Chapter 26 Benji #2
“Benji.” He’s already reaching for the box. “You are my favorite person alive right now.”
“Right now? How about always? I’m going to need that to be permanent.” I set the box on his tray table, swatting his hand away before he can open it. “Hold on. I need to wash my hands. Don’t start without me.”
I walk into the bathroom. The counter is ADA height which means he can roll under it. Since the day Mickey was shot, we’ve not had a single moment of real privacy. Every room has had a door that a nurse could come walking through.
This bathroom has a door with a lock.
I hop up on the counter and sit on the edge, legs dangling, my back against the mirror. I’ve either made a decision that I’m going to be very proud of or very embarrassed about and there is no middle ground here.
“Mickey?” I call through the open door. “Can you come in here for a second? I need to show you something.”
I hear his chair on the tile. The soft roll of the wheels, the slight squeak of the rubber on the floor. He appears in the doorway.
“What is it?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”
“Close the door and lock it.”
He reads me fast, the whole picture in one sweep, me sitting on the counter, my face, the flush I can feel climbing my neck. He reaches behind him and pulls the door shut and locks it.
“Benji. What are you doing?”
“Come closer,” I say.
He watches me for a long second then he moves forward.
The sink has the open clearance underneath and his chair slides right under the counter until his knees are between my dangling legs and his chest is inches from mine.
We’re face to face for the first time without me bending down or kneeling or craning over an armrest. The counter puts me at his height.
“Remember that big speech I gave you at lunch?” I ask. “About me keeping my hands off you? About me sitting in my chair like a gentleman?”
“Yeah, I remember.” He gives me a quizzical look. “And?”
I reach over and grip his shoulders. I can feel the heat of his skin through his T-shirt, the round solid muscle I’ve been rubbing cream into for weeks. “I’m sorry, Mickey. I lied. It turns out I’m not capable of doing all that.”
I slide my hands down his chest and lean forward. My mouth finds the side of his neck, the spot just below his ear where I’ve pressed my thumbs a hundred times during the cream ritual, the spot I’ve mapped without ever putting my lips on it.
My lips are there now. His skin is warm and I can feel his pulse under my mouth, faster than a resting heart rate should be.
He makes a sound. Low, barely more than a breath.
I press my mouth harder against his neck. I drag my lips down the tendon, feeling every ridge, and his head tips back. His grip closes around my wrist, holding me there. Pressing me harder against him.
“This room,” he says, rough and low. “This is the first room we’ve been in together with a lock.”
“I know.” I smile against his skin. “Why do you think I lured you in here?”
He turns his head. The turn brings his mouth within an inch of mine. His breath is warm against my lips. His eyes are so blue, looking at me with a burning focus.
“Kiss me,” he says.
I don’t move right away. My hands are trembling on his shoulders and I need one more second to look at his face before I change everything. His breathing is shallow. His pupils are blown wide and the blue is just a thin ring around the black and the black is all want.
For me.
I slide my hands from his shoulders to the sides of his neck. I hold his face how I’ve wanted to hold it since the first night he looked at me from his hospital bed and said you’re not bothering me. My thumbs trace the line of his jaw. His stubble catches on my skin.
His eyes close. The hard expression he wears like body armor—the one I’ve watched him put on for every nurse, every doctor, every person who walks through his door—flickers and falls away.
I lean in, giving him every chance to pull back, to turn his head, to change his mind.
He doesn’t move. He watches me close the distance with his eyes open now, tracking me the way he tracks everything, except right now he’s tracking my mouth.
I close the last inch between us and press my lips against his.
The first contact is soft. Almost nothing.
Just the soft press of my mouth against his, barely touching.
His breath hitches against my lips. I pull back a fraction.
Just enough to feel the loss of his mouth and the cool air that rushes in to replace it.
I hover there, my lips an inch from his, while we breathe the same air.
“Benji,” he whispers, pulling me closer.
I kiss him again, harder this time. His lower lip is between both of mine and I learn the shape of it. Full and firm. He presses my palm harder against his face as if he’s afraid I’ll stop.
No fucking way am I stopping. I couldn’t stop right now if the building caught fire.
