Charlotte

I knew what Ben had done. It had happened right in front of me, and objectively, I knew it. But we were almost all the way to my apartment, riding in silence, before I let myself fully understand it. Before I let myself fully know.

I looked down at my hands in my lap. They had almost stopped shaking. Beside me, Ben just drove, silent, his brow furrowed in deep thought. He didn’t even seem afraid.

They had wanted Jeremy dead. My brother. Dead. I pictured Jeremy with a bullet in him, his body tossed in a ditch somewhere. Or his throat cut. My brother, who I used to share peanut butter sandwiches with and push on the swing.

I didn’t know how this had happened, but it had. The weight of it pressed on my shoulders. If I hadn’t followed Jeremy’s directions and gone to Ben… If I hadn’t sat in front of his office, but had given up instead… The smallest thing would have changed everything.

I couldn’t just be quiet anymore.

“You saved Jeremy’s life,” I said to Ben.

He seemed surprised I’d spoken. “What?”

“Just now,” I said. “In that club house. They were going to kill my brother. They had it planned. Right?”

His expression tightened as he stopped at a light. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said. “I warned you. You shouldn’t have heard any of that.”

“When were they going to do it?” I tried to keep my voice calm. “While he was in prison? Or after he made bail? Do you know that much?”

He looked at me, and those gray-blue eyes seemed to rearrange everything inside me, make my chest hurt and my pulse go wild—especially between my legs. He wasn’t just good-looking, Ben Hanratty. His beauty had layers, light and dark combined. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the truth. One or the other, it doesn’t matter. They can do it either way.”

“Then why the drugs?” I asked. “Why bother getting him arrested in the first place? Why not just do it?”

“You want to know?”

The light changed, and Ben looked away from me and at the road again. “Yes,” I said to his profile. “I want to know.”

His jaw tightened. “It’s easier that way,” he told me. “It just looks like another drug dealer getting whacked. If your brother, the innocent programmer, is randomly killed, the cops will be all over it. But if your brother the drug dealer is killed, it just looks like he crossed the wrong guy while doing his dirty business.”

It was so callous, so calculated, it took my breath away. “Why? Why would they do that to him?”

“Jeremy was too afraid to tell me the reason,” Ben said. “He’s going to have to get over that.”

“You saved his life,” I said again. “Those scumbags were going to kill him, and you just walked in there and faced them down. You told them to cancel their plans. And they did it.”

“Don’t,” Ben said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make it sound like something it wasn’t. Don’t make me sound like a hero. It was just a thing.”

“Just a thing?” I half shouted. “That guy could have beat you up. He could have put you in the hospital, or worse.”

He shook his head. “This is my world, Charlotte. These people—these scumbags, like you say. This is what I do, or it was until recently. And it isn’t admirable. It isn’t an achievement. It isn’t something I’m proud to do with my fucking life.”

I had nothing to say to that. Proud? Should he be proud? Or should he be ashamed? I had no idea. I didn’t know left from right, up from down anymore.

He stopped the car, and I realized we were in front of my building. The candy store was dark, as were my windows on the second floor. I wanted to go in, and I didn’t. I turned to see Ben twisted in his seat, his elbow up on the back, his gaze hard on my face.

“You haven’t learned your lesson, have you?” he said.

“What?”

“About not going back in there,” he said, pointing to my apartment. “About coming to my place instead.”

My heart stuttered in my chest. His place. I felt aware in that moment, exquisitely attuned to everything, completely unwilling to lie. And what I felt was that if I went to his place right now, I’d end up in his bed. Ready, willing, and able.

I let out a breath. It was too much. I’d just met him; my world was already flipped on its axis. I couldn’t leave my home, and have sex with him—which, yes, I certainly would—as well. I needed my place, my familiar things. My bed, even if it suddenly seemed lonely.

This is my world, Charlotte. Full of danger and bikers and billionaires and ex-wives and God knew what. His world was crazy.

I didn’t want to live in Ben’s world. I wanted to stay in mine.

“No,” I said to him.

His expression shut down. Piece by piece, like doors closing. He knew what I was saying. He turned and opened his door, then got out. He came around the car and opened my door.

“What are you doing?” I said.

His voice was harsh. “If you insist on going home, I’m at least going to walk you up. Make sure there’s no one here.”

No one here. He meant an intruder, or some biker hanging around. I got out, and he slammed the door behind me. “So fucking stubborn,” he said under his breath.

He was stung because I’d rejected him. A man who looked like Ben likely didn’t get a lot of rejections. I felt a pang at that, that he’d probably go find someone else and I’d missed my chance. Still, I put my key in the downstairs lock and pushed the door open. “Thank you,” I said calmly to him. “For this. For everything.”

