24
Trevor officially craps himself.
In my act of pulling my pants back up, I knee Ben in the face.
In Ben’s act of scrambling to get out of my lap, he head-butts the steering wheel and issues a loud honk.
“Fuck!” I hiss, slipping back into my plaid button-up so fast, I hear threads pop. “This is not happening.” My hand searches in the dark for the reclining lever. “I can’t have something on my record. I can’t go to jail. Ben!”
Ben’s back in his seat, upright, and completely composed. Of course he is; he isn’t the one who was just being royally objectified and stripped of his clothes for some roadside sex.
I find the lever and give it such a hard pull, I fly upwards fast, nearly folding myself in half.
The very next second, a cop appears at Ben’s window, giving it that all-familiar tap-tap-tap with his flashlight.
Ben rolls down the window. “Hey there, Louie.”
“Benjamin Gage! Well, I’ll be.” The cop laughs heartily. “The heck you doing in this part of town at this time of night? About to fly back home or something?”
“Client,” Ben answers simply, offering a smile. “They have you on the late shift now?”
Oh my God. He knows the cop??
“Yep. It’s pretty damned quiet tonight, to be honest. I didn’t recognize your rental. You pull over to take a call?”
Ben—his phone already out with impressive speed—gives it an innocent wiggle. “Don’t drive and text, they say.”
“Good, good. I’ll leave you to it.” The cop—Louie—leans down a foot more, his eyes meeting mine. I give him an anxious, tight, toothy smile and a wave. He acknowledges it with the tiniest of nods, an awkward twist of his expression, and then he nods at Ben. “Have a safe flight home, Mr. Gage.”
“And you, a safe night keeping this city clean,” returns Ben.
The cop saunters back to his car, and soon, the red-and-blue circus of lights vanishes, traded for the soft moonlight of before. The hum of the cop car races past us, and then we’re alone again.
But we’ve changed. The sexiness from just a moment ago is gone. My heart races for a different reason. Have I pushed myself too far tonight? What is going on in my head? We’ve taken a flight to a strange city. We have met with and threatened a pompous teenage kid and taken his phone. And we’ve almost been arrested for entertaining the idea of fellatio in a car near an airport.
I hear my mother’s scolding voice in my head. I see my dad’s disapproving eyes. I see Elijah hanging his head and wondering who the hell his best friend is. I’m wondering the same thing.
This isn’t me.
“You’re pretty freaked out,” Ben notes.
“No shit,” I retort snappily.
He studies me for a moment. I feel his eyes burning into the side of my face. It shouldn’t turn me on, not while I’m having this miniature existential crisis going on in my head, but I can’t help the draw I feel toward Ben’s strength. I need him to say the exact right thing to me right now, but I have no idea what it is, or if I’ll even know it when I hear it.
“I had a different vision for tonight,” Ben tells me.
I close my eyes, shutting out the world.
Ben goes on. “I just wanted you in my apartment sharing a hot meal with me. Then I was hoping we’d … just hang out in front of the TV, maybe relax on my couch, and get to know each other some more. No pressure. No … chasing teens across California.”
For some reason, I was expecting his “different vision” to include bending me over the kitchen counter. I feel something stirring in me at the deliberate omission of any such raunchiness from his vision, to my surprise.
I think it’s my heart warming. Except it feels a bit like my stomach doing a proud somersault, turning over whatever little bit of that delicious Italian food we had hours ago before our dinner was interrupted by all this rousing celebrity drama.
“G-Get to know each other some more?” I prompt him, my eyes still closed.
“Yes, Trevor. I want to know everything about you.”
My eyes flap open at the soft, sincere tone in his words. I dare to turn to him, then melt at the sight of his shining eyes and fierce expression. It stabs me right where it counts, right in the chest, right where I’m feeling all that fear and anxiety and terror.
And he replaces all that mess with a calm, rich, needed feeling. The feeling you get when you’re chosen for a team in gym class. Or when you see your name on that cast list for a play. Or when the boss singles out that one intern—you—and commends your good, hard work.
“I … felt a different impression from you,” I tell him. “Judging from the way you attacked me before your officer friend Louie interrupted us.”
Ben tilts his head, appraising me. “Well …”
“I mean, I know you want my nuts.” I try to smile. It comes off a little fake, even to me. “Maybe I’m worried that’s all you want.”
Ben throws an arm over the back of his seat, facing me better. “I’m not going to lie, Trevor. You make me crazy. I am attracted to you. Badly. I don’t even see you as …” He gestures at me with his hand and a slight nod. “… as a twenty-year-old. You have an old soul. You have a brain in that head of yours. I really like that about you. And while sometimes it’s hard to contain my desire when we are alone, I … also want to know who you are inside.”
I can’t pull my eyes away from his, caught under his spell. He doesn’t say anything more, so I take it as my chance to confess the same thing. “I want to know what’s inside you, too, Ben. Other than this … softer side that you don’t let anyone see.”
“Oh, I let a couple see it.”
I smirk playfully at him. “Your dog doesn’t count.”
Ben tilts his head. “But don’t you?”
The way he stares at me right now, a sharp pang of thrill and mystery surges through me—the same electric sensation I had the night his eyes caught mine across that smokey nightclub. Was I defeated then? Did he conquer me, slamming through all my walls that first night? And have I been helpless to his power ever since?
Ben’s fingers surprise me when they tease into my hair, his hand hanging off the back of my seat. It feels so good, sending chills down my neck. “Let’s get on my plane,” he suggests, “maybe join the mile-high club, then head back to my place to get to know each other some more. How does that sound?”
I bite my lip as he plays with my hair. Sounds like heaven.