by Ruthie Knox
He let himself smooth his hand over the slippery jersey fabric on her shoulders and the broad, stiff numbers flanking her spine. Just once. “Bloodthirsty wench.”
Hiding behind the curtain of her hair, she bit him on the collarbone, inflicting a sharp, secret wound that made him suck in a breath.
“You’ll pay for that,” he promised.
“After the game?”
“There’s always halftime.”
* * *
They barely lasted a quarter. Somebody stood and blocked the TV about ten minutes in, and he started to grumble. May politely asked the woman to move, but the die was cast.
After that, every time someone laughed too loud over at the bar, Ben stiffened, and May turned up the volume on the TV. Allie wasn’t even pretending to watch, her mother had spent the past hour talking about the wedding with three of her friends, and her father was oblivious at the bar, deep into swapping hunting stories with all her uncles, who were in town for the wedding.
When the Packers called a time-out, two different neighbors swooped in to ask Ben questions about his imaginary job. Nobody asked May what it was like to watch her ex-boyfriend play his ex-team while she sat on a couch next to the guy she was falling for.
Which was good, because she wasn’t sure she could have told them what it was like. She didn’t have the words, and Ben had too many.
“You know, it’s the endorsements that take the most time,” Ben said. He packed the statement with such contempt, she expected her neighbors to recoil. To lift their hands and say, Whoa. Forget I asked. But it was as though no one could hear it but her. No one else was really listening to him.
“People always talk like endorsements are quick cash, but let me tell you, somebody is spending hundreds of hours working on those deals,” he said. “It’s just not the players. By the time you add up the lawyers hammering out the terms and the riders on those contracts and the PAs like me, who have to schedule all these phone conferences between four different people only to be told at the last minute that your talent has some unspoken objection to the whole idea of endorsing deodorant—”
The game came back on, and Ben’s eyes went straight to the screen. He stopped listening to himself. “It’s a pathetic time-wasting circle-jerk.”
“Excuse me,” May said. “I need to borrow him for a minute.” She grabbed his hand and pulled.
Ben followed her upstairs, past the TV in the living room. “Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see.” They padded up the carpeted stairs to the bonus room on the top floor.
Ben found the remote before she’d even finished flipping on the lights. “You’re a goddess,” he said, his eyes already on the blue glow of the TV’s warm-up screen. “Help me find the channel.”
She did, and they sat side by side on the couch, their thighs pressing together but their attention entirely on the screen.
Almost entirely. Ben leaned forward most of the time, legs spread wide, elbows on his knees when things were going well, the palms of his hands braced against his kneecaps when the team required his full attention. At one point, he reached over and absently rubbed his hand up and down her thigh. “You lock the door?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Then there was a call he didn’t like, and he threw both arms in the air and flung his torso back against the couch cushions, his whole body a protest.
A few seconds later, he sat forward again, resuming his vigil.
May paid attention to every play, but beneath—between them both—arousal built. A player fumbled, Ben called him a fucking idiot, and desire contracted between her thighs, low and hot. He groused at the refs now and then, but the Packers were ahead, so there was a pleasant halfheartedness to it.
“Einarsson’s not playing his best,” he said.
“Don’t make me feel bad.”
Ben put his hand back on her knee. “It’s not your fault.”
When the Packers’ new quarterback threw away the ball, then sprinted after the opposing lineman to pull an open-field tackle from his ass at the forty-five-yard line, May said, “I’m going to marry that man.”
She meant it as a joke, but Ben didn’t seem to think it was funny. “Not fucking likely,” he said, and heat zipped through her, waking every part of her that had been anesthetized when she walked over the threshold into her parents’ house and back into her old life.
Her clit. Her heart.
Her defiant, unsatisfied self.
“Stranger things have happened,” she said. The Packers were ahead with twenty-three seconds left in the first half. Ben’s dark mood turned her on. His body, solid and real beside her. His presence. “I bet he likes tall women.”
Three seconds later, Ben had her underneath him. “Wait until I’m gone before you start running around with quarterbacks again, huh?”
“If you insist.” She found the hem of his shirt and pulled it out of the way so she could settle her hands over the divots at the base of his spine.
“I insist.”
He kissed her deeply, and she wanted to cheer, it was so exactly what she’d been hoping for. His tongue tasting of salt and beer, his arm braced against the couch behind her head. His anger transformed into movement, desire. No lies between them.
Ben’s free hand found her breast and rubbed her nipple through her jersey, but she pushed his hand aside and reached for her zipper. She didn’t need foreplay. Her pulse was beating between her legs, loud and desperate, and Ben was already hard. “You have a condom?”
“In my pocket.”
“Get it on.”
She unzipped her jeans as he tussled with his, raised her hips a few inches and shoved denim as far down his legs as she could. She spread her knees and said, “Hurry.”
“Will anyone come up here during the half?”
“Hurry,” she repeated, and he settled over her, testing her readiness with a fingertip.
“You’re not wet enough. Let me—”
She licked three fingers and dropped her hand between her legs, more to get him to stop talking than because she really needed it. There was moisture inside her, and the condom was lubricated. Ben would take care of the rest.
