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He slid her own pants off with far less ceremony and looked down at her hungrily. She might have felt self-conscious in front of his perfect body, with his narrow hips and the tight muscles of his smooth stomach and chest. But the only light falling on her was from the moon streaming through the window, and it felt so right to be with him here, now, like this. He stretched on top of her and kissed her, pressing the whole length of his body over hers.
They moved like that, skin to skin, teasing each other through his boxers and the black cotton underwear she wore every day. Nothing special, nothing sexy—he hadn’t exactly given her any time to prepare. But the two of them learning each other, pressing and moving together, filled her with heat.
When he trailed his tongue down her stomach and bit her gently through the cloth, she knew he was teasing her as she’d done to him. Slowly he used his teeth to pull her panties down. When he settled between her thighs, she gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, giving herself over to the pleasure that coursed through her like a ravaging flame.
“This is what I’ve been dreaming about,” he murmured as he gazed up at her. Casey sank back into the pillows, letting out a moan as the soft, wet heat of his mouth met her with such intimacy that all she could do was close her eyes and let him transport her.
He started slow and then moved faster, using his tongue to unfold her until he found her small, round prize. Casey shuddered and clenched her thighs tighter around his head, urging him on. Unstoppable, he circled his tongue with a growing intensity that made her clasp the edge of the bed, twisting the sheets in her hand. Her legs bent, her toes curled, and when she tried to pull his head up to make him stop before he went too far, he flashed her a wicked grin and pulled her legs over the side of the bed, kneeling on the floor and spreading her open. She lay there, splayed out to him, part of her wanting to protest that she was too exposed in the moonlight and part of her unable to do a thing, so captivated by his touch.
His tongue flicked over and over her, pushing and pulling and probing as her thighs tightened with mounting delight. He slipped his tongue down to lick deep inside her, the wetness smearing across his lips and down his chin. Then he found her clit again, pressing in circles harder and harder until her entire body was concentrated in that one bundle of nerves, a bright hard light shining at the center of her being.
When she came, it pulsed through her like waves that kept crashing into shore, over and over again, and she was aware that she was crying out but not sure what she might have said.
Afterward, he held her hips and kissed the insides of her thighs until she squirmed.
“Was that okay?” He looked up at her with such a concerned look in his eyes that she burst out laughing.
“Shut up.” She smiled. “Just shut up.”
He got up from where he was kneeling on the floor and leapt on top of her. “I’m going to take that as so-so,” he declared. She laughed and grabbed his ass, pulling him toward her. He was rock-hard. No, that was an understatement. It was as if something straining, explosive, had filled him, and she couldn’t believe that going down on her could have done this to him.
It didn’t take her long to appreciate the possibility that he had enjoyed that almost as much as she had. As she took him into her mouth, she began to hum again. She flicked her tongue over the smooth skin that sloped down the front of his cock, making him jump in her hands.
He was long and thick and she slid him in, pulled out slowly again, building up a soft, slippery shine. Then she worked her tongue around him, exploring him, finding out what made him twitch and groan. They had all night, and they had been waiting so long. She didn’t want to start sucking him hard just yet. She wanted him to understand that he was totally hers, at her mercy, responding to her every touch. They might only have one night, and she wanted to make sure it was something he’d always remember.
She bent down low and swirled her tongue over his balls, feeling them tighten at her touch. Then she licked back up from the base of his cock to his tip, savoring every long inch and squirming with pleasure at the thought of how she was preparing him to take her, to fill her, to let go with her until he could no longer stand another moment before giving her what she wanted, which was him inside her, full and spent, grateful and still wanting more.
She knew that she should be focusing on him, the way he had devoted himself to her moments before. But she was selfish, greedy, because the feel of him sliding between her lips, over her tongue, pressing against the back of her mouth was making her so wet she moaned at her own pleasure. He thrust his hips into her, bringing his cock deeper into her mouth, and she opened wide to him, taking him in as far as he could go. She didn’t know how she managed to fit so much in her mouth, but she loved it, loved every inch of it. She wrapped her fingers around the base of his shaft and bobbed her head up and down, swirling her tongue and moving her mouth until he cried out and grabbed her shoulders, lifting her off him, both of them panting.
