Jesus, what the ever-loving fuck did I just do?

I lifted my hands to confirm that they were actually shaking. But from exactly what, I wasn’t sure.

Thwarted lust?

Probably.

Humiliation?

Definitely.

Confusion?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

I began pacing the confines of the small bathroom but it was useless. The place was the size of a tin can and even if I sprinted the length of a football field, it would do little to ease the adrenaline that was coursing through my veins. Every cell in my body was demanding I go back in the other room, crawl onto that bed and over Ben’s beautiful body, and seal my mouth over his until I didn’t know where I ended and he began.

I’d come so fucking close to doing so much more than kissing him when he’d started his little hump and grind against me. I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes in total in the hours since I’d finally pulled the mattress off the bed in the hopes of keeping Ben from crawling in and out of it over and over. I’d hoped that by having the mattress and pillows on the floor, he’d use them instead of me as his own personal body pillow, but the second I’d lain down next to him on the mattress, he’d snuggled up against me and I’d given up on the idea of sleep. I’d finally managed to relax and just enjoy the sensation of his body pressed up against mine when he’d started curling his fingers into my side. Then his mouth had been on the move and his lower half, which had still only been clad in the tight pink underwear, had started shifting back and forth against my hip. I’d actually thought he was just having some kind of nightmare at first and had been ready to soothe him back to sleep until his mouth had closed around a muscle in my neck. Then I’d felt his dick riding my outer thigh and my own cock had started throbbing like a son of a bitch. Even now, I could feel the moisture in my shorts from where my dick had started leaking in anticipation.

I had no clue how I’d managed to retain enough sense to stop Ben, but it was clear that my roughness had frightened him and I felt like shit about that. But I’d also been worried that he’d hurt himself with all the jerking around. The pain pills that Cain had left in my trunk had seemed to help ease some of the stiffness in Ben’s body, which was a huge relief, but I hadn’t been expecting him to keep climbing into bed with me.

And I most certainly hadn’t expected to like it as much as I did. Sure, I hadn’t had more than the few rushed blowjobs in darkened clubs or alleys when I’d been younger, but the part that was fucking with my head was that I’d never met anyone who I wanted to share a bed with. There’d been plenty of men I’d wanted to have sex with but hadn’t for fear of having my sexuality splashed across newspaper headlines all around the world, but there hadn’t been even one that I would have been content to just lie in bed with and listen to their soft breathing as they slept. Or relished the way they clung to me.

But Ben was fucking with a lot of my preconceptions about myself.

And that definitely was not a good thing.

Not to mention the fact that I’d just shared some deeply personal shit with him about why I didn’t like beds and how little Charlie Fortier, my colleague’s ten-year-old daughter, had gotten so excited about sharing her favorite brand of shampoo with me.

“Fuck,” I whispered to myself as I stepped up to the sink and turned on the water. I stuck my hands under the cold water, then scrubbed my face and the back of my neck with the chilly liquid in the hopes of calming my nerves. It was a good five minutes before I felt back in control and ready to deal with Ben again. My job was to get information out of him, not lust over him or throw my own personal shit at him to try to make myself look a little less pathetic. Next I’d be telling him I’d never fucked another guy because I couldn’t risk outing myself for fear of ruining my father’s political career.

The political career that had ended years earlier.

“Jesus,” I snapped as I snagged Ben’s now dry jeans off the shower rod and quickly put his note back into the same pocket I’d found it in. Hopefully, I could get him to confide in me what the contents meant, but I’d taken a picture of it with my phone while he’d been asleep so I’d have the information if I needed it.

With Ben’s jeans in hand, I pulled in a deep breath and opened the door, fully intent on trying to just move past the events of earlier by ignoring them completely. But they were just as quickly forgotten when I saw Ben sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, the blanket covering his lower body. For once, though, it wasn’t him I was looking at, but the gun in his hands.

My gun.

“Who are you?” Ben whispered without looking up at me.

“No one,” I automatically responded. He had no way of knowing I actually meant what I said… that that’s how I’d come to think of myself in the years since so many had compared me to my father and found me lacking.

Ben remained silent for several beats, his eyes never leaving the gun. I saw that he had Duckie between the fingers of his right hand. “Am I free to go?”

The fact that he even had to ask the question made me feel sick. “Always,” I said softly.

Not surprisingly, Ben got slowly to his feet. He still had the gun in his hand, but I’d already seen that the safety was still on. From the way he was carefully handling the weapon, I could tell he probably hadn’t ever been around a gun before. It wasn’t until he was standing on the floor next to the bed that we both realized his dilemma.

He had my gun… but I had his jeans.

My gut was telling me he wouldn’t turn the gun on me, but I still kept my eyes on his. His finger was nowhere near the trigger and he was holding the butt of the gun between his fingers in a way that the barrel was pointed down. Before I could even say anything, he wrapped his free arm around his body and then carefully lowered himself until he was able to put the gun on the mattress. I could tell he was still in pain, but the fact that he could do the move at all was proof that he was already feeling better.

He rose up and slowly walked toward me. With the gun in a safe place, I couldn’t help but focus on his half-naked body. He moved with such grace, despite the fact that he was hurting. I hated that bruises marred his lovely, pale skin, but despite the fact that I wanted to kill the person who put them on him, I couldn’t see him as anything other than beautiful.

