by A. S. Green
Like before on my beach, his kiss is lust and fire and all-consuming. My heart gallops, threatening to jump out of my body and join with his. Then…somehow…we go from sitting to lying on the soft ground. I don’t know how he got me here, but I’m not complaining. I may not know what the hell I’m doing, but everything about this tells me Bennet does. And that’s all I need to know.
“You want this?” he asks, panting.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Am I going too fast?”
“No.” I pull his mouth back to mine, and he raises my shirt, and then pushes my bra over my breast. He doesn’t even take the time to undo the clasp. His enthusiasm is everything. It means everything.
His mouth traces a path along my ribs and the underside of my breast, then he draws my nipple into his mouth. I squirm beneath him while his hand finds the hem of my skirt and pushes it up. He grips my hip as he rolls me into the soft blanket of leaves and moss. My eyes flutter closed as his fingertips skate along the sensitive skin of my inner thigh and a low groan rumbles through his chest.
“So beautiful,” he says, his face coming back to mine. “You deserve so much more from life than what you’ve allowed yourself.”
I open my eyes, not sure what he means, and tremble as his hand finds my core. My panties are soaked—drenched to the point where even the insides of my thighs are wet with my arousal—and while I’m embarrassed, Bennet seems very happy with his discovery.
He lets out a moan of approval. The sound sends a shudder through me, and he feels that, too. This is it. We’re getting so close. I’m going to do this. I’m going to have sex. Here. With Bennet.
I focus on the sleeve of his red T-shirt and try not to be scared. I attempt to call up the blazing excitement I’d felt just a moment ago.
He touches his lips gently to mine as his fingers finally find their way inside my thong, and he makes a slow swipe along my seam.
My eyes close. Oh, God. So good.
“D’Arcy, I don’t have a condom on me.” It sounds like both a question and a regret.
“Oh. Okay. Yeah, that’s fine,” I whisper.
His finger keeps up its languid passes through my slick folds while his mouth moves against my neck.
“So you’re on the pill?” His breath is hot against my skin, and his fingertip presses in.
“Uh…” My eyes pop open, but I can’t formulate a thought, let alone words.
“D’Arcy?” His eyes burn into mine. He pushes his finger into me a little farther, and I wince with the sharp bite of pain. He pushes farther and, as I gasp, the corners of his eyes tighten like he’s trying to figure me out.
“Fuck me, you’re so tight.” And then it dawns on him exactly how inexperienced I am. Ever so slowly, he pulls his hand back. I let out a whimper, feeling his absence. “D’Arcy are you a virgin?”
I’m embarrassed by his astonishment. “Not by choice,” I whisper, pulling his hand back to me.
I can understand if he’d prefer to be with someone more…practiced…but I hope I didn’t scare him off. I’ve always known that, sexually, I was out of my league with him. Now he knows it, too.
Bennet pulls away. I sit up and duck my chin, hoping against hope that he won’t see the humiliation flooding my face.
“Right,” he says, looking around at our surroundings. “Right.” He frowns and rakes a hand through his hair as if he’s trying to make up his mind about something. That something being me. “All right.” He turns to face me and blinks. “Let’s go back then.”
My head jerks up. Is he kidding? Is he effing kidding me? All this buildup and then he hits the brakes because…just because….well, forget him! I don’t need this.
I am such an idiot. Of course he doesn’t need all my virginal bullshit. Better he get with someone like Alli or….Jenna Smith…or pretty much anyone else I can think of. What a joke. I created this whole fantasy about Bennet just like I did with Andrew. What is wrong with me?
I will not cry, though. He can forget that. Because it’s all the same to me if he’s not interested. I’m sure the sex wouldn’t have been that good anyway. All hype. Just stuff they write about in books and a letdown in real life. Besides, I’ve got better things to do, like…like…
Bennet stands and, with one strong pull, has me standing, too. The change in altitude and the sudden redistribution of blood in my body has the world spinning and stars flashing in my eyes. Or maybe it’s the shock of rejection. I yank my hand out of his, scoop up my painting supplies, and storm down the hill. Back to the boat.
