Chapter 29 Bennett #2
My jaw drops, lips forming an O, and we only break eye contact when she looks down to watch me slowly disappear inside her. There’s something so raw and heady about watching her fascination as a sharp, high-pitched moan cracks in her chest.
“That’s it,” I rasp. “You’re doing so well.”
Once I’m fully seated inside her, I hold her hips still for a moment, eyes fluttering, throat swallowing as I try to gather myself.
I’ve had plenty of sex, but this feels significant. Monumental. A defining moment, and one I never thought I would have the privilege of experiencing.
“I have wanted this for so long.” My voice is gravelly and desperate.
She pushes against my bruising grip and rolls forward as she nods with her eyes closed.
Wonder. There’s no other word to describe how it feels to watch her.
Fuck. I can’t tell her I love her when she’s sitting on my dick. That’s no different than a starved man complimenting the chef. I can’t do that. But I want to.
My hands move up to her waist, and she falls forward, her arms draped over my shoulders. She slides up my cock, and then down. I let her feel her way through this for now and experiment with what feels good. I let her take it slow. For now.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Full,” she whimpers. “But so”—her breath hitches—“good.”
“You’re so tight for me, sweet girl. So warm and”—I thrust up into her as I smooth her hair, petting her—“perfect.”
She arches back, giving me a lovely view of her, the fire crackling behind her, lovely tits on display for me. Our bodies rock back and forth, finding a rhythm, and she falls forward again so that she is pressed flush against my chest.
With my arms wrapped around her waist, and her sweet moans filling my senses, I need to fuck her.
I snake one arm up her spine and pull her as close to me as she can possibly be as I begin to drive up into her at a relentless pace.
I want to fuck her so hard that she wakes up in the morning and can still feel me there between her legs.
It’s reprehensible, I know. I wonder if that’s why I hurt her before I knew how to love her; so that she would think of me even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
“Oh my god!” she cries as I maintain my pace.
She says my name over and over again like it’s a prayer. “Bennett, Bennett, Bennett, Bennett.”
I slide down in my seat and slow just enough so that my thumb can find that pleasure spot. With her hands on my shoulders, she drops her hips down on me, her inner walls clenching until I’m seeing stars.
“I can’t—” she chokes out. “You’re going to make me come.”
She rides me while I concentrate on her clit with one hand and cradle her jaw with the other. Her forehead is drawn in concentration as her hips create tight circles. The color in her cheeks has spread to her chest, and my thumb sweeps across her parted lips.
“Look. At. Me.” I grunt as each word lands on a thrust. “Look at me when I make you come, Clo.”
“Yes,” she says, her lids heavy and eyes glazed. “Yes.”
What else could I ask for in this moment? What else would she say yes to? Stay, I beg silently. Just stay.
I hold her gaze, pupils blown, as she begins to clench, her muscles spasming. My attention on her clit is unwavering.
She is beautiful in every way. Her hair curls into its natural waves after running through the rain. Her round cheeks are that perfect shade of pink. My favorite color, though I’m starting to think the color of her nipples is a close second.
“Right there,” she says, and I even commit the way her toes curl to memory.
Then as if she herself has been struck by lightning, her body stills, jaw slack for a moment as she falls apart with a throaty moan.
A string of my name and curse words and then my name as a curse word streams past her lips as I drive into her once more.
She makes slow, lazy circles with her hips as her body jerks with the aftershocks of her orgasm.
After a moment, she looks down to me with a soft, astonished laugh. She pitches forward and kisses me, her tongue lashing out against mine as she starts to move with purpose again.
But I can’t hold back any longer, not after seeing the way her brain broke from the orgasm I gave her.
My fingers dig into her waist as my hips snap upward, driving into her.
“Come for me,” she whispers in my ear. “I want to feel it all.”
My balls are tight and full as one hand comes up to fist in her hair. My rhythm begins to stutter as that distinctly hedonistic pleasure begins to tighten in my belly like a snake preparing to strike.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” I’m grunting and I chant over and over again as I spill inside her.
The lightning and thunder crash back and forth like a chaotic symphony, mimicking the unwieldy beating in my chest.
I pull Clover to me, so that her heartbeat can regulate my broken one, and because I need to feel her skin on mine every day for the rest of my life and I’d like to get a head start right now.
“Oh my god,” she breathes against my neck. “I didn’t think it could feel like that.”
It’s impossible for me not to fucking preen at her praise. “Does this mean I win?”
“What?”
“Against the others?” I ask.
