Page 66 of The Legend Next Door
We look at each other and burst out laughing.
“I know I’m a sad sack,” says Ben. “What’s your excuse?”
“My excuse? My excuse is that Luca’s an abnormally cute child. He is. He’s adorable. There’s no way you can be around him and be in a bad mood. He’s the best, Ben. He’s a great kid. A really, really great kid.”
“Thanks.” His shoulders ride up and his eyes shine with pride.
“You’re a good dad to him. A really, really good dad.”
“Thanks,” he says again, voice a little more raspy this time.
We’re standing close from being on the call. His head dips down toward mine, but instead of kissing me, which is what he’s done every other time he’s leaned in today, he circles me with his arms, tucking his chin over my shoulder and resting it there. I do the same, winding my arms around his neck and pulling him close.
His breathing catches and he tightens his grip. He feels hard and solid and soft at the same time. He feels like the place I want to rest my head on at night and the place I want to wake up in the morning.
Neither of us moves for the longest time, and by the time we do, the embrace has changed. It’s gone from comforting and affectionate to something different. Every cell in my body is alive with it. The only thing I can see, feel, and smell is Ben. He smells like a man. Like hockey and ice and hot things. Like laughter on porch swings. Like safety and things that scare me.
“Is your belly aching?” he asks.
As he says it, there’s a pang deep in my belly. Low down. A sharp twist that makes my balls ache. I’ve been aware of it off and on all day but have mostly been able to ignore it because of the jubilation and disbelief about what’s happening with Ben.
Suddenly, it’s the only thing I can think of.
“Yeah,” I say, looking down and rubbing my palms hard against my jeans to stop myself from rutting against him.
“Mine too.” There’s a question in his eyes. Not quite a request exactly, but the early murmur of a high-level query.
The urge to fall to my knees is so strong that I shift my weight from one leg to the other and lean against Ben to mitigate it. I’ve been tempted to ask him if he wants me to blow him again. I’ve thought about it twenty-eight million times since I got here. And that’s a conservative estimate. I’m not sure if I should though. I don’t want to make the first move, partly because I don’t want to go through the nightmare of overanalyzing my actions again and partly because I think he might prefer to be the one to initiate things like this.
I shouldn’t be the one who brings it up. I’m not going to mention it. I’m going to wait patiently until he says something.
“Would you like me to blow you again?” says the part of my brain that controls speech but not rational thought.
His hand rides up and down my back, settling on my hip and jerking me closer.
“Oh,” he growls, “you’regoingto blow me again, baby. You are. Just not…not like last night. You’re not going to come like that again. On your own. Without my hands on you. Next time you taste my dick, it will be after I’ve taken you apart.”
“Gguck,” I say.
He’s not done yet. Far from it.
“I’ve been thinking about it, you know. Shooting my shot…making my move. Been thinking about it all day.” He rests his forehead against mine, and he’s not Ben the Sex God now. He’s Ben the Sweetest Man on the Planet, and damn, he makes my knees weak. “Just trying to remember how the hell I used to shoot my shot a long time ago, in the old days, when I was moving to do something I’d never done before.”
“You don’t have to,” I say in a rush. “I don’t mind. I don’t have to… We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I want to do things,” he murmurs, lips moving against my ear, breath running down my neck like warm honey. “I want to do all the things, but I’m new at this…” The smile he gives me is a killer. A blade straight to the heart. “And I’m learning. I guess we’ll have to take it slow… Guess you’ll have to be gentle with me.”
I nod and shake my head and gurgle the way putty would if it was sentient and irrevocably aroused.
He hooks a finger under my chin and raises it so I’m looking directly at him and says, “Here’s what I’m thinking. I take off some of your clothes, you hold still for a while…and I touch you a bunch. Just to, like, feel my way around you.”
My shoulders shudder like they did last night. Hard and fast. From side to side like I’ve been shaken. “K-k-kay.”
He uses both hands to smooth my T-shirt down over my chest. I watch them, big and broad, heavy and hot, as he lays them on me.
“Uh-uh,” he says, using two fingers to motion to his face, “eyes up here. On me, the whole time, okay?”
I nod and say, “Gggg.”