Chapter Thirty-One
BENNET
What am I supposed to do with this information? It doesn’t make sense. Katherine said she wasn’t a virgin by choice, so how does someone who looks like her get through three years of college untouched? Her ex-boyfriend must either be an idiot or a saint or…secretly gay?
Not that I’ve ever been one to take sex lightly but—Jesus—Katherine’s virginity…this is a huge responsibility.
The last time I’d been with a virgin, I’d been one, too. It was spring break of tenth grade with my girlfriend, Maggie Cartwright. The whole thing had been over in seconds. Maggie ended up crying. I felt like shit. She broke up with me the next day, which sucked because we were on a church mission trip and had to sit next to each other in a minivan for the next five days.
I’ve figured sex out since then, but Katherine was obviously scared. I should have picked up on that earlier. I was a jerk not to. I’m certainly not going to make the same mistakes with her as I did with Maggie.
So what do I do?
One thing is certain—our first time together should not be on the ground. That was hot. But not for a first time. She deserves better.
We’re in the same posture as we were on our way out to the island—Katherine standing at the wheel, me behind her. I don’t do it to keep the pressure on her, or to force any intimacy, only to keep her warm because the temperature is dropping steadily. Her body is stiff, her shoulders back, her chin lifted. I would think she was pissed at me, if I wasn’t so confident it was fear.
We hit a wave and her body lurches, her heart-shaped ass bucking backward. Maybe I should let her sit because how am I supposed to slow everything down when she’s pressed up against me? I’m still as hard as I was fifteen minutes ago. Damn it. Not helping. I back off, just an inch.
We can take things at her pace. She doesn’t have to be afraid. Not of me. Not ever. I can’t explain that to her now. There’s no point in talking over the engine. But we’ll be back to Little Bear in just a few minutes. Once I get her to shore, I’ll let her know it’s all going to be okay.
We can take our time. We can kiss. Honestly, that would be enough for me today because, God, can she kiss. I’ll let her call the shots. She can have as much or as little of me as she wants. I’ll keep myself reined in. It won’t be easy. But I’ll do that. For her. Anything she wants.
Chapter Thirty-Two
KATHERINE
When we reach the mainland, Bennet leaps from the side of the boat to the dock, the rope in his hand. He’s in that much of a hurry to get rid of me. I don’t blame him. My face must be close to scarlet, and the tears I’ve been working so hard to restrain are burning holes in the back of my eyes.
He ties the boat securely to the cleats mounted on the dock. I step out of the boat—not taking his hand when he offers it—and march toward shore, then down the three steps onto the sand.
There’s no way I’m getting back in his truck. I’ll save him the hardship of driving me home. I’ll follow the shoreline to my beach. If my painting supplies get too heavy, I’ll leave them wherever I have to. It’s not like I’m going to need them ever again and—
“Whoa. Where are you going?” Bennet asks.
“Home!” I yell, without turning around.
“Oh, no you’re not.”
“Oh, yes I am!”
“D’Arcy…”
The bag is already getting too heavy, probably be
cause my whole body is numb. Such a difference from the live-wire feelings I’d been having all day. I drop the bag on Bennet’s beach and continue heading north.
In a flash he’s in front of me but standing back at least five feet. His palms are held up, facing me. “I know you’re scared, but you don’t have to be. Not of me anyway. I thought we could pick up where we left off—if you want—but we can slow everything down. Way down.”
“You thought… What?” I can’t make sense of him.
He looks at me as if I’m a riddle he can’t figure out.
“Are you…? Are you mad at me?” he asks.
“Am I mad? You’re the one who—” I can’t finish my sentence. To say it out loud, to resurrect that moment of his realization of what a child I am… It’s too humiliating.
“D’Arcy,” he says, drawing my name out slowly. His eyes are soft and tender. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Stupid?” Now he’s just pissing me off.
