33 BEN
BEN
“Told you not to do it.” Nigel grumbles as we near the house.
“Oh, shut up, old man. She loved it.”
“The woman who hates grand gestures loved your grand gesture?”
I wave him off. “It wasn’t for her it was for her Gran.”
“Uh huh. What’s it with you and decorating?” He yawns.
I yawn back, “Not me, it’s just the time of year,”
I am beyond tired. Bloody winter weather always mucking up my plans. I would normally be pleased I’m showing up on Saturday, technically, but as it’s two in the morning, I’m sure my wife is dead to the world in there.
“Good luck, lad,” Nigel says, clearly thinking I’m an idiot. I make a lewd gesture at him as I climb out and head to the keypad, hoping he’s wrong.
Janie didn’t scold me about the surprise, not really. We’ve texted every day since then, as is our norm now, and she hasn’t seemed angry even once.
I’m just so bloody glad she’s alright now.
My mind replays her sobs, her shaking in my arms.
Ugh. I thought I was past this.
I wait for the garage door to fully open, waving goodnight to Nigel as it does. I look at the giant Lincoln sitting there and get a whiff of some stale smell. Similar to her Gran’s room. Not old people smell, I don’t think, more like old things.
Still, I inhale deeply.
I cannot lose my shit like that again. I know she wanted to ask about the panic attacks, just like I want to know what’s going on with her and the Canton family. She’s cagey every time my sister-in-law, or any of her relatives, comes up.
Cagey is fine. Irritated, grumpy, also fine.
Sad though, sad I guess I still don’t handle well.
I put my hand on the doorknob and push in. Janie’s left a few lamps on for me. I inhale again and smell her in the house. My chest tightens and I have to close my eyes.
What the hell am I on about?
I’ve had birds cry with me. Penny wept when we broke up. I’ve seen both of my sisters-in-law cry. So why is that when Ja—
“Ben?”
Janie stands there looking like a mussed up angel, frowning and yawning. But awake and here, greeting me.
“Hey,” I say, my voice garbled.
“I wasn’t sure you’d make it in with all this snow.”
I walk to her, trying not to ogle her exposed legs under nothing but her sleep shirt. No, that’s my shirt. Bloody hell.
“I was determined to make it. Can’t miss my carriage ride.” At that she smirks. I get to her and drop my bag. I reach out to hold her face in my hands, but pause. “Can I kiss you hello? Is that a thing that we—”
She jumps me. Lips smashed to mine, legs wrapped around my waist.
Yes
Janelle
More more more
I moan, she moans right back. I squeeze her magnificent ass and she grips my hair.
“Bed,” I say.
But she drops down.
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” she says, grabbing my belt. “I’m trying to be mad about another round of surprise decorations.” I hum in confusion, distracted by the fact that she’s taking off my pants. “But I’m just not.”
“Oh?” I say, enchanted as she whips off her shirt and sinks to her knees in nothing but a pretty, tiny, teal thong.
“No, you know what I am?” She shoves my pants and boxers down, grabs me in her hand and—
Yes!
Her mouth.
On me.
I will never get over this.
She says something, but her mouth is stuffed full.
Damn it, I’m close already. Again? No!
“What was that?” I say, breathing deep and trying to think of rugby scores or anything other than how close I am.
“Grateful, Ben. I’m grateful. Now I’m going to properly say thank you.” I hiss as she pumps me with her hand and then I experience…nirvana? Ecstasy? Heaven?
I try to make it last as long as I possibly can.
I manage to hold off for nine minutes.
_____
“Okay, where are these carriages?” I ask my blushing bride as we park near town square.
“Change of plans.”
“What? Change of plans? Your plans? ” I exclaim dramatically.
She sighs. “I’m going to give you one minute to tease me about being boring and predictable and rigid, ready? Go.”
My smile dies. “Pass. You are none of those things.”
“I am, and I’m fine with it.”
“You really aren’t, love.”
She lowers her chin, “Benedict. I have a spreadsheet for my meals, remember?”
“Which I obliterated. You rolled with it. You are completely unpredictable and the least boring person I’ve ever been around.”
“You know what? We don’t have time for your lies and flattery because we,” she pauses, pleased with herself, “are going tubing.”
“Tubing,” I repeat.
“Extreme tubing down Mount Juniper. We’ll catch the bus up to the top when it circles around here in two and a half minutes.”
