Benjamin
I’ve seen Elena in any number of sexy outfits at The Wicked Horse. She likes them tight, short, and revealing, and I like them as well.
Like her better naked.
And yet, as I walk toward her in the lobby of the hospital’s main floor, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her look more beautiful. I had merely told her I was taking her to dinner, then left it up to her what to wear because where I’m taking her, anything from jeans to a cocktail dress would be appropriate.
But she surprises me in a feminine wraparound dress in a floral print. It’s ankle length in flowing layers. She has on a pair of nude-colored heels, and her makeup is very understated. Her hair is sleek and gathered at the nape of her neck. For jewelry, she has simple gold studs in her ears.
She looks amazing—completely out of character from the sex kitten I’d met and fucked at the club. I have to wonder which Elena is the real one. Perhaps she’s a mixture of both.
“Hey,” she says as I approach, her eyes taking me in. I dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt after my last surgery, opting for casual. I even put on tennis shoes rather than my standard loafers or the low boots I’d usually wear, but my leg is aching a bit after standing beside the operating table all day and comfortable shoes help.
“You look gorgeous,” I say, noting her flash of surprise at my compliment as I bend in to brush my lips across her cheek.
“Thank you,” she mumbles with a shy smile, and it’s obvious she’s completely off her game. Maybe the real Elena is the sex-club vixen who doesn’t know how to be wooed.
Not that I’m trying to date her.
This probably isn’t going to be what she’d been expecting when I said dinner, but where I’m taking her is a bit monumental.
I grab Elena’s hand, position her on my non-cane side, then lead her out of the hospital. “Do you mind if we take my car?”
“Not at all,” she replies.
We walk in silence across a small parking lot to a private lot for on-call doctors. I lead her over to my Audi Q8, open the door, and help her into the passenger seat. She’s already buckled by the time I get in. Within moments, I’m pulling out of the hospital parking lot. I cross one intersection, turn right at the next, then pull into another parking lot. The entire journey takes less than a minute.
When I glance over at Elena, she’s scanning our surroundings in surprise.
I pull up to the first four-story brick building, put the car in park, and then shut it off. She looks up at it for a moment before turning to me, curiosity burning in her eyes. “What are we doing here?”
“Dinner,” I say with a smile before hopping out of the car. I move over to her door, open it, and help her out.
“At a friend’s place?” she inquires as I lead her to the first-floor apartment directly in front of us.
“No,” I say as I slip my key in the door. “My place.”
I open the door, then let her step inside. She places her hand clutch on a small counter that separates the kitchen and living room, then examines my new but sparsely furnished apartment.
Pivoting, she faces me as I close the door. “This is your apartment?”
Nodding, I step past her, heading around the counter and into the kitchen. I place my cane up against the pantry door, comfortable without it in the kitchen since I can lean on counters if necessary. “Signed the lease two days ago. I’m still waiting on some furniture I ordered, and I don’t have all my personal stuff moved over yet, but yeah… it’s mine.”
As I open the fridge and start pulling out stuff I’d pre-cut yesterday, Elena sits down at the small table that seats two. The apartment is small but luxuriously appointed. Hardwoods, crown molding, top-of-the-line fixtures, and appliances.
“Want some wine?” I ask.
“Sure,” she replies, and I nab a bottle of red from a small wine rack that sits between fridge and sink. She watches me silently as I open the bottle, pulling out two wineglasses I’d bought and washed just yesterday. I didn’t want to bring the ones I’d collected during my life with April. In fact, I’m starting over new with everything here.
I hand Elena a glass, then tap mine against hers. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” she murmurs, but I can see she’s incredibly confused.
Smiling over the rim of my glass, I move to take the other seat at the table. Dinner is a simple charcuterie board I’m going to put together along with a cobb salad, but that can wait.
“You said I was living in a ghost house,” I say, and I’m charmed by the embarrassed flush to her cheeks.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she mumbles apologetically. “I was awful.”
“No,” I correct. “You were truthful and absolutely right. And I was torturing myself there as well. I’m going to sell the house. There’s no reason for me to stay there anymore, so I went ahead and rented this apartment that is convenient to the hospital until I can decide what I want to do permanently.”
“Permanently?” she inquires before taking a sip of her wine.
“You know… whether I want to bother with home ownership or just stay in an apartment. Stay in the city or move to the burbs. Hell… potentially move to another city for all I know.”
“Lots of choices,” she murmurs, and I couldn’t agree with her more. Suddenly, I realize I have a blank palette for my life now. I can paint whatever story I want.
