Carmen
I bit my lip as I climbed up the boulders. Ben had disappeared on the other side, but I was too focused on the climb to feel nervous now that I couldn’t see or hear him. I dug my fingers into one little outcropping of rock, then lunged up to grab the next. I found a good rhythm as I moved inch by inch up the face of the dusty stone.
My legs were aching from holding me up by the time I reached the top. I sat down with a satisfied sigh. When I looked back over to see how far I’d come, I was pretty impressed with myself. It’d been a while since I’d done something so adventurous and outdoorsy. I’d forgotten how good it felt to tackle a physical challenge like that.
Turning to the other side, though, was a whole different story. Thin, flat tree branches with broad leaves crisscrossed over each other, forming a canopy I couldn’t see through even a little bit. “Ben!” I called.
His voice came back muffled. It didn’t sound like it was that far below me, but I felt nervousness start to creep its way into my system nonetheless. “I’m right here, Carmen,” he said.
“How do I get down there?”
“You have to jump.”
“Jump? Are you crazy? I have no idea where I’m landing!”
“I’m right here. I’ll catch you.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry all of the sudden and I noticed my hands were shaking. I couldn’t remember why I’d agreed to go on this crazy walkabout in the first place. Ben hadn’t even told me what it was he was showing me, for crying out loud. This was the last time I’d be following him blindly into the wild, I was sure of that. Never again.
I squinted and tried to find a gap in the leaves to peer through, but there was nothing. They didn’t look too strong or thick and I wasn’t afraid of getting whacked in the head with a stiff branch. But the nervousness pumped through me anyway. This was miles outside of my comfort zone.
“I don’t know,” I said fretfully.
“Carmen,” Ben called back. “Do you trust me?”
That was a serious humdinger of a question. Did I trust him? There was more baggage attached to that than I could wrap my head around. Who knew four little words could have so many implications?
I trusted him not to murder me in my sleep. I guessed that was a start. We’d spent enough nights under the same roof for me to feel pretty certain that he wasn’t about to slip a knife between my ribs when I wasn’t looking, just to get rid of me. He’d even taken to sharing the bed with me after I’d called him out for complaining about the kink in his neck he’d earned from too many consecutive nights on the couch. After that, he’d agreed to sleep alongside me, though he still refused to even come close to making physical contact.
I trusted him to make me laugh, too. There was something about that wild grin of his that made me feel a little wild myself. It felt good to relax in his presence, to let him sweep me away in the little eddies of conversation I loved getting lost in with him. He knew how to poke and prod until I was almost annoyed with him, but then he’d look at a new piece of furniture or a dish I was cooking for the first time, and turn on me with such a look of wide-eyed surprise and amazement that I couldn’t help but flush with pride. It wasn’t the kind of look I was used to receiving. My mother had made me feel that way, but she’d been gone for long enough that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone be impressed with something I’d done or made.
But did I trust him? It was more than those things. It was more than safety or giggles. It was the way I found him staring at me sometimes. Like I was a mythical creature he’d never seen before, only heard about. It was a bizarre look, and if anyone else had looked at me that way, I might’ve called the cops and reported a stalker or a psychopath. But on Ben, it was the opposite. I wanted to curl up inside that look, bathe in it, let it rinse over me and nestle me in its warmth. I couldn’t explain why I felt that way or what it was about him that made it feel so special. I just knew it did.
I knew I was falling for him, even though I tried not to admit it. When I woke up before him or when he fell asleep while I was still up, sometimes I’d taken to glancing at his face and seeing a sense of calm confidence there, even when he was deep into his dreams. It made me melt in weird, unexpected ways.
So did I trust him? I took a deep breath and answered his question the only way I could think of.
I jumped.
# # #
I broke through the treetops heels first. Little branches snapped under my weight as I plummeted downwards. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and my arms crossed over my chest. I couldn’t help but screech just a tiny bit.
I opened my eyes just after I’d passed through the leaves, only to see the ground hurtling up at me. But there, right below me, with his arms spread wide and waiting, was Ben. I slammed into him, but he gauged my speed perfectly, squatting low to make my landing as soft as possible. He caught me around the hips, snatching away all my momentum at once, and then gradually set me back on my feet.
“Told you,” he said.
I was too out of breath from the excitement to answer, but smiled and nodded. He had told me. I’d trusted him. He’d been there. Funny how such a simple little thing could feel so big and overwhelming.
He kept his hands lightly on my waist for a moment longer than he needed to. I didn’t mind, though. After soaring through the air, I liked being grounded by him, connected to him, knowing I was here and he was there and neither of us was going anywhere without the other.