“Oh, you win,” she says. “First place, the gold medal, top of your class. And what about me? How do I stack up?”
“To who?” I ask.
“All the other girls.”
“Again,” I say. “To who?”
With a growl, I lick her cheek.
She giggles, her hair tickling my neck. “You freak, what are you doing?”
“Marking you, obviously. I don’t need any other guys to come sniffing.”
With an arched brow, she leans back and laps her tongue up my neck and along my jaw. “Mine,” she says.
“Say it again.”
Her blue eyes sparkle in the dark and she nuzzles into my chest. “Mine,” she whispers against the scar. “Mine.”
We stay like that for a long time, my dick softening and then becoming hard again. We go again, because I’m twenty years old and what’s the point of being young if you can’t take advantage of the recovery time?
We take a shower in the downstairs bathroom and strip the beds upstairs of their bedding so we can sleep on the couch in front of the fire.
Wrapped in a shroud of duvets and throw blankets, I hold Clover to me as she traces the scar on my chest.
The storm outside has quieted to a steady rainfall, and we’re both humming with contentment.
“When did you do this?” she asks, her finger drawing circles around the bumblebee tattoo on my chest.
“My eighteenth birthday.”
She looks up from under those soft blond lashes. “For Grandpa Dean?”
“Sort of.” I tighten my grip on her, because there is so much I want to say to her right now, but I need to know that she is solid and she is here and she’s not going anywhere. “And for you.”
“For me?” Her voice is soft and full of astonishment.
I nod and kiss the top of her head. “The patch of clover. Do you remember how many bees it would attract?”
She nods.
“You were always the clover and I was always the bee.” When I got the tattoo, it was something I never imagined being able to tell her. In fact, it felt more like a memorial of what was and what could have been, more than anything else.
She sits up, propped on her elbow, and I feel the loss of the contact instantly. I compensate by bringing my hand up to cradle her face instead.
I take a deep breath. Even if she doesn’t feel the same way, I am lucky to have the opportunity to say these words to her. I have to tell myself this or else I’ll just close up, and how would that make me any different from my mother?
“Clover. I have spent most of my life loving you. Even when I didn’t know what the feeling was. I don’t know who I am without loving you, and when I said it back to you when we were teenagers, my only regrets were that I didn’t say it first and I didn’t say it as … me.”
Her lips part.
“Wait,” I say. “Just please let me get this out. I need you to hear this and if you still want to say whatever it is you’re about to say afterward, then please do.”
“Okay.” Her eyes are bright and awake now.
“I never thought I would have you back in my life. I never thought I would be so lucky. I didn’t deserve it and I still don’t.”
Her brow furrows and I have to resist the urge to smooth away her worries with my thumb.
“I want this to be the beginning. I want to take you on dates and spoil you and eat grilled cheese with you. I want you to make fun of me and I want to be bad at things with you. I want to go to those stupid painting parties with you. I want to travel with you and watch you see something amazing for the first time. I want to be there when you take over the world by day and then listen to you make those little, sighing giggly noises you make in your sleep by night.”
“I do not make—”
My arched brow silences her and she shrinks back with a coy smile.
“I want to wake you up in the filthiest ways you can imagine. I want to be old and horny with you. I want our kids to be so embarrassed by us and then I want their kids to feel the same. I don’t deserve it.
I don’t deserve any of it. But I am greedy and spoiled and I am here begging for something I will never be worthy of: you. ”
My chest is heaving after not taking a single breath as I wait for her response. For her to tell me that life isn’t fair and you can’t have everything you want.
“Are you done?” she asks, like I’m a child who’s just thrown a tantrum.
I nod, and she flings herself at me so hard that we nearly break both our noses.
“Shit, that hurt,” I tell her.
She brushes her nose against mine gently this time. “Pain builds character.”
When she tries again, her lips are soft and slow, the perfect antidote to my manic confession. “I love you too.” She presses her forehead to mine. “Sometimes I hate you for making me feel this way.”
“Oh.” The balloon of hope in my chest begins to deflate.
“But I don’t want this to end either.”
She presses a hand to my heart, her palm warm and calming.
It’s all so goddamn poetic. Sharing each other fully, physically and emotionally, in the place where it all began. Our lips join in slow and lazy kisses until we fall asleep wrapped up in the certainty of each other.
When I close my eyes, I go back to the beginning and relive it all over again in my dreams. This time, the painful parts are easier to bear, because now I know that in the end, Clover Rowan Walsh loves me.