Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Cat
W hen I woke up, I was curled underneath Bennett’s arm like I belonged there. The memories of seeing his ball-bag piercings seemed like a distant dream. Or a nightmare. I haven’t decided yet.
He was still fast asleep, sitting up with his head dropped back as I hurried to dress. As I looked at his mouth, I remembered where it had been.
I set to work immediately, busying myself in the dark so that I didn’t have to think about it. After building a fresh fire so that we wouldn’t freeze to death, I braved the cold and dumped the still-frozen chicken into the snow outside.
That’s where I am now. In the dark, outside, with no clue how I’m going to come back from this.
Or if I even want to.
All the teasing and mean-spiritedness between us feels more like foreplay now. That’s how it seems to Sober Cat , at least. I don’t know how Sober Bennett feels, and I’m too afraid to wake him up and ask him.
I kick some snow over the chicken and hope a bear doesn’t sniff it out before we’ve been rescued. That’s the last thing I need right now. When the choice is between the bear and the man, can’t I pick neither? Maybe Eve is onto something.
The door opens behind me, and a squinty-eyed Bennett shivers in the doorway. “What the fuck are you doing out here? Get back inside. It’s only four in the morning. Too early to risk walking back to the mansion.”
“Is that what we’ll have to do?” I ask. My voice still hasn’t gone back to normal, but at least I don’t sound like Joan Rivers anymore.
“I doubt it,” he says. “Just get inside before you get sick.”
I wait for the hammer to fall, for him to follow up his concern with a low blow, but it doesn’t come. He just stands there and waits for me to get back inside the cabin.
“Now take off those fucking clothes,” he adds when the door closes behind me. “We have a theory to test, remember?”
“Right,” I say, though I wish he wasn’t treating this like a science fair project. Maybe we aren’t on the same wavelength after all.
As I strip away the layers, I try to recall what gave me such a massive change of heart in the first place. I mean, we’re talking about Bennett here. Yeah, he’s hot and protective and about as alpha male as alpha male gets, but he’s also as mean as a one-eyed dog with a bone. Now that he’s back to the gruff-asshole persona, I don’t know if I feel the same as I did when I had liquor to numb the bite of his words.
I reach for the bottle of whiskey, but he pulls it away. “We’re doing this sober. If we want to know how we really feel, we have to have our full faculties.”
I lick my lips and look up at him. I don’t know if I can do this without Jack’s help. It’s just so fucking weird.
“Unless you’re rethinking this?” He steps closer and tilts my chin so that I’m forced to look into his eyes. “I know I’m a prick, but I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to. If this isn’t what you want, we can stop right now.”
Oh fuck, now he’s talking sweet again. I’m Ado Annie, being seduced by the peddler’s words. If he tells me I’m like a Persian kitten with a soft, round tail, I’ll melt.
“Kitten, what do you want?”
Close enough.
I rip off the last remaining fabric between us and step into him. “I want to know how I really feel about you. Let’s fucking do this.”
He pulls me into his body as we stand before the fire. My rational mind screams for me to stop, but I can’t. I’m careering down a hill at full speed, and I don’t care what I crash into.
His hands fall to my hips, squeezing my flesh and pulling me closer. My hand moves to his rock-hard dick and comes away sticky.
“Oh, shit. We’ve got to clean this honey off before we fuck,” I say, though I’m not sure how we’ll manage it. Heating snow will take ages on that shitty stove.
Bennett smirks at me, then leans down. When he stands again, he holds the jar of honey toward me. “I set it by the fire so it would get warm again. Instead of cleaning up, I say we make more of a mess.”
Before I can argue that this is unsanitary and liable to give me a yeast infection, he pours warm honey over my breasts, then lowers his head to lick it off.
Okay, maybe this isn’t so bad after all. Monistat has come a long way, after all.
“Lie on the quilt,” he says.
My legs can’t move fast enough, even though my brain says I shouldn’t look so eager. But what do I care? This is a secret. He wants everyone to know what we’re up to just as much as I do, which is not at all.
