Chapter 26
I don’t think we’ve done this before. Kissing for kissing’s sake. Because our lips fit. Like the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that litter my coffee table.
And, God, it’s satisfying. Finding that perfect fit. The perfect piece.
Wanting, needing, feeling like you should spend the rest of your life attached at the lips, exactly like this.
My hands weave into the hair at the base of Ben’s neck. It’s silky against my skin, and would it be weird to have shirts made out of his hair? Probably yes.
I think I’d want it anyway.
Ben’s fist wraps around my ponytail, tilting my head so he has better access to my neck. I’m torn. I immediately want his lips back on mine, but why does this feel so damn good too? They’re sloppy and wet and loud, like he doesn’t care who hears us.
We’ll scandalize poor Marcy.
“We,” Ben says with a kiss. “Should probably—” Kiss. “Go to the baths.” Kiss.
The what? I can’t focus past the suck of Ben’s lips against my neck, feral, marking me.
“Colette.” A firm hand comes to hold my hips down. I guess I was shamelessly grinding up into him. I’m not sorry for that. “You’re going to make me…” His breathing is heavy as he yanks himself away from me.
My brain is moving too slow because by the time I try to pull him back to me, he’s already across the room, back to me with both hands on top of his head. His “fuck” echoes around the room.
Standing, I walk around Ben’s front, laughing at his scrunched up face.
“Not funny, Red.” But his smile says otherwise.
I lace my hands with his, guiding them off the top of his head. One more kiss sounds like a good idea so I pop onto my tiptoes and press against him again. He winds our tangled arms behind my back, drawing me in.
The puzzle imagery comes to the forefront of my mind again. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. A perfect fit.
I’m the one to pull away this time. “Baths,” I remind him when his brow furrows in concern.
“Baths,” he repeats, like it’s a brand new word he’s never heard before.
Stepping back, I let go of one of his hands but keep the other one hostage. We open the double doors that lead into the actual bathing part of the bathhouse and my jaw drops.
It. Is. Stunning.
The massive room is lined floor to ceiling with elegant green-grey tiles.
There are skylight domes over about half of the baths around the room, casting magical rays of sunlight onto the small pools, making it look like the water is glittering.
Six hot-tub-sized baths are dotted throughout the room, each wrapped in the same tile with a small set of stairs that leads to the bath itself.
Little plaques with temperature information are fastened to the edge of each structure, but I don’t need to read each of them to tell which ones are the hottest.
Large billowing steam twists and turns out of two near the center of the room. Obviously, I beeline straight to those.
“No sauna?” Ben pouts.
“What? No, I hate the sauna. This bath, however, is calling my name.”
He looks like someone blew out the candles on his birthday cake before he was able to make a wish. “Why are you pouting Benjamin?”
“The sauna is the nude area.”
In lieu of replying, I untie the belt at my waist that’s holding my robe together. Slowly, the robe slides down my arms, revealing the fire-engine-red bikini that doesn’t do much in the way of covering all of my important bits.
Ben quickly assumes his favorite position: on his knees for me.
“Colette,” he groans, his lips skimming the waistband of my swimsuit. He bites at the fabric and tugs, letting it go with a resounding snap against my skin. His lips make their way to where my thigh meets my hip, planting more sloppy kisses against my inner thighs.
Tugging Ben’s head back, I pivot around him and into the water before he realizes what just happened.
The water feels phenomenal, and I relish being wet in more ways than one. I’ve never had a partner that can pull this reaction out of my body the way Ben can.
It’s terrifying.
I’m quickly becoming obsessed.
Ben gets his wits about him, finally disrobing to reveal—“You’re naked!”
I cover my eyes, and Ben’s responding laugh echoes around the room, surrounding me with his unfiltered joy. “You’re observant,” he volleys.
“Marcy said bathing suits in the baths!”
“Marcy is also being paid a pretty penny so that we have the ability to do whatever we want in this bathhouse.”
“If we actually do get murdered they are going to find you fully nude. Do you really want an investigative team looking at your flaccid dick?”
He chuckles again, and I hear him wade into the water. Said dick—very much not flaccid at the moment—pokes me in the stomach as he sidles up next to me. His hands slide up my arms, peeling my hands away from my face. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, Red.”