I can’t say Elena will be part of that story, but she did jar me enough to realize the life I was leading was too destructive for me. Ironically, she’s the one who ultimately led to my freak-out last Friday, which caused me to back out of a surgery Brandon had to scramble to cover. Once I’d sobered up after Father’s Day, it had hit me hard how fucked up my life was. I’ve been a dick, an asshole, and a virtually unlovable person over the past year, but I’d never let down a patient until then. Even though Brandon is as adept at performing the scheduled surgery as I am, it had been my patient. That meant they had put their trust in me, and I hadn’t even fucking shown up.
I can’t do that anymore.
I can’t be that type of person.
And as long as I can have Elena on my terms, there’s no reason I can’t explore outside the walls I’ve erected, at least a little bit.
“Why are we here instead of the club?” Elena asks.
I’m caught completely off guard not only by her question, but also by the distrustful tone in her voice.
“Because I wanted to show you this place,” I say truthfully. “And I thought we could perhaps continue what we have outside The Wicked Horse sometimes.”
Her brows draw inward, knitting in consternation. “But this doesn’t mean anything’s changed between us, right? It’s still just sex?”
“And dinner,” I say with a quirk to my lips. “I mean… I’m pretty hungry and figured you are, too.”
She just stares, and I don’t know whether to be amused or offended. It’s so strange for the woman to be the one suspicious of motivation. Moreover, for the woman to be so averse to a relationship. It’s clearly why she’s a little off-kilter tonight.
I reach out to take her hand, trying to reassure her. “Elena… I enjoy the hell out of fucking you. I’ve never been more compatible with a woman before—not like the way I am with you. You and I are so much alike in our desires to keep this casual, right?”
She nods slowly.
“So if you want, we’ll only fuck at the club. But we can certainly fuck here, too, or even at your place sometimes. Just as long as we’re clear on the boundaries, right?”
She nods again before taking another sip of wine. When she sets the glass down, her gaze hardens minutely. “But let’s clarify a few things.”
“Okay,” I drawl hesitantly.
“I get this is just sex, and I’m fine with that. You’re right… it’s the only thing we’re both interested in. But are we monogamous?”
“Yes,” I answer firmly. I sure as fuck know a great thing when I see it—or rather, feel it—and I don’t have interest in anyone else. In fact, I couldn’t care less if we ever return to the club.
“Then I need you to explain something to me.” Her voice dropped an octave, and I can tell this is important.
“What’s that?”
“If sex is all this is, and all it will ever be, why did you break things off last time?” she asks. The hardnosed question causes my gut to pinch, because it means admitting a terrible vulnerability as well as divulging she’s done a number on my head already.
I decide to tell her most of the truth. “I had not realized Father’s Day was coming up. I’d overheard some people talking about it, and it caught me totally off guard. Frankly… I sort of spiraled down.”
“That was the night you stood me up?”
I nod. “Stood you up. Canceled a surgery and sort of went off the grid for a few days. Drank a lot of alcohol.”
“I’m sorry, Benjamin,” she says. Her voice is so gentle, yet it’s filled with hurt on my behalf. It makes my chest ache. “I hate that for you, and I can’t even imagine what that was like.”
My throat clogs with emotion, and I can’t respond.
She squeezes my hand. “If you ever need a break again, I’ll understand.”
Fuck… the urge to cry from her understanding of my pain hits me hard. I can do nothing but give her a short squeeze back and a false smile, and I rise from my chair.
Giving her my back, I turn toward the fridge again to make our dinner. “I’m starved,” I say lamely, grabbing the spring salad mix, tomatoes, cucumber, and an onion from the vegetable drawer. I move to the counter, keeping my back to her as I start to prattle on about my last surgery.
I let my hands work on our dinner while I use inane conversation to lead me away from the emotion that was starting to overwhelm me. Yet, I can’t quite forget how much her empathy touched me.
Way too fucking deep.
I start to slice the cucumber when I feel her hand at my bicep. It slides down my arm, and I freeze into place. She takes the knife from me, sets it aside, and then curls her fingers around my bicep again whereby she gives a tug for me to face her.
I resist, terrified she’ll want to talk things out with me or want to psychoanalyze my pain. I don’t want to talk about it. Not with her. Not with the one person who has woken up the feeling within me in over a year.
“Benjamin,” she calls gently.
Hesitantly, I turn to face her. When my eyes land on her, they widen in shock.
Elena is completely naked, and she has a playful smile on her face. All thoughts fly out of my head, and my cock responds accordingly.
And I can see by the expression on her face, it’s exactly what she was aiming for. Elena was pulling me away from the emotion of the candid moment we shared, putting things back onto the only plane of existence that feels comfortable to me.
“We can eat later,” she says.
I put my hands on her waist, and easily lift her to the counter that separates the kitchen and living room and is currently without vegetables and knives. Her legs spread and I step in between them, bringing my hands to her face so I can kiss the ever-loving fuck out of her. She puts her hands on my belt. While she works to free my cock, I thank my lucky stars I found a woman such as this.
One who knows my limitations and is fine working within them.