When he came to a stop in front of me and held out his hand expectantly, I handed the jeans over. But when his hand closed around the fabric, I didn’t release it right away. “Why not just point the gun at me and take them?” I asked.

“Probably for the same reason I actually believed for a second that you meant what you said about getting Georgie back.” He pulled the pants free from my grip. “Because I’m an idiot.”

“I meant what I said, Ben,” I said softly as I took a step toward him. I hated that he took a matching step backward. “Let me help you.”

Ben shook his head. “I can’t,” he said in a barely there voice.

“Can’t or won’t?” I asked, my frustration getting the better of me. I was used to fixing problems with my gun or my fists. I didn’t know how to do this… whatever this was.

He didn’t answer me. Instead, he went to sit in one of the chairs by the small table. His moves were slow and clearly pain filled as he tried to get his pants on. I was moving before I even realized what I was doing. When I knelt before him and took over the job of getting the pants onto his ankles, Ben leaned back in the chair. I tried to keep my moves impersonal yet gentle as I worked, but when I got the pants up to his thighs, it was like my fingers stopped working. My heart was pounding in my chest, and it seemed like every breath took more effort than it should.

And I knew why.

I didn’t want him to leave.

Yes, I could and would follow him if he did, but that wasn’t the point.

I wanted him to choose to stay. I wanted him to trust me. I wanted him to see that I could do this for him… that I could help him.

God, what the hell was wrong with me? How had this one man messed with my head so quickly? He was supposed to be just another job.

The skin on my arms began to burn, and it was all I could do not to pull at my sleeves to make sure they were tugged down all the way. I closed my eyes when Ben’s gentle fingers sifted through my short hair. It felt so good that I let out the breath I’d been holding and then dropped my head so my cheek was resting against his thighs. I didn’t care how foolish or weak I must have looked, kneeling there before him, my head in his nearly naked lap. I slid my hands around Ben’s waist and pretty much clung to him as he soothed me like I was some kind of wild animal caught up in a snare. It could have been minutes or hours before his quiet voice broke the heavy silence between us.

“Tell me why this matters to you so much, Reese. Why me?”

I couldn’t answer that because I didn’t understand it myself. I shook my head slightly because I couldn’t find my voice long enough to tell him I didn’t know. I lifted my head and released my hold on him so I could finish working the pants up his legs. I was about to tell him to sit up when one of his hands closed over one of mine where it was holding onto the waistband of his jeans.

“Tell me one thing, Reese. One thing about you that no one else knows.”

He lifted my chin to force me to look at him, and I knew why. He was testing me… like me, he was relying on the eyes to tell him the truth.

My eyes.

“The thing you were doing to me a little while ago…” —I glanced briefly at the bed and then looked at Ben again, whose unbruised cheek colored prettily at the mention of how he’d been grinding against me— “Stopping you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Ben shook his head. “I know, Reese, I’m so sorry—”

“No, Ben,” I interjected. “Stopping you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“Wait, are you telling me you… you… wanted…” Ben’s eyes went wide. “So you’re saying you’re—”

I cut him off before he could continue because I was afraid what hearing that word would do to me in the moment. “I can count on one hand how many people know that about me. But you wanted something no one else knows, right?”

Still looking a little shell-shocked, he nodded.

Humiliation simmered beneath my skin as I tried to steel myself for his reaction. “Ok, so, um—”

“Wait,” Ben whispered. He stroked his finger along my cheekbone and smiled gently. “It’s okay, you don’t need to tell me.”

He was giving me a reprieve, but surprisingly, I didn’t want it. “Waking up with you… I’ve never done that before.”

“You mean you’ve never slept with someone before?”

I nodded. “That… and… I’ve never slept with anyone before,” I somehow managed to get out.

“I don’t get it,” Ben said. “I—”

His eyes suddenly went comically wide as his mouth opened on a silent “o.” He began opening and closing his mouth like a fish. I felt like the biggest fool in the world and tried to pull away from him, but he grabbed my arms with surprising strength. I didn’t struggle because I didn’t want to risk hurting him.

“I’m sorry, Reese—”

“No, it’s okay. It was a stupid thing to tell you. You… you wanted something real and big, and I tell you this—” Before I could say anything, he slapped his hand over my mouth.

“It is a really big thing, and I’m honored that you shared it with me. And I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. I just… I mean, have you seen you?”

I almost smiled but when the fingers of Ben’s other hand pressed into a particularly sensitive spot along my inner arm, I remembered that I wasn’t the man he thought I was. I’d never considered myself a vain man, but admittedly, in that moment, I was wishing away my scars harder than I ever had before.

“Reese?”

At Ben’s questioning tone, I shook my head, forcing him to drop his hand from my mouth. “It’s okay,” I said. “Lift up,” I murmured as I motioned to the pants I was still trying to help him get on.

“Wait,” Ben responded. “I, um… I think maybe I should shower before I go, yes? I can still smell… I still smell pretty bad.”

I actually found myself holding my breath at his words. I began nodding and then caught myself. “Yes, you should shower but not because you smell bad.” I almost told him he smelled good, but we’d been down that road before, and I’d already made enough of a fool of myself.

“Ok, good. I’ll shower. Yeah. I’ll do that,” Ben babbled. “But, um, just one thing.”

“Anything,” I said eagerly.

“I think I’m going to need some help…”