by Nina Lane
Stop.
I shoved those thoughts away and rose back onto my knees. I settled onto Ben’s erection and paused, his cock pulsing against my inner walls.
“I don’t think I can do that,” I admitted.
“Yes, you can.” Ben stroked my damp thighs up and down.
“What does it feel like?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know, but I promise it’ll be good.”
In one movement, he rolled us both over so he was on top, still embedded inside me. He pulled back and thrust. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, surrendering to the power of whatever it was that we had together, loving the sensation of him fucking me so hard and so deep.
“Oh, I think I’m….” I writhed under him, stunned by the sudden upwelling of lust, the pressure winding through my lower body. “Ben, I’m about to come.”
He made a rough noise in his throat, plunging into me as he scraped his teeth over my shoulder, down to my breasts. He took my stiff nipple into his mouth and sucked, the sudden pull shocking heat right to my sex and…
“Ben!” His name wrenched from me on a scream. My pussy clenched around his cock, vibrations flooding outward from my channel and into every part of my body. Clutching Ben’s arms, I shuddered and quaked as he continued to pump inside me, overwhelming me with the power of him and this insane, wild pleasure.
“Ready?” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear. “I’m so fucking close, Maddie… going to come inside you so goddamned hard…”
“Yes,” I gasped, pushing my hips up to meet his thrusts. “Oh, Ben, please… fill me… I want to feel it, feel you…”
“Fuck, yeah. Take it… now.” With a deep groan, he thrust once, his body tensing as he came inside me. I tightened my grip on his back, shuddering anew as he rode the wave and collapsed beside me.
“I didn’t know I could even have that kind of an orgasm,” I gasped, as we both lay on our backs and tried to catch our breath. “There’s so much I don’t know.”
Ben slid his hand over my damp, naked body. “I’m more than happy to teach you.”
“I’ll bet.” I nudged his hip with mine. “Do you think it’s weird? That I’ve reached my age without knowing much about sex?”
“No.” He caressed my breasts. “Not everyone has a lot of sexual experience. And it sounds like circumstances prevented you from experimenting.”
“That sure wasn’t the case with you.”
Ben shrugged. “I got around in my twenties. But I’m not into that anymore.”
“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” I asked.
“Fifteen.” A flush rose to his face. “Friend of my mother’s.”
“Really?” I pushed up to my elbows to stare at him. “What happened?”
“My parents had gone away for the weekend and asked her to check up on me,” he said. “She showed up one evening, telling me she wanted to make sure I wasn’t having a party or letting a girl stay overnight. Then we sat down to watch a movie and… stuff happened.”
“That’s so wrong,” I said. “I mean, her. She could have been arrested.”
“Yeah. But it was one time. Can’t say I was scarred by it either.”
“I guess that gave you a penchant for older women, huh?” I asked.
“I don’t have a penchant for older women.” He slid his hand between my breasts and over my heart. “I have a penchant for you.”
Pleasure flushed through me. “You’re good.”
“I know.” He grinned. “So what about your virginity?”
“I was twenty-three.” I flopped back on the pillows and looked at the ceiling. “Wedding night.”
“I can’t imagine dozens of guys weren’t after you before you got married.”
“Whenever anyone showed interest, I put them off,” I admitted. “My mother always told me that ladies didn’t entice men. And I met Richard when I was twenty, so I didn’t really date at all. Certainly I never slept with anyone else.”
“That’s pretty sexy, actually,” Ben said, rubbing circles around my belly button. “I feel very possessive and caveman about you.”
I smiled. “You are very possessive and caveman.”
He gave me his engaging grin, his eyes blue like the ocean, and his sun-streaked hair rumpled and messy.
“I think you like me that way, Maddie.”
“I do, Mr. Hunter,” I whispered, leaning forward to press my lips against his. “So much.”
CHAPTER SIX
‡
Ben and I spent Saturday afternoon exploring the tidepools clustered along the coast. Clouds blocked out the sun. Cold winds whipped off the surface of the ocean, spraying our faces with salt water. Ben held my hand as he navigated the slippery, kelp-covered rocks in front of me, ensuring the security of every footstep before guiding me to follow.
“This is the intertidal zone,” he explained, sweeping his other hand out to encompass the rocky combination of land and sea. “It’s always been my favorite part of the ocean. Just the idea of it—it’s such a tough, dangerous world. All these creatures have to withstand constant waves, wildly fluctuating air temperatures, low oxygen and salinity levels, predators.”
He stopped and reached into a pool to touch a barnacle.
“And they’ve all adapted and evolved to contend with the danger,” he continued. “They grip the rocks so they won’t be swept away by the tide. They escape into shells or use camouflage to protect themselves. They attack, hide¸ hunt, find ways to survive. It’s a microcosm of the universe.”
“‘Ferocious with life,’” I murmured, watching a fish dart toward Ben’s hand.
He glanced up at me. “Steinbeck.”
I smiled. “My favorite author.”
“Mine too.” He pulled his hand from the water and wiped it on his jeans. “We’ll have to go down to Salinas sometime and see Steinbeck Country.”
