Benevolent

by Leddy Harper

  “Had. What happened to him?” I immediately regretted asking her that. I was sure she didn’t want to talk about it, but the words came out before I could stop them.

  She looked back up at me and I felt a tightness in my chest that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Eden was definitely doing something to me. I wasn’t quite sure yet if it was a good or bad thing. I figured it was bad, but if it was, why did I feel so good around her?

  “He also had a genetic heart defect.”

  “Do you have the same one?” I didn’t want to hear her response, but I needed to. Something about the thought of her having a fatal heart condition terrified me and I didn’t know why. The only thing that made sense was that I never wanted to hear about anyone having some kind of deadly disease.

  Her voice lightened a little as she spoke. “No. He was my adopted brother.”

  “Like you were adopted or he was?” When I first asked if she was still mad at me, I hadn’t expected it to turn out the way it was. I was learning things about her and it interested me. I enjoyed talking to her and listening about her life, the good and the bad.

  “We both were.”

  I wanted to keep listening to her talk, but I didn’t know what else to ask. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about her brother or if it was still painful for her. It sounded painful from the tone of her voice when she spoke about him. I wanted to ask about her being adopted, but figured I’d let her volunteer that information. All there was left to do was sit there and stare at her in the darkness. It wasn’t hard to do.

  “So, since you know why I chose accounting and finance, why did you? What made you want to start Kauffmann Investments?” she asked with a smile. She was changing the subject.

  I was both happy and sad about it. I was glad she was talking, but I didn’t want to talk about myself. I wanted to keep hearing her talk. But at least she was still there. She hadn’t gotten up and walked away yet. So if she wanted to hear about me, I would tell her all she wanted to know.

  “When I was fourteen, I started working at a small hardware store where I grew up. I loved the old man that owned it, Grady Allen. He was such a nice man that would give anyone the shirt off his back. When I was sixteen, he sat me down and told me that he was going to have to let me go. I thought it was something I had done, but he finally broke down and told me he was going to lose the store. He couldn’t afford to keep it open anymore. My job wasn’t what worried me; I knew I’d find another one. It wasn’t like he was paying me very much anyway. It was him losing his store that he had for over forty years that really upset me. So I took all the money I had saved from working and asked my father for a loan. I told him to give me a year to have it all paid back with interest. So, I went to Grady Allen with twenty-five thousand dollars and convinced him to give me a chance to turn his store around. Within six months, he was not only in the black for the first time in five years, but he was making more money than he had in the previous ten years combined. When I turned eighteen, he gave me half-ownership of the store and made me his partner. I didn’t want it, but that’s when he told me to sell my share and start my own company. It was because he knew I had something special. He believed in me. My father sent me to college to learn about management and investments, and the rest is history.”

  “Wow. That’s rather impressive.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  And then she laughed again. It did even more to me in the darkness because it literally surrounded me. Everything in my brain shut down when she laughed. My darkness with Gabi vanished; my stress from work was gone. Everything became better with her laugh.

  “Oh my God, I’m starting to think you’re not joking anymore.”

  “Why would I joke about something like that? I am impressive.”

  “And apparently beautiful,” she added.

  “Glad you think so, too.”

  “It’s nice to hear you laugh,” she commented shyly.

  “Why is that?”

  “You seemed really quiet when I first walked up. Last night you were boisterous, this morning you were… demanding and intimidating. But tonight, you just seemed… I don’t know, quiet.”

  I didn’t know she had noticed. I thought I did a good job at hiding it. Somehow, she saw me. I wondered if maybe she was the first person to see it since it all happened. Or maybe she was just the first person to say anything.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Just a rough day.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Did I? Sometimes I thought I did, but I didn’t really feel like I had anyone to talk to. And there she was, asking me to talk to her. I could have talked to her about it, but I was enjoying my time with her and didn’t want to mess things up by bringing up miscarriages and depression. So I shook my head and said, “No, thank you.”

