“I don’t want you to start with that whole white-knight ‘you don’t have to touch me’ thing,” I tell him as I rub up and down his serious length. “I want to do it.”
“Not gonna say anything like that.” His hips twitch, as if he wants to jerk up against my pressing hand.
For some reason, that makes me smile. No, my Ben isn’t a white knight at all, is he? He’s someone with dark secrets, but I feel like I know him. I trust him. He might be older than I am, with a different story, but we’re the same people inside—lonely and looking for that right person.
And with him, I never feel lonely anymore. I feel seen. I feel cherished. Important.
So I lean forward, getting in his face as much as I can as I stroke his cock through the wet fabric. I put a hand behind his neck and pull him down for a kiss, our tongues touching as I curl my hand around his shaft and pump.
We’re still kissing when he comes in my hand a brief time later, and I love the way he sags against me, the groan of my name on his lips as the heat of his release gets all over both of us. He kisses me again, but this time our kisses are soft and sweet, as if all the edge has been taken off. I love when he puts his arms around me and holds me tight, cuddling me against his chest as if he never wants to let me go.
“That was lovely,” I whisper. “But I’m afraid we’re still down a well.”
“Gwen will show up when we don’t leave,” he points out, his hand moving up and down my back in sensual strokes. “I’m parked directly in front of her house.”
“And no tablets, either,” I say mournfully. I’m trying to be sad and frustrated, but really, I’m rather distracted. Ben feels good against me, and my body’s throbbing with the best orgasm it’s had ever since I bought a bullet vibe. I haven’t used it since I moved in with Nick, because I didn’t want to get caught working myself with a toy, but now I can’t help but wonder if Ben might be interested in watching that.
“This was a long shot anyhow,” Ben says. “Which I tried to tell you. And you didn’t listen.”
“I’m not a very good listener,” I agree. “That’s something you’re just going to have to get used to.” I’ve always been the one that had to be responsible, to take charge of things. Even when I lived with my parents, I was the one that paid the bills, the one that made sure the rent was taken care of, that the water wouldn’t get turned off. I was the one that cleaned up the apartment and took out the garbage. It’s made me controlling and stubborn, sure, but I also like to think it’s made me strong. “Everyone has flaws. So mine is tidying and taking charge. So what.” I poke him in the gut. “I could name a few of yours.”
“I have no flaws,” he says in a lofty voice.
I snort at that.
His arms tighten around me. “Reggie . . . I . . .” He pauses, and when I look up at him, there are a million things in his gaze, as if he wants to tell me something important. “I . . .”
“Are both of you down there?” calls out a sweet voice from above. Gwen. “My goodness! Don’t you know that’s dangerous?”
Ben glances up at the light, his hands tightening on me. Whatever he wanted to say is gone, I imagine. Thwarted by Gwen, though I’m not super upset to see her here, since we need a rescue. I just wish she’d have waited maybe five more minutes so Ben would spit out whatever it was he was going to say.
I grimace. “You talk to her,” I whisper to Ben. “I still want to claw her eyes out.”
He chuckles, still holding me close. “We had a mishap,” he calls up. “I don’t suppose you have a really long ladder?”
“You’re lucky I know the local fire department,” Gwen calls down. “Give me time to make a few calls. You just stay right there.”
Like we’re going to go anywhere? But Ben’s thumb slides under my wet shirt and rubs against my bare side, and I think, maybe, that I don’t mind being down here a little longer.
29
BEN
A few hours later, Reggie and I check into a hotel. It’s dark, and we’ve made no progress on helping Aunt Dru, and yet . . . I find that I’m not full of despair. I’m actually in a good mood.
For one, I’m not in this alone. Reggie’s right by my side, just as determined to help Aunt Dru as I am. Gwen has promised additional help if we need her, as well. Lisa is at my aunt’s side and reports no changes one way or another. I’ve got people I can call, with Willem at the top of that list, for ideas and suggestions.
In the bathroom of the hotel room, Reggie sings in the shower, her voice charmingly off-key. I sit on a chair near the bed, my clothes still dripping wet, a towel underneath me. I let Reggie have the shower first, because it’s the polite thing to do. And because I wanted time to think.
What happened in the well was a little insane. I’m still not entirely sure why I climbed down after Reggie instead of calling the local fire department. Maybe it was the fact that she was down there alone and scared that ate at me. Maybe I was frustrated with her hot-and-cold mentality after last night. We’d kissed passionately, she’d decided that I was too scary for her, and then this morning Dru was cursed, and now it’s almost midnight and Reggie and I kissed and made each other come at the bottom of a well.
If she tells me that she wants to be just friends again after that, I think I’m going to lose my mind. I know there are a million reasons not to touch her, but Aunt Dru’s curse has taught me that if you care about someone, you need to say something or you might lose them. And when Reggie grabbed me and kissed me—and then confessed she was jealous of Gwen—it made me realize how much I didn’t want to let her go. I don’t care if she’s younger. I don’t care if she’s my aunt’s familiar. We’ll figure out a way to make it work.
I feel like Reggie’s the only person other than Aunt Dru who has ever bothered to see the real me. Maybe she doesn’t know all my secrets, but Reggie knows that I was responsible for my parents’ deaths, and she kissed me anyhow. She worked me with her hand and made me come, all the while gazing up at me, our eyes locked.
It was the most erotic experience I’ve had in five hundred years, and it was all because Reggie was right there with me, the look in her eyes confident and full of affection, as if to say that she had me just as much as I had her. I didn’t realize I needed that until that moment.
The shower shuts off and so do my thoughts. I should be reaching out to contacts, working my network of warlocks and Aunt Dru’s acquaintances to see if anyone knows anything. Warlocks love to gossip as much as witches do, and it’s entirely possible that someone’s blabbed about what they’ve done to my aunt.
But tonight . . . tonight I’m just tired, and I want to see where this thing is going with Reggie, or if we’re at an impasse again.
A few moments later, Reggie comes out of the bathroom with wet hair falling around her shoulders, her skin freshly scrubbed, and she clutches the neck of the oversized robe to her collarbone. “Shower’s all yours,” she calls out cheerfully. “I even saved you hot water.”
I stare at her, because she’s beautiful, and all the things I want to tell her stick in my throat, because I’m not good enough for her. So I just get to my feet and push past her without a word, closing the bathroom door behind me and shutting her out. I wash quickly but not so quickly that I don’t stroke out another quick release, thinking about the way her eyes shone as she rubbed me, or the way she rode my hand as I made her come.
I suspect I’m going to be thinking about those moments a lot for the next, oh, five hundred years.