What Comes After Dessert

by Ren Benton

  “The Stinson brothers went to the Jersey Shore for spring break, caught a show, and uploaded some video to the Internet. Anybody who didn’t find out that way heard it from my mother. Preemptive damage control. It wasn’t her fault I turned out that way. Cue the wringing hands, weeping in distress, sopping up the condolences, et cetera.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “He hasn’t said anything.” She punished her lower lip with her teeth. “I like to think it’s because he still doesn’t know, not because I’ve caused him so much disgust and shame he’s forced to live in denial.”

  He covered her restless hand with his. “Your dad doesn’t miss much, and he loves you.”

  Her chin dipped. “It’s worse when you love the disappointment.”

  He spent an entire day with her dad. Nothing the man said suggested he was anything other than the proudest papa in the world. She was harder on herself than Wayne would ever be. “How long did you keep it from him? Assuming he does know by now.”

  “No one here knew for maybe six years.”

  “Jesus, Tally. How did you keep it quiet?”

  The look she gave him said, You poor, naive child.

  She’d hidden being beaten from everyone, including a doting father who lived under the same roof. Keeping a secret like her job while living nearly two thousand miles away would be a breeze in comparison.

  “I didn’t even make an effort to hide. I just didn’t brag about it. When I had no intention of ever coming back here, I didn’t care who knew or what they thought. Hell, if it livened up this place for five minutes, I was performing a public service.”

  “But then you had to come back for your dad.”

  “Well, I had to come back. And suddenly, public opinion in Nowheresville became relevant. Jobs were scarcer than ever, but they were nonexistent for me. The money situation was dire to the point I went to Stella to beg for food, expecting her to toss me out before I caused a health code violation.”

  “I’d have thought you met Stella once or twice in the eighteen years you lived here.”

  “I met everybody. Your mom, for instance.”

  His mother’s hostility slapped at him without even being directed his way. Facing it from every direction had to have further damaged Tally’s faith in humanity, already tattered by years of her mother’s abuse. Thank god for Stella. “She didn’t jump on the dogpile.”

  “She said she respected a girl who did whatever it took to survive. She was going for surgery and needed someone to run things who would do whatever it took to ‘get shit done.’ Then they messed up her surgery and it became a permanent thing.”

  “Did she mean for you to work fourteen-hour days seven days a week?”

  She lifted one narrow shoulder. “Whatever it takes to get shit done. I think she thought giving away free food would make me more popular.”

  When your kids didn’t have enough to eat, the woman who supplied it ought to be your hero. “Why hasn’t it?”

  “The only thing worse than accepting charity is accepting charity from a whore.”

  Fucking ingrates. “Not everybody is a judgmental asshole.”

  She looked out the side window. “Fewer people than I thought, apparently. But I can count on one hand the days somebody hasn’t mentioned it. Do me a favor and streak down Main Street so they have something else to talk about.”

  “I’ve done that four times since I’ve been back. Nobody found it gossip-worthy.”

  “If I’d seen it, I would speak of nothing else. Ever.”

  “Thank you. That’s a balm to my fragile ego.”

  “Is your delicate butterfly wing of an ego taking me anywhere in particular?”

  “I found a ring of keys. We’re going to see what we can unlock.”

  Chapter 20

  Tally took the wheel while Ben plied a padlocked gate with an assortment of keys. She tipped her head out the open window. “You know, even if you have a key, this is trespassing.”

  “I have an agreement with the law.” The headlights made a spectacle of the misdeed while he tried another key. “Officer Beaver won’t hold me in Westard one second longer than necessary.”

  “Worst law enforcement officer ever.”

  “That’s my favorite thing about him.”

  Getting run out of town was probably the whole point of this crime spree. His mom hadn’t extended a warm welcome, and taking a breather from his domestic strife put him in the company of an aging stripper with a bad attitude.

  Of course he’d been nice about her career choice. Wow, that’s really interesting. What’s that like? Historically, polite interest had been followed by either Well, it’s getting late, I should be going and never speak to you again or How about a private show, baby?

  Only Ben would carry on as if nothing had changed and he wasn’t appalled or angry that less than a month after the last time she wouldn’t let him see her naked, she’d been on a stage wearing nothing but seven-inch heels and a thong that provided less coverage than a Band-Aid, simulating a sex act with her boobs and a pole.

  Bless his big, soft heart for refusing to believe she was one of the girls who paid the guy monitoring the cameras to look the other way while she turned tricks in the VIP room. Her financial statement must have given it away — there wasn’t much point resorting to prostitution if it didn’t pay well enough to get her off the bus.