  She was quiet for a moment before standing up. I didn’t know what she was doing, so I sat there and watched her peer over the banister.

  “You’re not technically my boss until tomorrow morning, right?”

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, so I just agreed and waited for her to continue.

  “I want to go swimming. Jump in with me.”

  “I’m not jumping in. It’s not deep enough there.”

  “Don’t be scared. This will be my first time in the Gulf of Mexico. Don’t you want to be my first?” She was teasing me. She was taunting me. And I felt it in my gym shorts. She was flirting with me again and I had a choice to make. Either play along and hope I didn’t get too close to that invisible line, or fess up about Gabi and go home.

  As I thought about what I should do, I stared at her body. She had thick thighs and her jean shorts hugged them nicely. Thoughts of what they would feel like wrapped around my waist as I was deep inside her flooded me. My eyes moved up to her stomach, which was hidden behind her tank top, but I had seen her enough to know she was small. She had an athlete’s body, so I was sure it was flat and tight. I licked my lips as I thought about trailing my tongue over her abs and up to her breasts. And that’s where my eyes landed next. They were heavier than average but perky. From her cleavage, they didn’t look to be fake—I looked at enough silicone filled jugs as a teenager I think I’m pretty good at telling the difference. I wondered what her nipples looked like. I assumed they were light since she had creamy colored skin, but were they small, large, perfect, inverted, or did they stick out like rocks when she was cold… or horny.

  Yeah… I needed to go home. Staying with her would have been bad news. Trouble. I didn’t need trouble in my life. I had just hired her for Christ’s sake. She would’ve been my employee in less than twelve hours. Not to mention… I didn’t trust myself with her around that invisible line.

  I stood up and watched as she kicked off her flip-flops and climbed over the railing. I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to tell her how unsafe it was. I had all intentions of doing so, but instead, I took off my tennis shoes and socks and joined her on the other side.

  She stared at me wide-eyed, probably reflecting the same expression I had on my face. It was wrong. I shouldn’t have been on that side. I shouldn’t have been seconds away from jumping off a dock in water that was probably too shallow to even be jumping in. But again, she made me stupid.

  “Hey,” she said as she grabbed my hand. “Just know that if you ever want to talk, I am a really good listener.”

  I didn’t even get a chance to respond before she jumped forward, pulling me with her.

  I got to the water and tucked my legs up, not releasing them until I was on my way back up to the surface. It was deeper than I had thought—the tide must’ve been in—and as I stood, the water came to my shoulders. Eden had to have been almost a foot shorter than me, so I knew she wouldn’t have been able to stand.

  Her head pushed through the surface as she took in a lungful of air and grabbed ahold of me. “I can’t swim.” She sounded panicked and out of breath, so I pulled her to me and held her around her waist.

  He
r legs instantly went around me and squeezed. I wished she hadn’t done that, and as soon as she did, she gasped. I knew she felt it; there was no way she couldn’t have. It wasn’t even a full hard-on, but it was enough behind my wet shorts for her to feel it as she was pressed completely up against it. I was mortified, and her silence let me know she was, too.

  “If you can’t swim, why the fuck would you jump in the water?” I asked, hoping to conceal my embarrassment.

  “You said it wasn’t that deep.” She was still out of breath and I didn’t know if it was from the jump or from my erection pressing into her.

  “It’s normally not,” I responded as I walked her back up to the shore.

  We got to where she could reach and she let go. That’s what I had wanted her to do two seconds before that, but once she did, I wished she had held on longer. It had been too long since I had legs wrapped around my waist and I didn’t realize how much I had missed it. I knew it was wrong for wanting it, but damn it, I couldn’t help it.

  We walked back up to the shore in silence. As soon as she turned around, my eyes went straight to her wet tank clinging tightly to her chest. My half hard-on turned in to a full-fledged erection. I tried to rearrange myself, but there was no use. And she noticed. I saw her attention being pulled to my noticeable cock. I hung my head in surrender. Maybe partly guilt, too.

