WHAT HAD SHE DONE? She was screwing this up. She had agreed to come out tonight with the full intention of repairing the crack in their relationship. And instead, she had decided to bust it wide-open.
Or she was a lying liar who was lying to herself.
She’d had kind of a mini-breakdown starting with that disastrous Michael date and continuing into today. She could admit that.
She’d gotten up early and taken Flicka up into the hills and ridden until she’d been ready to collapse from hunger, and hadn’t had a single revelation. But at least she’d gone out. Carved out the time to be in nature and to do something she loved.
She’d been starving and restless and had decided to go out to get food.
She’d seen the red hutch at a furniture place in town and had decided she needed it, because her house felt wrong. Or really, her life felt wrong. But she’d made herself believe a red hutch could fix it.
Then she’d bought the miniskirt. Which looked borderline obscene on her, because her legs were endless—her one overtly sexy feature—and it had made her feel good about herself. So she’d gotten it.
Then she’d gotten home and put it on, and had started doing herself up a little. She had put on damned lipgloss. She was wearing a push-up bra, for all the good it did with her teacup boobs.
Then the hutch had arrived and they’d put it in her living room without doors and she’d just gone straight into trying to fix it, only she hadn’t been able to.
Then Bennett had shown up. A white knight without his steed.
It had all become shockingly clear in the moment. She was avoiding the fact that things with him were at critical mass. That it wasn’t her house that was wrong, it was her heart. And the missing space wasn’t red hutch-shaped.
It was Bennett-shaped.
And the miniskirt was not so another random man would notice her.
She’d wanted to see if she could look sexy enough for him.
What Michael had said to her kept resonating inside of her. That comment about her getting Bennett out of her system.
It had sparked the desire to get serious about a change that had to start with her—not another man. And she’d been feeling...good. Spontaneous and different and good. But Bennett had shown up. He always would. He would always be there and this feeling wasn’t something she could displace anymore.
Everything in her brain was currently scrambled. But she knew two things. That she could not watch Bennett walk out the door with another woman. That she couldn’t go on the way things had been. And that those two things scared her far more than whatever other consequences awaited her.
Because she had done this for years. She had watched him find someone else. She had tried to find somebody herself so that she wouldn’t be alone.
She had followed him around when he had gone to pick Olivia up from work. Had been the third wheel when they’d gone out to bars. Had watched the two of them play darts. She had even been there when they had broken up. The emotional support in every way for this man all while wanting him with everything inside of her.
She had been convinced, all that time that Olivia had been getting the one thing that Kaylee wanted most. But she hadn’t.
And now, Bennett felt like that dry spell was catching up with him. Well, she felt far too invested in that dry spell. Because when she had assumed he’d been sleeping with Olivia, she had been tortured. And her own bed had been very, very empty.
She’d decided years ago that burying her feelings would be best. But if the past few months had taught her anything it was that her life wasn’t best right now. It wasn’t going to correct itself, and it wasn’t going to be fixed with dates, avoidance or red hutches.
“I’m in about the same dry spell,” she said. “It’s been more than a couple of years for me.”
She tried to brazen it out. Tried not to betray the fact that this was something she had thought about for years. Something she had wanted for years.
It was easier if he just thought this was some kind of matter-of-fact offer to help a friend out with something.
Like, she was asking him to loan her a cup of flour. Except she wanted him to lend her his penis.
That was how she wanted to present it. Anything else was...
You’re in love with him, aren’t you?
She gritted her teeth and blotted out the echo of Michael’s words.
She didn’t want to be in love with Bennett. Because he wasn’t in love with her. But on the other side of this would be something new she could work with. And that was the best hope she’d had for a while.
“What the hell, Kaylee?”
“You’re not opposed to it,” she said, hoping that she wasn’t deluding herself. “If you hadn’t ever thought about it then the whole kiss thing... It wouldn’t have made things weird. It made things weird, because it made us both think about it.”
“Kaylee...”
“Leave with me,” she repeated, the words firm. Undeniable. There was no pretending she’d meant something else. No pretending he’d misunderstood. They both knew what she’d said.
They both knew what she wanted.