“You want to tube down a mountain?” I ask tentatively.
“You want to tube down a mountain. I want to thank you for what you did for Gran and all the other residents.”
“Uh, as I recall, I was thoroughly and properly thanked for that this morning,” I say, my blood running south at the memory.
“Yeah, but then you thanked me back, also thoroughly and properly, so I had to plan something good for my thrill-seeking husband. Way more thrilling than a carriage ride.”
My chest warms at the word husband, and pride stirs in me at her admission. After she altered my DNA with the most passionate blow job I’ve ever gotten, I laid her out on the kitchen table and repaid the oral favor. I had hoped I matched her enthusiasm. I guess I succeeded.
Then, of course, she all but fled away to her room.
I wanted to hold her. I wanted to carry her to my bed, and not to have sex. Well, okay, maybe to have sex. But mostly to just be near her. Hold her while she sleeps. Have her scent on my pillows.
Which is a real bloody problem.
Scent on my pillows? What the actual hell is happening to me?
Something unwelcome, because clearly, she doesn’t feel the same.
Her phone buzzes again in her pocket and she tenses, but doesn’t check it. I still can’t figure out if she’s being secretive or not. She’s definitely being…careful. Guarded.
“C’mon, here comes the bus,” She pulls me out of my bleak thoughts.
“Alright,” I say, watching her jump excitedly out of the car. She looks adorable in her winter duds. Her gray hat brings out her eyes but I’m sure she’s in all black under the decent winter coat she let me buy her. It’s a dark purple. It suits her, just like I knew it would.
She asks about my latest trip as we climb onto the bus.
I ask her about the great mustard mystery she’s solving one spreadsheet at a time.
We chat easily together about everything and nothing, until Steven and Miles hop on at one of the stops.
Our conversation transitions to the town and its latest gossip.
Apparently Betty Swanson swears she saw Mayor Bear clomping though the town’s Nativity scene display—not to be confused with the live action Nativity Scene that is not yet set up in front of the Baptist church—but Shelly Swanson, Betty’s sister, claims it was actually Betty’s dog that got out and wreaked havoc.
Half the town feels Betty is trying to cover her tracks, er, her dog’s tracks.
The teenager in charge of the Jolly Juniper High School e-newsletter has apparently launched an official investigation and all of it is utter nonsense.
But Steven is so animated and Janelle is so passionately on Team Betty, who is a nurse at her Gran’s home, that I’m bloody enraptured by the whole tale.
Finally at the top, Miles and my wife almost to fisticuffs over which Swanson is in the wrong, we file out and I study my little wife.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Yeah. I’m not unadventurous, you know. I ski, both snow and water, I’ve surfed. I haven’t jumped out of a plane or gotten a pilot’s license but I do stuff.”
“Alright, wifey, let’s get to it then.”
She pretends to be annoyed at the nickname as we go to the little shack with the tubes. We choose a bright orange inflatable shaped like the number eight and mosey to the line that’s formed at the top. When it’s time to go, I steer her to the front of the tube.
She pauses, “I don’t think I want to be in the front.”
“Not as adventurous now, my darling?”
“Nope, guess not. I just, this is like, much more of a mountain than I remember? This first time I think you should be in front and I’ll hold onto you.”
“I think more of the weight should be in the back, yeah?”
“I don’t know, boss, I’m not a physicist.” She rolls her eyes.
This is a bad idea. We’ll be front-heavy. But she seems genuinely afraid, and she’s already plopped down onto the thing. I’ll just lean back. It’ll be fine.
I sit down, she wraps her arms around me, and we push off.
Janelle screams bloody murder, I laugh. It’s good fun, sliding fast and smooth, only having to barely hold on. Until we hit a small hidden tree stump and, just as I feared, I stop. She doesn’t.
“Janie!” I yell as I watch her fly through the air and turn into a puff of white dust a few feet down the slope.
“Janelle?” I cry again frantically trudging toward her.
She waves an arm to show she’s able to move.
“Are you alright my darling?” I pant when I finally reach her.
My heart stops because she’s still, hand over her face and—she’s laughing. “You’re alright.”
“That was insane! I flew! I flew through the air like a freaking bird! Did you see that?”
“I did.”
She frowns, but still giggling, “Why aren’t you laughing?”
