Dont Ask Me Twice
Gisele
People tend to think lines are clear. Before this.
After that. Safe. Not safe. But around here, the lines blur faster than anyone wants to admit.
One choice becomes another. One moment becomes something you can’t take back.
And the real truth? You usually know exactly when you’re about to cross it. You just do it anyway.
Playlist: “Earned It” by The Weeknd
The rules aren’t working anymore.
I realize this somewhere around 6 PM, standing in my empty salon with a bottle of wine I shouldn’t be opening and a knot in my stomach that’s been tightening since the Riverdale trip yesterday.
The whole point of Operation Soft Boy was structure—containment, control, measurable progress toward emotional health.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped containing anything.
I pour the wine anyway. Take a sip. Try to convince myself that what I’m feeling is professional concern for a friend in crisis and not the desperate, aching want of a woman who’s spent years pretending she doesn’t love someone.
The word stops me cold.
Love. Shit.
There’s no walking that word back once you let it out of Pandora’s box.
I haven’t let myself think that word in years. Haven’t let it get anywhere near the careful compartments I’ve built around Bennett Foster, the ones labeled “friend” and “project” and “definitely not someone I imagine when I’m alone at night.”
But it’s there now, sitting in my chest like a truth I’ve been too afraid to name.
My phone buzzes.
Bennett: Running late. 15 minutes.
I should use those fifteen minutes to get my head straight. To remember why the rules exist, why I created structure, why falling into bed with the man I’m supposed to be helping would be a spectacularly bad idea.
Instead, I pour more wine and wait.
When he walks through the door, the atmosphere shifts.
We stand there for a moment, the space between us crackling with everything we’re not saying. The Riverdale trip changed something. The diner changed something. The moment in his car when he almost admitted what this was becoming changed something.
“Greeting choice,” I say, because structure is the only thing keeping me upright.
“Hug.”
He crosses the room before I can prepare myself, and then his arms are around me, and I’m breathing him in—soap and evergreen and underneath it, that scent that’s just him. My hands fist in the back of his shirt without my permission.
This isn’t a therapeutic exercise. This is holding on. This is need.
“Gisele.” His voice is low, close to my ear. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“About yesterday. About what I almost said in the car.”
My heart kicks against my ribs. “You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” He pulls back enough to look at me, and his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them. “That’s the point. I want to.”
“What do you want to say?”
“That I’m done pretending this is just about Post-it notes and breathing exercises.
” His hand comes up to cup my face, and I feel the calluses on his palm like brands against my skin.
“That every time I leave here, the only thing I can think about is coming back. That I show up early because I can’t wait.
That I invent excuses to text you. That you’re the first thing I think about when I wake up.
That whatever we’re doing isn’t working, because I’m not getting better—I’m just getting more tangled up in you. ”
“Bennett—”
“Tell me I’m wrong.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “Tell me this is one-sided, that I’ve misread everything, and I’ll walk out that door right now.”
I should tell him that. Should maintain the boundaries I built, protect both of us from the inevitable disaster of wanting too much.
But I’m so tired of pretending.
“You’re not wrong,” I whisper.
His expression cracks open. Relief and hunger and fear all tangled together, and then his mouth is on mine, and I stop thinking entirely. This kiss is different from the one in the equipment room.
That was tension snapping, surprise and want colliding without warning. This is intentional. He kisses me like he’s been planning it for days, mapping the shape of my mouth with focused precision.
Control freak, even here. Even now.
I make a sound against his lips—something needy and overwhelming—and feel him smile.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he says. “The sounds you make. Wondering what else I could pull out of you.”
“Less talking.” I fist his shirt, drag him closer. “More doing.”
He laughs, low and dark, and then he’s walking me backward toward the couch in my back room. My legs hit the cushions, and I sit down hard, looking up at him.
“We should slow down,” he says, even as his hands are reaching for the hem of my sweater. “Talk about this.”
“We’ve done nothing but talk for weeks.” I grab his shirt, pull him down over me. “I’m done talking.”
“Gisele—”
“Bennett.” I meet his eyes. “I want this. I’ve wanted this for longer than I’m willing to admit. If you need to slow down, tell me. But don’t slow down because you think I need protecting.”
