Ben did love to cook. He was teaching Marcie some basics. She didn’t have an aptitude for it, much preferring to consume than create, but she did enjoy their cooking sessions. Like last night, learning how to prepare melted chocolate to apply to the fat, juicy strawberries…
He’d laid her down on the kitchen floor and drizzled the heated chocolate over her breasts, stomach and between her thighs before sampling her, top to bottom. It had been everything he’d wanted, seeing her body bowed up from the tile, her full breasts quivering, pink nipples hard and sex glistening. Her lips parted on a scream as he drove into her and made her climax. While her body was still shuddering, he’d withdrawn, flipped her over and taken her ass, tasting chocolate on her shoulder as he bit her there, leaving that bruise she’d shown him. He hadn’t let go as he’d climaxed, only increasing the force of his bite.
As the women started to get back into the car, Marcie hung back, her gaze returning to him. Maybe his thoughts showed, because her eyes became more luminous, lids dropping as her lips parted. She mouthed one word, a secret message just for him.
Master.
Max inadvertently shifted between their line of sight, handing Dana in and then gesturing courteously to Marcie so she could follow her. Ben saw the flash of Marcie’s mischievous smile around the limo driver’s broad shoulder before she ducked into the car. His little tease. He’d make her pay for that later. For now, he tried to focus on other things, like poured asphalt and a fifty-pound barbell sitting on his dick to keep it behaving properly in public. Maybe a hundred pounds would do it.
He joined the ladies in the car. On the way to Ingredients, they broke out bottles of water and soda. Cass and Savannah took a glass of wine, all of them sampling more of the pralines and pretzels.
As he listened to them without hearing the words, a relaxing rise and fall of feminine music, he began ticking off some things he wanted to check out at the store. Driving a submissive to mindless ecstasy with the artful use of pain and working for K&A were his two favorite things, but cooking was right on their heels.
When Jonas Kensington, Matt’s father, had taken Ben in off the streets, he’d been a hungry, wary-eyed kid. Even after being given enough at mealtimes to fill him up and then some, Ben couldn’t get out of the habit of scavenging and stealing food, hiding it away. There was a pantry and refrigerator full of snacks that he was told he could have at any time, but he hadn’t believed it. On his first night, he’d snuck down in the middle of the night to squirrel some away in his room. He was practical, grabbing protein bars and packs of crackers. But what he really craved were the fresh fruit and vegetables. So he’d snagged three big apples, an orange and a pear.
He’d also taken a head of iceberg lettuce and a half bag of baby carrots, eating those all immediately in his room, trying to crunch quietly. Even today, he remembered how the lettuce had tasted. The crisp heart, the burst of cool water when he bit into the white, thick section of each leaf. Not slimy and limp, like what he’d find in a dumpster. A kid on his own couldn’t take advantage of soup kitchen food without SS being called.
He hadn’t realized a maid would be making up his room weekly. A couple days later, he was attending school like any other “normal” kid, with clean jeans and a packed lunch, plus money to buy milk and other stuff from the cafeteria. When he came home, he found the non-perishable snacks he’d stored under the mattress stacked neatly in a decorative basket on his nightstand.
Panic at the consequences of being found out had turned into puzzlement when nothing was said, but that basket forever after remained filled with snacks and fresh fruit. More often than not, they were homemade foods, like fruit-and-nut laden granola and walnut chocolate chip cookies. He’d never forget the white chocolate dipped granny smith apple. The coating had been mixed with pecan chips and some kind of spice that balanced the sugar perfectly.
He became curious about how the cook for the Kensington household made such wonderful things. Soon after that, he was spending a lot of his afterschool time at her elbow, watching and learning. His love of fresh foods, his appreciation of the flavors and how they could be combined, evolved into a love of cooking. Golda was a brusque, no-nonsense woman without maternal warmth, but Ben didn’t trust affection, so they were a good match.
Jonas had been looking for a good foster home placement for him, since he didn’t feel he was home often enough to be a good parent to a nine-year-old boy. Matt himself was always either with Jonas at work or attending college, so his and Ben’s relationship didn’t really kick off in the direction it existed now until Ben was in college himself and started interning for K&A.
Since Ben had never had any parenting, a couple hours here and there would have worked fine for him, but Jonas seemed to feel differently. Then Golda told Jonas that Ben would come live with her in the guesthouse on the Kensington property. She became Ben’s final foster home before he turned eighteen and went off to college. Golda and he remained friends until she died in his sophomore year. He still had items in his kitchen that had belonged to her.
Marcie wrapped her hand around his biceps, bringing him back to the present. When Ben glanced down at her and smiled, she returned the gesture, though her gaze was thoughtful as she studied his face.
“All right?” she murmured.
“Better than,” he returned, tightening his own hand over hers.
He was telling the truth. He didn’t walk back into the past like that often. But he’d noticed lately that when he did, he wasn’t trapped so much in a twisted labyrinth of dark memories. Instead he was thinking of things like Golda and the cooking, the landmarks he’d followed away from that darkness.
Max found a parking space several blocks from Ingredients, which was remarkable, since the shopping day was maturing, the tourists emerging to join the locals.
As they strolled toward the store, the women’s hair fluttering in the breeze, he had his arm around Marcie as she talked with Cass and the others.
New Orleans was always full of color and life. They paused at the open courtyard across from the Royal Sonesta hotel to listen to the musicians playing live music to a growing lunchtime audience. Marcie and Dana joined hands and executed a jazzy two-step, Marcie curling her arm around the other woman’s waist to take the lead as they spun and twisted. Then they descended upon him, Marcie seizing his hand to draw him to her as Rachel took over with Dana.