I DIDN’T MISS THE way all the beautiful women on the boat looked at me, or better yet, sneered in my direction the entire day. Doing my best, I hid it from Ben, hoping he wouldn’t think I was delusional. I’m not jealous, just a little put off by the cattiness, it’s not the setting I’m used to being in. Ben never took his attention off of me though, and it made my belly coil in knots and my skin prickle with heat. I felt truly special for the first time in my nineteen years.
I always wondered what kissing a man would feel like when it had the passion that Ben gave. Never in any of my thoughts or dreams did it feel even half as incredible as each touch of Ben’s lips on mine. There is a sense of recklessness with Ben and I chase it, thrive to have more of it. It’s been forty-eight hours since I looked him in the eye and told him to take a hike and pitch a tent to stay when he reached the top. Now, I crave to be touched by him, to listen to everything he has to say and look for any piece of information I can to make sense of why I feel this sense of necessity to be near him.
Minutes in Ben’s world feel like hours, and hours like days, and days like months. It’s riveting and it makes the rash progression of us make even more sense.
“Night guys, thank you for today!” I clear the back seat with Ben in toe as we say good bye to Kate, Nick, and Eric. Nick and Ben share a quick look that I don’t understand, a passing glance of…concern? I don’t know, but for a split second I drown in worry. Turning to him as the car pulls away, I go to speak, but before the words even dance on the tip of my tongue, he speaks.
“The piano is waiting and your angel voice better be ready,” he teases and I roll my eyes, the clouds of worry slowly clearing up. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
“I do not have an angel voice, you weirdo. But I did make a deal, so let’s do this.” Butterflies rumble in my stomach as we make our way up my steps and progress as I unlock the door. I’ve never been one to sing in front of a ton of people. My parents hear it the most, but second to that, the confines of my car and the surrounding crowd of my church choir are the only ones that get to hear me sing.
“A Yamaha S Series. Shit baby, this is beautiful.” In our sitting room, just to the right of the front door, our white Yamaha Piano sits adjacent to the fireplace and in front of the large bay window. The sun is gone and chased away by the moon. Our neighbors’ lights are all on and I see some eating dinner and others watching TV while Ben takes a seat at the bench.
“My mama and papa love playing the piano. In fact, every Sunday we play it as a family, sing some hymns,” I whisper the last part. Ben has made it clear that my religion is not for him and I respect that. Would I prefer he have faith, yes, but I’m not the preachy kind. I won’t force my beliefs down anyone’s throat but my own.
“Me and my mom used to do that. Of course our piano wasn’t this beautiful, but my mom loved to sing church songs to me. That’s how we discovered I could sing.” As I watch him while he talks about his mother for the first time, I don’t miss the apprehension in his voice and that deep sadness thundering in his eyes.
“Do you still sing together?” I ask hestiantly.
“She died,” he replies harshly. I feel his pain stricken grief all by looking at him. His mother died? Gosh, I could only imagine the feeling. Almost losing my mama destroyed me and she made it through.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ben.” Bringing my hand to rest it on his shoulder, he peers up at me, grief still pinching his face, but I see a flash of anger dancing in the shadows.
“Don’t be sorry, it was a long time ago. But enough with this, what’s your favorite song?” He is shutting down before I can fully get inside him and decode who he is and I let him brush it off, because that’s who I am—the passive aggressive girl. I don’t want this night to be something that upsets him. Especially after the fantastic day we had together.
“Wow, that’s a loaded question. I have so many.” I chuckle, leaning on the lid of the piano and staring out the window.
“Here, let me help. Who’s your favorite artist? Band? Singer?”
“How will I know you can even play their songs?” I implore, propping my chin on my shoulder.
“Oh, Sadie baby. I know everything.” He winks, the cockiness exuding off of him.
“Full of yourself much?”
“You’ll get used to it.” With another smirk, he waits for my answer.
“Hmmm. Oh! Okay, I got it! I love Panic! at the Disco! “This Is Gospel”. Have you heard that song?” I clap my hands.
“Yes, I have. I love them. Alright, I’ll play and you sing.” Suddenly my belly begins rumbling with nerves, my heart racing as my throat grows tight. When the first high notes start, his once joking demeanor disappears and he grows serious. I see a different side of him, the usual fun going Ben is now concentrating and his love for music shows.
I relax a bit as he loses himself in the melody. Finally two notes before the words start, he looks up at me, his long, calloused hands stay on the keys playing from memory. I swallow and bring in the first few words.