“That was the hard part. Just around this corner, and you’ll see,” he told me. He grabbed my hand. I twined my fingers between his and let myself be led onto a path that sloped down and away around an ancient, craggy-looking tree.
The second we stepped around it, my jaw dropped.
It was hands down the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in nature. A waterfall off to our right splashed gently down onto wet, mossy rocks, collecting at the bottom in a clear little pool that in turn fed a winding, playful brook. The water churned past our feet and disappeared into the foliage a few dozen yards down towards the right. Both sides of the river were festooned with lush green trees and bushes, birds twittering from branch to branch, and flowers springing up underfoot. It was like a postcard come to life. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I felt Ben looking at me and I turned to face him, still stunned.
“Like it?” he asked with an impish grin.
“Like it? I love it. It’s unbelievable. I literally don’t know what to say.”
He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. “It really is something else, isn’t it?”
“How’d you find this place?” I gushed.
“Jay and I used to come here when we were kids. We had these little dirt bikes—real pieces of shit looking back on it, but back then, we thought we were the baddest dudes on two wheels on the whole face of the earth.” He shook his head as he chuckled at the memory. “We used to go ripping around all over this park, trying to pop wheelies off the top of the hills. You know, dumb stuff. The kind of thing teenagers with too much testosterone and free time do. It’s a dangerous combo.”
I kept looking around in amazement as he talked. Everywhere I looked, something new bloomed or peered out at me. I thought I caught the eyes of a little woodland creature, a fox or something like that, sneaking a glance from the underbrush. I felt like Pocahontas, though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have arrived here on a motorcycle.
It was amusing to imagine Jay and Ben ripping around the park on their whiny motorized bikes. I could easily picture them getting into all kinds of trouble, playing pranks on the park rangers and tourists, generally up to no good.
“Here, there’s a great little seat up here,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him.
I kept ahold of his hand as we walked towards the waterfall. A natural staircase had formed in the rock, leading up to a big, scooped-out stone sitting right up on the edge of the stream where it tumbled downwards to the pool. Ben held on tightly to my hand and watched cautiously as I mounted the steps ahead of him, taking them carefully one by one.
“Easy,” he said with a warning tone in his voice. “These can be slippery. Don’t want you to fall and bust that pretty little ass of yours.”
His tone was gruff, but underneath it was a genuine concern. It made my heart wriggle in my chest. He could be cute without even knowing he was doing it.
I scooted across the stone bench. Ben settled down next to me. His thigh came to rest lightly against mine, sending heat oozing even through the fabric of our jeans. Together, we looked out over the lush alcove. Neither of us said a word for a while, but we didn’t need to. Just being here next to each other felt like it said everything on its own.
“What were you like as a kid?” I asked softly after a while.
“Oh, I was trouble. Bad trouble. You wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me.”
“So nothing has changed, then, I guess?”
He grinned. “My mom would have agreed with you.”
“Would have?”
“She’s dead now. Although I guess there’s no saying for sure whether that stops her from scolding me. Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s disappointed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay; it’s been a long time. I’m only kidding anyway. She did the best she could have with a punk kid like me. It took a while to straighten myself out, figure out what kind of man I wanted to be.”
“And what kind of man is that?”
Ben looked at me curiously, his head tilted to the side. “You know, I’m not quite as sure about that as I was a few months ago,” he said after a while. “Before I met you, I would have said I wanted to be the toughest man in the state, the guy nobody dared fuck with. I don’t think that’s changed. But the way I think about that has changed. The reasons I want it.”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. There was so much I wanted to ask him about it, but I still felt the thinnest membrane between us, separating us. Almost all of me was tumbling head over heels for the man to my right. But the tiniest little portion sat back. Still unsure. Waiting. Watching. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry, Carmen. I don’t say things like this often, but I’ll make an exception: I’m glad I met you.”
My eyes and heart were equally full as I looked up at him. Something about the nature around us made everything Ben said seem so much more profound, like there was an extra force of gravity working hard here to give his words more depth and weight.
“I’m glad I met you, too, Ben.” I felt like my words were pressing hard at that last layer left between us, poking at it to find the structural flaws and make it give way. So much tension, so close to the breaking point.
“Are you?” he asked. He was studying my face closely. His eyes tracked from my lips to meet my gaze and back down again, roving in search of some sign that would tell him whether I meant what I said.
