Chapter 19
Kayla
The house was too clean.
I’d spent the hours between the parking lot and seven o’clock in a state of productive panic that had transformed my home into something that belonged in a real estate listing.
Counters wiped twice. Throw pillows arranged, rearranged, then put back where they’d started.
The dishes from William’s after-school snack washed, dried, and put away instead of left in the rack the way I normally did because I was a human being and not a magazine spread.
Dinner was on the stove. Pasta with a simple red sauce. Salad. Nothing ambitious. Nothing that screamed I spent four hours on this. I’d considered and rejected three other options before settling on the thing I could cook without burning down the house while my hands were shaking.
William was at Trish’s. His overnight bag had been packed with the focus of a child who took sleepovers seriously—pajamas, toothbrush, Jolly’s red ball, which went everywhere with him now, and a book about police dogs that he’d checked out from the school library twice already.
Trish had picked him up at five-thirty with a wink and a whispered, “Relax. You deserve this.”
Now the house was quiet, and the quiet was wrong.
Not peaceful. Expectant. An empty chair and a clock I’d checked four times in the past six minutes and a simmering pot of sauce I’d stirred so many times it was practically pureed.
I turned off the heat. I adjusted a dish towel that didn’t need adjusting.
Moved the saltshaker two inches to the left. Moved it back.
Six fifty-eight.
The doorbell rang at seven exactly.
Of course it did. The man had military precision built into his cellular structure.
I crossed the living room. Wiped my palms on my jeans, which I’d changed into after rejecting the dress because the dress had ended up being less this-old-thing?
and more like hey there, sailor, I haven’t had a date in six months.
I was hoping the jeans said I barely thought about this, which was the biggest lie my wardrobe had ever told.
And I was also hoping I’d stop regularly dialoguing with my clothing because that couldn’t be good.
I opened the door.
Ben stood on the front porch. Clean shirt, dark, collar open. His hair was damp at the temples like he’d showered recently, and the last of the evening light caught the green-gold shift in his eyes that I’d been trying not to catalog since the day I’d met him.
My mouth opened, and everything I’d been holding since Trish had invited him over came pouring out.
“Hi.” I actually waved at him like I was Forrest Gump or something.
“William’s at Trish’s, and I realize this looks like I engineered some kind of setup, and I didn’t—well, Trish did, but I didn’t stop her, and I should have told you William wouldn’t be here because I think maybe you said yes to dinner because of him, because of Jolly, and that’s fine, that’s actually wonderful, but if that’s the case, then this is just dinner between neighbors, and I don’t want you to feel like I—”
He kissed me.
Not slow. Not careful. This was immediate and decisive—his hand finding the back of my neck, his fingers sliding into my hair, and his mouth on mine with an intention so focused it shut down every wrong conclusion I’d built in two days of overthinking.
He stepped forward and I stepped back, and the door was behind him and then it wasn’t, because he’d closed it without breaking the kiss, and the sound of it latching was the last clear thing I registered before my brain went quiet.
His other hand found my hip, and he pulled me against him. The full length of his body pressed to mine, and the hardness of him against my stomach confirmed what I’d been too afraid to believe. He wanted me. The evidence was undeniable.
He broke the kiss just far enough to look at me. His breathing was rough. His hand was still on the back of my neck.
“I didn’t come here for William.” His voice was low, stripped down to nothing but the truth. “I came here for you.”
There it was. Blunt and plain and leaving no room for the wrong interpretation. Every careful theory I’d constructed—the good neighbor, the kind man, the person who kissed me because I was crying and then realized his mistake—collapsed under short words delivered in a voice I felt in my spine.
I pulled him back down to me.
This was the kiss that changed everything. He moved his hands from my neck to my waist, and when I opened my mouth against his, he made a sound, low and involuntary, the noise of restraint cracking, that sent heat flooding down through my belly and lower.
He spread his fingers across my lower back and lifted me into him, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and felt the muscles in his shoulders bunch and flex as he walked me backward into the kitchen.
My lower back hit the counter. He didn’t stop. His mouth left mine and found the side of my neck, his teeth grazing the tendon there, and I gasped and gripped his shoulders and felt his hips press forward in response. The counter edge was hard against my spine, and I didn’t care.
I couldn’t care about anything except his mouth on my throat and the pressure of his body pinning me to the counter and the growing ache between my legs that was making it difficult to remember my own name.
I pulled at the back of his shirt. He stripped it over his head in one motion, and the sight of him, the broad planes of his chest, the flat ridges of his stomach, made my mouth go dry.
I put my hands on him. Ran my palms down his chest, feeling the heat of his skin, the hard muscle underneath, the way his stomach contracted when my fingers reached his waistband.
His breath left him in a rush. He lifted me onto the counter with both hands and stepped between my thighs, and the new angle put the hard length of him exactly where I needed pressure.
I rocked against him, and he cursed under his breath, one word, rough and unpolished, and his hands went to the hem of my shirt.
He paused. Looked at me.
I pulled the shirt over my own head.
His eyes dropped. His jaw went tight, and I watched his hands open and close once at his sides before he touched me, cupping my breasts through the thin fabric of my bra, his thumbs finding my nipples, and I arched into his hands and felt the sound I made vibrate in my own chest.