  She walked closer to me and I knew I should’ve stopped her, but I didn’t. I stood there, waiting to see what she was going to do. Her hands came up and held my face. She made me look at her. I didn’t want to at first. I had an internal war going on inside my head. I shouldn’t have been there with her. I should’ve stopped it a long time before then. The words were at the tip of my tongue. I can’t. But they didn’t come out. I wanted to blame it on the lack of physical affection, but that was just a lame excuse douchy cheaters used. I kept telling myself to look away. I kept trying to think of Gabi, but I couldn’t. All I could do was look at Eden. Her lips. Her eyes. No matter how badly I wanted to turn away, it was as if something was holding me there.

  Her fingernails began to scratch at my scruff until I was literally groaning in pain. My balls ached and my cock throbbed. The simple touch of her hands on me had my nerves misfiring on all cylinders. I wanted to reach out and hold her, touch her, but I didn’t. It seemed to be the only restraint that I had in me. I guess it was simply because I couldn’t move.

  Slowly, she pulled my face closer to hers. Inch by painstaking inch until her lips touched mine. They weren’t chapped from too much crying. They were soft and warm. My lips immediately responded to them, but it was short lived. It was the briefest of kisses, but it was enough to put me in a tailspin. My heart hammered in my chest because it knew it was wrong, but the rest of my body buzzed in excitement.

  She pulled back and let go of my face. My head was all over the place, I didn’t even know what was up and what was down. Endorphins lit my body up as if I just got done working out. Adrenaline rushed through me as I watched her turn around and head back to the pier. I followed out of pure desperation. I felt like I was a fucking teenager again.

  When we made it back up to where we left our shoes, I’d had enough of the silence. It was killing me. I was sure it was the silence that ate at my insides, not the guilt, because I was too stupid at that moment to have even felt the guilt.

  She turned around once she reached the end and I was right there. We were chest to chest, both breathing heavily. There were no thoughts in my head. No angel on my shoulder. No tiny voice in the back of my mind. I grabbed her waist and lifted her until she was seated on the railing and I was between her legs. My lips were instantly on hers and her legs wrapped around me as if they belonged there and knew just what to do.

  I licked her bottom lip, tasting the salt from the Gulf mixed with what could have only been her. She reciprocated by opening her mouth and meeting my tongue with hers. Her hands returned to my face and began scratching my facial hair again. I groaned in her mouth and she met it with a breathy moan that made my cock jump. She must’ve felt it because her hips began to tilt into mine. I grew hot all over just thinking about being inside of her. It was a need unlike anything I had ever felt before.

  My hands moved from her waist to her hips, helping her along as she pushed them into me. My fingers extended around to her ass and all I wanted to do was dig my fingertips into it until I left bruises, branding her as mine. I kept one hand there to steady her while I moved the other up into her wet hair. I moved it up the back of her neck to the base of her head. I kneaded her scalp with the tips of my fingers as they settled in for a good hold. Once my palm was holding the back of her head, I fisted my hand, grabbing hold of her hair and tugging at the roots. She opened her mouth and let out the most orgasmic sound I had ever heard. I wondered if that was the way she sounded as she reached an orgasm. My lips moved down her exposed neck, tasting the unique mixture of the Gulf and her again.

  Her hands fell to my chest and began to move down, leaving a trail of fire behind. My skin literally felt like it was on fire everywhere she touched. The closer she got to my waistband, the tighter my balls felt. They pulled in tight to my body and I thought I would explode at any second.

  She was so close to my dick I could almost feel her small fingers wrapped around my shaft. I could almost feel the warmth of her skin as she stroked me up and down. The closer she got, the closer I got. I continued to lick and taste her skin as I imagined what it would feel like to have her hands on me, to be in her, to fuck her, to come with her.