He watched her hand, eyes glittering. “That’s fucking hot.”
“My new quarterback boyfriend tells me that all the time.”
“Smart-ass.” Wrapping his hand around the base of his cock, he found the right angle and sank inside her.
“Ohh.” She arched up off the couch, seeking to get closer to him. To pull his heat deeper.
Their breathing became its own language, long exhales and short, gasping inhales voiced as quietly as they could manage. He felt so good, his thick length claiming her the way she’d been waiting for all day.
You’ve been waiting all day for him to claim you.
Guh, she had. She was. One more stupid hope, balanced on the cliff edge and waiting to be tipped over and dashed. Surely if he’d planned to claim her, he’d have done it already, rather than spend the day going along with the ridiculous lie Allie had invented.
Surely if she deserved his regard, she’d have said something. Done something by now. Something much more brave and definitive than sneaking him off for a quickie in the bonus room.
But what was he doing here, inside her house, inside her body, if not claiming her? Why make friends with her family, share a beer with her father, tease her mother in the other room if not because he wanted this, and he wanted everyone to know it?
Stupid questions. Stupid girl, to be getting her hopes up.
Still. Still. He’d made her this way. She couldn’t pretend, with Ben inside her body, that this half-assed, undefinable relationship of theirs was entirely in her head.
She squeezed him tight, digging her nails into his ass so he’d take her faster and rougher.
She couldn’t pretend not to care. He was leaving, and she cared.
She wanted him to stay with her, and she would tell him so.
She would clear things up with Dan. She would stand up to her mother. Tomorrow.
Now this was all they needed. His fingers tangled in her hair, wrapping it into a fist to create a tug against her scalp. Stinging pleasure to match the sharp intrusion between her thighs, the cutting pressure of his hips moving in rough, synchronized thrusts against her own.
Their joined bodies moistened until they began to glide, pleasure singing over her skin, tripping her lungs, curling her toes.
His mouth on her throat, open and hot. The scrape of his teeth.
Ben bit her neck. Hard.
“Ouch!”
“I owed you that.”
He nipped her lip, then kissed her. Purposeful at first, but soon the kiss lost focus. When he pulled away, his eyes were only half-open, his cheeks and throat flushed. “I’m close.”
“Touch me.”
He shook his head. Grabbed her wrist. Pushed her hand between them. “You.”
Ben had lifted his chest off her, bracing himself on both hands and staring down at the place where their bodies joined, and she had to admit, it turned her on. So primitive, watching his glistening flesh disappear at the same time that she lifted to meet him.
She touched him first, lightly circling his base with her thumb and fingers.
“May,” he groaned. “For Christ’s sake, we’re trying to get you off. That’s just—”
She tightened her grip, and he inhaled sharply through his nose.
“That’s just what?”
But it was too late to tease him—he was gone. His hips picked up, hammering relentlessly for a few beats until his whole body stiffened and he groaned. May’s skin prickled at the sound. Her fingers found her clit as he dropped his head against her shoulder. She stroked herself, smelling the sweat on Ben’s neck and lifting her hips as he bumped lightly against her, tweaking at her nipple, and all the pleasure in her body focused down, sharpened.
She heard the dull thud of footfalls on the basement stairs. Voices in the living room. Her hand worked faster between them. Her hips bucked, her back arching hard enough to bring Ben’s head up.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s my girl.”
His words filled her with a frantic desperation that she was way too far gone to analyze. Pinned down by Ben’s gaze, she was alone in this—his eyes, his words, his lazy twisting of her nipple and the fullness of his cock inside her such passive forms of participation in comparison to the crazed energy with which she chased her own orgasm.
No lover had ever watched her the way Ben did. There was no hiding from him, and she didn’t even want to. She wanted him to see her—to witness the ugliness of her need.
She wanted him to know everything.
She wanted him to know she loved him.
Oh, bad idea, May.
But it got her off. When the orgasm came, it pulled her tight as a clenched fist, tight as her own fury at herself, and then granted her reprieve, flinging her out of her own head. She gasped, openmouthed. She gave herself over to it—a seemingly endless contraction of pleasure and painful joy.
Ben balanced above her, blocking the overhead light. Watching the whole thing.
She closed her eyes when it ebbed away. Pressed her lips into his skin. Touched her nose to his shoulder.
She opened her eyes and drank in the sight of his hard, beautiful face. With trembling fingers, she outlined the shape of his jaw.
Loved him.
Fuck.
“Your mom thinks I’m going to help talk you into getting back together with Dan,” he said quietly.
“I know. I heard.”
“There’s no fucking way I’m doing that.”
“I broke up with him,” she said.
“I know, but you didn’t break up with him enough.”
“I get it. I’m sorry. I promise, I’ll—”
Mingled voices rose from the living room. Allie and Matt. The front door opening. One of their friends leaving or arriving.
“I’ll fix it,” she said.
But she didn’t know how to fix it.
“I miss you, May.” His voice had a roughness to it, emotion she hadn’t heard. Not like this. “I haven’t even left yet, and I already miss you.”
