On Sale for Christmas

"Then c'mere," he said, daring to draw me down into his lap, so that I didn't have to see his face. And for some reason, I let him. Though his surprisingly strong arms wrapped around me with warmth and comfort, I squeezed my eyes shut wondering if it was possible to be more humiliated.

Now he was going to give me the nice guy speech now, about how he didn't judge me, how everybody had a right to their fantasies, about how he was sorry he let things get out of hand.

Instead he asked, "It's gotta be a stranger, right?" I groaned, as if to fend off anything else he might say about my kinky call girl fantasy. But it didn't stop him. "Because if it was somebody you were dating, you could pretend it was only a game. If a guy like me gave you real cash to go to bed with him, it'd feel like monopoly money."

I nodded before I could stop myself.

"And you want it to be real," he said.

Maybe it was because I was an actress that sexual fantasies didn't have the same kick unless they were more than just acted out. But somehow Ben had figured that out—pried open my mind and seen into its darkest corners. He knew my secret and now it was like he had some kind of magic power over me that made me keep telling him more. "Yes…just once…I want to do it for real."

He nodded, still cradling me in his lap. "So some guy who just wants to buy you for the night?"

"Or for the hour," I said, all pretense falling away.

While I alternately died inside with shame and roared alive again with arousal, by-the-book Ben was still sorting out the specifics. "And what do you want to do for this stranger?"

"Have sex with him. Go down on him. Whatever he wants to pay for…"

Ben's fingers twined with mine, and I confess, I felt a wildly bizarre attraction to him in light of the fact we were talking about my fantasy to bang some other guy. I wasn't sure what was happening between us, but I loved the woodsy scent of him, something between pine and cedar. And I loved the brush of his stubble against my ear when he finally said, "There's gotta be more to it. What aren't you telling me?"

"What do you mean?"

"If that's all this fantasy is about, you could've done it by now. You're a completely gorgeous girl and an actress. You could convince a stranger that you were a high priced call girl if you wanted to…"

He thought I was gorgeous? "Maybe I don't really want to do it," I said, having told myself this all along. "Maybe it's just the kind of thing I only want to think about when I touch myself."

The mention of touching myself elicited a growl of approval. "Becca, I think you want to do it. I think that's why you're shaking like a leaf."

"I'm shaking because it's cold and you won't let me back inside…"

"Still a bad liar," he said, taking my hand in his, and putting it between my knees, forcing me to squeeze the heated place between my own thighs.

Jesus. Where'd he learn to do that? "Ben!"

"What? You said it's something you like to think about while you touch yourself. We're thinking about it so I want you to touch…"

Oh. Oh, wow. So not what I ever imagined Ben saying… or wanting… but somehow the fact that he wanted it, and the fact that I was turned on, made me want to do it. Still, I hesitated. "Someone could come out—"

"No one's gonna catch us," he said, nuzzling my neck with his lips and sending a shiver of pleasure down my neck. "Door opens out. My back's against it. And Becca, believe me when I say that I'd fight off a battalion to keep you in my arms now that I've got you here."

Who said shit like that? Sappy, earnest, glib—

"So, tell me why you haven't pimped yourself out yet?" he asked, wiping the notion of glib romance out of my mind. "You could go up to any guy in any bar in the city and proposition him, and only a blind, impotent idiot would say no."

"Um…because I don't want to get arrested. It's kind of illegal, you know."

He snorted. "Not really. Not everywhere."

"It's dangerous," I countered, outrageously aware of my hand between my thighs, and his on top of it. Disbelieving that the boy next door was taking liberties with me in my mom's garage. Shocked to the core that I liked it. "Some guy could hurt me. Kidnap me. God only knows what."

It wasn't the whole reason I'd never done it, but it was close enough.

"I'd never let anybody hurt you," Ben said, very seriously, his breath warm on my ear. "I can make your fantasy come true and keep you safe. And I want to. Hell, I'd love to do that for you."

As if he'd drawn some invisible guitar string on my body and plucked it, something tugged at my clit and my nipples at the same time. It was temptation. But it couldn't be real. Not with this guy. "Why would you want to?"

"Because I want to turn you on," Ben said, squeezing more insistently.