Her heart thundered erratically, her throat scraped raw. And she just waited. Waited for him to respond. Waited for that hard expression of his to shift. For him to turn away. Lean closer. Something.
It seemed like forever.
And then, just like that, it was all lightning again. A flash of something in his eyes. Want. Just for a moment she could see it. Just for a moment it was clear.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, flinging a couple dollar bills on the table and grabbing hold of her arm, dragging her toward the exit of the saloon.
“I didn’t say I was ready to go,” she said, panic suddenly rising up to strangle her.
“We need to talk,” he bit out.
He propelled her forward until they were outside, on the street in front of the saloon. “Get in my truck,” he said.
That bossy, alpha tone should have made her mad, but instead, it set off some chain reaction through her body. Made her squeeze her thighs together.
“Why can’t we talk in there?”
“Because I cannot have a conversation about possibly having sex with my best friend in a room full of people.”
“I don’t want to have a conversation. I thought I made that perfectly clear.”
“Get in the truck.”
“I drove myself,” she protested feebly.
“I’m driving you home,” he said.
There was something about the way that he held his jaw, granite and uncompromising, that made her stop arguing.
They got in the truck, and Bennett turned the engine over. Her heart was pounding hard, her stomach queasy. She had made it completely clear what she wanted. He wanted it too. She saw it in his eyes. He might be angry. He might want to talk them both out of it. But she had seen the truth.
They started to drive out of town, leaving the main street, and all the buildings behind them. Headed into the darkness, where there were no streetlights. Where there was nothing but trees to stand witness.
It all flooded up inside her then. Fear. Need. Desire. She was about to climb out of her skin, or out of her clothes and onto him. It was crazy. But she’d said the words and there was no going back. She didn’t even want to try.
“Pull over,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“We need to talk,” he said.
“No,” she said. “We don’t. We’ve spent the last seventeen years talking, Bennett. I don’t want to talk anymore. That’s not what tonight is about.” She took a deep breath and curled her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms. “You said you wanted to take care of me. Well...this is how you can take care of me.”
He kept driving for a moment, and then they came to one of the many dirt roads that wound around up into the mountains. He turned suddenly sharply. And said nothing as he drove on, the gravel crunching beneath the truck tires. He pulled off at the first turn out, well off the main road. Isolated.
He turned the key. She sat for a moment, staring straight out the windshield, listening to the residual pop and sizzle of the engine as the truck began to cool down.
Then she turned toward him, pressed her fingertips against his cheek. She didn’t move closer. Didn’t undo her seat belt. She just...touched him.
She was startled when his iron grip captured her wrist, pulled her closer, the shoulder strap on her seat belt biting into her collarbone.
“Are you just going to tease me?” There was something tortured in his voice. Something deep and intense she had never heard before. At least, never directed at her.
“N-no.”
“That seems like a tease, Kaylee. Seems like barely more than talking.”
She wished that she could see his face. But it was too dark. The trees rose up tall, blocking the light from the moon. She could make out the stars, but just barely. Nothing more than gold dust in the sky.
“If you’re going to start it,” he said. “We might as well finish it.”
He was right. It was acknowledged. That this electric, thick air that had been growing between them recently was attraction. That she wanted him. The damage was done at that point. More than done.
It was the thing she’d always been afraid of. Making a change that couldn’t be taken back.
But she was shaking. She didn’t know if she could do it. Didn’t know if she could take this step.
She had tried. She had tried to be good for so long. Had tried to keep this relationship in its own category. Friendship. Hell, he was almost family. At least, that was what she had told herself. And the attraction stuff... Understandable. Because he was a handsome man and she was just a woman, after all. Because she liked him so much, and all that liking was a hairbreadth away from being sexual anyway with men and women. At least, as long as there was any seed of attraction there.
She had told herself he didn’t feel it. But now she knew he did. Even if it was recent on his end, the fact that he did feel it now changed everything.
The fact that they were here changed everything already.
Still, she was scared. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring herself to close the distance between them when she had done it already in the past few days. When she had been the one to commit all the unpardonable sins. The one who had kissed him. The one who’d said he could break his celibacy with her.
