, her nails digging into the meat of his shoulder. The quakes were unending, relentless in their quest to pull her deeper into their consuming riptide. Before they’d completely waned, a low, guttural groan fell from Ben, announcing that he was right there with her in the undertow. Connected as they were, she felt every single pulse of his climax in the heart of her core, and that only spiraled her into another small fluttery round of spasms.

Recovery from the sensory overload wasn’t immediate. Realizing the magnitude of what she’d just done, however, proved an infinitely shorter process.

She’d willingly gave herself to the one man she’d sworn to lock out of her life and her heart for good. How the hell was she supposed to fix this epic clusterfuck?

CHAPTER FIVE

Approximately fifteen seconds into his post coital glow, Ben intuited that everything might not be hunky dory in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. For starters, Rory had gone ominously silent for the last several minutes and a skittish energy radiated from her. The last troubling clue that they had a potential problem on their hands was the suspicious cloud of smoke funneling from the stove. “Uh, Ro, when were those oversized cookie things supposed to be done?”

She offered him a blank stare. “Oversized cookie things? What are you—” Blinking, she whipped her attention to the smoking appliance. “Oh my God, I set the timer! Why didn’t it go off?” She scrambled from his lap, almost falling down on her ass in the process. Dodging his attempt at assistance, she scurried to the oven and cracked open the door, releasing a bigger billow of the acrid fumes. He snagged her arm and hauled her back. Once he’d ascertained that the stove posed no greater threat than a baking sheet full of charcoaled remains, he shut off the thermostat and clicked on the exhaust fan. A quick check of the digital display solved the mystery of the faulty timer. “You set it for two hours.”

“
What?
” Disbelief widening her eyes, she peered at the readout. Groaning, she plopped her face into her hands. “I can’t believe I did that.” Spreading her fingers apart, she gaped at the wisps of smoke streaming up into the vent. “A few more minutes, and who knows what would have happened?”

“I’d say you might have had to call in the local fire department, but I already came.”

She dropped her arms, her mouth twitching. “That was epically bad.”

“But true.” Grinning, he disposed of the condom in the nearby trash can before leaning down to kiss her. He nibbled on her bottom lip, the lush curves pressing into him doing wonders to rekindle his blood. Deliberately rubbing his growing erection against her belly, he splayed his palms on her buttocks. “You were incredible. I’m dying to get you in a big, soft bed where I can properly make love to you.”

The odd uneasiness descended on her again. Placing her hands on his chest, she pushed away from him a bit. “Ben, we need to talk.”

He damn well didn’t like the sound of that. “Okay.”

“What happened here, it was a one-time thing.” She finally looked up at him. “Nothing more.”

He’d expected her to say as much, but the pain of hearing it didn’t hit him any less. “Don’t do this, Ro. What we have, it doesn’t come around every day. I
know
that wasn’t some meaningless fuck for you.”

“You’ve been out of my life for ten years, Ben. There’s a lot you might not know about me.”

“You couldn’t have changed that much.” His heart still recognized its missing half. He tended to trust that organ better than any of the others. Shit knows he should have listened to it from the very beginning. It would have saved him a decade of loneliness and misery.

“Maybe I have. I’m not an innocent, naïve girl anymore.”

“Trust me, I noticed. You’re a beautiful, grown sexy woman.” A blush bloomed across her cheeks. Enchanted by the sight, he followed the sweep of color with his thumb. “You have no idea how much of a sucker I am for you. Christ, when you walked into the station today it was like reliving the moment I first laid eyes on you. Do you remember it?”

She averted her gaze. “Of course I do.”

“You were wearing a short plaid skirt with a red sweater, your hair twisted up in that fancy Parisian thingamajig.” He demonstrated the style with his hand, fully aware he was doing a terrible job describing it.

She gaped at him. “It’s called a French Braid.”

He snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

She continued giving him that bug-under-a-microscope scrutinizing stare. “How could you possibly recall all of that?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Something life changing like that, it stays with you.”

Her forehead scrunched. “Life changing?”

He slid his hands up along her shoulders. “I knew the instant I saw you, Ro. Everything prior to that moment had just been a dress rehearsal. The true purpose for my being on this earth rested here.” He slipped his hand over her heart. “And here.” Twining his fingers with hers, he settled them over his own heart. “It scared the crap out of me for a long time, because I didn’t think I could handle the responsibility. I thought for sure I would fuck it up. That I would fail you.”

She swallowed roughly. “You’re remembering it wrong, Ben. You left me because I would only hold you back. Your words.”

Shame blanketed him. “It was an excuse. A fucking cowardly lie.”

Tension lines bracketed her mouth. “Easy for you to say that now, ten years after the fact. I wonder if we’d even be having this conversation if you hadn’t gotten injured.”

He frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Say you’d gotten your wish of going pro. Somehow I doubt I’d even be a niggling thought in the back of your mind.”

He shook his head furiously. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

“No? As it stands, you didn’t exactly hunt me down all this time. I couldn’t have been that important to you.”

Remorse vised his chest. “In the beginning I stayed away because I thought it was the only choice I had. You most likely hated me, and I convinced myself there’d be no fixing that.” He took a deep breath and forged on. “But I did try to find you, Rory. A year after we broke up, I stopped by your folks’ place and asked where you’d moved to.”

Befuddlement settled on her face. “They never told me.”

“Yeah, I suspected as much. They weren’t too thrilled to see me, as you can imagine. Your dad offered to give me a nose job—with his fist.”

“Oh Lord. Did he?”

“Nope. Fortunately your mom didn’t seem too keen on having my blood ruining the carpet.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “I also staked out your and Hailey’s old apartment for a while on the off chance you’d show up. That eventually got nipped in the bud when she caught me in the act and threatened to report me to the cops as a stalker.”

She groaned. “Well, I guess that explains why she always insisted on meeting at my place for our weekly Tuesday night taco party.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry if they were all jerks to you.”

“We both know I deserved it. Besides, they were doing it to protect you. They meant well. Anyway, I didn’t tell you this stuff with the intention of painting them in a bad light. I wanted you to know that there wasn’t one second that I stopped thinking about you. Loving you.” Huskiness lent a raw edge to his voice. It was never easy putting your heart on the line, and especially not when there was a good chance of having it returned to you beaten and bruised.

“Ben…” Rory crossed her arms, her knuckles white as she squeezed her fists. The gesture was a symbolic signature of defense, an invisible barricade shielding her heart.

She wasn’t going to let him in. Suffocating heaviness sat on his sternum. “Do you love me, Ro?”

Her gaze dropped to the tiled floor.

“Do you love me?” he repeated, despising the desperation clawing at his vocal chords.

“Don’t ask me that question, Ben. You might not like the answer.”

Yeah, maybe he wouldn’t. But better to know and cease torturing himself. “If you don’t—if there’s no chance of salvaging your feelings for me—then I’ll walk out that door and never bother you again.” Queasiness sloshed in his gut at the possibility of being shut out of her heart forever.

She rubbed her temple, her fingers trembling. “I don’t know.” Her blue eyes held a lifetime of doubt and pain. “You walk back in after all this time, stirring up memories I’ve worked so hard to lock away. It’s asking a lot of me to trust you.”

He nodded. At least she hadn’t insisted that her love for him was dead. As long as that remained the case, he would never give up hope. “I have to earn that from you. I realize it, and I’m prepared to do everything it takes to make it happen.”

She hugged herself again. “What are you asking of me? If it’s a relationship, there’s no way I can give that to you.”

A disturbing nugget of a revelation lodged in his mind. “You’re seeing someone.” He’d blindly concluded earlier that she’d only been pulling his leg about that meeting a date for dinner business. What if she hadn’t been blowing smoke up his ass?

“No, I’m not.”

Relief crashed over him, but it was short-lived as she laid down a long list of reasons for why she deemed him non-relationship material, starting with the most obvious and important—her complete lack of trust in him.

“I’m not going to set myself up for another huge fall, Ben. Who’s to say you won’t suffer a major freak out again? I can’t—I won’t—risk it.”

“You’re not the only one who’s changed, Ro. I’m no longer that same stupid punk who’s terrified of responsibility and failure. Because guess what? I’ve failed, big time. I know the bitterness of that taste, and while I won’t say that I particularly enjoy it, I’m not gonna run for the hills at the first sign of it being dished up for me.”

Rory didn’t look entirely convinced. “That’s just one of many obstacles we’re facing. There’s also the fact that you’ve been holding onto this memory of me, and it might not be in alignment with the person I am now.”

“Then give me a chance to get to know the new you. We’ll treat it as a fresh start. For both of us.”

Her expression remained skeptical. “You won’t try to pressure me into giving you more than I’m willing to give?”

“Cross my heart.” He repeated the sentiment with two fingers forming an X on his chest.

She continued to drill him with her assessing stare, her pensiveness unbudging. Finally she gave a weak exhale. “Okay. But this isn’t a promise of a future. I’m not looking for that with you, or anybody else right now. If that’s not something you can handle, this will never work out.”

“I can deal with it.”

“I hope you mean that. Because I’m dead serious, Ben.”

“Whatever you give me, I’ll take it.” Yes, he longed for all of her. Having to settle for anything less than that certainly wasn’t his first choice. All he could do was pray that eventually she’d release the lock on her heart. However long it took, he wasn’t giving up on her. On them.