As I lower myself to the quilt, Bennett is right behind me. He drops to his knees between my legs and tilts the jar over my stomach. Golden warmth blankets my abdomen and cuts a lazy trail down my side.
We’ll have to burn this quilt. It’s evidence now.
Bennett leans down so that his mouth is beside my ear. “Turn over,” he whispers. “I want you covered in this before I demolish you.”
Being destroyed has never sounded so good.
I flip onto my stomach, and warmth coats my back. His tongue follows the trail. From between my shoulder blades to the crack of my ass, he doesn’t miss a drop. His arm slides beneath my pelvis, and he raises my ass in the air before drizzling honey into my ass crack. I don’t have time to object, and then his mouth is on my asshole.
This is a first for me. I’ve done a fair bit of anal, but ass-to-mouth is new. And kind of hot. As long as he doesn’t expect me to return the favor, that is. Even with honey to sweeten the task, I don’t think I can lick a butthole.
There’s no hesitation from Bennett, however. His tongue swirls through the honey and knocks at the back door. My eyes roll into my head and I moan.
“You’re fucking filthy, and I love it,” Bennett groans before diving between my cheeks again.
I push into him, wanting more. “Not sure why you’re calling me filthy when you’re the one eating ass,” I moan.
He slides two fingers into my pussy, stroking me inside while he continues licking me. “Oh, I’m filthy. I’m fucking disgusting , and you’re about to let me inside you.”
More honey coats my back. Instead of licking it away, he rubs it in with his hands, massaging sweet warmth into my sore muscles. Maybe this food kink isn’t so bad after all.
I’m just about to tell him to fuck me, but a distant sound pushes my lips together. Was that a voice?
“Bennett?” I whisper.
He keeps eating my ass.
I turn to look at him, and his eyes are closed. I never knew a butt buffet could bring such bliss, but there’s no time to think about it now. Someone is definitely outside.
“Bennett, stop!” I whisper-shout. “Someone is outside! We can’t let them find us like this!”
He freezes and listens, and sure enough, someone is shouting our names nearby.
“Why would they come for us at”—he looks at his watch—“nearly five in the morning?”
I turn onto my side, and the quilt sticks to me everywhere. “Oh, shit, shit, shit! The evidence!”
I scramble to my feet and snatch the quilt from under him. He turns to the side and tries to grab the jar of honey before it topples over, but he isn’t quick enough. It rolls into the stone hearth, bursts into fine shards, and coats the hardwood in its golden blood.
No use crying over spilled honey. I toss the quilt into the fireplace and hurry to get dressed.
It’s hard to see what I’m grabbing in the dark, but it doesn’t fucking matter. Once we get our big coats on, no one will be the wiser. I cram my head into the armhole of a sweater, then find the neck on my next try. Dressing by firelight should be an Olympic sport.
Bennett is just pulling on his coat as the door flies open. I drop to the couch and try to pretend I’ve been sitting here all along. If I can stop breathing like I just ran a marathon, I might even pull it off.
“Cat? Cat, are you alive? He didn’t kill you, did he?” Kindra rushes toward me.
Ezra stops in the doorway and sniffs the air. “What is that smell?”
“Honey?” Bennett says as he looks at me.
What the fuck is he doing? He’ll blow our cover right here and now if he uses sweet pet names in front of them!
“We, uh, got in a fight over the honey jar,” Bennett says when I don’t speak. “I dropped the jar, and it made a mess. That’s probably what you smell.”
Oh. He meant that.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m a real butterfingers. We had to burn the quilt because I dropped it right on top of it.”
“I thought Bennett dropped it,” Ezra says.
“Uh, he did,” I say.
“But then she dropped it again when she picked it up, and that’s how it got all over the quilt.” Bennett pokes the fire, and a few logs collapse inward. “This should burn out on its own. Why don’t we head back now?”
He hurries to the door, leaving Kindra and Ezra to look at me like I’ve lost my mind.
After what they almost walked in on, maybe I have.