It had all been her. She couldn’t bring herself to be the instigator again.
But then, she didn’t have to be. Because he was the one who closed that distance. He was the one who pressed his mouth to hers.
The sound he made when their lips touched wasn’t one of pleasure. It was one of pain.
Like he was a man enduring the worst kind of torture, rather than a man kissing a woman in a darkened truck.
For a moment it was like the kiss they had shared at the ranch. Closemouthed. Simple.
Still.
But then, it was like something broke between them. Whether it was him or her, she didn’t know. But suddenly she found herself flush up against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, his hand on the back of her head, holding her hard against him. She, for her part, was clinging to his shoulders, and they both angled in, parting their lips. When his tongue touched hers it was more than a lightning strike. It was one that touched down to earth and lit the ground on fire. Left it scorched. Left everything singed in its wake.
She was finally tasting him. Really tasting him. She moved her hands around from his shoulders, down to the front of his chest. To those muscles that she had admired for so long, but never touched like this. She was greedy, desperate suddenly. Because this was the chance. Her opportunity to experience all of these fantasies. And she felt like it was too much. Like there were too many things to want, and not enough time to have them. Maybe not enough time in the whole of her life.
Yes, she had wanted to kiss him for years. But also, she had wanted to touch him. She needed him. She needed him so badly. Under her palms, against her skin. Every inch of his body.
He had been forbidden for so long. This had been forbidden for so long. But it was happening now. She couldn’t get enough of it.
She’d had hints of it over the years. The familiarity of his scent, brushes of his fingertips against hers. Friendly hugs.
But not this feast. This all-consuming sense of being surrounded by him. The smell of his skin all encompassing, filling her lungs. She slipped her hands up from his chest, loath to stop touching those incredible muscles, but she needed his skin.
She dragged her fingertips over his face, feeling that glorious stubble beneath her palms as she cupped him. It was so masculine. So innately sexual because it was so very different from her.
Except none of the other men she had kissed had impacted her this way. She had never once thought of stubble as being intimate, borderline filthy. But with him it felt like it. Because she had never been allowed to touch him like this, and now she was. So it made the smallest of things, things that would have been innocuous with any other man, seem so deep and raw and wrong. So wonderful and intense.
Between her thighs, a pulse beat steady and hard, that ache stretching from deep inside her core. She was ready for him now. If he unfastened his jeans, and pushed her skirt up he could be inside of her in seconds. Just that very thought had her on the edge. Had her ready to explode.
She had never felt like this when kissing a man. She had felt less during sex.
His hands were stationary, holding her still as he tasted her, as he swept his tongue along her lower lip, sending a sharp shock through her body, an electrical jolt that made her internal muscles pulse.
She was ready to come. Just from this. From a kiss. He hadn’t even touched her anywhere but her head, and she was ready.
“I need...” She moved her hands from his face, down to the hem of his T-shirt, plucking at it desperately. “More.”
He swore and drew away from her. “I have blankets in the back.”
It took her a while to register what that might mean, but then he moved away from her, and she protested, feeling muddled and hypersensitized.
“Bennett, don’t stop.” She couldn’t disguise the needy thread in her voice. She didn’t even want to.
“Can’t,” he bit out.
He reached behind the bench seat and grabbed hold of a folded-up flannel blanket, then got out of truck.
She just sat there for a moment, unsure of what she was supposed to do. Her brain wasn’t working right. Her thoughts were thick and strange, and she couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Then, the passenger-side door opened, and he was there, one hand braced on the open door, the other pressed against the frame. Filling the space.
She unbuckled, then turned toward him, her knees hanging outside the truck. And he wrapped his arms around her again, pulling her up against him. This time, he settled between her legs, the kiss deep and intense. And she could feel him. Hard and insistent between her legs. Pressed up against that place where she was so needy for him.
She saw stars.
She tilted her pelvis forward, letting her head fall back as he kissed her neck, as he rocked his hips up against her. Unconsciously, she wrapped her legs around his waist. Her skirt slid up her thighs, baring her legs entirely. She shifted, capturing his mouth again. He rolled his hips forward, the seam on his jeans biting through the flimsy fabric on her panties.