My voice is shaky at first and my hands are sweating the Nile River. Not just because he’s a talented artist, but I’ve never sung solo in front of people, let alone a beautifully, dangerous man like him. Ben makes me nervous and I’m beyond eager to impress him.
“It’s just me Sadie. Your voice is beautiful—you’re beautiful,” he whispers during a pause in the lyrics, the melody carrying on around us. I nod, still obviously wavering in much self-doubt.
His hands are still on the keys, the notes dropping along with my stomach as he speaks, “Sadie, come here.” He holds out his hand and I take it. Shaking my head, my eyes slope downward. I sit astride him in defeat—I really have no confidence in who I am.
“Hey, look at me.” Bringing my face in his hands he lifts my chin.
“Music is a way to be free, to let the world around you fall away. Your voice is beautiful, Sadie. Be who you are with me—don’t hide.” Ben’s brown irises shine through my baby blues, looking deep into me. It’s a sharp sword, being this insecure around someone who is secure in everything they do.
“Okay.” I go to stand but he stops me, scooting us forward to the edge of the bench and placing his hands back into formation. “How are you gonna play with me in your lap?” I curiously wonder.
“I know the keys very well baby and I wanna feel you. Feel your voice inside my soul—be the music.” My heart thuds loudly in my chest, creating a comfortable beat. That’s exactly what I mean when I say Ben has a way of changing me, making me want to be a completely different person than I was before.
“This is gospel,” he starts us off. I swallow and pick up the next words. The piano vibrates loudly, the melody moving smoothly with the words we sing together. When the chorus kicks in I find my voice—finally and pray endlessly that I can keep it.
The smile on his face lets me know he likes what he hears and it builds that arousal in my stomach again. We’re connected here in the moment, from the music to the physical touch. When he leans in to plant a kiss against my lips, that connection only magnifies when the tempo of the song crescendos around us. The intimacy on his lips captures my breath for a second.
His tongue seeks access to my mouth and I grant it, opening and inviting him in. When he plays the last note in our vocal pause, I reluctantly pull back in an attempt to gain back my steady breathing.
He takes the second verse as my chest rises and falls unsteadily. I watch intrigued and turned on by the way he gives everything he has, his neck straining and his veins rising alongside the column of his neck and above his Adam’s apple. There is a different way about him when he sings privately versus the man I first saw on stage. There’s more intensity, more of a passion to feel the music and let it carry him away. On stage he hides behind the funny, playboy rock star, the cocky man with every intention of never showing his real self.
Within a few more seconds our voices join again and we find the perfect pitch, my soprano and his alto. As if we were always made to sing together, we find the groove easily.
“Damn baby, hit that note!” The keys become louder under his moving fingers and I hit the highest note I can, smiling infectiously. He laughs, as do I, when the final few keys fade out, ending the song.
Running my hands through his lush mane, I settle my fingers on the back of his neck. I want to get close, I want to know Ben and with that simple song I feel I’m tapping into a side of him that only a few people get to see.
“You have an incredible voice, angel. So damn beautiful,” he whispers. I whimper the moment his hands find my hips and start kneading the muscles of my curves.
“No, that was all you. I’ve never seen someone that passionate when they sing.” Truly it was a stunning sight to see a person connect with the music, to know the words and have his hands blindly find the keys.
“We make beautiful music together, Sadie.”
“Amen,” I praise.
Staring at him for a moment, I watch him snap within seconds, a brewing storm hitting its peak. “I want you,” he growls, gripping a firm grasp on my butt and pulling me flush against him, my core directly against the tent in his swim trunks. My chest is to his and our noses are touching with just a whisper of space between our lips.
“How?” I question, curious to know how far he thinks we can go, even though I know we can’t go further than where we went last night. Regardless of how reckless Ben can make me feel and how quickly he was able to get inside my heart and head, I don’t lose sight of the morals I have. I can lose a lot of things to explore the unknown with Ben, but my virtue isn’t something I will give to anyone but my husband. I have to hold on to at least one part of the only me I’ve ever known.
“I want to make love to you.” He leans in and kisses the top of my full breasts peeking out of the scoop in my bathing suit. I throw my head back and by natural force the lower half of my body grinds down against him. I feel his erection straining in his bottoms and it electrifies me, shaking me to the core.
“I want to taste your skin on my tongue,” he whispers, licking up the column of my neck.
“I want you to sin with me—for me.” Swallowing past a near choke, he wraps his large hand around my thin neck, squeezing with little force. “Look at me, Sadie.” I snap my head back up, bracing my hands on his lower abs as our eyes lock in a gaze. With dilated eyes I look into the eyes of another side of Ben.