I tried to put as much confidence as I could into my response. “Yes,” I said firmly. “I am. I thought this was going to be, like, my last thing, you know? All doors closed? My daddy had worked so hard to keep me pinned down that I was sure he was using you to make it permanent. Maybe he thought that, too. But it hasn’t been like that, not at all.”
“What do you mean, pinned down?”
“I mean, ever since my mom died, I could barely go five minutes without him checking on me, keeping close tabs, like I was on a leash and he was never going to let any slack out on it. He made me live at home while I was going to school, never let me go out to parties, or have very many friends. Definitely never any boyfriends. The only tastes of freedom I ever got were behind his back. And every time he found out I’d done something he didn’t approve of, his stranglehold just got a little bit tighter. I guess I just assumed that’s how my life would always go.”
The more I talked, the more the words seemed to pour out of my mouth, just like the waterfall at our feet. I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted to say, or how good it would feel to say all this to Ben. He watched, not saying anything or interrupting, but taking it all in with a serious smolder in his eyes. His frown deepened the more I spoke. By the time I finished, he looked angry. Furious, even. Like he wanted to break something badly.
“Listen to me, Carmen,” he said. His voice didn’t rise above a whisper, but it was taut with a dark, pulsing energy that gave me no choice but to offer him every ounce of my attention. He drew me in with his tone alone. “As long as you’re with me, no one will ever do anything like that to you again. Not your father, not me. You’re mine, but you’re your own person, too. If you want something, you go get it. I’ll do everything I can to help you. I’m your husband, Carmen. Not your prison guard.”
Our eyes were locked together. Ben was all I could see. His jaw was stiff with pent-up anger and passion. His mouth a straight pink slash among the furrows of his dark beard. His neck ringed with veins and tendons stretched tight like cables on a bridge. He was my warrior, my guardian. My husband.
“I need you to tell me you understand, Carmen. It’s not enough for me to see you nod. I have to hear it come out of your mouth.”
“I understand, Ben.”
“Again,” he commanded. “Make me believe you.”
“I understand.”
“Again.”
“I understand.”
He nodded, satisfied for the moment. I saw him leaning forward inch by inch. His mouth drew closer to mine until his breath was hot on my face and his smell filled my nostrils, rich and deep, drowning out the leafy scent of the wildlife around us. I was sure he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to do it, like it would seal in everything he’d just said and make it real, make it realer than real.
But the membrane was still there. I could feel it and I knew he could, too. We weren’t quite there yet. A little bit was left to go before we could fully trust each other.
He looked into my eyes, then drew back again. “Look down there,” he said softly. “Jay and I used to do this thing every now and then. We’d pretend that if you looked closely enough at the surface of the pond, you could see the future, your future, playing out like a movie on the water.”
I followed his pointing finger. The pool’s surface rippled slightly from the force of the waterfall puncturing it from above, but it was still enough at the edges that I could start to see a reflection swimming into place as I squinted. I leaned over. There, I could see myself, almost, the blurriest outline of my head and shoulders peering down from where we were sitting a few yards above.
“You have to really look,” he said solemnly, “but I swear, sometimes you can really see stuff.”
I leaned forward an inch more, staring intensely at the surface. I came a little more into focus the harder I looked. But then the wind picked up a spray of water from the waterfall and sent it a little bit farther beyond its normal path, scattering across my reflection and ruining it.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring to straighten up, “I don’t think I can—”
I saw only a flash of Ben’s wild grin before he scooped one hand under my legs and another under the small of my back and tossed me high into the air over the pond.
I screamed as I flailed helplessly all the way up to the apex of my flight path. I heard Ben’s booming laughter, then I started to descend. The way down was quick. I had only a tiny chance to swallow a huge breath and squeeze my nose shut to keep out the water before I plunged below the surface.
It was frigid. I was chilled to the core immediately. I sank like a rock, spearing a yard or two down. The pool was deeper than I would have expected. I bumped gently into the rocky bottom before finding my feet and turning my gaze upwards. The light sparkling through the surface of the water was beautiful. It looked like it was dancing for me.
But my lungs were starting to burn. I hadn’t gotten enough air to stay down here very long. Driving my heels hard into the bottom, I arrowed back up to the surface.
The sound of the forest seemed loud after the silence underwater. I treaded in place as I took a big inhale, then squealed, “You asshole! I can’t believe just did that!”
Ben was standing above bent over with his hands on his knees as he laughed harder than I’d ever seen him laugh before. There were legitimately tears running down his cheeks and mingling with his beard. As stunned and angry as I was, I couldn’t help but love the sound of it. It was the most purely joyful thing I’d ever heard from him, far lighter and happier than I knew he was capable of. In spite of myself, I smiled.
