Chapter 42
NOW
Paloma
He’s intoxicating above me, all masculine and dominant. Another breath punches out of me as his hand ghosts over the spot I need him most. I feel like my entire body is throbbing, like I am a heartbeat in his hands.
And now, he’s making a mess of me. He keeps my thigh pressed open into the bed—using it to steady himself as he mouths hungrily over my breasts.
“Has anyone ever told you how good you are?” he says, pulling back as he slides up my body, fingertips still swirling over the hardened peak of my nipple. “How you deserve to be worshipped like this?”
He slots his dick between my breasts where I’m still pushing them together, sliding slowly between them as I stare up at him in awe. The mass of his body is held off me but hovering so large and looming, like an ancient god to be worshiped.
Only, I feel worshipped by him.
“God, P,” he grunts out. “Thought about this. For three fucking years.” His breath huffs, blowing a few curls away from his eyes. “I’m always thinking about you. Always.”
Again, his words tangle in vulnerability and heat—a mix that makes me mewl and restlessly grind into the air. He moves his body, using one arm planted at his side to keep his weight off me, the other reaching between my legs to cup me.
The position has him leaned back, giving me a perfect view of his soft chest, sparsely covered in dark brown curls. Everything about him is intoxicatingly powerful.
My moan is mirror-shattering, wanton, arguably unsexy—but he closes his eyes like he’s hearing a symphony.
“That’s it, P.” His fingers pet against the seam of my lips, parting me with an expert touch—he’s spent years learning my body, watching my every breath, to play me so easily.
Like fucking poetry.
“That’s all I want, love—to make you feel good. Ride my fingers.”
I do, watching him the same way he watches me. It’s so intense immediately, as it always has been beneath his careful, calloused hands.
His mouth pours words over me like he’s writing them in ink across my body. So good for me, love and Ahh—no, P, not yet. Hold it, in such a firm voice I can’t help but obey.
“Please, Bennett, please let me—”
“Fuck,” he grunts, tossing his head back, the muscles of his neck thick and tensed as his hips stutter, his come spilling messily between my breasts. Just seeing him completely undone makes me unravel faster, mouth opening on a low, breathy cry.
He shifts off me, curling around me entirely as he continues to fuck me with his thick fingers, my body building up and up.
His mouth makes a new home by my ear, whispering sweet words, talking me all the way through it as I come hard—harder than in the hotel room, more vulnerable, but not rocked by the emotions the way I had been then.
No—now I feel warm, weightless, and whole. Like nothing bad ever happened to me. It’s just me and Bennett, as if we’ve always been together, this close, with no pain.
“Good?” he asks, pressing a kiss to my cheeks and then the corner of my mouth. I smile, skin flushed as he checks me over almost obsessively. “Words, Paloma.”
“Good.”
He carries me to my bathroom, running the shower with one hand as he sets me carefully on my feet. But he still cradles me close, his other palm steady on the back of my head, keeping me pressed to his chest.
We shower and he washes my hair, gentle as always.
“I’ve missed this,” I say, vulnerable and soft in his arms. My fingers play against his chest as he quietly tilts my head with a gentle command of Lean back, P.
“You know how I feel about your hair,” he says, with an almost smoky chuckle.
His voice is still thick, raspy in a way that has my body heating up, ready for him again.
“I think about it all the time, imagine it in my hands, against my skin.” He holds a hand at my forehead, attempting to keep water from my eyes as he washes away the conditioner he’d carefully combed through my strands.
“I’m going to brush it, too,” he says, his mouth on my neck. I nod, though he didn’t ask a question.
After he dries my body with the soft towel, wraps it around his waist, and slips his shirt over my head, he brushes my hair while we sit on the mess of my bed.
I try to lay next to him, but he shakes his head with a soft, “Come here,” pulling me to rest against his chest where he’s propped up against my headboard.
I’m sleepy and soft, but he still feels tense. Almost antsy.
“Was that . . . okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” I offer, pulling his hand to my mouth to kiss his fingers. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Why?”
The question is fast enough that my brow furrows. “If something is bothering you, we can talk about it.” A darker thought rises, and I debate for a long moment if I should say it or ignore it. The girl I’ve been for years would ignore it. But I want something real with Bennett.
“If something is bothering you,” I try again, “sex isn’t going to make it go away.”
“Do you regret it?” he asks, a lump in his throat.
I turn in his arms to look at him, eyes pleading as I lift his chin to meet my gaze. “God, no, Bennett. But I don’t want . . . I don’t want you to use—”
His eyes go wide, body sitting upright as his arms leave my sides. Head sinking into his palms, he begs, “No . . . God, no, P. I’m so sorry—I would never . . . I’m not using you. I swear I wasn’t. I-I—”
“Bennett,” I stop him, firm and loud. I slide to kneel between his thighs and sit back on my heels as I cup his entire face in my hands, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. “I would never think you were using me. Never. I just want to make sure that you can talk to me, if something is hurting you.”
“Like you did with me?”
I flinch back slightly. He shakes his head but continues to let me hold him. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. I deserved that one.” A breath chokes me, but I continue. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I just . . . I wasn’t okay.”
“But you’re okay now?” There’s hope there in his words and I grasp it with two hands.
“Yeah. At least, I’m trying.” I settle back against the headboard next to him, my legs over his waist as he skims his fingers over my calf and holds my ankle. “Actually, I’ve been going to therapy.”
It feels ridiculous to be embarrassed by admitting it. Everyone and their mother goes to therapy now—it’s normal; healthy, even.
A grin, however small, breaks across Bennett’s face. “Yeah? That’s . . . that’s great, P.”
I nod, chewing on my lip.
“How long have you, um, been going? If you want to tell—”
“I started at the beginning of the semester. I’m . . . I’m trying, to be different than I was.”
“Did you go as a kid?”
I shake my head. There was a court-ordered therapist once, when my mom had been investigated by CPS. But I don’t think that counts.
“No, but I think it’s helping. So”—I shrug with a half grin—“yeah. Maybe one day I won’t be so broken.” It’s a joke, but Bennett doesn’t laugh.
“You’re not broken, P,” he whispers, squeezing my calf and dragging me fully into his lap. His hand reaches for mine, and he massages my palm and fingers as he speaks. “You’re not. But I think therapy is great. It’s always helped me.”
I nod with a gentler smile this time. Because to know he still feels that way, that he sees me as something whole and wonderful, not the truly broken thing that I am. It feels like hope.
Like the first splash of cool water after a starting dive.
“We should get dinner tomorrow.”
His eyes widen, body tensing beneath me. “Like . . . a date?”
I chew on my lip and hesitate, eyeing him as he dips his chin to meet my eyes.
A mischievous grin I don’t normally see on Bennett suddenly appears. His hand tucks a strand of blond hair back.
“I wouldn’t mind if it was a date,” he says.
The words feel electrifying, so memorable. They’re a perfect display of how intensely the power has shifted between us. It gives me hope . . . that maybe someday we will find our footing. Together. Maybe this is the first step.
“A date, then,” I say, remembering his reply just as clearly as he remembered my teasing words.
He takes my hand. I can feel that touch in my soul, like the darkness is slowly washing away. Permanently.