Suddenly, she saw the merit of skirts. It would be so easy. So easy for him to be inside of her.
Bennett. Inside of her.
She shivered. A full-body response to this madness that was threatening to consume her completely.
Then, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up out of the truck. The open door left the light on, casting a very faint glow into the bed of the truck. And she could see what he had been talking about. Blankets. There had apparently been some in the bed already, and they were spread out now, the one from the inside of the truck over the top of them.
He didn’t want to stop.
He lifted her up over the tailgate, depositing her on the makeshift bed. He lifted her like she was nothing. He made her feel small, feminine. Almost laughable for a woman who was nearly six feet tall and made entirely of lean muscle with very little in the way of hourglass curves.
But he made her feel beautiful. Cherished.
And that ache in her throat was back. She needed it to go away. An ache between her legs was one thing, because she knew how he could fix that.
It was all the rest. The other feelings that he gave her...that she didn’t know what to do with.
But she didn’t have to think about it. She couldn’t think about it. Because then Bennett joined her in the back of the truck, on his knees down by her feet. He grabbed hold of the hem of his T-shirt and ripped it up over his head.
She couldn’t see him well, but what she could see...
The light from the cab of the truck threw his muscles into relief. The shadows showing the dips and hollows on that sculpted body.
She’d seen Bennett without his shirt before. And it was always a whole thing.
Always fuel for her fantasies late at night when she couldn’t sleep. When she was lonely and desperate for some kind of release, and could picture only one man.
It was always followed by shame. Shame and feeling weird about him the next day when she saw him.
Because she had always felt like it was a violation of some kind. That his body wasn’t there for her.
But now it was. Right now, it was.
She scrambled up onto her knees, moving closer to him. Then she pressed her palm flat against his bare chest.
“Bennett,” she whispered, the word like a prayer.
Finally, she was touching him. Bennett. His body. Naked under hands.
She rocked her hips forward, squeezing her thighs together slightly, trying to do something to ease the intensity of the need between them.
Then she swallowed hard, her throat like the inside of a pincushion. She let her fingertips drip down across his nipple, and he sucked in a sharp breath. Then down farther to his abs, to the waistband of his jeans.
He was beautiful. Built tough and strong, the results of years of hard work. The evidence that he was rancher stock down to his bones. One of the few men in the world tough enough to stand up to her.
To make her feel delicate.
Like she could be the girl in that lace bedroom she’d wanted as a kid. Like she could wear sky-high heels and still be feminine.
Not helpless or powerless. Not a bad feeling at all. It was...it was intensely heady and sexual. To feel like he could overpower her easily. To be so conscious of another person’s strength. To have it underneath her fingertips like this, barely leashed and there for her pleasure.
She didn’t think she had it in her to say those words. To share like that. But she could show him. With her body. Show him what he made her feel.
“Your turn, Kay,” he said, his words tortured, falling back on her nickname from high school. Which just made it seem all the more real.
He was the only person who called her that ever. Which made her all the more aware that this could only be him.
But then, the intensity of the arousal thrumming through her body made certain that she was aware of that too. The fact that she was sitting on a knife’s edge, so close to release it was almost embarrassing.
She had never come with a man before. She just could never get herself all the way into it. Could never stop feeling self-conscious. About where to put her hands, about whether or not he was enjoying it. About whether or not she was enjoying it enough. But she had always told herself it was nice to be close to someone. And that she would never be able to have a real relationship if they didn’t have physical intimacy.
But now she knew what utter bullcrap that was.
She had tried so hard to make it happen with the small number of other men she’d gone to bed with. And with Bennett...she didn’t have to try at all.
She was still up on her knees, frozen, her palm pressed flat to his stomach. And then his warm, rough hands were brushing against the tender skin on her stomach as he began to lift her shirt up over her head. She lifted her arms, allowed him to remove her top.
He swore, slowly dragging the edge of his thumb across that place where her bra met her skin. And she moaned. She couldn’t hold it back. Didn’t even want to.
“Let me see,” he said, the word tortured.
