Was it wrong that she felt a sweet ache of nostalgia for Dan on her couch? There had been a simplicity to that life—an ease to behaving the way people expected her to. If she’d married him, she might have found it stifling, but stifling was what she’d been used to. Stifling had been comfortable until that moment onstage when she’d listened to Dan’s proposal and felt her fingers tighten around the shrimp fork, her whole body saying no, no, no.
She became aware of the silence, and of Ben watching her. Waiting.
“You want to see the bedroom?”
It was the only room she’d allowed herself to decorate exactly how she wanted. The walls were four different shades of green, and the bed was “too modern,” according to her mother—a “mashup,” Allie said, because May had opted for the clean lines of a Scandinavian platform bed and then purchased a big fluffy pillow-top mattress for it that rose over the edges like a delicious soft muffin.
It felt like that, too. Like sleeping on a muffin.
Ben must have misinterpreted her highly misinterpretable statement, because he dropped the bags and stalked toward her until her butt was pressed against the couch and her hands were pressed against his chest.
“It’s the best room,” she clarified. Her voice came out funny. His eyes were making her short of breath. Those hungry eyes.
“I’ll bet.”
She laughed, but the sound was more like a sob. She didn’t know for certain if she wanted him to kiss her or leave her alone to find her way back to this place again.
Maybe she’d done the wrong thing, letting him drive her here. Maybe she’d ruined it—a decision as bad as drawing him would have been, only worse, because now she’d have memories of Ben all over her house. In her bed. She’d have to remember him and mourn him in this same space, crowded up against her memories of Dan and the knowledge of her decorating disasters. She’d have to find her feet again alone, here.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to go?”
“No.” She reached for his waist. “I want you to distract me.”
He kissed her then, and he didn’t fuss around. He gave her the deep plunge of his tongue and his fingers speared in her hair, holding her in place as he insinuated himself between her legs. He gave her his directness, his heat, driving away all her fear and replacing it with certainty.
Her house didn’t matter. She could ignore the mess in her head, in her heart and her life, for a little longer.
Only the slide of his hands underneath her shirt mattered.
Only Ben.
“Nice place,” he said to her cleavage.
“Oh, shut up.”
He chuckled and thumbed her nipple through her bra. She dropped her hand between his legs and did her best to drive him crazy.
They stole one more evening together, a gift they unwrapped slowly and scattered all over her house.
His T-shirt across the back of the living room couch.
Her top and bra in the kitchen, where they stopped for water and got distracted when he lifted her up on the countertop and kissed his way down her throat to her breasts.
Her jeans on the floor in the hallway and all the rest of their clothes in the bathroom, which she insisted was part of the tour.
He insisted on a long, hot shower, a great deal of which he spent on his knees, teaching her what it felt like to be rendered boneless as a jellyfish.
She stayed out of her own way, allowing herself to be who she wanted to be, feel what she needed to feel, grab him and grip him and cling to him the way she had to.
He clung back, kissing her until her lips stung. Thrusting inside her until she couldn’t remember a time when this hadn’t been at the core of who they were together, this hot, heavy invasion and retreat, stringing her tight and pulling her apart.
“I like your bed,” he said. “This is a great bed.”
“Oh my God,” she said, because it was the only thing she could say.