He kisses me back. Careful at first. A press and a pull back.
His mouth moves against mine in small adjustments, learning the angle, figuring out where our faces fit together.
The carefulness of it makes me want to scream.
I sense the restraint in him, the effort it’s taking to hold back, when every muscle in his arms is locked and trembling.
Then something in him gives way and he comes back harder.
I feel the exact second it happens because his hold on my wrist cinches tight and his other hand finds the back of my neck.
His fingers wrap in my hair and pull. The tug tilts my head back enough to change the angle, his mouth opens against mine and the careful part is over.
Thank fuck.
The kiss goes deeper. His tongue brushes my lower lip, a question and a dare in one touch, and I open for him.
My answer has been yes since the first night he let me rub cream into his feet.
The first touch of his tongue against mine sends a bolt of heat through the center of my body so intense that my hips jerk forward on the counter.
My hands leave his face and thread into his hair. When my fingers curl and tug, a groan rises out of his chest, low and ragged. It vibrates against my lips, travels down and settles in the lowest part of my stomach.
I pull back to see his face. His breathing is uneven, his chest rising and falling. His lips are slick and flushed deeper than they were two minutes ago, the lower one slightly swollen.
“Don’t pull away,” he says. “Benji. Don’t stop.”
I tug him closer. The chair rolls the last inch against the counter and his chest presses flat against mine. The contact is a wall of fire. His body against mine, the hard plane of muscle through his shirt against my ribs.
I pour everything into the kiss. Every lonely drive on the interstate.
Every night I rubbed cream into his feet while he watched with wet eyes.
Every text at midnight. Every time I walked out of a hospital room and wanted to turn around.
I put all of it into his mouth and his tongue meets mine to accept every bit of it.
His hand slides from my wrist to my hip, where his thumb finds the strip of bare skin between the hem of my shirt and my waistband. He rubs there, and the touch of his calloused thumb on my skin makes it very difficult to stay still on this counter.
I break the kiss long enough to breathe.
My lips drag across his cheek, his jaw, the hollow below his ear.
I press my open mouth against the hinge of his jaw and his head tips back.
I kiss down the tendon of his neck, unhurried, open-mouthed, feeling every ridge under my lips, tasting the salt of his skin.
His fist closes in the back of my shirt and I feel the pull of the fabric across my chest. The pull says come closer even though there is no closer left.
He turns his head back to me. His mouth finds mine and this kiss is different from the ones before.
The testing is gone. His teeth catch my lower lip.
Not hard. Just enough to send a spike of electricity through me that makes my hands clench in his hair.
He soothes the bite with his tongue, one pass that turns the spike into a spreading glow.
He pulls back half an inch. His forehead finds mine. Every exhale is a shudder against my swollen lips. His eyes lock on mine and hold them. The naked hunger destroys me.
“I feel like I’ve waited forever to kiss you,” he says against my mouth. “I can’t get enough of your mouth.”
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” I murmur. “Every time I touched your skin, I was thinking about this. Every time my thumbs pressed into your neck, I was imagining your mouth. Every single time, Mickey.”
He swallows hard, then he pulls me in and kisses me again.
His mouth moves against mine with the unhurried pace of a man who has nowhere else to be.
There’s no urgency in him. No rushing toward a finish line, no escalation.
Most men kiss like kissing is a toll booth they need to pass to get to the next destination.
He’s kissing me like kissing is the entire point.
I don’t know how long we stay like this.
Several minutes. Maybe longer. His hands on my hips, my fingers in his hair, our mouths finding and losing and finding each other in a rhythm that’s ours now.
In this room, there is only his mouth, his hands and the small sounds we’re both making that neither of us could stop if we tried.
When we finally break apart, we’re both trembling.
His forehead drops against my shoulder. I wrap my arms around his head and hold him there, my chin on top of his hair, his breath scorching through the fabric of my shirt.
I can feel his heart slamming against my ribs.
Or maybe that’s mine. I can’t tell anymore.
He lifts his head. His hands slide up from my hips. Along my sides, over my ribs, his palms pressing flat through the shirt. He reaches the hem and grips the fabric and tugs upward. The gesture is clear.