With shaking fingers, she reached behind her and unhooked that push-up bra, the push-up bra she was regretting now, because she felt like it was promising him things that she couldn’t deliver.
She would have said something, warned him, but her tongue wasn’t working. She pulled it off and threw it down into the bed of the truck. The cold night air and her arousal making her nipples impossibly tight.
“Kaylee,” he said, her name reverent on his lips as he pressed his palms against her breasts, teasing her nipples.
She had to brace herself, holding on to the side of the truck bed, to keep herself from falling back as pleasure coursed through her, with each pass of his calloused thumbs over her sensitized body.
He moved his hands down to her waist, his large hands nearly spanning her slim midsection, then he moved them down farther tracing a line beneath her belly button, that point of contact so strangely intimate somehow. Because he was her friend. Because he had never, ever touched her like this before.
It was weird to think she had known him for seventeen years, had even fantasized about him, but that she didn’t really know him. Not really.
Because there was this. All this, that she had never really witnessed before.
The expression in his eyes when he was turned on, the way that he held himself in check, even though she could sense that he wanted to push her down onto the blankets and devour her completely.
She was ready for that. But she also didn’t want it to end. Wanted it to go on forever. She was caught and held firmly between those two desires. And so, she just let him continue the slow exploration. Let him undo the snap on her skirt, draw down the zipper and slowly push the denim down her thighs, leaving her in nothing but a pair of lace panties.
“Well, hell,” he breathed.
“What?”
“I did not take you for a lace panties kind of girl, Kaylee Capshaw.”
Pleasure bloomed over her skin. She didn’t know why, but it made her smile. Maybe it was just the idea that Bennett had an opinion on what kind of panties she might wear.
“What kind of panties did you think I wore, Bennett?”
His fingers edged down slightly lower, flirting with the waistband on their current topic of conversation.
“Cotton.” The word sounded like it had scraped all along his throat on the way out.
“Sometimes I wear cotton.”
“But tonight you wore lace.” He looked up at her, his eyes meeting hers. “Did you wear them for me?”
She had. All of this was for him. She could pretend that it hadn’t been. That she hadn’t been imagining this moment. That she hadn’t been committed to trying this.
But she would be lying.
The moment she’d picked that miniskirt up in the store today, she had a feeling she’d been thinking of this.
“Of course it’s for you,” she whispered, barely able to force the words out.
He growled, the sound so unfamiliar coming from this man she had known all of her life that it made her heart stutter.
He was dangerous, her Bennett. So much more intense, more masculine, than she had even allowed herself to see.
But then, this was the essence of what made him a man. And of what made her a woman. This need. This desire between them.
The way that his body was hard and only got harder, that hers was soft in so many ways, and prepared itself to yield to all that strength.
They were business partners. They were friends. Equals in their daily life.
Having that shift, rip, so profoundly was heady and intense and terrifying all at once. She wanted more of it, as much as she wanted to hide from it.
But she couldn’t hide from it.
He pushed his hand down farther, his fingertip grazing her center. It was like the strike of a match. She couldn’t hold back the sound of pleasure that built in her throat and escaped on a whimper.
He breathed a curse as he delved deeper and found her slick and hot for him.
“Yes,” she whispered, arching her hips against him, meeting each of his movements with one of her own.
“Kiss me,” she whimpered. He wrapped his arm around her, drew her bare breasts up against his chest, holding her tight and forcing her lips apart, thrusting his tongue in deep, mirroring the rhythm of his finger. Then he pressed it between her slick folds, rubbing her slowly, methodically. Before pushing inside of her completely.
She broke. And he swallowed her cry of pleasure as her internal muscles pulsed around his fingers, as she gave in to the deepest, most intense orgasm she had ever had in her entire life. The only one she had ever had in front of another person.
And it was Bennett. Bennett was the one who had seen it. Bennett was the one who had caused it.
It was Bennett who had been the first one to taste that pleasure on her lips, to feel her lose her control.
Of course it was Bennett. It was always going to be Bennett.
She could try to care about other people. She could try to want them.
But it had always only ever been him.
She drew in a shaky breath, blinking back an onslaught of tears, trying her best to hold it together when she had already fallen apart. Then, he slipped her panties down her legs, and on autopilot she let him pull them off completely as she shifted so she was sitting on her bottom.