“Not yet,” he pleaded, catching his breath. He grinned, his eyes narrowing. “I’m not ready to be done yet.”
He clambered up, gently pushing Casey back so she was lying with her head by the foot of the bed, propped up on her elbows, enjoying the sight of his disheveled hair in the dark glow of the cabin, illuminated by the light of the moon. He was kneeling with his cock straight out and she tried to catch it in her mouth but he playfully swatted her away.
“No more,” he scolded, and she pouted.
But she was more than ready for what was coming. She’d been ready for over a month. She leaned back and he moved with her, sliding on the condom. And then he was inside her in one sharp thrust and she cried out, aware that it had been a long time since she had been this way with anyone. Her body slowly adjusted to his size and she opened her legs to let him in deeper, running her fingers through his hair, across his neck, down his back, over his butt, pulling him into her as he panted in her ear.
As he started moving inside her, though, something struck her as not quite right. She thought she just needed to give it a minute—after all, she was a bit rusty. But where she had been so eager, her desire flagged with each of his tight, economical thrusts. He was pulsing rhythmically away, but that was precisely the problem. She’d felt passion before, but now his actions felt mechanical. Rote. The expected motions before a well-known finale everyone in the audience was waiting for so they could go home. Was this how they were doing it these days?
There were different ways of being had, and it wasn’t that Casey never wanted it fast or quick. But there was something so controlled about the way Ben was proceeding—clinical, almost. She didn’t know how to move with him this way. She didn’t know how to let herself give into the pleasure if he was going to hog it all so tightly for himself. She wasn’t even sure how much enjoyment there was for him if it was going to be like this.
If it had been another time and place and a different person altogether, she might have lain on her back and let him drill away until he was done and then mumbled some platitudes and seen him out the door, chalking it up to a night that she could have better spent under the covers with a crossword puzzle. Or better yet, under the covers by herself.
It wasn’t that it was bad, it just wasn’t worth her while. And she wanted him to be worth the wait.
Maybe she’d gotten carried away in her fantasies and overestimated the chemistry they shared. But she couldn’t believe that the man who’d kissed her like that, who she’d exploded with in a depth of passion she’d given up on ever knowing, could make love like this. She wasn’t about to give up on him yet. She’d had eight more years in the sack than he had, she reasoned. Was all her experience for nothing? She would show him. She would guide him. She would—she was sure of it—utterly blow his mind.
The question was, how?
Casey ran her fingernails down his back and gripped his ass, hard. Ben moaned. Good—he wanted her. Now she had to teach him how.
“Slow down there, tiger,” she whispered in his ear.
He paused in his motions, lifting off her to look down quizzically.
“Slower?” he asked.
Casey bit her lip uncertainly. She didn’t want to give him some instruction manual. Doing the same thing at a different pace wasn’t what she was talking about. She wanted him to feel it. She rocked slightly under him, pushing her right hip up against his.
“May I?” she asked.
Confused, Ben nodded. Casey used her hip to press him back until she was rolling him over, keeping him inside her. She sat up on him and ran her fingers across his chest, enjoying the way he drank in the sight of her.
“Ah, so you want to be on top.” Ben grinned. “Fine by me.” He lay back as if he was about to enjoy the ride.
Casey shook her head. God, he was infuriatingly twenty-six right now. Why did any woman bother to sleep with boys in their twenties?
Probably because once they taught them to be men, it was worth it. At least she hoped it would be.
“It’s not about top or bottom,” Casey teased. “Trust me.” She bent over him and clasped his hands, drawing his arms over his head. Then she leaned her weight onto him, holding his arms down. In that position, with him securely beneath her, she started to move.
Slowly, at first, she rocked her hips up and down, enjoying the fullness of him inside her. She pressed into him, burying him deeper. Then she pulled up, circling her hips so the tip of his cock circled inside her. She kept moving, drawing him in, relishing how he moved inside her. From the way his breath was catching, she knew he was feeling her, too.