He tried to choke out words between bouts of chuckling, but he could hardly manage it. “You thought…the future! In the water! Haha…” He descended again into another laughing fit, falling back onto the stone as he wiped the tears away from his face.
“You better get your ass down in here with me,” I warned, “or else bad, bad things are going to happen to you.”
He composed himself and hunched down to look at me. His eyes were twinkling. “No chance,” he said. “I’m not the clown who tried to see the future in a pond.”
I scowled and turned to swim to the edge so I could climb out and start to dry myself off. I was shivering already. The skin on my arms and legs was riddled with goosebumps. I took two strokes, teeth chattering, before I heard the scuffle of boots on rock and then a wild, banshee wail.
I flipped onto my back to see Ben, knees tucked into his chest, leap into the air over the water, mouth open wide in a happy, wordless holler.
I yelped and kicked away hard as he smashed into the surface. A giant plume of water sucked in and shot straight up where he’d landed. Massive waves roiled outwards from the epicenter of his cannonball, swamping me in their path. I bobbed up and down in the current as it started to settle down, watching and wondering where Ben was. I was starting to get a little bit worried. Had he hit his head on the bottom? Did he get his foot trapped below a rock? Finally he emerged, sticking his head above the water before shaking it like a wet dog. His grin was lopsided, goofy, and unbelievably contagious. I felt myself smiling without even trying to.
He took two broad strokes to knife across the water and bump softly into me. He encircled me in his arms. Then his chest was against mine and his mouth was against mine and the last barrier fell away from between us as his tongue swept across my lips before diving in. His kiss was hot, warm, and as wide open as it could have been. It was like he wanted to taste every ounce of me. I wanted the same from him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed back, hard and fiery.
We were bouncing up and down, wrapped tightly around each other, as the pool gradually recovered its stillness. His breath and mine mingled in each other’s mouths. Ben leaned forward slightly and kicked, propelling us towards the edge of the pond. I felt the soft, grassy bank bump up against my back. He found his feet and stood, scooping me up with him in an effortless motion before laying me right back down just above where the water lapped onto the shore. He never stopped kissing me.
His body was wide and smooth, all wet, shiny muscle. I peeled his shirt up, breaking our kiss only for as long as it took to get the thing over his head and off of him. It made a sucking noise as I tossed it aside, like it didn’t want to give him up. That was too bad for it, because he was all mine. All of him was mine—his arms, his chest, his soft, brushing lips. The wet curls on his head were mine, and the growing stiffness between his legs would be mine just as soon as I could fight with his jeans to claim it for myself, too, or rather, to let myself be claimed by him.
He kissed me like he wanted the world to know I was his, and I was glad to let him. I wanted to be his, to be Ben’s. His hand found the bottom edge of my shirt and tried to tug it upwards, but the way I was laying prevented him from pulling it off. I started to lean upwards to let him work it off of me, but he pulled back, frowned, and with two hands tore it clean down the middle.
“You ripped my shirt!” I gasped in surprise, pretending to be angry.
He gave me that cocky smile, the one I couldn’t resist. “Cost of doing business, babe.” Then he descended back onto me, biting and sucking at my lips. I moaned, unable to keep all the tension inside of me.
He pawed at my breasts, bare since I had decided against wearing a bra that morning, and slid down me to take each nipple into his mouth one at a time. His teeth raked tenderly over the sensitive flesh as he suckled at me. After the freezing cold water, his hot mouth was heavenly against my skin. While he nipped at me, his other hand moved down to my jeans.
He didn’t hesitate to slip his hands down further to cup my mound. The merest touch was already almost too much to handle. It had been such a long waiting game, so many days of my body crying out for Ben while my brain steadfastly refused. Now, though, I had his hands and his mouth and his everything, all to myself in this hidden oasis in the desert.
He let my breasts fall from his mouth and sat back on his heels so he could rip my jeans off. I raised my legs to help him and he pulled them away in one clean swoop, throwing them over his shoulder next to where I’d cast aside his shirt. He didn’t wait long to bring his mouth down to the crease in my hip, biting hard enough to leave a mark before gliding across my waist to the other side.
He let the tip of his tongue sneak out and trace intricate patterns along the edge of my panties, teasing me with his flickering touch. I wove my fingers in his hair and held on tightly as he worked closer and closer to my hot slit. Every cell in my body wanted him to touch me. He hadn’t even taken off my underwear and I was already shivering close to the brink of coming.