She scooted forward, her legs parted, Bennett kneeling up between them. Then, she placed her hands on his belt, slowly working it through the loops of his jeans, undoing the button and drawing his zipper down slowly. His breath hissed through his teeth as her knuckles brushed up against his hardness.
She was going to see Bennett’s naked penis.
She was about to hold it in her hands.
She could barely handle that. But then, he had just had his fingers inside of her when she’d come. So, this seemed fair enough.
She wanted it. So desperately. But she was afraid of it too.
With shaking fingers, she pushed his jeans down, and he helped her get them off him. And then she scooted closer, pressed a kiss to his taut stomach, just above the waistband of his underwear.
“Kaylee,” he said, grabbing hold of her chin and tilted her face up. “You don’t have to...”
And that right there confirmed exactly what she was going to do next. She moved her hand to the front of his underwear, black and tight and sexy as hell. Then she tested the length of him, the thickness, through that fabric.
He was definitely a lot more man than she’d ever had before. It felt like her reward. Her just deserts for waiting so long for him. That he would be the most impressive. That he would be the sexiest damned man she had ever touched.
In her opinion, saying size didn’t matter was a lot like saying one scoop of ice cream was just as good as two. You might only need one, but you always wanted two.
Bennett was two scoops and then some.
Slowly, she pulled his underwear down, leaving them in the middle of his thighs as she turned her focus to his body. She pressed her palms against his legs and leaned in, pausing for a moment to take in the musky, masculine scent of him. She shivered, all the way to her core. She would have said there was no way she could have another orgasm, not yet. But oh, she was about to. Just from looking at him. Just from being this close.
The light from the truck was weak, and it didn’t allow her to see him as much she wanted. She wrapped her fingers around that hard, hot length and she groaned.
“Wow,” she said, testing his length, his strength, imagining that thick, glorious arousal surging inside of her. But first. First there was something she needed to do.
She leaned in, flicking her tongue across the swollen head of him, parting her lips and taking him in slowly, inch by inch.
Bennett swore, reaching up to grip her hair, holding himself steady, using her as his anchor. She didn’t mind. She wanted to be his anchor.
His everything.
He bucked his hips, pushing himself deeper into her mouth, groaning as he did. She was afraid that he would be tentative, that because he had said she didn’t have to, he would feel uncomfortable with it. But clearly, whatever reservations he’d had were long gone now.
And she was glad. She didn’t want him to hold back. This was her moment. The culmination of years of fantasies. She didn’t want restraint. She didn’t want him to be careful. If they were going to burn everything down, if they were going to blow it all up, then it needed to be completely destroyed. There was no point going halfway. At the point when they had acknowledged that they both wanted this, that they wanted each other, it had already been too late.
Hell was hell. Whether you were standing at the door or deep in the pit of it.
When it came to this, there was only all the way.
Maybe it was the way through. Or maybe not. But right now it didn’t matter.
She worked his glorious body in and out of her mouth, and he moved his hips along with her. The taste of him, the strength, all of it, it made it a bigger turn-on for her than it might even be for him. Because she was sure that Bennett Dodge had not ever fantasized about her giving him a blow job. But she had certainly fantasized about giving him one.
Bennett. Her Bennett. Finally. Under her hands, in her mouth. It was all she had wanted. All she needed.
“Kaylee,” he gasped. “I can’t... I can’t last.”
She could only make a muffled sound.
And then he pulled himself away from her.
“Bennett,” she breathed, “it’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he rasped, reaching for his jeans and grabbing his wallet. He had a condom, which didn’t really surprise her, considering which particular conversation had led them here. She’d had one too, but hers was still in the cab of the truck, so she was happy to let him take the wheel on this. “It’s really not okay.”
He discarded his underwear, and slowly tore open the packet, taking out the latex and rolling it over his length.
Suddenly, it all became very real. And suddenly, it became very scary.
Because it was all fine and good to think of touching as being the same as wanting. But actually contending with having him inside of her. With being with him like this...it was different. It was more.
