Chapter 18
THREE WEEKS LATER
I was in the kitchen, eating cereal straight from the box, listening to a new audiobook in an effort to wind down after a Friday shift at the bar.
It was nearly three in the morning, my bare feet were tired, but I wasn’t exactly looking forward to bed.
Every night I slipped between the sheets, I felt a little lonelier than I did the night before.
One night with a real man.
One night with a Stallion.
How unrealistic a notion.
Like he did with increasing frequency, Twister wandered through my thoughts, distracting me from the narrator playing through my phone’s speaker.
Five nights with a real man.
Five nights with a Stallion.
Five nights under Twister’s roof, smushed between him and the cushions of his couch was all it took to change my mind about what it was I wanted.
And what I wanted was him .
My desire felt exacerbated in his absence.
So much so, I couldn’t say whether or not I was losing my mind.
It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t reasonable.
It wasn’t smart, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Every call, every text, it chipped away at me, unearthing a version of myself I hardly recognized.
It should have scared me, but it didn’t.
‘I got you, sparky. You’re safe.’
This thing between us made me feel unchained and unburdened.
He made me feel wanted and worthy .
A part of me knew it was stupid to indulge the fantasy, but I couldn’t help it.
After everything I’d been through, it felt like a temporary reprieve.
For the first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to be desired as the woman I was rather than manipulated into a caricature I wasn’t.
Benson made me believe it in his own way.
He was no sweetheart, but he was a savory treat for whom I yearned.
I hadn’t seen him since the Sunday he took off with Wrangler.
He told me he thought he’d be gone for a couple of weeks.
I never asked him where he was going or why, and he never said.
There were no expectations set when he left.
I didn’t know whether or not I would hear from him, and I didn’t trick myself into believing it was my right any more than it was his duty to be in touch—but he surprised the hell out of me, anyway.
He didn’t make contact every day, but the longest he’d gone silent was forty-eight hours.
Sometimes, all we exchanged were a few random texts about nothing.
Other times he called, like when he got the all clear from the clinic after the test he promised he’d get done.
We talked about other things, too. If it was in the morning, we’d chat for a while.
If it was in the wee hours, it was usually only a minute or two.
When he ran into a delay partway through his trip, he let me know he was going to be gone longer than he anticipated. My disappointment at the news was almost as shocking as the regret I swear I heard in his voice when he told me.
Him and me.
It was an arrangement.
An agreement.
A promise.
Though, as the days passed, it felt like the line between exclusivity and an actual relationship was blurrier than when we started.
Now, he had me counting days. Hours. Minutes.
I knew it had been almost exactly thirty-nine hours since his last text; and while I wasn’t worried, I found myself hoping my phone would ring before I sought sleep.
When it did—interrupting the narrator I hadn’t been paying attention to—my heart began to gallop.
I was quick to slide my thumb across the screen, accepting the call as I brought the device to my ear. “Hello?” I answered.
“Hey,” he greeted, his deep voice wrapped in an obvious exhaustion. “Know it’s late. Wanted to hear your voice.”
I didn’t tell him how relieved I was to hear his. Instead, I asked, “When are you comin’ home, brown-eyes?”
“Just pulled in.”
My spine straightened as my breath caught.
“You’re here?”
My excitement was indisputable even to my own ears.
“Yup.”
I looked around my kitchen, and I didn’t even stop to give it a second thought before I probed, “You still on your hog?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Want to come over?”
“Fuck, baby,” he sighed. “Yeah. I do. But I need a bed tonight, sparky. Not a couch.”
The way he said it, it was like it pained him to tell me no.
We hadn’t even so much as darkened the doorway of his bedroom since the night of our first date. A boundary had been drawn, and he’d left it to me to erase it.
Now, reckless as it might have been to invite him into my home—to open the door to new memories I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget when I most needed to—I replied, “I have one of those.”
My invitation was met with momentary silence, and I found myself holding my breath in anticipation.
“I’ll grab a shower and be right over.”