He slowed down suddenly. The frenetic tempo of his clawing, biting, sucking force calmed to a crawl. Now, his fingers were delicate instead of probing as he hooked them around either side of my panties and drew them carefully down my legs and off of me.
He rocked back onto his heels once more and took his hands away as he gazed at me. Old Carmen would have thought this was insane. I was lying naked on a riverbank in the middle of nowhere while a grizzled, tattooed biker looked me up and down like he wanted to devour me whole. Old Carmen would have said something embarrassing about having to go before sprinting to the nearest police station, or panicked and made an excuse before scampering away.
But I wasn’t the girl I used to be. I wasn’t going to run. I didn’t want to. This was the only place I wanted to be: right here, with Ben, knowing I was every bit as safe and free as he told me I was. Knowing I could run if I wanted to, but that I’d rather wait in wild anticipation for his tongue to lick me upwards and upwards until I burst and moaned his name.
“Do you want me?” I whispered.
His eyes shifted from my body to my face. “Like a dying man wants a second chance.”
He kept his gaze locked on mine as he unfolded forward. His mouth found my pussy and the first broad, slow lick of his tongue over my swollen lips was pure ecstasy. The second was magic. The third broke me.
It poured out through my throat, becoming Ben’s name as I moaned it into the treetops for the birds to hear or whoever else wanted to know the identity of the man who was doing this to me.
He switched from the long, wide passes of his tongue to darting circles that flicked around my clit at the same time he reached up a finger and slid it teasingly into me. I was so tight—it had been so long—that I had to bite my lip at first to stop from whimpering. But I quickly warmed to his touch as he twisted it easily at my entrance. I grew wetter and wetter as he licked around my clit and pushed his finger a tiny bit farther every few seconds. Soon, he was far in me, and he turned his finger around to stroke at my g-spot. As he did, he sucked my clit between his lips and rolled around it with his tongue, adding pressure and moisture to the motion with each passing rotation.
I gripped his head tightly as he sped up, fingering and eating me out with increasing intensity. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I had to wrench them closed and focus on the burgeoning pressure beneath his touch. He knew exactly what he was doing as he brought me right up to my second climax and shoved me out into it. I fell, tumbling head over heels into the sensation breaking out over my body like lancing electricity.
He didn’t wait for me to settle back down either. Instead, he pushed his own jeans down his hips and took out his manhood. It hung heavy in front of him, but as he lined himself up with my entrance, it grew stiffer and stiffer, until his cock was rubbing back and forth on my clit. The friction was mind-numbing.
I felt exactly how I’d felt the first night we spent together—hollow, empty, needy. The answer to all of it was pushing between my lips, waiting for me to say yes before it could fill me. Before he could.
I forced my eyes open as the orgasm Ben had given me continued to flare like fireworks up and down my body. My lower lip was scraped raw from biting it so hard. It was all I could do to nod desperately as he raised his eyebrows at me in search of a sign to keep going.
“I want you, Ben,” I whimpered.
He responded by pushing all the way into me. I gasped. It was even fuller than I remembered, thicker and harder. He went slowly, but I still had to dig my nails into the turf on either side and clench my knees hard around Ben’s waist. When he had driven deep and our hips were almost touching, he bent over and smashed his mouth against mine.
I pulled his head close and hung on for dear life as he began to pump slowly in and out of me. Each stroke took minutes, hours, centuries, but it was pleasure all the way up and all the way down. When he was buried fully, I moaned, and when he was almost gone, I moaned. My arms were getting sore from holding onto him so tightly, but it was the only way I could ride out the waves of sensation rippling outward from where he was piercing me.
He broke off the kiss, but he didn’t go far. He kept his forehead pressed against mine and his eyes boring into me as he began to increase the speed of our rocking. Faster and faster we went, building and building, getting higher together, until sweat slicked both of our brows even though the air around us was damp and cool. It didn’t matter—there was fire just below our skin.
“Ben…” I cried.
“Carmen,” he responded. His face was screwed tight in concentration as he slaved to keep himself from going over the edge.
But I wanted him to. I wanted to feel him explode inside me and I wanted to see how his face looked when he came while we held each other. “Come for me,” I begged. “Please.”
His hips slammed against mine like a hammer descending over and over again. His cock was stiff and strong, and finally, he was there. One more stroke and I felt him unleash. Deep in my pussy, he erupted, filling me. I held him tightly until his motion slowed and eventually stopped.
Ben’s eyes were closed as he regained his breath. When it had normalized, he opened them again and looked at me. “The future,” he said, chuckling. “Who falls for something like that?” He grinned.
I nipped at his ear. “You’re an asshole,” I whispered jokingly.