“How’s that?” she whispered, searching his eyes.
“Casey,” he moaned, barely able to speak.
Her name in his throat made her ride him harder. When his hips moved with hers, this time it wasn’t the rote monotony of before but something entirely new. His hands found her breasts, her hips, her ass, and he held her tightly as she moved.
She was working him faster now and he met her rhythm, sliding in and out with long strokes and then gasping when she plunged down onto him and ground her hips against his, circling him deep inside. Then she angled him right where she wanted and kept her hips still so that he was thrusting up into her, short quick strokes that made her legs tighten around him.
They romped wildly then, as she turned so they were both lying sideways, one leg pressed up against the wall, crying out as he held her breasts, rolling and pinching her nipples between his forefinger and thumb as he buried his face in her hair, biting her shoulder, moving in and out until their cries filled the night. She rolled him on top of her again, showing that it wasn’t about who was on the top or bottom but how they moved together that mattered.
He raised her legs and she rested them on his shoulders. When she came again, unable to hold back another second, he maintained the same quick strokes that had brought her to climax and then fell forward, his palms by her face, her legs still up over his shoulders, leaving her open—so completely open to him. He finished with long, deep thrusts and she felt his heat as he cried out and then collapsed on top of her, releasing her legs and holding her in his arms.
She wrapped her legs around him, drawing him close, still pulling him deep into her to enjoy the way their bodies continued to pulse. After he slid out of her and got up to discard the condom, he curled up with her in the small bed with his arms around her, one hand gently pulling on her curls.
“Was it worth the drive up here?” Casey asked with a sloppy smile.
Ben rolled onto his stomach so he was gazing down on her. “You know I would have given anything to be up here sooner.” He kissed her temple. “I should have turned the car around on Memorial Day. Made everybody miss their planes.”
He grinned sheepishly, hair falling into his eyes. Instinctively Casey reached up and brushed it away. He was so strong—physically, in the way he propped himself up on one arm, and how tightly he’d held her and pressed against her. And emotionally too—the way he carried himself removed from his friends and resisted the easy thing of accepting the girls like Janelle who followed him around. The way he went through life refusing to do anything that would cause him to sacrifice some core of his being.
But he was vulnerable, as much as anyone was. He was young and uncertain and scared, afraid of disappointing others, afraid of losing himself. It was like the cooking. He knew he wanted to open a café, and he certainly had as good a shot as any of making it work. But still he hesitated, holding back, afraid to voice his desires aloud. Wondering, what if he failed, what if he was laughed at, what if he lost something important along the way?
She realized she’d been wrong to assume he didn’t care about being included. He was twenty-six. Of course he cared. If she was honest, she did, too—even here in Bonnet, where she’d come to escape from it all. That was what Lee had been saying to her. She couldn’t live alone. No matter how much she stayed true to herself, she would still need people to guide her.
“Why did you leave?” she whispered, needing to hear it from him. Needing to understand where they stood.
He sighed and rolled onto his back, putting his arm around her as she rested her head on his shoulder. It was easier, somehow, to relive the past if they weren’t looking at each other. She heard the catch in his voice and knew she wasn’t the only one who’d found the last month hard.
“I know how this is going to sound, but the truth is that I panicked. I knew kissing you was going to be good. I had no idea it was going to be that good.” He turned toward her, his voice soft. “It was more than I had expected. More than I was ready for.”
For all the times that she’d replayed their first kisses in her mind, trying to make sense of what had happened, she’d never been able to imagine an explanation that made sense. What had she done wrong? How could he have done this to her? Why did he suddenly not want her, when all the signs had pointed directly to yes? But she found that she actually understood. Should he have been back with his friends? What if he fell in too deep? What exactly did one do when one was supposed to be having a weekend getaway from culinary school and instead found something so entirely unexpected along the way?
Even when you tried to do what was right, how were you supposed to translate what the heart was saying with its messed up, syncopated beats? It was hard to know what the right thing was from moment to moment, breath to breath.