“I have one of those, too,” I murmured.
I heard it as he started his Harley’s engine a second later.
He ended the call without another word.
My belly was knotted in excitement the likes of which I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Now anxious for his arrival, there was no chance of me paying attention to my book.
I shut it off, put away my cereal, then made my way to the front of the house.
I flipped on the porch light as well as the ceiling bulb in my entryway before I headed to the living room and wandered aimlessly around my coffee table.
Five nights with a real man.
Five nights with a Stallion.
Five nights was all it took to awaken a new monster in me.
This one was greedy for one thing and one thing only— Benson Wright .
The sound of his voice was nothing more than a tempting morsel that wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy.
Now, the thing within didn’t care about the wreckage which would come as a result of indulging my desires.
While it circled my heart restlessly, I was certain its intentions weren’t of the protective variety.
I needed Ben, and that was all that mattered.
Not fifteen minutes later, I heard the rumble of an approaching motorcycle. Through the slats of my closed blinds, I saw his headlight flash as he pulled into my driveway.
It was in that moment when I realized precisely how far I’d fallen; how much of my already fractured heart had begun to splinter.
Call it denial or delusion—maybe even dimwittedness. Whatever it was that was doing its damnedest to safeguard my heart, to protect the home I made for myself—the fortress I hid behind—it was all but rubble now, as if he’d driven right through it on his hog—freeing my monster.
It had been six weeks since the wedding, and he was gone half that time.
Yet, somehow, I’d been completely swept up in the whirlwind that was Ben.
In his absence, it was easy to disguise my longing in the physical void of him.
I could dismiss the weight of it, the depth of it.
But as I stood across the room from my front door, my heart racing at the sound of his boots on my porch, I felt another piece of me break away.
Truth of the matter was, this— this feeling—it was as close to heaven as I was ever going to get.
While I wasn’t a masochist, I knew the moment I opened that door and let him in, he would claim another piece of me, and I would let him.
Then, when it all fell apart, when I finally got what I deserved, I knew it would be agony to pick up the pieces that were left and start again.
I’d done it before.
Only, this time, I knew it would be worse.
It would be worse, because he wasn’t a monster.
But I didn’t care.
I wanted him so badly, when he knocked, I sprinted toward my entryway.
I pulled the door open, and there he was in all of his six-foot-two glory.
He was in his boots, faded black jeans, and a long-sleeve tee underneath his kutte. The bandana he must have worn on his ride was pulled down around his neck, and his hair was wind-blown and sexy as hell.
His arm was bent, the fingers of his left hand wrapped around the handles of his leather rucksack, slung over his back. When he stepped inside, he tossed the bag and, without a word of greeting, reached for my face with both hands.
I didn’t resist, but closed my eyes and craned my neck, offering him my mouth.
His kiss was ravenous from the start.
Pressing up onto my tiptoes, I reached for his shoulders, clinging to him.
One of his hands slid around the back of my neck before grasping a fistful of my hair while the other snaked around my waist, hauling me tight against him.
My toes barely grazed the floor as he took another step inside, moving us enough for him to kick my door shut.
He did it so hard, the slam rattled the hinges—but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
He tasted divine.
Yeah.
He was my slice of heaven.
I sold my soul years ago, damning myself for the rest of my life. But this— him —I was going to savor for as long as I could.
He grabbed a palmful of my ass, pressing me tighter against him, and I felt the evidence of his arousal even as my own pooled at my core. He groaned, and I wanted to climb him like a fucking tree.
“I want you,” I breathed, reaching for the button at his jeans.
“Take my dick out, baby,” he muttered against my lips.
My hair still in his fist, I blindly did as I was told, whimpering pathetically when I gripped him in my hand.
“You feel that?” he all but groaned into my mouth, jerking his hips at my touch. “You feel how fuckin’ hard I am?”
I nodded as much as his hold would allow, surprised by how breathless I already was.
“I’m gonna fuck you so hard, your scream will wake the neighbors.”
“Please,” I begged.