She wanted it. But it terrified her. She was not a casual sex kind of girl and she hadn’t been with very many people. Always after careful consideration. After they had spent a long time dating.
But actually, if this were casual sex, it would’ve been less scary. It wasn’t casual sex. It was sex with Bennett. And that was the opposite of casual. That was something a hell of a lot more terrifying.
But then on a groan, he kissed her again. So deep and dirty and all-consuming that it made her forget her moment of trepidation. She pushed her panties down her legs, desperate to be completely bare up against him. And then she was. That hot erection burning against her stomach, his chest hair rough against her breasts. His thighs pressed against hers, one large hand moving down to cup her butt. He squeezed her tight, then pushed his fingers between her legs from behind, stroking her slick channel.
Then he pushed her down, flat on her back, settling between her legs. She didn’t want to stop, not anymore. She angled her hips up, offering herself to him as he positioned the blunt head of his arousal up against her. He wrapped his hand around himself, pushing his length through her folds once, twice, again, sending sparks raining down on her before he brought himself against her entrance again.
He pushed forward a fraction of an inch, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. To keep from crying. As Bennett, her best friend, filled her completely.
She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, trying to hold back the onslaught of emotion that was threatening to crash over her. She didn’t want that. She just wanted this. She just wanted to feel. Feel all that hardness stretching her, feel him pulsing inside of her. That was what she wanted. To feel the weight of his body pressed down on hers, his heart beating against her chest.
His breath was hot on her neck, his hands roaming down her back, moving down beneath her ass as he lifted her up and thrust hard into her. He let out a short, fractured sound that hollowed out her stomach, made her feel like she was on the edge again.
She knew his voice. But not like this. She knew his touch, but not like this. She knew him. He had been part of her life for so many years. They had gone to school together. They worked together. They drank together. He had been in her home, in her world, for all of this time, but he had never been inside of her.
It was almost too much. Too real. And she was thankful for the pleasure that began to blot out reality. That made the stars overhead blur and made everything feel just a little bit fuzzy.
He shifted, gripping her hips, jerking her down against him as he thrust forward, the sound of skin meeting skin the only sound in the silence of the forest. Except when he said her name. Short, sharp, pained. But he knew that it was her. He wasn’t pretending it wasn’t.
She wrapped her legs around his narrow hips, pressing one hand against his chest, the other gripping his shoulder as she rocked against him, desperate for more. Desperate for everything.
This wasn’t like any sex she had ever had. It wasn’t clumsy or tentative. It wasn’t two people stumbling through, trying to figure out what the other wanted.
It was selfish. Harsh and hard. In that way it was perfect. Because they were both taking exactly what they wanted. She was taking pleasure in his body, and he was taking it in hers. And that...that brought all the satisfaction she could ask for.
She wasn’t worried about whether or not he wanted it. Whether or not he enjoyed it. She knew he did. It was in the frantic way he moved, in the way he said her name, the way he groaned against her neck, his breath hot on her skin.
She was unraveling again. Bit by bit, beneath his touch. With him all around her, filling her, destroying her. Making her new.
She didn’t know what would be left of them when it was over. She didn’t know if they would be able to come back from this. To piece themselves together, piece their friendship together. But right now there was this.
It was everything.
A moment in time that so many of her feelings, so many of her desires, so many of her long-held dreams had been leading to. That no matter what happened in the end she couldn’t regret it. Because for her this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. For her this had nothing to do with a dry spell or simply being lonely. For her, this was about Bennett.
Whatever it was about to him, she knew what it was to her.
And it mattered enough that it could be everything. For her. For now.
He gripped her thighs, drawing her knees up farther, positioning her so that he went deeper. Impossibly. Beautifully. She gasped, her orgasm breaking over her suddenly, like a sneaker wave on the beach. She had spent her whole life working so hard to find release, she hadn’t known it could be so easy. But then, with him it had always been just beneath the surface. With him, of course it was easy. Because it had almost been harder to hold it back.
He followed her closely, his harsh groan loud in her ear as he froze against her, pulsing deep inside of her.
And then it was over. He pressed his forehead against hers, sharing the same breath. He kissed her. And then he pulled away.