Chapter 5 Benji
BENJI
When I pulled up to the tree lot, it was empty except for a college girl inside the booth, scrolling on her phone. I walked past her without expecting to say anything, but she caught me off guard by poking her head out the little window. “You need help or do you want to look around?”
I was somewhat startled by the question, but I was pretty sure I could find my way. “I’m good. Thanks.”
She nodded and turned back to her phone. “We close at four.”
“Four?” I checked my watch. That was in twenty minutes. “I thought you were open till dark.”
She shrugged. “It gets dark around then.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but if she was working alone, I could understand not wanting to stay later than necessary.
It was a little spooky walking through the trees with only nature sounds surrounding me.
I wasn’t afraid of wildlife, per se, but bats carried rabies and loved pine trees.
I didn’t need to add a series of rabies shots to my weekend schedule.
Ignoring all the full and traditionally beautiful trees, I went straight to the pile of misfits to see which one called out to me.
The first one I picked up basically disintegrated in my hands, but the one beneath it was perfect.
When I finally managed to wrest it into a standing position, I could see that it was exactly my height and almost as scrawny. “Perfect!”
I paid for the tree and dragged it to my Tesla. Last year, I had an SUV with a rack on top, so tossing the tree up there wasn’t hard. A few knots in each corner and I was good. But my new car didn’t have a rack. The roof was all glass and didn’t give me any real anchor points to secure my tree.
Tying knots wasn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, so I struggled to get the twine around the tree trunk and through the interior of my car to wrap around from the other wide, when I heard the crunching of boots approaching from behind me.
“Need a hand?” The deep voice was as unexpected as it was soothing. “This looks like a two-person job.”
Or just one competent person. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.” My hands were going numb and my nose was leaking as I turned to confirm the identity of my savior.
For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating.
But then his hand wrapped around mine and gently removed the cord, and I knew it was him.
Cain. The sexy Daddy from Primal who fed me his milk.
“Cain?” My voice cracked, but I didn’t have time to be embarrassed.
I was too shocked to register anything else.
Well, almost anything else.
He squinted, and for a split second, he didn’t seem to recognize me. But then I saw it. The moment when my face clicked in his mind and that little flicker of surprise produced a…smile. “Benji?” He said my name as if he were as confused by the situation as I was.
“Uh, hi.” I exhaled a deep breath and leaned against the side of my car. “What are you doing here?”
He held up the huge and very obvious wreath in his hand. “Wreath for the front door.”
“Classic.” My brain had fully blue-screened, and I wasn’t sure how to act around a professional Daddy…in the wild. “So, um, you live around here?”
“I do.” He grinned and nodded once. “Off West Street. You?”
“North Third. Kinda near the high school.”
Cain nodded again as he slipped his free hand into his pocket. “Nice area.”
A silence descended because I didn’t know how to respond. Was I supposed to thank him for the compliment or just ignore it. I chose the latter.
Cain watched me for a second, then stepped closer.
“Let me get that for you.” He took the twine out of my hands and pulled it taut to gauge its strength.
After approving the cord, he retied my loose knot around the tree trunk and expertly hooked little circles of cord inside my car in places I’d never even noticed before.
While he worked, I took the time to study various parts of his body.
His fingers were thick and the nails were trimmed short, like maybe he’d gotten a manicure recently.
And even under his sleeve, I could see the way his biceps flexed and rolled with each movement.
I couldn’t help peeking at his chest, wondering if he’d recently emptied his milk or if it was still full of warm and creamy goodness that I’d been dreaming about.
That and his other kind of creamy goodness.
Staring was never polite, but in this case, it was impossible not to. “You’re really good at that.”
He didn’t miss a beat, tossing the bundle across my car and then circling the front to make all the same connections on the other side. “I worked at a tree farm one winter when I was a kid. Learned the secrets of the trade.”
“So there are secrets.” I was only half joking because I’d never seen anyone tie knots the way he did. “I knew it!”
When he finished, he gave the tree a firm shake and raised an eyebrow to me. “There ya go, kiddo. Should be good for the drive home.”
My breath hitched at the endearment. He’d used the same endearment at Primal when I was in his arms. Granted, he probably used that with everyone, but it felt special. And since I didn’t feel special very often, I held on to the moment and just smiled. “Thank you, Cain.”
With the wreath he’d leaned against my tire still on the ground, he slipped his hands into his pockets and took a step closer to me. “So, how are you, Benji? You doing okay?”
The question pulled me out of the fantasy I’d been quickly letting my mind get lost in. “Uh, yeah. Why?”
He took a step back and swallowed hard, holding my gaze as if he didn’t want to miss a single expression. “At the club. The other night.” He cleared his throat. “You took off pretty quick. I hope I didn’t upset you.”
Damn. I’d hoped he didn’t notice my fast escape, but it was pretty hard not to notice my near panic attack. “No, you didn’t. I just—”
I just what? Lost my mind and convinced myself a hot muscly stud who had a line of boys literally drooling for him could be into me?
That seemed a little deep for a parking-lot confession.
“I just, uh, remembered I had some work stuff to do, so I needed to get home.” I winced at how terrible the lie sounded to my own ears.
“I see.” He didn’t break eye contact, but I knew he didn’t buy that crap for a second. “You wanna get dinner?”
My heart did an actual cartoon double-take, and my throat was suddenly dry. “Like, now?”
He checked his watch and shrugged. “We can drop off your tree first and then grab sushi or ramen or something.” He finally relaxed his hard stare and raised an eyebrow. “Unless you’ve got somewhere to be.”
“No.” My voice was practically a whisper, so I cleared it and tried again. “I mean—yeah, that sounds good. I could eat.”