A knot tugged at my chest. I averted my gaze from his and crouched to examine the tidepool. “Look at the size of that starfish.”
“Despite the name, it’s actually not a fish.” Ben plucked the huge, orange creature from the bottom of the pool. “It’s an echinoderm, like a sea cucumber or a sand dollar. They’re recognizable by their radial symmetry and mesodermal skeleton. You can feel the plates on the exoskeleton, like armor.”
He held the starfish out to me. I touched the rough, bumpy exterior.
“Is it true that they can regrow arms?” I asked.
“Some species can,” Ben explained, putting the starfish back into the pool. “It takes a long time, and the starfish is vulnerable during the whole process.”
I looked at him, struck by the intent expression on his face as he studied the world of the tidepool. He pointed out sea urchins, hermit crabs, coralline algae, chitons¸ kelp snails, opaleye perch, and even the tentacle of a little red octopus hidden in a cave.
We explored for two hours, looking, touching, occasionally picking up a creature to study it. I drank in Ben’s wealth of knowledge, loving everything he was teaching me about tide cycles and zones, the classifications of animals and plants, and even the phases of the moon.
I felt everything—the wind, the water, the sensation of his fingers gripping mine, the rhythm of my pulse. All of my senses were filled with the utter pleasure of being with this young man who’d not only awakened my body but my mind and my heart. I was alive.
As we made our way back to the shore and walked along the beach, Ben talked about his volunteer work with an environmental organization dedicated to the preservation of marine ecosystems.
“I’m glad you have a way to stay involved with all this,” I said, reaching down to pick up a glossy shell from the sand. “Clearly you love it.”
“Yeah.” He looked faintly embarrassed. “Sorry, I tend to go on about it.”
“No, I could listen to you talk for hours. I’m learning so much.”
I squeezed his hand, aware of a pang inside as I thought I’d never found anything similar to be
so passionate about.
And for me, it might be too late.
I had my children, yes, but one day they would go off to live their own lives, and then what would I do?
Pushing the nagging worry aside, I picked up a couple more shells and put them in the pockets of my jacket before we returned to the cottage for cups of hot cocoa.
We settled on the sofa together, me nestled comfortably on Ben’s lap. He wrapped his muscular arms around me, made a noise of contentment, and leaned his head against the back of the sofa. I thought I could quite happily sit there for years, tucked against his warm, strong body.
“I like it here.” I took a sip of cocoa and reached up to slide my hand over his whiskered jaw. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Thanks for coming. I’ve never brought a woman up here before.”
“Really?” The admission both surprised and pleased me. “Why not?”
“It’s a private place, I guess. I come here to be alone. I haven’t been inclined to share it with anyone except you.”
I gazed at him, a sense of wonder filling me. I loved that he’d first seen me as a challenge, but to know that he also just wanted to be with me was a gift like no other.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “So much.”
He rubbed his hand over my leg. I skimmed my fingertips over his cheekbones, traced the shell of his ear.
“That day in your office,” I said, threading my fingers through his thick hair, “why did you come on so strong?”
“Because I knew you’d like it.” Ben gave me a smug look.
I swatted his shoulder, flushing at the realization that he’d been right. I’d liked it an awful lot.
“Seriously,” I said. “Why?”
“I’d been thinking about you for weeks,” he said. “Fantasizing about you. But of course I knew you were married. And I knew you weren’t the kind of woman who’d respond to a man doing something stupid, like sending you flowers or trying to kiss you.”
“How did you know that?”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“Because you’re Madeline Collins,” he said. “Some asshole tries to hit on you out of nowhere… hell, you wouldn’t even lower yourself to slapping him. You’d just turn him to stone with a glare.”
I thought that was probably true. Several of Richard’s friends and associates had tried to come on to me over the years, but I’d quickly shut them down with a sharp word and hostile look. I supposed word had gotten around that I was an “ice queen” since no man had made an overture toward me in ages.
Except Ben, of course. Although his overture had been like nothing I could ever have imagined.
“So what made you think I’d respond to your… orders?” I asked.
Ben grinned, his eyes sparking with heat. God, he was cute. Ocean boy, domineering school principal, and intense sexy hunk, all rolled into one delicious package.
“When I overheard that talk about your marriage, it clicked,” he said, stroking his hand over my thigh. “I knew it wasn’t that you didn’t want sex, but that you’d had a lousy time of it. Then I started thinking how good I could make it for you, and I had to leave the damned multi-purpose room because I was getting so jacked up. And when you walked into my office, looking like a princess and holding that plate of sugar cookies… well, all bets were off. I was going in full force. And I was either going to have you or get arrested. There was no middle ground.”
“I was shocked that I responded the way I did,” I admitted. “I’d never thought I’d get so turned on by being ordered around and taken that way. Although if it had been any other man…”
I almost shuddered at the thought. No question that I’d been so turned on because Ben Hunter had been the one seducing me with his raw talk and hot blue eyes.
I leaned my head on his chest and listened to the rhythmic thump of his heart. We were quiet for a few minutes, the cold ocean air drifting in from a partly open window. Dust motes swam in a river of pale sunlight. There was a loose thread on Ben’s T-shirt, and I twisted it around my finger.
