by Cora Black
Ben didn’t say anything. Some part of Charlotte wanted to wring his neck for being so goddamned stubborn.
“You know, based on the way Uncle Wally talked about you, I expected to see you get in tons of fights and go off to fuck random girls. But there was none of that.”
“Uncle Wally doesn’t know anything,” Ben spat out. “He’s just an old man.”
Charlotte bit her lip, wondering how to proceed. “Maybe. But he seems to really love you, spending so much money to help you out.”
“He doesn’t—” Ben started, his voice loud and harsh, but when he spoke again his tone was low and controlled, even though his anger was still apparent. “It’s not about love. He knows he’s getting on and he wants someone he trusts to take the crown. Every biker has an expiration date.”
“So you think he trusts you?” Charlotte asked, feeling skeptical.
“No, but then, that’s what you’re here for,” Ben replied before sucking hard on his cigarette, hard enough that he coughed a little. “Make me into a good little soldier, make me lead the way Wally would.”
Charlotte nodded slowly. He had a point. “That’s what he hired me for, yes,” Charlotte admitted. “But it’s not what I’m here for. I have my own objectives.”
“And what are those?” Ben asked, turning finally to stare back at her.
“I want to see you stop hurting yourself. I want to see you do things that make you happy.” Charlotte stared back at him as hard as she could, trying not to blink to show how serious she was about it, how much she meant every word.
“Well, good luck with that,” Ben said, turning back away from her. Charlotte fumed. She wasn’t going to let this go.
“I do have pretty good luck, actually. And I think I know what can make you happy, if you’re interested.”
Ben turned back to her, his jaw set as hard as stone. “Yeah, go ahead, make me laugh.”
“The club,” Charlotte said. “I saw you today, making the deals, talking to the bikers. You’re really good at it. You’re good at leading. You’re good at making people do what you want.”
“I’m good at a lot of shit,” Ben replied gruffly, putting out his cigarette before immediately lighting another one.
“Sure, I bet you are,” Charlotte admitted. “But you’re appreciated here, even after a year of beating people up physically and emotionally. The club loves you, and some part of you loves it back.”
Ben got to his feet, and for a second Charlotte was afraid she was going to have to chase him down the stairs. Instead, he started pacing around the room. Charlotte got to her feet and followed his path, letting her cigarette hang between her fingers. “It’s true,” she said. “It loves you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ben said, moving faster around the room. “I don’t love this place. I don’t love anything.”
“I think we both know that’s not true,” Charlotte said in a small voice. Suddenly, Ben froze and turned on his heel, facing Charlotte.
“You wanna know what I think?” Ben said in between long puffs of his cigarette. Charlotte stared at him, even though her heart picked up its pace, pounding audibly in her ears. “I don’t think you do this job because you like to help people.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I think you do it because you like being close to it. All that risk. All that trouble. You like having a taste of it without having to dive in yourself. But it’s getting old, isn’t it? Just sitting on the sidelines?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Charlotte lied, shifting from one foot to the other.
Ben leaned in closer, close enough so that the smoke from his last puff hit her face. “You enjoy it. And not because it’s fulfilling or any bullshit like that. You want to be close to the danger. It’s your drug.”
Charlotte’s brow furrowed, but after a second she relaxed her face and stared up at Ben as calmly as she could. “You could be right. You probably are. And you know what? That doesn’t scare me. At all. That’s the difference between me and you.”
Ben laughed, a harsh, hard sound, nothing like his sweet chuckles when they were in bed together. “You think I’m fucking scared? Scared of what?”
Charlotte shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say a lot of things. Staying, going. Leading, following. Being alone forever, being with someone.”
“I’m not scared,” Ben argued, his cheeks reddening. “I’m not scared.”
Charlotte leaned in closer, mere centimeters away from his lips. “Prove it.”
Ben started walking forward, invading her personal bubble and causing her to back up until she hit a wall. “What do you want?” he whispered, his head nudging against hers gently. He dipped his head to press his lips against her neck, his mouth sliding along her pulsing veins. “What do you want from me?”
Charlotte swallowed heavily, trying to summon up the courage she needed to say what she had to say. “I want you to tell the truth.”
Ben’s head snapped back up, his eyes still a little cloudy from lust. “What?”
“I want you to stop lying,” she whispered, trembling under his hands. “If you’re really not scared, stop lying.”
***
Ben’s hands fell off her body and hung limp and useless by his sides, but he didn’t step back from her. Their breath mingled together. It didn’t feel as sexy as it felt a few seconds earlier. Instead, he felt cold, distant from her, like the only reason he wasn’t running across the room was because he was out of energy.
“I’m not— It’s not about being scared,” he finally said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“So you admit it?” Charlotte prodded him. “You are lying about something? Maybe about how much you hate this club. Maybe about how you don’t want to be a leader.”
