Except she liked being here with him.
She needed a tissue, Celeste realised, had sniffed four times in the past fifteen seconds and it was getting embarrassing now, except she had to reach over him to get them, so she didn’t bother. ‘Here.’ He pulled a wad out of a box on the coffee table and Celeste managed a wry laugh.
‘Do you sit here crying at films often?’
‘Nope...’ Ben smiled at the image she conjured up. ‘Jen’s sister was over earlier.’
Oh, God!
She didn’t say it, but she flinched at her insensitivity. Wallowing in her own problems, he just seemed so together, it was so easy to forget all he’d been through. ‘Just for a quick hi, but she hadn’t seen the house.’
‘It must have been hard for you,’ she said.
‘Yes, it was,’ Ben admitted. ‘Thankfully I was called into work.’
‘Thank you.’ She stared over to him. ‘I mean, really, thank you for everything.’
‘I was glad to help.’
‘And I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’ Ben asked, but was just a touch uncomfortable as to how she might answer.
‘Because of how difficult things are between us...’
‘They’re not difficult,’ he lied.
‘Yes, they are,’ Celeste contradicted, ‘because I want to be friends with you, Ben, but I don’t know how to be one...’ He could see the tears rolling down her cheeks now. ‘And please don’t feel guilty when I tell you this, but it’s part of the reason I’m moving home too—maybe things will be easier, maybe we might even manage to be friends.’
‘I don’t think so.’ His fingers wanted to touch her hair again, he wanted to hold her, to kiss her, but it would be too cruel to them both.
But then she looked at him, looked right at him, and said the words that sometimes he’d wished too, stuck her toe in that closing door and kept it wedged that little bit open.
‘I wish it could have been you. I wish Willow was yours.’
She meant it, she really meant it, and her nose was running because she meant it so much.
She wished it had been Ben, that he had been the one who’d made love to her.
Wished, wished, wished for so much more than the little they’d had.
‘It would never have been me,’ Ben said then. ‘Because I’d have taken so, so much more care of you than he did.’
He couldn’t stand that she was moving away, couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing her again, couldn’t stand not to touch her some more. ‘Come here.’ He pulled her at her wrist so she was right up against him and it was like climbing into his boat.
Sort of away from everything.
It was nice to have a cuddle with him while she cried—he was so big she had to lean against him, or she’d topple overboard! Nice when he hooked his arm around her and secured her there.
Just really, really nice.
It was for Ben too.
So rarely was he indulgent—but next week she was going somewhere she didn’t really want to go.
Leaving him somewhere he didn’t really want to be.
Tonight they were here.
And it was nice.
Nice to lie on the sofa with her.
Nice to hear her sobs recede and to feel her chest move as she laughed at the film.
It had been a hell of a day. Showing Abby and her husband Mick around the house, with Abby tearing up every five minutes, he’d even offered to take them out on the boat.
Except Abby looked too much like Jen and there would be three in the boat instead of four—so he’d been glad when he’d been called in to work.
It had just been one of those days, and it could have been one of those nights too.
Except Celeste was here and all it felt was right.
He was hovering on the edge of indecision, scared but almost ready to really make a new start.
A very new start.
Certain films shouldn’t be watched with a supposed friend who was actually a whole lot more.
They were watching a passionate on-screen kiss—and it seemed to go on a lot longer than Celeste remembered from the last time she had seen the film.
It was like the time when at fourteen she’d been watching a serious documentary with her parents and suddenly they had been watching full-on sex.
Just exquisitely uncomfortable—but for all sorts of different reasons tonight.
His hand was hovering over her stomach, but she was too near the edge of the sofa, needed a little shift, a little hoist from him to bring her closer, which he didn’t do, so Celeste wriggled back a bit.
Just a bit.
Ever the gentleman, he moved back a fraction and secured her, his hand on her stomach, and she felt like pulling up her knees, because she’d felt him touch her.
She couldn’t remember how to breathe, because there was this feather-light stroking from his fingers on her stomach, just these almost indistinguishable caresses and a slight irregularity to his breathing as they continued to watch the kissing on the screen.
‘When you move home....’ His voice was hesitant, slightly gruff. ‘Suppose we take things slowly...’ She could hardly breathe, hardly dared to hope, scared to move in case he stopped talking. ‘Suppose we go out...?’
‘I won’t have a babysitter—Mum only said she’d do it while I worked,’ she whispered back.
‘You could come here, we could have dinner, just start at the very beginning, get to know each other properly...’
‘And Willow?’ Her heart was in her mouth.
‘If we take it slowly enough, maybe...’ He could hear the blood pounding in his ears as he offered so much more than he had sworn he ever would. ‘Maybe in time...’
He was offering her hope—offering them hope—that the impossible might just happen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CELESTE SUDDENLY DIDN’T care about the film, she wanted to see him, so she wriggled around and his legs had to trap hers to stop her falling off the sofa. He could see her lovely eyes shining in the darkness and he wanted to protect her, even from herself, but, God, he also wanted to kiss her, to just dive straight into that pleasure, but he had to make it very clear too.
‘We’ll just take things slowly.’
‘I know.’
And then he could kiss her—properly this time—and she could kiss him too, a lovely slow kiss that wasn’t awkward, just took a little adjusting to, because she was lower than him and rather precariously balanced, so he pulled her in a bit so that her bare thigh had to be clamped by his denimed ones, and as his tongue slid into her mouth, as their lips pressed harder, if she wanted to stay on the sofa, her other leg had to wrap around his.
He smelt like Ben...like the kiss from the first time, except she felt sexy now rather than tired, she felt alive rather than weary, and she felt wanted rather than looked after.
It made her feel dizzy.
She was sucking on his bottom lip, her little hand on his broad back and with the roughness of his jeans in her groin.
‘Celeste...’ He pulled back a bit as she pressed hard into him. ‘I thought we were taking it slowly!’
‘Not with this part,’ she murmured.
Like teenagers, with no real intent, they kissed, except, unlike the rest of his body, his arm was going to sleep, so he pulled her onto her back and lay on top of her, his elbows sinking into the sofa as he kissed her deeply.
It was a kiss that was safe, because they weren’t going anywhere more serious at the moment. At some level they both knew that, but it had to be verbally confirmed.
‘We can’t,’ Ben said as her thigh slid between his legs and her hand slid up the back of his T-shirt, feeling the silk of his skin, the firmness of muscle, and she arched towards him. ‘I haven’t got anything.’
‘I know,’ she breathed. ‘But I had a coil inserted...’
‘No.’ He stopped then, because she was just too precious to risk it. ‘You’re not to rely on just that.’
‘So just kissing, then...’ Her mouth was on his, her body this writhing mass of want beneath his. It was already more than a kiss but, God, it felt nice.
‘I think we can manage a little more than that,’ he promised. His hand was creeping up her top now, her breast soft and warm beneath his fingers. This was so much more than a kiss as his fingers skilfully caressed her nipples.
She’d considered her breasts useless, shrunken little failures, having not been able to breastfeed Willow, but now they swelled beneath his fingers, and the feel of his mouth and his tongue on them was sublime.
She was pressing into him, could feel his erection, and she wanted it closer...
‘Ben...’ she murmured softly. She could feel these little licks of pleasure in her stomach and it startled her, for he was turning her on her side, with nowhere to go except the back of the sofa and the gorgeous weight of Ben pinning her. Her hand crept to the front of his jeans; she felt the lovely solid length of him and heard him moan. ‘Ben...’ She didn’t know why she kept saying his name, but she couldn’t help it. Her fingers started working the heavy buckle of his belt, but his hand stopped her.