“I thought…maybe…maybe we should do things…you know…right.” His expression is gentle, almost apologetic, but there is a heat behind his eyes that is confusing the hell out of me.
“We should do—” Dammit. I still can’t finish a sentence.
“I’m not talking about sex, D’Arcy. Not now.”
Reflexively, the tip of my tongue darts out to wet my lips. Bennet’s eyes flash with intensity then quickly soften again.
“But you deserve to be paid attention to. And you don’t deserve to be lying on the ground in a pile of leaves when that’s happening.”
“Attention?” All the breath goes out of me.
“Yeah.” Electricity emanates off him, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. It’s unnerving and exhilarating, and it sends a throbbing sensation right to my core. “And I intend to give you a lot of my time,” he adds quietly.
Oh, God. Now I get it. The mere thought of his implication warms my body. I take a small step toward him.
“Stop,” he says, and I stop. My eyes go wide. Now what’s happening?
“A man should always come to a woman like you.”
And with that, he takes two long strides and scoops me into his arms, cradling me against his chest. He carries me toward his cottage as if I am weightless—up the steps from the sand to his deck. And he doesn’t lose his grip when he opens the sliding glass door and steps inside.
I should be terrified, but I’m not. I have confidence that Bennet will take care of me the way I need to be taken care of, and, though I hate to think of Andrew now, I know things could never be like this between the two us. Deep in the heart of me, in that place I’ve always hated to acknowledge, I know I would always be the one having to go to Andrew.
I might care deeply for him, but he could never hold me like Bennet is holding me. It would be impossible because I would never allow Andrew near that vulnerable side of me. Even at my lowest, when he helped me through the first months after Dad left, I never let him in. Not fully. Because something told me my weakness would push him away.
Now I know the beauty of letting someone see that tender spot. I barely know Bennet, but he sees it. He holds it. He tends to it.
I can’t take my eyes off his face—the way the light catches his blue eyes, the jagged scar by the corner of his eyebrow, the windblown tangles of his hair—but I still manage to get glimpses of the cottage: walls the color of wet sand, kitchen cupboards hanging open, shelves stocked with a dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese. Books are piled up in the corner of the room. Sunlight streams in ribbons through a kitchen window.
We move through a doorway into a smaller room with the same pale, knotty-pine floors. Three square windows are set high on the north wall. They’re open, allowing sheer white curtains to float gently in the early evening breeze.
In the middle of the room is a white featherbed—soft and billowy, it’s got to be ten inches thick—with a million white, fluffy pillows that would swallow me whole. Everything is soft and bright white and exactly how I imagine heaven. It’s perfect. He’s perfect, and he’s right.
“This is quite the…um…your bedroom looks like something out of a designer catalog.” It’s not the sexiest thing I could have come up with, but I can’t help it. His room is nothing like I would have imagined. I would have thought Sully O’Hare’s cottage would be decorated in a style that was more…I don’t know…old-man bachelor. More like Calloway’s.
Bennet smirks. “Too much?”
I shake my head.
His expression breaks into a grin. “Remember me telling you about the boat that I worked on? Well, after sleeping for years in a tiny berth, I guess I’ve developed a penchant for nice beds.”
I know what he said about going slow, but I have to check if the bed is as soft as it looks. I sit on the edge and press my hands down into it. I was right. Ten inches thick. Bennet sits, and I lie back. He stares for a second, then he settles himself beside me.
He combs a finger through my hair. “I wasn’t going to sleep in Sully’s lumpy old bed, so I bought this one. And before you ask, yes, you’re the only person besides me who’s ever been in it.”
I am not surprised, given what he’s told me about his social standing on Little Bear, but I am relieved. After two years on the island, perhaps this means he’s out of practice. Maybe it will even out the playing field a bit.
Bennet props himself up on his right elbow and looks down at me. I am both warm and shivering. “Close your eyes,” he says.
“Again with the eyes,” I say, trying to calm my nerves with sarcasm.