“Okay, fine, why don’t you just tell me what you think and I’ll be quiet?” Ben shot back, irritated.
But Charlotte didn’t stand down. “You say you don’t want this. That you just want to get on your bike and leave. But I know you well enough now to know that if you really wanted that, you’d have done it by now. Otherwise, what are you waiting for? Uncle Wally to keel over and die so you don’t have to disappoint him? No. No, I don’t think so. I think you can’t bring yourself to leave.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Ben conceded, finally stepping a foot away. He couldn’t go any farther than that; she was like a magnet, pulling him in. “Maybe I can’t leave. But that’s not the same thing as not wanting to leave.”
“True,” Charlotte reasoned. “They’re not necessarily the same. But have you ever stopped to consider that your body refuses to leave this place because it knows something your mind doesn’t?”
Ben didn’t say anything. He had to bite back a mean remark about how she just dove right back into psychobabble; but again, he didn’t have the energy to put up a front right now, not when all he wanted to do was lie down and pretend he didn’t exist.
“Maybe your body knows better than you do. I know mine does,” Charlotte said in a low voice, her eyes dropping down to the floor while her cheeks reddened. “My body knows things that I don’t. Like how much I want you.”
Ben found himself stepping forward again, putting a hand under her chin to force her to look up. “Yeah? How bad?”
Charlotte shook her head. “That’s not the point. I’m saying… I think you can’t leave because some part of you, no matter how deeply buried, knows that you’re meant to do this. You were born to do this. You know how many people wish they had a purpose to their lives? A real purpose, something to live for?”
Ben’s hand dropped again. “Why would I want to live for this shitpile?”
She shook her head. He was getting all the answers wrong tonight. “You might not like the club how it is right now, but that’s because you’re not in charge of it. If you were, it could be whatever you wanted. You have the power to lead people, to make them do what you want, to make them better than they were before. I’ve felt it. I feel it
,” she whispered.
“You’re wrong,” Ben said. “You don’t know it yet, but you’ll see. If you bother sticking around, you’ll see.”
Charlotte stepped forward off the wall, then, getting into his space and staring up at him with fire in her eyes. “Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”
Ben felt his heart jump in his chest, and that sensation was so terrifying, so oddly familiar, that he had to do something to block it out, to distract himself. So he slammed her back against the wall and pushed their mouths together, biting down on her bottom lip until she moaned into his mouth. “You’re a fucking… You’re so fucking...” Ben muttered into her mouth, his hands coming up to rub her breasts over her dress.
“You, too,” she murmured back as her hands pressed against the muscles of his back, forcing him closer, deeper into her body.
Ben didn’t have the patience to fuck around this time. He needed to be inside of her. He needed to switch his brain off and sink deep into the sweet abyss of her cunt, and just turn off everything else in his body but the parts of him that could touch her. He yanked her sleeves down off her shoulders and pulled her arms through, leaving her dress clinging to the tops of her breasts. Ben leaned down and licked her cleavage, biting down on the soft tissue and making her cry out in what was probably a mixture of pleasure and pain. Some part of him wondered if he should slow down, if he should be gentle, if she wasn’t able to handle it.
But the other part of him, the stronger voice in his head, insisted, Trust her. Trust her. So he did.
Ben tugged on her dress till it dropped to the floor and laughed breathlessly when he saw that she wasn’t wearing a bra. How did he go all day staring at her and miss that? Ben lowered his head and Charlotte moaned in anticipation, knocking her head back on the wall of the loft even before his mouth touched her nipples. He pulled one of the sensitive little nubs inside his mouth, raking his teeth over it and sucking hard, probably hard enough to leave a deep mark there. Good, he thought to himself. Fucking good. She should know who she belongs to.
Her hands came up and tangled into his hair, tangling it up between her fingers. He growled at the sensation, loving the feeling of her nails scraping against his scalp. He moved to the other nipple and gave it the same treatment, tugging and biting at it until she squealed too loudly. God, everyone down there in the club knows what’s going on. The thought only turned him on more, the whole club knowing that he had this sexy smart woman in his bed. I haven’t fucked her in a bed yet, he noted. I should get on that.
But not today. He didn’t have time for that today, not when his loins were practically burning for her. Ben traveled back up to her neck and bit down on her clavicle and her tendons, all the sweet fragile bones right under her skin. “I’m gonna fuck you against the wall,” he grunted against her skin.
Charlotte moaned out weakly and grabbed onto his shoulders, nails digging into his skin. “Please. Please.”
“Please what?” Ben demanded. It felt safer this way, when they weren’t talking about him, when they were focused on her and what she wanted. He wanted to give her everything, absolutely everything she wanted. The thought scared him, made him feel like his heart was up in his throat. But he couldn’t deny it. I want to give you everything, he thought as he bit harder onto her neck.
“Please… Take off your clothes,” she finally whispered, gasping for air as she dug her fingers into every available inch of his skin.