Those eyes glistened with more emotion than I knew how to understand. “Yours, though.”
The most beautiful words I’d ever heard.
# # #
We lay on the bank for a while until the water had dried from our bodies. Then, reluctantly, I let Ben help me wriggle back into my wet jeans. I picked up the ragged remains of my shirt and examined it.
“Thanks a lot,” I said sarcastically.
“Hey, that’s a very fashion-forward look,” he shot back.
I glared at him. “Yeah, because you know so much about fashion.”
“I was voted most fashionable in high school, thank you very much.”
“No way.”
“Okay, so I wasn’t. But I could’ve been.”
“Did you even go to high school?”
“No, but you’re missing the point.” I smacked him on the shoulder and he laughed. “Here,” he said, “take mine.” I eyed the shirt suspiciously, but I decided it would be better than nothing. I pulled it over my head. It wouldn’t be so bad to follow Ben and stare at his back muscles.
Once we were dressed, we headed out of the enclave. The boulder was easier to climb going in the other direction, though Ben still kept a close eye on me as I swung over and dropped down. The bike was still waiting where we’d left it. The sun had dipped below the horizon and the last of its rays were close behind. It would be dark soon. The warmth of the day had started to disappear, as well.
Ben was checking something on the bike when I heard footsteps approaching from around the bend. A few moments later, two people emerged, a man and a woman. They were both wearing big camping backpacks and chatting freely. My jaw dropped when I realized who it was.
Dan stopped a few yards away from me. His eyes went round. He looked back and forth between Ben and me, trying to figure out just what in the hell I was doing in the middle of this huge state park wearing a man’s t-shirt while accompanied by a shirtless, tattooed biker.
“Uh, um, Carmen, good to…see you again,” he stuttered eventually.
“Hi, Dan,” I said.
“Whatcha, um, whatcha been up to?” he asked, shifting around on his feet like he couldn’t decide what to do with himself. I could tell he was baffled. I couldn’t blame him. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t exactly have expected this to be our second encounter either. I didn’t really know how to go about explaining the situation.
“Just, you know, exploring, I guess you could say.” I was blushing a little bit, but Dan was the color of a stop sign. Next to him, his companion was doing the same thing he was, glancing back and forth to try to make sense of this bizarre twosome, though she was doing a better job at not gawking like a fool. “You?”
“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight, so we’re, um, going camping. Oh, shit,” he said, smacking the heel of his hand into his forehead, “I’m sorry. This is Cassie. Cassie, this is Carmen.”
The girl was cute and seemed friendly. She stuck out a hand and smiled as we shook. “Nice to meet you, Carmen,” she said brightly.
“You, too, Cassie.” I felt Ben walk over behind me. “This is Ben,” I said. “Ben, meet Dan and Cassie.”
Ben and Dan clasped hands firmly, nodding to each other in that overly stoic, masculine way that men always seemed to love doing. Underneath, though, I could tell Dan was downright terrified of Ben. I couldn’t blame him for that either. Ben didn’t exactly come off as the friendliest of guys on first impression.
“How do you two know each other?” Dan asked. He sounded polite enough.
“We’re married,” Ben responded flatly.
Dan went from red to white in an instant. The little bit of poise he’d managed to collect prior to Ben’s sudden bombshell of a statement went whistling away with the wind. I almost wanted to laugh. This was the smooth, handsome guy who’d had me feeling like I was tripping all over my tongue at the park? God, that was just a few months ago. It hadn’t been that long, not really. So why did he seem like a child when he stood across from Ben? How could these two men even be the same species? Ben was calm and composed, while Dan spluttered, trying to find something reasonable to say.
“That’s, uh…wow. Lovely. Great. Um, awesome, I’m really happy for you, Carmen. Wish I’d gotten that date when I had the chance, heh.” As soon as the awkward joke came bumbling out of his mouth, he looked like he immediately regretted it. Ben didn’t move, but a single muscle twitched in his face. It was enough to turn Dan into quivering putty.
Cassie was looking around at all of us in turn. She looked lost, and why wouldn’t she be? Heck, I was lost, and I was the only thing these men had in common. Aside from me, Dan and Ben were as opposite as two people could be. Dan was smooth, lean, clean-shaven, whereas Ben was this hulking, scarred, tattooed mess of a man.
A few months ago, I would have looked at him like he was from another planet. I wasn’t altogether sure he wasn’t. The difference was that now I knew it was a place I wanted to immerse myself in. I blushed deeper; my body was still ringing with the sensation of Ben burying himself inside me. It felt almost wrong to be standing around and chit-chatting with this youthful boy when just a few minutes earlier I had been in the midst of being filled with a real man.