The words hit something in him. I watch the last of his hesitation dissolve, replaced by pure hunger.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says.
“Tell me the same.”
He nods once, and then his mouth is on mine and I stop thinking entirely.
Almost.
Because even now, even with his hands on me and his mouth moving against mine, some part of me is still catching up to the reality of it. This is Bennett. This is actually happening.
My sweater disappears over my head in one smooth motion.
He goes still just for a second—hands on my waist, me in my bra, him still fully dressed—and he just stops. His chest heaves, and his eyes do something I’ve never seen them do before. Something that has nothing to do with want and everything to do with finally.
“Hey,” I say softly, because the moment needs a word and I don’t have a bigger one.
“Hey.” He sucks in a breath. “I just need a second.”
I know exactly what he means.
Then his hands slide up my back to the clasp of my bra and the second ends.
His henley follows, and then it’s skin against skin—the heat of his chest searing into me—and I feel it then, the thing I couldn’t have anticipated: his hands are slightly unsteady. Never hesitant with me. But trembling at the edges with something that isn’t nerves.
It’s restraint. He’s fighting to go slow when everything in him wants to sprint.
That undoes me more than anything else could.
“Damn.” His mouth drops to my throat, my collarbone, lower. He tugs my bra down with impatient hands, and the second my breasts spill free, his mouth closes over one nipple, sucking hard before soothing it with slow, lazy circles of his tongue.
Then he says my name.
Just my name. Not baby. Not you. Gisele—rough and emotion-filled, face pressed against my skin like he needs to say it out loud to confirm this is real.
It cracks something open in my chest that I don’t think is going to close again.
“These perfect fucking tits.” He switches sides, lavishing the same attention on the other peak, his free hand kneading and rolling until I’m arching into his mouth. “I’ve dreamed about them for years. Thought about sucking on them until you were begging.”
His free hand slides down my side, gripping my hip, pulling me tighter against the hard ridge of him straining behind his jeans.
“Bennett,” I moan, rolling my hips against him.
He lifts his head, eyes blazing. “Yeah, baby? You feel how hard I am for you?” He grinds against me. “That’s what you do to me. Every single time I see you. Running around Sorrowville with a semi, praying that Shep doesn’t notice and start running his mouth.”
His lips find mine again while his hand slips between us, cupping me over my jeans. He rubs the seam against my clit with firm, devastating pressure, and I whimper into his mouth.
“That’s it,” he says, voice dropping low. “Let me feel how wet you are. Been dying to get my hands on you. Been dying to taste you. To be inside you. To make you come so many times you forget your own name and only remember mine.”
He kisses me again while his fingers work me through my jeans, and I’m already half out of my mind, because this is Bennett, and his hands are on me, and twelve years of wanting is a lot of wanting to finally have somewhere to go.
Bennett hooks his fingers into the waistband of my jeans and pauses, eyes locked on mine.
I lift my hips without a word.
He drags my jeans and underwear down together, like he’s unwrapping something he’s been afraid to want for a very long time. When the fabric clears my ankles and drops to the floor, he spreads my thighs with both hands and just—looks.
I peek down at him.
And my heart does something catastrophic.
Bennett Foster, on his knees in front of me, looking at me like I’ve handed him something he stopped believing he’d ever have. The hunger in his eyes and the amazement underneath it—both completely real, both completely him, both aimed directly at me.
“Jesus Christ, Gisele,” he breathes, voice rough with awe. His thumbs stroke the soft skin of my inner thighs, inching higher. “Look at you. So pretty and pink and already slick for me.”
He parts me gently with careful fingers, and the sound that escapes him is low and guttural and undone.
“Fuck, baby. You’re dripping.” His thumb traces me slowly, spreading my wetness. “This is all for me?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Always.”
He groans and presses one thick finger inside me slowly, watching it disappear. The stretch is perfect, and the way his eyes flutter half-closed makes my breath stutter.
“So tight,” he says. “So hot. So fucking perfect.” He adds a second finger, curling them just right, stroking the spot inside me that makes my toes curl. His thumb finds my clit and circles with devastating patience. “I’ve thought about this so many times. How you’d feel. How you’d sound.”