In reply, he brushed past me and walked into the stairwell, looking up it to my apartment door. “Open that,” he said.

I took my turn brushing past him—the stairwell was very small—and walked up the steps to my apartment door. “See?” I said as I unlocked it and pushed it open. “I’m fine.”

He brushed past me again—my nipples were hard under my shirt now—and walked into my apartment. Strode into the small main room, walked to the kitchen and the back door that led to the fire escape, checked the door and the window. He poked his head into the bathroom, and then, his boots stomping on my hardwood floor, he disappeared into my bedroom.

“Hey,” I shouted after him from the doorway. “There’s no one in there.”

Silence for a few seconds, and then Ben came out again, his gaze fixed on me. It felt like my clothes were melting off. “You’re right,” he said in his gruff, pissed-off voice. “No one in there. Not a fucking soul.”

I lifted my chin. “I like it like that.”

“Do you?” He came toward me. “You’re lying.”

“You don’t have to be sore about it,” I said. “We just met.”

“Is that what you think I am?”

Now my lips pressed together. The excess of testosterone was making me dizzy. “You can leave now.”

“Keep pretending, Charlotte,” Ben said, coming to a stop in front of me and looking down at me. “Keep pretending you don’t feel it.” He brushed his fingertips lightly over the side of my neck. “I had my hand between your thighs tonight, and you liked it.”

I had. I’d loved it. Through the fog of my terror, I’d been pulsing uncomfortably, hoping against hope that he’d move his hand higher. “It was part of the act,” I told him.

“Still lying,” he said, brushing the side of my neck again as I fought not to shiver. “Good night.” He dropped his hand and backed away.

Everything was all wrong. How we’d started, and how we were finishing the night. I hadn’t said the things I wanted, at least not in the right way. I’d pissed him off, and he almost deserved it—but not quite. Maybe I deserved to be pissed off, too.

“Hey,” I called after him.

He stopped and looked back, those gray-blue eyes fixed on me.

I wanted to tell him he wasn’t as bad as he thought he was. I wanted to ask him more about his awful ex-wife. I wanted to tell him to shove his precious male pride, and that I wanted to sleep with him but I still wasn’t going to, and that he was making me slightly crazy.

I didn’t tell him any of those things. Instead I did what I’d wanted to do when I first saw him walk toward me as I sat in front of his door. I stepped toward him, rose on my toes, put my arm around his neck, and kissed him.

I’d barely put my mouth to his before he kissed me back. No, that’s an understatement: He devoured me back. He put a hand on the back of my head and opened my mouth and kissed me like I had never been kissed before. Slow and deep, almost harsh, like he was just barely hanging on. His stubble rasped my skin and he tasted like beer, and I did what I’d never done to any other man: I wrapped my other arm around his neck, pressed my body against his, and practically sucked on his tongue.

In a second he had me pushed back against the wall next to my open apartment door, the thump of impact stinging through me. His hands cupped under my ass and I moaned as he swallowed the sound. He used his mouth like an expert, scraped me with his teeth, dug his fingers into me through my jeans, and I felt alive. Like my entire body had woken up, raw to every sensation, almost painfully aware. Ben notched his hips between my legs, and nothing had ever, ever felt as good as his body against me. We were like two puzzle pieces. My body rubbed greedily against him as I kissed him harder.

He let go of my ass, raised his hands to cup my jaw. Angled me just right and kissed me slower, slower, his mouth owning mine, his hands warm on my skin, his fingertips pressing into my hair. I could feel every inch of him, that sexy body of his, his chest against my hard nipples, his flat stomach against mine, his hard cock through his jeans, and I realized I’d opened my legs and hooked a leg around his hip, in a way that was perfectly possessive.

He broke the kiss, though his hands stayed on me, his mouth brushing against mine. “You’re right,” he rasped, his eyes dark. “You shouldn’t come over. I’d fuck you until dawn.”

Oh, yes. Let’s do that, my body said. But I made my mouth say the words. “I’m not coming over.”

“I know.” He brushed his lips over mine again, making them ache, and he let out a low sound that was pure male frustration. Then he dropped his hands from my jaw and moved away. “Monday morning,” he said. “Nine a.m. If anyone bothers you, call me.”

And then he was gone.

I stood there for a long minute. Throbbing, raw, my skin hot and cold. My head spinning. I heard him descend the stairs, exit the lower door, and drive away. I put my fingers to my scraped mouth.

Then I closed the door behind me, locked it, and walked toward my bedroom and my empty bed.