“Because I thought you might be paralyzed, or, you know, dead!”
“BAHA!” She’s laughing again.
“Bloody hell, woman, you're going to kill me. Let’s get you up, come on.” I say, helping her to her feet, both of us unstable in the snow.
“Let’s go again!” She says, surprising me.
“Really?”
“Yeah but this time I’ll sit in front, you were right.” The second she says it, she regrets it, but I seize the opportunity.
I tease her all the way down the rest of the slopes and on the ride up again.
I joke that I’ll get the admission and the date tattooed on my chest. I beg her to say it again on the drive home.
And again when we pull into the garage. She rolls her eyes and I use it as an opening to kiss the shit out of her even though there are no cameras here.
“It’s still Saturday,” I say when I can finally pull my mouth away from hers.
“Didn’t we say once per Saturday?”
I shake my head and kiss down her neck, straining over the center console. I speak into her delicious honeysuckle skin, “No, and even if we did, let’s renegotiate. Name your terms.”
“My terms are that we only scratch the itch once per Saturday,” she says but her voice is breathy.
I lick up her neck to her ear, nip at her earlobe, then pull back. I lower my voice in the way she seems to like. “That is not what you want us to do.”
“No, but it’s what we should do.” I start to slump but she grabs my lapels. “But I owe you a Saturday.”
“Owe me?”
“Yes, I was sick with the plague and we had to skip. It’s only fair.”
“Right, fair, yes,” I say, my mouth already back on her neck but I want to bury my face in her cleavage and there are so many clothes. “Too many clothes, let’s go.”
I barely finish the sentence and she’s already bounding out of the car. I smile, watching as she hustles to the door, her coat half off already. At least I’m not the only one going absolutely mental.
I think of her all day long. I re-read her texts. I look at photos on my phone. Every time I close my eyes I see her gray irises, her skin, her lips, I smell her perfume, I hear her whimpers.
Damn, I’m hard already.
I hurry after her, and she smiles and runs, literally, through the house.
I chase, and she laughs. I love her like this.
Cheeky, a bit mean. But with me, for me, wanting me.
I find her in her closet where we become totally mad for each other.
Buttons pop off, a zipper breaks, I curse, she laughs again.
When we’re finally both down to just our underwear, she steps back, panting.
“I want to watch you,” she says, hands squeezing her perfect tits. “And I want you to watch me.”
I step closer to her and grit out, “How badly do you want that?”
She breaks out in goosebumps as she says, “Pretty freaking bad.”
I bracket my arms on either side of her inside the cabinetry that should have long hanging clothes, but sits mostly empty. It makes a perfect cage. My body pins her in with no escape and I think she likes it.
“Then come with me this week,” I say before I know what I’m saying.
“Where?”
“Wherever I’m going,” I put out a hand to stop hers that’s headed down her stomach. She whimpers and I go on, “I’ll be a gentleman Sunday through Friday. But I did get you remote status. Come be remote with me.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Ben!” She whines, wanting to touch herself but unable to move her hand.
“Good. Now, beg.”
I smirk, watching emotions war on her face. She doesn’t like this idea.
But I need her to say it.
I’m not an idiot. She doesn’t want us to have actual sex. She’s not going to let me in, metaphorically or physically. Fine.
But she sure as hell is going to admit to this desperation, this raging need between us. It’s not just me.
“Please, Benedict.”
“Ben,” I correct her.
She arches her back as her fingers move down. Her fingers start to work and she keeps her eyes locked on mine, putting on a little show that I’ll remember over and over again the rest of my days.
“Husband. I am begging you.”
Kill me dead.
I whip off my briefs, stand, grip myself and give her exactly what she asked for.
She stares at my cock and unravels quickly, then asks to touch me. I oblige.
Then I almost black the hell out. From a hand job in a closet.
She asks to watch Harry Potter as we dress.
She asks for a sip of my tea.
She asks to lay her head in my lap.
I’d give her anything she asked.
Anything. Everything.
But I don’t think she will ask anything more of me.
Isn’t this supposed to be the dream? A goddess of a woman who only wants sex? Who barely wants my money, beyond what we already agreed upon? Who doesn’t want my connections, my status? Doesn’t want my time or my feelings?
Not a minute spent with Janelle could be called a nightmare but damn—this unrest, this nagging, needing, wanting feeling…this does not feel like a dream.