He ignores it. “We’re continuing our lesson in the senses, and I need you to close your eyes, babe.”
I nod and comply, reveling in the term of endearment. A second later, there is the softest tickle across my forehead, descending the slope of my nose, and over my cheek. I exhale at the flutter of a downy feather against my lips. Then the feather is gone, replaced by something firm and warm. Then wet.
Bennet’s tongue slips between my lips as he continues to torture my goose-bumped flesh with the feather. It travels down my neck and across my collarbone while he nips at my earlobe.
His fingers move lower, drawing a line down the buttons of my shirt to my stomach where a sliver of skin is showing. He swirls the feather in a circle around my belly button, then slips his hand up inside my shirt, cupping my right breast and swiping his thumb over the crest.
Slowly, I lift my lashes and suck in my breath at the way he looks at me. His eyes are burning.
He scolds me with a tsk-tsk of that tongue. If his hand wasn’t already busy at my breast, he might have even wagged his finger at me. “Close your eyes,” he says. “I don’t want you to miss anything.”
“I’m not missing any of this,” I say, my voice cracking. And that’s the honest-to-God truth because every nerve in my body is alive and on fire.
He chuckles, but then the laugh cuts off when I lift my shirt, pulling my bra off, too. It’s more than eagerness that makes me do it. In the brightness of the room, I don’t want my ridiculous underwear to ruin the mood.
For a second, I swear Bennet stops breathing, then he says, “You are stunningly beautiful. I could look at you all day.”
“Please don’t.” My heart is banging in my chest so loudly, I swear it’s going to break through my skin. Bennet is hovering over me, but not giving me any of his weight. My nipples tighten under his heated gaze, and I wrap my hand over his shoulder to pull him closer.
His back muscles bunch under my fingertips, and when he touches his lips to mine, they are sweet. Tenderness warms his eyes when he once more kisses my lips, then my jaw, as his thumb swipes over my breast, sending a surge of heat through my veins. He takes his time at my neck, nipping his way lower to my shoulder, then lower still. This time, I’m prepared for what’s coming, but I still gasp audibly when he greedily sucks my nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue over the tightening bud.
“Bennet,” I whisper as my eyes fly open and a rush of electr
icity races for my sex, tightening its walls. I’m in awe. Not only of the physical sensations he stirs in me, though those are overwhelming enough, but also of the way he stares as his hands explore my body.
Our eyes lock. There’s a strange intensity to him. This beautiful person who’s so independent, yet whose expression—right now—says that everything he needs can be found in me. I don’t stop to wonder how that could be because—God—I need more of him. I hope he feels the same way.
I find his hand and push it lower, hoping it’s obvious what I want because I’m too shy to say it.
“I love that that’s the pace you want to set,” he says, his voice rough, “but I’m still taking my time with you.”
God.
“Patience,” he says, answering my thought. “I’ll make it worth it.”
His mouth returns to my breast, this time my left, nipping, sucking, and swirling. His hands are everywhere. Almost. My whole body is molten and cries out for him. I let my knees fall open, and he exhales against my skin. He’s still refusing my invitation, but maybe not completely ignoring it because I can feel him, hard and thick against my hip.
I roll into him, and he jerks back in surprise when I pop the button on his shorts. He’s been so in control up to this point that I’m glad to have unnerved him. It makes me brave, which is good because I need to feel his skin on mine. I want to draw my finger over those dips in his abs and that angled line at his hips.
I tug at his T-shirt until it’s over his head and on the floor, then run my hand down his hard stomach, feeling each muscle, then under the elastic of his boxer briefs. I wrap my hand around his length. Both of our breaths stutter. It’s the first skin-on-skin contact I’ve ever had with a guy (like this anyway), and the size of him blows my mind.
Bennet thrusts himself against my hand. His fingers trace the line of my jaw, then his hand slips over my side, dipping into my waist before climbing the curve of my hip. He turns his wrist, skimming the back of his hand across my belly, then curling into the space between my legs.