“I told myself I was supposed to be hanging out with my friends, but really that was an excuse,” he finally admitted.
“What do you mean?” Casey asked, trying to understand.
“You’re a little scary,” he whispered, turning to look into her eyes.
Casey knew he was trying to be serious, but she had to laugh. “Me? You’d pretty much only seen me in sweatpants and knew I had nothing but eggs and beer in the fridge. If I’m scary, it’s because I’m the loser monster that follows young kids around, providing ample fodder for their parents to issue warnings about what will happen if they don’t do their homework and wind up with too many cats.”
Ben smirked and shook his head. “Something tells me you always did your homework. And last time I checked, you don’t have any cats.”
“Only because I’m not responsible enough to take care of them. I can’t even keep a house plant alive.”
“Overrated skills,” he said. “And you should try a jade plant. You can neglect them to your heart’s content and they’ll live.”
“Tried it,” she countered. “I was expertly negligent and still it died.”
He pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. “You are a special one.”
“See?” she said. “Not scary.”
“Only scary to a houseplant.”
“Which you are not.”
“But I’m serious.” Ben brought the conversation back around. “You are. You’re beautiful, smart, thoughtful, observant, kind, and an incredible artist—I mean really—and you withstand subzero temperatures—”
“The water’s not that cold,” she objected, but he shook his head.
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m complimenting you. It’s intimidating to be around someone who’s basically the whole package. And intimidating because, how do I even get her attention when she has no reason to glance my way? And then, oh my God, what do I do if she actually does?” He shook his head.
“You’re crazy,” Casey murmured, not sure what to make of this boy who clearly hadn’t been around enough women to know that Casey was anything but special, and far from scary.
“I guess I’ve never known anyone who felt this real,” he whispered so quietly, it was almost as if he hasn’t spoken.
There was a long pause. Casey had no idea how to respond. There was no way to explain how deeply she had longed for him to come back, and your dimples make my heart beat like a bongo set didn’t exactly have the right ring. It was crazy, when she thought about how little they actually knew each other.
But it was even crazier to pretend that after what they’d just shared, they could return to their lives pretending that nothing had changed.
“I think I really like you,” Ben finally said. Quietly, in that embarrassed tone he got that made her want to kiss him all over.
But instead she laughed. “You think?” She raised an eyebrow.
“I know,” he whispered in her ear, his breath shooting arrows down her spine. “I’ve had way too long to think about it, and I know.”
“And that’s a problem because?” she whispered back, turning to lie on top of him, sending gentle pressure from her hips to his leg.
“You don’t understand.” He groaned as she moved. “I don’t just go around liking people.”
“I’ll take that as a good thing.” She was moving her arms along his stomach now, unable to stop touching him, to feel the full weight of him in her tiny bed that hadn’t held more than her body since she’d moved in.
“I mean, I never like people,” he said.
“That seems a bit of an overstatement,” she protested, gently ribbing her teeth along his earlobe. “You like your friends.”
“Sometimes,” he joked. “But only as friends. This—” He kissed her collarbone, ran his hands down to her hips. “This is different.”
“So you left because you like me?”
“Something like that.” He kissed her on the mouth, hard and soft all at once, and it felt so good to be lying there together, tasting each other as if they had all the time in the world. Something long dormant was unfolding inside her, like some forgotten bud from spring that didn’t realize it was summer now and time to bloom.
It didn’t quite make sense on the surface—to walk out on someone precisely because he wanted her. But on a deeper level, she understood. He had to leave before things got too intense and someone got hurt.
And then he came back, because you can’t walk away from your feelings. You can only hide until they find you, wherever you are.
It was true for him, but it was true for her too. Even in Bonnet.
Especially in Bonnet, with nothing but the wind in the trees and the clear night air to distract her from yourself.
“And you came back because you like me?” Casey asked, needing to hear him say it again.
“And then I came back because I couldn’t stay away.”
His skin was warm where she pressed her lips to his cheek and too late Casey realized that one night would never be enough. She didn’t know how she was ever going to be able to let him go.