Dan forced a dry swallow down his throat. “We should get going,” he blurted suddenly. “Gotta set up camp, and uh, firewood, you know, for the, um, fire…” he trailed off without finishing his sentence.
Ben nodded. “Good to meet you, Dan,” he said coolly.
“Likewise. And, Carmen, maybe see you…? Never mind. Have a good night!” He scurried off immediately, dragging Cassie behind him. They disappeared in the direction of the hiking trail that, according to a nearby sign, picked up just a little bit farther into the foothills.
Ben turned and looked at me. “Friend of yours?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
I couldn’t read his face. Was he angry? Disappointed? There was no way he could possibly be jealous, right? That wouldn’t make any sense. Or would it? I didn’t know. Like always, he was a mystery to me until he chose not to be. “Not really,” I said, my voice low. “We just met once. He, uh, asked me out. But nothing ever happened.” I added, “I swear,” for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
“Hmm.” Before I could figure out how to ask him what he was thinking, he turned and walked back to the motorcycle. “Coming?” he asked.
I hurried over and climbed on behind him.
He didn’t say a word the whole way home. I clung to his shirtless torso as we ripped down the highway way faster than we had on the way here. He seemed to be driving angrily, or maybe I was just projecting my worries onto him. I felt like I’d ruined the moment by bumping into Dan and not handling the awkward situation that had ensued. Ben and I had felt so close lying together in sunny silence on the riverbank. But now it felt like his walls were drawn up again, like he’d retreated from me just when I thought he’d finally begun to relax.
He didn’t say anything as we parked outside the apartment, as we climbed the stairs, or as he unlocked the front door and let me walk inside ahead of him. I was too scared of what he might say to probe just yet. I needed time to think it over, so I didn’t dare turn back around and ask him anything.
But just as I was about to walk into the bedroom to take a shower, he spoke up. “Carmen,” he said in a low voice.
I froze. Slowly, I pivoted on my heel to face him. He stood a few yards away, just inside the doorway, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest as he stared straight at me.
“Yes, Ben?” I said hesitantly. I couldn’t hold his eye contact. My gaze kept darting between him and the floor. He was smoldering—not quite angry, but he was hot with some emotion I was struggling to identify.
“Who was that son of a bitch?”
“He was no one, Ben. I swear. It was just like I said. He came up to me at the park one day and asked if I wanted to get dinner with him. But my dad never let me go. That was the end of it. We haven’t talked since.”
He growled something I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I asked.
“I said, I didn’t like him.”
I bit my nails as I looked up at him fearfully. He straightened up, unfolded his arms, and cracked his neck on either side. Then he took another step in my direction. I surprised myself when I cowered instinctively against the doorframe that led to the bedroom. What the hell? Was I afraid he’d hit me or something? He’d never even come close to threatening me or making me think that before. But the way he’d responded to Dan was a whole new side of Ben, one I’d never seen in all our time together. Maybe it had been lurking below the surface the whole time, just waiting for the right stimulus to come out.
I swallowed. It hadn’t really been that long, had it? Just a few weeks together, and before that, there was only the one night. He’d been nothing but courteous that whole time, if distant. But against that firsthand experience, I had a whole lifetime of hearing stories about the Dark Knights and the awful things they had been known to do to girls, at least according to the rumor mill. Beatings, threats, all kinds of ugly bits of half-heard gossip. A man like Ben was probably capable of doing lots of things I didn’t want to think about. There was every likelihood that this was one of them. Stick a toe out of line and watched it get smashed. Was that his style?
I was surging with the desperate desire to run away and hide. My skin was crawling with anxiety and fear; my mouth felt dry and sticky. I forced myself to stop chewing my nails and instead to clasp my hands in front of me obediently. Maybe, if I acted apologetic—even though I’d truly done nothing wrong—he wouldn’t hurt me too badly.
He stopped when he was right in front of me and spread his feet wide. I was quivering from head to toe. This was it; the punch was coming. Everything up until now had been just a honeymoon period, a brief oasis in time before the hitting started. The future looked bleak from this moment forward. It looked painful.
Ben raised a hand towards me. I closed my eyes, waiting for the strike to land.
But instead, he cupped my chin softly. His fingers were more delicate than I ever could have imagined.
“Open your eyes, Carmen.”
I forced them open, trembling.