“Ben.”
“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can ask me anything.”
Trepidation simmered in my veins. His heartbeat was so strong, so steady. It sounded like it could outlast time itself.
“Have you ever had fantasies about… um, sexual violence?” I asked in a rush.
“You mean like forced sex?” he asked.
I nodded. “Gangbangs, circle jerks, rape. All that stuff.”
He was quiet for a moment, his fingers playing idly with a few strands of my hair.
“It depends,” he finally said. “Rough sex, yes. Degradation, no. Gangbangs and circle jerks, no. The idea of having other men around doesn’t do it for me.”
“BDSM?”
“Not much. I’m always the dominant one, so…” He shrugged. “I don’t need to fantasize about it. I just do it.”
“Like spanking.” I shivered at the memory of how much I’d liked the stinging little spanks he’d given me. “But what about hardcore dungeons and that kind of thing?”
“I’d much rather be dominant in a bedroom than a dungeon,” he replied in amusement.
“But you fantasize about tying women up and doing stuff to them.”
“I like that, yeah, but only if the woman also wants to,” he said. “I’ve never fantasized about anything to do with hitting or blood. I don’t know if it makes it more palatable, but in my rougher fantasies it’s always consensual. Like role-playing, I guess.”
I felt him looking at me. I was still intently twisting his T-shirt thread around my finger.
“Why are you asking?” he said.
A flush heated my cheeks. “Just curious.”
He put his hand against the side of my face and turned my head so I had to look at him.
“Why?” he repeated.
“Oh, I found some stuff on my husband’s computer,” I admitted. “All related to that kind of thing. Of course, he and I never did anything remotely like that, so needless to say I was shocked to discover he was even interested in it.”
Ben had tensed at my mention of Richard, but his voice remained even as he said, “So what did you think of it?”
“I thought it was horrible.”
He looked as if he knew there was more. I averted my gaze from his.
“Then I thought of how incredible it was when you were telling me what to do,” I continued. “Like I didn’t have any control. I didn’t want control. It was such a relief not to have to think or worry or make any decisions. All I had to do was feel. And it just felt so good.”
“That wasn’t the same thing as what you saw on the videos,” Ben said.
“I know. But it was still about control.” I swallowed. “I’m so rigid all the time, Ben. Everything I do… it’s all regimented, like a fucking military schedule. Four-thirty workout, five-thirty breakfast, spa treatments on Monday, the same goddamned salad every day for lunch. Everything is on a timeline or a spreadsheet, from extracurricular activities to PTO committees and vacations. I have every single day planned for the rest of the year. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s no wonder I haven’t bothered improving my sex life. It’s not on the fucking schedule.”
A weird, panicky feeling started brewing inside me.
“I have to make decisions all the time,” I continued. “Every minute of every day. What to put in the kids’ lunches, what to wear, what to make for dinner, if this mother is a better chairperson than that mother, when to schedule play dates, soccer, museum tours, budget meetings. Should I spend money on this or that, when should we go on vacation, where should we go, should the kids take piano or violin, and on and on.
“I know it sounds so stupid and banal… I’m so fortunate to have everything, and it’s not about being ungrateful. I’m just… when we were in your office and I closed and locked the door, I was so relieved, like I’d made a final decision and everythin
g after that was entirely up to you. All I had to do was… surrender.”
And oh, God, how blissful it had been.
I was breathing fast, my skin prickling anew at the memory of that night. Old shame mixed with arousal simmered inside me.
“Maddie. It’s okay.”
I looked at Ben. He was still watching me, his expression gentle.
“It’s not abnormal or unnatural to feel like that,” he said. “You have no reason to be ashamed. You’re incredibly brave to give up sexual control, and I’m honored that you trust me enough to do it. I always want you to tell me what you need, no matter what it is. Whatever you feel or want sexually is no one’s business but ours.”
Ours.
I didn’t dare ask what would happen when we returned to Sweetwater. I couldn’t even fathom an end to this dream-like weekend. I certainly didn’t want it to end. I wanted it to go on and on, an endlessly repeating pattern like galaxies, clouds, mountains. An infinite fractal.
Ben lowered his head to capture my lips with his. He was so gentle and powerful at the same time. I sank into the kiss for a few minutes, letting my body relax against him before I put my hand on his chest.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Need to use the bathroom.”
His mouth lingered on mine as he patted my hip and let me disentangle myself from him. I went to use the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, surprised by my own reflection.
My hair was tousled, my lips were naturally reddened from Ben’s kiss rather than lipstick, and my skin was flushed a pretty pink. I looked totally different from the sleek, perfect Madeline Collins I was every day. Now I looked softer, younger, lighter, somehow more… human.
Our talk dispelled any lingering unease, and we spent the rest of the afternoon playing board games and reading. We took another walk on the beach to watch the sunset before returning to the cottage, where Ben made crab cakes, baked potatoes, and asparagus for dinner.
I sat in the breakfast nook and watched him, loving the way he moved with such easy, masculine grace.
“How many girlfriends have you had?” I asked.