  And then I stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was, but something happened. Either the angel on my shoulder decided it was time to climb on or the voice in my head woke the fuck up, but something happened and I stepped back. She nearly lost her balance for a second before regaining it.

  “I’m so sorry, Eden, I can’t do this. I am with someone.”

  She didn’t even respond. Instead, she hopped off the railing and grabbed her shoes before walking off the pier. No words, just silence as she left me standing there. I wanted to go after her. I wanted to go home. I wanted to stand there and berate myself for my own stupidity.

  I fucking hated myself.

  The house was dark and quiet when I finally walked through the door. Guilt consumed me as I took my first breath of the cold and still air around me. I really hated myself for what I had done. For what I allowed myself to do. I knew it was a bad idea before I even climbed over the railing. I knew being around her was dangerously teetering that line but I went for it anyway. There was something about Eden that made me want to be around her, even when I knew I shouldn’t be. It wouldn’t matter anymore. She probably hated me and I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t show up to work the next morning. I was almost hoping she wouldn’t, but at the same time, the thought of not seeing her killed me. I was fucked. I was a stupid fucking idiot.

  Gabi was asleep when I entered the room, so I quietly made my way into the bathroom to shower and try to clean Eden from my body. I wished I could’ve washed her from my mind as well but knew there was no such way.

  I turned the water on as hot as it would go, almost to the point of burning my skin. I knew that I was doing that as some sort of punishment. But it didn’t matter how guilty I felt about it, my mind still replayed it over and over again. I hated that. I hated myself for not being able to see or think about anything other than her lips on mine, my lips on her skin, her skin against me, or the intense craving I had for wanting to be balls deep in her. My imagination took over as my mind filled with images of spreading her out on the beach. I pictured the way she would sound as I pushed into her for the first time. I imagined the things she’d say as I brought her to ecstasy. I wondered how it would feel as she clung to me, riding out the waves of the orgasm I’d bring her to. And of course, I thought about what it would feel to explode inside of her. What it would feel like to pump the last bits of my come in her warm cunt.

  I was hard again. It was painful, but I couldn’t do anythin
g about it. I couldn’t stroke myself because I knew I would only picture Eden while I did it, and I already had enough guilt weighing on me before I’d climb into bed with Gabi. So I did the only thing I knew to do, I turned the water frigid cold and thought about my parents. I wondered how they were doing. I thought about how long it had been since I last picked up the phone and called them. They loved to travel and I wondered if they were on a trip or at home. Finally, I was able to turn the water off and got out.

  Climbing into bed, I held my breath, hoping to not wake Gabi. But it didn’t work. I heard her inhale deeply and then move closer to me. Her arm went around me, pulling me closer to her. I froze. I didn’t know why, but I froze. I tried to keep her at the forefront of my mind, tried to remember that it was Gabriella that was holding me and not Eden. It wasn’t Eden who was touching me or moving her fingertips softly down my naked chest. It was Gabi who pressed light kisses on my shoulder. And when she pulled herself on top of me, straddling my waist, I had to remind myself that the thighs under my hands weren’t Eden’s thighs. They were soft like Eden’s, but they weren’t as defined as hers.

  “Be with me, Dane,” she pleaded.

  I opened my eyes and looked at her, making sure I was lucid enough to know what I was doing. I had to look at her to make sure it was Gabi. She hadn’t spoken to me like that in such a long time; I had to look at her to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.

  It was a bad idea, but I was a man and couldn’t resist. I was instantly hard again before I even flipped her over on her back and settled between her bare legs. She must’ve prepared for this because as my hands slipped up her thighs, I realized she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Gabi always wore underwear to bed; she said it made her feel gross if she didn’t. I used to beg her to go without a few times, but she never did. So when I felt her bare cunt, I knew it was all planned. I was only further convinced when I realized she was also shaven bare there, too. She hadn’t shaved down there in months, so the fact that she had kind of surprised me. My dick responded well to it, too.