I swallow, then murmur, “Story of my life.”
He sets down his silverware, then leans back in his chair. His eyes drift down my chest for a moment. We just ate a full meal of steak and pasta, yet somehow he still looks starved.
Starved for something else.
Like me.
I rise from the table so fast, my thighs bang into it. He lifts his eyebrows, startled. “I’ll … I’ll get the plates,” I announce, my voice unsteady and an octave too high, before taking both our dishes away and moving to the kitchen too fast.
I count my breaths to calm myself and quickly run through a roulette of different things I can say to excuse myself home. If I’m here a second longer, I’m seriously going to give in to impulses we both promised we’d resist. With every passing glance, my resolve is crumbling.
And then I go and talk for an hour about my near-death experience with red meat. What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m just nervous. I’m doubting my tenacity, here. I’ve resisted Ben for so damned long, and I know for a fact that I won’t be able to take the high-and-well-behaved road much longer.
And I’m supposed to survive a summer of this torture?
The faucet turns on too strongly, and a spray ricochets off a dish and covers my front in water and pasta oil.
“Fuck!” I cry out, dropping the dishes into the sink.
“It’s alright,” comes his deep voice—from directly behind me.
I spin around to face him. My whole front is transparent now from the water, my nipples hardened from the cold. And now Ben towers over me, the deep resonance in his unassuming words pulling me in. It’s alright. Everything about him has me trapped, roped up like a prisoner. Even literally, I feel like I can’t pull my arms away from my body nor make my legs bend.
I’m all his. I’ll do anything he wants. He owns me.
“I was thinking,” he says, his voice soft, the sound of it casting goosebumps up my arms, up my back, up my neck, “that maybe we’ve left a little room … for dessert.”
18
Trevor realizes he is the dessert.
I swallow hard, then meet Benjamin Gage’s eyes—his sharp, scorching eyes.
“D-Dessert?” I whisper.
Slowly, he brings a finger to the collar of my shirt and hooks it inside. Then he gives it a tug, the top button coming undone with surprising ease.
My heart hammers away. My knees quake.
He pops open the next button. Oh God …
“B-Ben …” I whisper.
He ignores me. His other hand comes up, and then the two of them work the rest of my wet shirt off from the top, down. Button by button, I feel it loosen, yet see none of it, my eyes glued to his.
“Ben …”
Still, he says nothing. He watches his own hands as he peels my shirt off, slipping it over either of my shoulders. The cool air of the room kisses my skin, and then the wet fabric falls away.
His fingers slide down my arms slowly, like he’s never seen them before. Every ridge of muscle, the bumps of my elbows, he touches them with curiosity. Then his fingers drift softly inward, their rough tips unhurriedly running along my ribcage until they dance over my chest.
When his fingertips reach my hard nipples, I suck in air.
They’re so sensitive, I squirm under his touch.
I’m so hard right now. My cock is swollen and aching, and it throbs inside my underwear. His hips so close to mine, I feel an automatic pull toward him. I might be humping him, our crotches grinding against one another. The pressure down there builds.
“B-Ben …” I breathe. “Please … W-We … We shouldn’t …”
But I want him to. Badly. I want him to keep touching me. I want his hands everywhere. I want his lips on me next, doing all that his fingertips are doing—and more.
I don’t want him to stop.
And he doesn’t. His hands run down my sides smoothly, palms against my skin, and then he’s pulling my belt open, freeing it from my pants. It hits the floor buckle-first, loud and clanging.
I open my lips to whisper his name in protest once more.
But then his mouth is there instead, shutting me up. When I try to moan a word one last time, his tongue is there to stop me yet again, and then all my desire to protest is gone with my voice.
And our kiss.
Fuck, does Ben know how to kiss.
All that’s left of what I know is twisted tongues, breath, and our wet lips.
And his fingers as they open my pants and pull them down.
Underwear, too.
My cock freed, it swells even more. I gasp, feeling the cold air all over my body. My skin exposed, goosebumps rush across every inch of me. Instinctually, I step out of my pants as he works my mouth muscularly and with power, dominating my face. I kick away my underwear too, desperate to be freed of my clothes and open to him—and to whatever wicked things he plans to do to me.