He unclasped my bra with one hand and it fell away between us, and then his mouth was on my breast, his tongue drawing slow circles around my nipple, and I dug my fingers into his hair. I moaned at the sensation and stopped pretending this was something I could control.
“Ben—” His name came out ragged, half a plea.
He lifted his head. His eyes were dark, pupils blown. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
I bit back a hysterical laugh. “If you stop, I’ll actually die.”
Something broke behind his expression. The containment he wore most of the time dissolved, and what replaced it was hunger, open and unguarded, aimed entirely at me.
He pulled me off the counter, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and felt him hard between my thighs as he carried me out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
We made it to the hallway at the top. That was as far as our patience lasted.
He pressed me against the wall and kissed me so deep I couldn’t breathe.
My legs were still locked around him, and the friction of our bodies grinding together through two layers of denim was maddening, close but not close enough, the heat building without release.
I dropped my legs, and my hands went to his belt. His went to the button of my jeans.
We undressed each other with more urgency than grace.
His jeans hit the floor, and I pushed down my own and kicked them off.
He slid his hand between my thighs over the thin cotton of my underwear and found me wet and ready, and the sound he made, this low, wrecked groan that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest, almost undid me right there.
“Christ, Kayla.” He pressed his forehead to mine.
His fingers stroked over the fabric, teasing my clit, and my hips bucked into his hand.
He hooked his thumb under the waistband and pulled them down, and then his fingers were on bare skin, sliding through slick heat, and I bit down on his shoulder to keep from crying out.
He knew what he was doing. His fingers moved with a quiet competence, reading my responses, adjusting pressure and rhythm, circling my clit with his thumb while two fingers pressed inside me. My back arched off the wall. My thighs were shaking.
“Not yet.” I got the words out between breaths. “I want you. Inside me. Now.”
My jeans were on the floor two feet away.
I pushed off the wall, dislodging Ben’s hand, and reached for them blindly, digging into the back pocket.
My fingers closed around one of the foil squares Trish had pressed into my hand on her way out the door.
Just in case. Don’t argue. I hadn’t argued.
I’d shoved them in my pocket and turned red, and now I could have kissed her.
I tore it open, rolled it onto him, and his breath caught and his hips jerked into my hand.
He lifted me back against the wall, and I felt him push into me. And the stretch of it, the fullness, made the air leave my lungs in a rush.
He held still for a second, one hand braced against the wall, the other gripping my thigh, and his forehead dropped to my shoulder. I heard him exhale, slow and unsteady, like he was trying to hold himself together.
I shifted my hips. He groaned and started to move.
He pressed me up against the wall with an effortlessness that reminded me of exactly how strong he was, and each thrust drove deep enough to hit something that made my vision blur.
I gripped his shoulders, his biceps, the back of his neck, anything I could hold on to while my body climbed toward something I could already feel building at the base of my spine.
He was vocal in a way I hadn’t expected. Not words. Sounds. Low, rough exhalations that matched his rhythm, the occasional muttered curse when I tightened around him, my name said once against my collarbone in a voice I barely recognized as his.
The man who said almost nothing had been saving it all for this, and every sound he made sent another wave of heat through me.
“Bedroom,” I managed. “I want—”
His arm locked under me, and he carried me down the hall, still buried inside me, each step sending a jolt of friction that made us both gasp.
He lowered me onto the bed, and the pace changed.
Slower. He braced himself on his forearms and looked at me.
The half-light from the hallway caught his face, and what I saw there—the naked want, the care underneath it, the absolute absence of anything except this moment and this room and the two of us in it—made my chest crack open.
He started to move with a rhythm that was devastating in its steadiness, deep, unhurried strokes that hit the right angle every time, building pressure without rushing it, his hips rolling against mine while he read every signal I gave him.
Every hitch in my breathing. Every dig of my nails into his back. Every involuntary sound I made when he found the spot that turned the world white at the edges. I could feel myself tightening around him. I wrapped my legs back around his waist and pulled him closer.
His rhythm faltered. His breathing fractured. He drove deeper, faster, sliding his hand between us to press his thumb against my clit, and somewhere in the climbing heat and the building pressure and the sound of his breath coming apart against my neck—I let go.
His thumb circled my clit once more, and I came apart. The orgasm broke through me in waves, deep and full-body, starting where he was buried inside me and spreading outward until my fingers tingled and my jaw went slack and I couldn’t do anything except hold on to him and let it take me.
He followed seconds later, his body going rigid, his hips driving forward one last time, his face buried in my neck, my name on his lips.
For a long time, neither of us moved.
His weight settled over me, heavy and solid. His heart hammered against my ribs. His hand rested on the curve of my hip, his thumb tracing an absent, idle path across my skin as his breathing slowed.
I lay beneath him and felt the quiet settle. Not the wrong kind, not the expectant kind that had filled the house all evening. This was the kind that came after something necessary and true, when there was nothing left to prove and nothing left to hide.
My body was loose and spent in a way I’d forgotten I could feel.
Every muscle unwound. Every thought dissolved into sensation—the rise and fall of his chest against mine, the damp heat where our bodies were still joined, the slow drag of his thumb across my hip bone as sleep started pulling at the edges of everything.
I closed my eyes. Let his strength hold me. Let the quiet stay.