“Yeah? You want me to?” Ben asked, a teasing tone to his voice.
“Yes, I— I need it. I need you. Please.”
She sounded so desperate, and it made Ben even harder. He pressed his erection against her, loving the little breathless moan she offered in response. Ben stepped an inch away from her, making her drop her hands from his shoulders so he could shrug out of his shirt. He set about unbuttoning his pants and pushing them to the ground after fishing a condom out of his pocket. He knew there was a good reason for always carrying them around.
Charlotte’s hands wound back around him, digging their way into his boxers and squeezing the flesh of his ass. Ben stepped forward and grinded against her clothed pussy, pushing their crotches together and relishing in the friction. Ben groaned, even from this indirect touching. It felt so fucking good, being this close to her, touching her like this. He never wanted to stop.
But Charlotte must have gotten impatient, because she finally grunted and shoved his boxers down to his knees. Then she moved her hands back around to push her own underwear down. “Fucking fuck me already,” she groaned before attacking his mouth, latching onto his lips with her teeth.
Ben blindly fumbled with the condom, tearing his mouth away from Charlotte for a second to make sure it wasn’t broken and slipping it onto his cock before stepping forward again, brushing his covered cock against her bare cunt. Oh, God. She was so fucking wet already. But that didn’t stop him from teasing her a little.
Ben dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around her legs for balance as he shoved his mouth into her cunt, already dripping for him. He immediately started sucking as hard as he could, taking her most sensitive red flesh into his mouth before slipping his tongue in between her lips, making her squeal out again. She was so easily surprised, so easily pleased. He loved it, how sensitive she was. He ran his hands over her thick, full, muscular thighs, loving how goosebumps rose up in the wake of his fingers. Ben flattened his tongue and licked up and down, up and down, making her cry out and clutch his head. After doing this for a few more moments, Ben latched onto her clit, flicking his tongue up and down, back and forth, every direction possible. He wanted to make her come before getting inside her, but he also really fucking wanted to fuck her already, so he needed to make quick work of her cunt.
He quickly stuck two fingers into her hole, shallowly fucking them in and out, with Charlotte moaning quietly at every push and pull. At the same time, he hardened his tongue to a stiff point and flicked it back and forth over her clit, moving in fast circles that had her jolting forward into his mouth. Her hips pushed back and forth between the wall and his face. With his free hand, Ben grabbed her bare ass, driving his nails into the sweet flesh. When she moved forward into his mouth and left extra space between the wall and her body, he reached back and slapped her ass, hard, hard enough that the noise reverberated around the room. When Charlotte started moaning louder, Ben moved his tongue faster and pressed down harder.
“Fuck! Fuck!” Charlotte grunted out, harshly fisting her fingers into his hair and pulling hard.
Ben pulled his hand back from her ass to use his other thumb on her lips, pushing them up and down. Between his fingers and his mouth, he was moving her clit in two directions at once, and Charlotte’s legs started trembling around his head.
“Shit, shit, I’m gonna—I gotta fucking…” Charlotte stuttered out, yanking harder on his hair. It hurt, but Ben couldn’t bring himself to care, not when Charlotte’s skin was heating up under his touch and more and more of her sweet fluids were leaking out onto his fingers.
“Baby, baby, baby!” she cried out, slapping against his shoulder.
“Yeah, baby? Yeah?” Ben encouraged her, whispering the words into her cunt.
“Please! Please!” she yelled, thrusting her hips forward into his mouth.
Ben sped up again, going as fast as he possibly could, until the muscles of his fingers cramped up, but he powered through it, jerking her cunt up and down and licking at her clit until she screamed.
He latched his lips onto her clit and sucked as hard as possible, making her shrill even louder and higher, her legs shaking until she shoved his head away from her cunt, mere seconds before she slipped down the wall.
Ben laughed, using one hand to rub reassuringly at Charlotte’s knees while using the other to wipe his mouth and chin. “You okay?”
Charlotte just giggled in response, sounding like a giddy teenage girl. It made Ben’s chest feel warm and full, like he’d just eaten a perfect meal. I guess I have, he t
hought, licking his lips to taste the remainder of Charlotte’s juices.
“You wanna keep going?” Ben asked, his fingers dancing along her kneecap.
Charlotte was still gasping for air, but she nodded. After a few moments, she finally had the air enough to speak and said, “Just… give me a minute.”
Ben leaned over her and kissed her hairline, tasting her sweet sweat. “Mm-hmm,” he answered, when really he wanted to shove into her right then and there, still completely hard in between his legs.
“I just—I just…” she trailed off, her tongue coming out to lick at her lips. “Need a second. But I. I need more.”
“I’ll give you more, baby,” Ben said, threading his fingers through her sweaty hair. “That’s what you’re here for, right? I’m not gonna deny you good fucking.”