“How?” he asked, voice husky as the tip of his tongue played with her nipple before sucking it hard between his hot tongue and the roof of his mouth.
“Th—that,” she said on a moan.
“Me kissing you?” He switched to her other breast and gave it the same torturous teasing. “Is that what you want?”
His questing fingers were inching closer and closer to where she needed them, close but not…quite…getting there. “And your fingers!” she gasped, giving up and arching into him.
He rewarded her with both, kissing her hard as his fingers traced their way up her thighs, and then between. The touch nearly levitated her off the bed, would have for certain if she hadn’t been anchored by his body. Applying pressure in the exact right spot, his lips—God, those lips, doing diabolical things to her as well—combined the sensations so that her head spun, and she cried out.
“Anything you want,” he murmured against a breast. “You want me to touch you? My mouth on you? My hands gripping your hips as I sink in and out of you until we’re both screaming each other’s name?”
She let her eyes drift closed as her lips parted on a “God, yes…” He was still just playing with her, but she was done playing. Fisting her hands in his hair, she pulled his mouth to hers. He let her control the kiss, and another, and another. Finally he lifted his head, gave her a wickedly naughty smile, and took over, shifting down her body, kissing every inch he passed. He didn’t stop until he’d made himself at home between her legs, holding them open with his shoulders.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, nipping first one inner thigh, and then the other, and then…in between. “Say the magic words, Aubrey. Tell me what you want now.”
“Your mouth, I need your mouth.”
He gave it to her, and her breathing hitched, and then stopped altogether. Her blood seemed to flow through her veins like liquid fire. White-hot, pulsing need ripped through her as he gave her exactly what she wanted.
When she’d stopped shuddering, he was resting his head on her belly, watching her recover.
“Now you,” she said, reaching for him. “I want to feel you inside me. Please, Ben. Inside me now.”
He rose up. “Wrap your legs around me.” His voice was rough, his hands gentle, as he slid his hand up her legs and directed them around his hips. He sank into her, hard. Perfect.
Their groans of pleasure commingled in the air. Leaning over her, he bent low and kissed her—fervent, erotic, rough, and wild.
Her body, already on fire for him, erupted again. Ben’s hands slid to her hips, cupped her ass, and, lifting her up against him, he thrust deep. It was enough to have her crying out, arching against him in an attempt to draw him even deeper. “Yes,” she moaned, clutching at him. “Like that.”
He growled low in his throat as he gave her what she wanted, on his terms. Slow. Purposeful. Taking her to the point of no return and beyond, to a place where she couldn’t have said what she wanted next if her life had depended on it.
It didn’t matter. Ben seemed to know exactly what she wanted. That was the thing about him. He instinctively knew when to be aggressive, when to be gentle and coaxing, and, best of all, he knew how to drive every last worry right out of her mind.
Chapter 25
A long time later, they collapsed on the bed, gasping, sweaty, breathing like lunatics. Ben threw a hand over his eyes as he tried to catch his breath, because though he could lie smooth as silk when he wanted to, he never lied to himself.
This wasn’t just sex between him and Aubrey. This was love.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Okay.”
She was quiet so long that he dropped his arm from his eyes and turned his head.
She was looking at him, eyes shimmering with a suspicious sheen. “It’s about my list,” she said softly. “You’re on it.”
Ben stared at her. “You said I wasn’t.”
“I…misled you.”
He took this in for a full minute, running through his memories and coming up completely blank. “I don’t understand. What did you ever do to me?”
She sat up and reached for his shirt again, pulling it back over her head and down to mid-thigh.
Covering herself from him.
He wasn’t liking this much. “Aubrey.”
“Don’t you want to put something on?” she asked.
“After you answer me.”
She ran a hand over her eyes, and he realized her fingers were shaking. “I’m trying,” she said. “I’ve been trying for a while.” She shook her head. “No, that’s a lie. I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s been killing me slowly, but I—” She broke off and let out a long breath. “I screwed up.”
He pulled her hand from her face. “Just say it.”
“Okay.” She drew a deep breath. “Do you remember when Hannah broke up with you?”
“Yes.” It had been the summer after he’d graduated high school, and he had been night surfing. Alone. It’d been a dangerous, reckless thing to do, but he’d been stupid back then and had often pulled such stunts. It’d been some sort of teenage testosterone-driven dare, a challenge between him and life, and he hadn’t been too particular about who might win.
When he’d come back to shore, Hannah had been waiting on the beach for him. She’d stared at his feet and told him she was breaking it off because they were going to college in a few months, and they needed to spread their wings.
He remembered feeling blindsided. He’d told her that he didn’t need to spread his f*cking wings, and she’d smiled a little bit sadly and said she was setting him free anyway.
He hadn’t seen her for two years. He’d finally run into her by sheer accident on spring break, and they’d reconnected. And though she’d never asked and he never told, he’d spent the two years away from her having a damn good time spreading his wings.
“What about it?” he asked Aubrey now.
“I told her you slept around with other girls, one of them being me. It was why she broke up with you.”
It took him a moment to find words, and even then he only had one. “What?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, chewing on her lower lip. “I caused her to…break up with you.”
He shook his head. She was making no sense. “You were two years behind us in school. You didn’t even know Hannah.”
“We were in after-school tutoring together. I was there for Spanish Two. She was in danger of failing Spanish Four.”
“You’re lying,” he said flatly. “Hannah was a straight-A student.”
“She’d always been, yes,” she agreed. “But Spanish flattened her. She had to get her grade from an F to a C or lose her upcoming college scholarship. She came to tutoring every day for an hour.”
He stared at her as the first inkling of doubt began to creep in. Hannah had been busy every day after school, but she’d told him she was working at the optometrist’s office where her mom worked. More than that, the college scholarship thing was setting off alarm bells in his head. Hannah had been all set to go to the University of Washington at Seattle—with him. But after she’d dumped him, she’d gone to a community college instead. He’d always assumed it’d been so that they wouldn’t be at the same school. But what if that hadn’t been it at all? What if what Aubrey was saying was true—that Hannah hadn’t brought her grade up enough and she’d lost her scholarship? “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why did you tell her we slept together?”