“Stay a while.” She held on to his arms and kissed his forehead. “Just stay.”
The bottom riser of the upstairs staircase creaked as someone put weight on it. She heard Matt laugh. A dog barking.
“They’re coming.”
She couldn’t move. Her heart felt too full, her throat closed with emotion, choked up with feelings she couldn’t put words to.
“May?” he asked. “You with me? We have to move. Quick.”
She managed a nod, and then when he smiled, she looked away. Better to focus on the moment—his withdrawal, the condom disposal, the arranging of their clothes and their faces, the unlocking and opening of the door. Better not to think about what was happening to her.
What he meant to her.
What she felt when he looked at her that way.
By the time the wiener dog burst into the room, Ben looked like nothing had happened, but May still felt as though she’d been ripped into tiny pieces and scattered all over the place.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Allie knelt at the apex of the horseshoe-shaped table and committed murder with a staple gun.
Her victim was a wad of gauzy pink and orange and white ribbons, which she was supposed to be forming into some sort of rosette to adorn the head of the reception table.
T-minus five hours until the wedding, and the whole family was at the National Railroad Museum, decorating the reception hall. The room was high-ceilinged, with a warehouse feel and six neat rows of enormous train cars—engines, sleeping cars, cabooses—lined up like, well, boxcars. Toward the front of the room, the museum staff had arranged tables and chairs in a large space crowned by a horizontal reception table. There were twinkling lights on the engines and a decorative archway for leaving presents underneath. A temporary dance floor and a space for the DJ to set up.
Anybody could have a reception at Brett Favre’s Steakhouse or the Holiday Inn. It took a couple with a little verve to throw a party at the train museum.
Plus, Matt was kind of a train nerd.
Her mother was determined to turn the assembled plastic tables and chairs into a romantic getaway for two hundred and fifty people. Allie had to applaud her dogged determination, however misguided.
A bright pink and orange decal on the entry door said ALLIE AND MATT in flowing script, and the tables were covered with linens in matching orange, pink, and yellow. May and Ben had beheaded hundreds of fake daisies and scattered them artfully around the white china. Mom had made a garland of daisies for the gift-gazebo-thing, which she was fastening in place with twist ties. Allie was stuck with rosette-making duty.
The stapler struck the ribbons with a satisfying bang.
Rosettes were for women who gave a damn about beaded bodices and lemon-chiffon frosting. They were for giggling girls who fainted with happiness at the idea of hundreds of guests clinking their champagne glasses with forks, demanding that the Princess and her Prince Charming engage in PDA.
Allie was not one of those girls. She didn’t care about ribbons. She cared about dogs and long hikes in the woods and Matt. She cared about him deeply, but she didn’t love him the right way.
She’d thought May would tell her that was okay. That sometimes love wasn’t balanced. That passion never lasted, and stability mattered.
She’d thought May would say that Matt was good and lovable and he’d treat Allie well for the rest of her life.
But she hadn’t said it. She hadn’t said anything.
May’s loud laughter echoed through the reception hall. She and Ben were on the other end of the room, setting buckets of daisies on the tables. The laugh was new—since she came home, May had been quiet the way she got when something was eating at her, and Ben was as tightly wound as he’d app
eared in the cell phone picture May had snapped for her.
But they had this heat between them. Allie didn’t get how it was possible that nobody saw it but her.
Maybe they did see. Seeing but not speaking was how her family rolled. They needed a Latin motto that meant If we ignore it, maybe it will go away.
“Don’t forget the medallion, hon!” her mom called from across the room.
Allie picked up the shiny silver circle from the table and sneered at it. It said “Allison and Matthew” in black script, and it was supposed to go in the center of the rosette.
Brandishing the only weapon she had, she stapled the living shit out of it.
“How’s that coming along?” Mom asked.
“Great!” she shouted. “You’re going to love it.”
Her mother would be appalled. All the guests would look at Allie’s misshapen, mangled rosette and wonder what had happened, but no one would say anything, because she was The Bride. She’d discovered that the status gave her an odd sort of power.
It’s your day, her mother kept saying. Whatever you want!
She wanted doughnuts for breakfast.
Sure! You’re the bride. I’ll send one of the boys to pick them up.
She wanted to do her own hair, because when she’d suggested at the wedding-hair practice session that she was thinking of wearing it in a beehive for the ceremony, the stylist had looked at her with actual pity.
Allie didn’t want to be pitied. She wanted a beehive.
Of course, darling! her mother had said. You’re the bride. I’ll cancel the appointment.
Allie was starting to feel invulnerable. Maybe even invulnerable enough to say something to May.
Hey, May? Is Ben planning to stick around for the wedding? Because that will get a little awkward, what with Dan flying in a few hours from now, plus the pack of lies we told Mom and all. I think you’d better send the boy toy on his way before your ex arrives in his monkey suit, is all I’m saying.
But May knew the score. She just didn’t care. Or she did care, but not enough to do anything about it.
And meanwhile Mom wouldn’t shut up about Dan. When Dan was coming. How May really needed to talk to him—Have a nice long talk, okay? Okay, May?