“Yes, but we are in public!” My reply is indignant.
Ben hums. “Not an exhibitionist then? The little show in the relaxation room tells me otherwise.”
I bite my lip, looking up at him. “I don’t mind a little exhibitionism.” I shrug. “But there’s no one else here! We can’t even be discreet! Hide in the middle of a crowd—that sort of thing!”
“Fuck discreet,” Ben replies. His dick seems to agree, insistent against me as he draws closer and closer.
His eyes zero in on my neck and he grins, leaning in to bite the juncture between my neck and shoulder.
“Don’t be pissed,” he starts, “but you may or may not have to cover this hickey for the next couple of days.”
“Hickey?!” I shove Ben off of me, which he takes in stride, submerging himself fully in the bath.
He resurfaces with a huge grin painted across his stupidly beautiful face.
Water drips from his hair, and I can’t even be mad at him when he shakes his head like a dog coming in from the rain.
My hand finds the side of my neck, tracing the spot Ben left his mark on me.
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to cover a hickey in this heatwave, you asshole. ”
“Don’t cover it.” His long arms hook behind my legs, tugging me back toward him. “I like it almost as much as I like seeing you wear your ring,” he tacks on, speaking to himself more than me.
“I have to cover it,” I laugh, pushing back. “I’m starting classes soon. No one is going to take me seriously if I have a giant bite mark on my neck.”
He doesn’t answer me, instead swimming toward me with only his head and neck above the water. With my feet planted firmly on the steps, he’s eye level with my navel. Which is exactly where he puts his chin once he’s close enough. He kisses my stomach, asking, “What about here?”
“Hmm?”
He looks up at me through long lashes, drops of water snaking their way across his face, over his nose. He’s unfairly pretty when he smiles, and I get the feeling that he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. “Can I bite you here, Colette?”
“Oh.”
Ben nips right next to my belly button, and goosebumps erupt across my flesh. “I think I’d like to mark you here and maybe…” He drags a finger lazily down the seam of my bikini, moving closer and closer to my inner thigh.
“How do you always end up on your knees for me, hmm?” I ask, increasingly distracted by where his hands are going.
“Very, very intentionally, Red.”
“You can, by the way.”
“Can what?”
“Mark me.” That’s all the permission he needs. His strong hands come around my waist, hauling me up to set me on the wide ledge of the bath. He shoves my legs open, sending me off balance before I can steady myself by grabbing onto the outer lip of the tub.
Ben’s lips latch onto my inner thigh right at the juncture of my hip, and he sucks. Hard.
Immediately I’m met with images of him sucking on other things, and the heat pooling low in my belly is demanding to be released.
As if he can read my mind, his mouth closes over my clit and he sucks again. My head is spinning in the most delicious way, and I’m right back to wanting more, just like our earlier kiss.
Without removing my bathing suit bottoms—as if he’s too lust crazed to create time for such a frivolous act—he hooks his finger in them, moving it to the side so he has full access to me.
He returns to his task with gusto, and I appreciate his dedication to being perfect at everything he tries, I really do.
It is absolutely working to my benefit at this moment as Ben’s tongue swirls methodically.
He teases my entrance with a finger as his other hand comes up to tweak my nipple.
That’s all it takes. Somehow this man’s tongue has become the key to my orgasmic bliss, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without—
Holy shit. As the last waves of my orgasm are cresting, Ben returns to my navel, sucking a mark right next to it, too. Something about seeing how feral he is, in addition to the fact that two of his fingers have found that perfect spot inside me, has me falling quickly into a second orgasm.
My moans echo off the tile walls around us and I’m praying to every god in the universe that this room is soundproof.
Ben kisses his way up my heaving torso, stopping to leave one more hickey on the underside of my breast—he’s insatiable.
“I can’t believe I just let you eat me out inside of a bathhouse.” I cover my mouth as a bubble of laughter threatens to erupt.
Ben’s answering grin is playful, puppy-like. “I can. We know a bath turns you on, Red. No one is surprised by this.”
Fine, maybe he’s right.
When Ben is dropping Ernest and me off at my apartment later that evening, I expect him to try to stay.
Instead, he gives me the most tender kiss on my forehead, draws a single line down my palm, and says, “One down, four to go.”
Then he’s gone.
And maybe I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t stay.