“There’s something you should know about me,” he growled. “I’m a jealous son of a bitch. I don’t share. Never have. I don’t play nice with others. When I want something, I want it all to myself, now and forever. And you…you’re like nothing else I’ve ever had before. With you, the need to have everything is more intense. It’s clawing at me. I don’t just want you now. I want you from years ago. I want your whole life. Do you understand me? I want you to belong to me so completely that it’s like you’ve always been mine. The thought of another man even looking at you makes my skin crawl. I’m a flawed man, and this is one of my deepest, but it is what it is.”
He paused to look deeply into my eyes before continuing. “The thing is, I can’t and won’t force you to accept those terms. I meant it when I told you I’m not your prison guard. Your old man may have taken away your choices, but I’m not him and I won’t do that. So you need to decide right now. You can stay here, with me, on my terms. Or you can walk out the door and go anywhere you like. It’s your call.”
He let his hand fall away from my chin and crossed his arms again. He took one last look at me, like he was trying to soak up the images of me, sear me on his retinas, as if it might be the last time he would ever see me again. Then he walked around me and into the bedroom.
“Ben.”
He was halfway across the room. The light overhead cast dim, twisted shadows across his muscular back. He stopped, but didn’t turn to face me. The air was thick and heavy.
“Ben, I’m not going anywhere. I’m yours. No one else’s. Just yours.”
Slowly, he turned around. He was bigger than ever, it seemed, or maybe that was just my imagination running wild. The fear that had corrupted my thinking was transforming into an intense, trembling energy. How could I ever have thought he would hit me? Of course he wouldn’t. Of course not. It felt like the last vestiges of doubt were getting purged from me in a flood of emotion I couldn’t possibly resist. The only thing I could do was give into it.
Give in to him.
“I’m not a normal man, Carmen. If you’re choosing me, you have to know it won’t be a normal life.”
“I don’t want a normal life. I want this. I want you.”
Before I could stop myself, I ran over to him and jumped into his arms. He caught me without blinking, and my lips crashed into his. His skin was still damp to the touch from the river, and as he threw me onto the bed beside us, my wet hair splayed out like a fan over the comforter. He fell on top of me, his body hot, his touch roving and insistent.
I didn’t want to be wearing clothes for a second longer. Without waiting for him, I stripped his baggy shirt over my head and immediately reached for the buckle of his jeans. He slid out of them and tugged at mine, not even bothering with the button but instead just forcefully yanking them down until they were off and gone, and he could take his firm cock and push it into my hot, desperate cunt and start to fuck me, to fuck me hard and fast and with the most furiously intense passion I’d ever seen or felt or heard of. I was moaning by the third stroke and it felt like just seconds after we’d begun that I was coming. I wasn’t sure whether I was coming because of his manhood penetrating deep into me or because of his masculinity pouring around me like hot wax, but it didn’t matter, because I was coming either way. I clawed at his back and felt blood start to run from where my nails dug deep, but that didn’t matter either. What mattered was his mouth sealed against mine and the frantic pumping of his hips to drive deeper and deeper into me. He wrapped my legs around his waist and used my hips to pull me towards him, to ensure that every single inch of him was diving as far as possible into me as it could go and then just a little bit more. He stroked a rough thumb across my clit and the lightness of that mixed with the thick density of his fucking made my eyes roll back into my head and my toes curl.
Ben wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and forced my head up. “Look at me,” he commanded. He hadn’t stopped thrusting since the moment he entered me. I didn’t ever want him to stop. Little moans and whimpers escaped my mouth as he stared into my eyes like he thought he could see my soul there. He started talking. The words poured outwards like a tidal wave. Neither of us cared if they made sense. What mattered was that it was his voice, Ben’s voice, my husband’s voice and the voice of my baby’s father, that came rough and never-ending.
“You’re mine, all mine. I want all of you, no, need all of you, won’t stop until I have all of you. I put a baby in you and I’ll do it again and again until we’re both dead and gone, and even then, I will own you and keep you to myself. I don’t share, I won’t share, I can’t share. Carmen, you’re mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.”
He came again, hard, filling me up for the second time in as many hours. I knew it then: I loved him.
# # #
A little while later, after we both had showered and put on clothes to sleep in, we were lying in bed together. I was curled against his side with my head on his chest, rising and falling with his breaths.
“How is it better every time?” I murmured.
He knew what I was talking about, of course. My heart was still fluttering from the sex, despite how much time had passed. My body was exhausted, but my brain refused to let me sleep.
He rumbled something I couldn’t hear because my ear was pressed on his pec. What he said wasn’t important, though. I had everything I needed already. I had him next to me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. Before I knew it, we were both asleep.