He’s wild and untamed, completely unhinged from reality now. What I imagine intoxication to be like is what I see mirrored in front of me, causing me to become drunk on him. Saints describe sinning as looking into the eyes of Satan or down the barrel of a gun and that is exactly where I am. Held by the throat and questioning all my morals and teetering on the edge of sanity. Ben is the gun and his eyes are the barrel, and I am looking straight down it, begging the devil to pull the trigger and then I’ll become the next sinner in his long line of turned saints.
“Sadie, you have gotten under my skin and you can’t go back.” He tightens his grip on my neck and I gasp, hearing myself clearly. “Yeah, that’s me owning you, Sadie.” Those words should terrify me, completely turn me off, but they don’t. I like the idea of being owned by Ben Cooper.
“Ben.” I thrust my hips, the friction of his erection hitting my clit makes my entire body tense up then dissolve on a shiver.
“Tell me no and I’ll stop, baby. But if you don’t, then I’m gonna taste you.” He brings me into him even more and I do nothing to protest when he feasts on my lips. Licking his tongue against mine, biting my lip and tasting me, he groans and I whimper. I seem to be doing that a lot in his presence.
“Ben?” I pause, pushing his chest slightly with my flat palms.
“Yeah, baby, I’m here.” He leans back in and latches onto my neck. Trying to not fall into a total Ben coma, I enjoy it for a second longer before I stop us again.
“Ben, no listen. I want to talk.” I need answers from him about what’s happening between us. I don’t know him fully, and still I feel I own him completely—as if I’ve been in his heart and traveled the ins and outs to his soul.
“What’s up, angel?” With one more peck he kisses my neck, his eyes traveling to my face.
“Ben, I’m scared. I don’t know you, but you’ve embedded yourself in me. I feel crazy. Tell me this isn’t crazy.” My head is a mess of unanswered questions.
“This is crazy. And you know me Sadie. You know who I am more than I do and it’s only day two,” he states, running his hands up my thighs.
“You’re everything I was taught not to want and yet you’re here. I hated you just days ago Ben—now I want to know who are, I want to protect you.”
“Protect me? From what?” he implores, his face scrunched in confusion.
“I don’t know. But every voice in my head and all the alarm bells in me are telling me that I need to protect you from something, to be a part of your life. God is telling me to run all while he tells me to stay and be here.” He shakes his head in disbelief, not buying my notion one bit or maybe more so the part about God, but I believe the premonition. What a random feeling to have, for it to be nothing but an act of fate.
“Sadie, if you’re here to save me from anything, it’s to save me from you. I never wanted something or someone like I want you. Not even the music calms me the way you do and you know that, that’s why you feel it. You’re feeling what only you have the power to do. You own me.”
“Then tell me who you are, make this all make sense. I don’t know anything Ben—anything about who I am anymore.” There is so much more truth to that than I think him and I even understand. I don’t know what I’m feeling or how to comprehend all the crazy notions I have storming inside me.
“Time, give us time and we’ll learn who we are. But do me a favor, Sadie?” He pauses and I nod, his hands finding my flushed face. “Don’t fight this. If I won’t, then you shouldn’t either, because you’re the realest thing I’ve had since my mother died and that’s the fucking truth.”
“Ben,” I cry on a whisper, locking my hands around his wrist. I tilt my head slightly and kiss each of his wrists. He looks broken and whatever happened with his mother is still a very heartbreaking thing in his life. In fact, it may be his entire make up and reason for who he is. The rock star, the man with no God but a religion in drugs and a fast track life to disaster.
“You know what? Let’s relax tonight. Maybe watch a movie and eat really fucking shitty food.” His attempt at making me ease up a little is working. I don’t push him further on his mother and I don’t dig more into how I’m feeling. I just need to ride this out and let time and my feelings work themselves out.
“I’d like that.”
“Me too. Up, up!” He slaps my butt and I jump up, the skin still stinging as I go.
“Ouch, that hurt.”
“Dirty baby likes it a little rough?” Growling, he bends and scoops me up and presses me flush against him, his arm around my waist and his other free hand on my rib just under my breast. My curvy frame is small and dainty against his tall lean figure. Dipping his head in my neck, he growls and tickles me with his scruff, a small act that he does frequently—it’s slowly becoming one of my favorite things.
Just like that I go from aroused, to unsure, and come circling back around to relaxed. Ben Cooper is something else.
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