  But damn his mother for making her be the one to tell him.

  Janine Fielder was probably sharpening her pitchfork even as her pride and joy committed a misdemeanor. Her son had dodged a bullet twelve years ago by escaping a relationship with a budding stripper, only to fall back into the slut’s clutches now that he had gold to dig. Cue the nightmares involving bikini weddings and divorces with division of assets and alimony that reduced the golden boy to a tin man.

  And damn her own mouth for not staying shut. She should have filled it with pizza instead of reciting an itemized list of her sins. Yes, Ben had to be protected from his reckless choices, but he was leaving in a few days. A little ignorance wouldn’t have endangered him for that short span of time.

  The chain rattled. The gate swung wide. Ben bowed and waved her through the opening. She guided the car past the point of no return and waited while he closed the gate and looped the chain.

  He dropped into the passenger seat. “Onward, Jeeves.”

  Now that he wasn’t driving, he helped himself to another slice of pizza.

  The car bounced along a rutted smudge that had been a path before bumper-high grass and weeds conspired to overwhelm it. The car crept forward without the pressure of her foot on the gas pedal, in no rush to encounter the disaster waiting just out of sight. “Bet you the last slice we get at least two flats and have to walk home.”

  “Two flats is pessimistic to the extreme. I like my odds. You’re on.”

  She’d forgotten his immunity to catastrophe would counteract her magnetic attraction to it. Maybe they’d meet in the middle — he’d get the pizza, and she’d get to watch his muscles flex while he changed one flat tire.

  The headlights washed over a long, low building that extended over a silver sheen of moonlit water.

  Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Oh.”

  Marry me, Tally.

  “I didn’t know it would end up here.” He sounded like he was having as much trouble breathing as she was.

  Was he hot all over, too? Sticky after stumbling through a spiderweb of memory?

  “I need a swim.” She tossed the keys at him and got out of the car, where there still wasn’t enough air to breathe.

  Somewhere on the opposite side of the lake was an ill-conceived and short-lived attempt to capitalize on the tourist allure of tiny midwestern towns where strangers were gawked at like an extraterrestrial visitation for lack of any better form of entertainment. Ben worked part-time at the lodge while it lasted. In the absence of guests, he had a lot of free time on his hands, much of which he spent with Tall
y’s hands on him. They spent a lot of time in this boathouse.

  The last time they’d been together had been in this boathouse.

  Marry me, Tally.

  Ben. No.

  She threw her shoes, shirt, and jeans in the car and waded into the lake in her bra and panties. The tepid, cloying water did nothing to cool her overheated skin or make her feel cleaner.

  Hands gliding over her hips pushed the heat lower, changing the tone of the discomfort. He was less tentative than the last time they were here, no longer waiting for her to give permission for every touch. He knew what he wanted, assumed her answer now would be yes, so didn’t waste time asking.

  No was a strong woman’s answer, the answer of a woman who weighed the consequences, dictated her own terms, and surrendered nothing she wasn’t willing to lose.

  Tally hadn’t been strong since the last time she was here, the last time she said no to him. Since then, she’d done nothing but give away bits of herself, her body, her dignity. What consequences? What terms? Now, she had nothing left to lose by being weak.

  Yes. I’m tired of all this nothing. Take it, please.

  She turned to face him, and his grip shifted to draw her tight against his body. A button pressed into her belly. “You’re still wearing pants.”

  “I needed a pocket.”

  Such a considerate boy. “You could have just worn the condom.”

  “I didn’t want to seem presumptuous.”

  Even when he didn’t ask, he would never demand, never push, never call her a cocktease if she wasn’t on board with everything he wanted. If she shoved him away, he would go. He had always let her do whatever she wanted. True, a lot of what she wanted involved pleasing him with her mouth and hands, but it was always in her control, he was always in her control, when the rest of her life had been directed by a tyrant.

  If she’d had more experience making her own decisions, maybe she could have stopped him from thinking about ruining his future before she had to hurt him. It wouldn’t have saved her heart when it was over, but he didn’t deserve to be bruised when he walked away from her.

  She couldn’t keep him this time, either. She knew that. He was just passing through. Because there was no chance of him staying, her reasons for depriving herself of the pleasure he’d always been willing to give her no longer applied. For a little while, a day or two, she could have all of him.

  Minutes earlier, this had been the last place she wanted to be. Now, she recognized the opportunity to exorcize the ghost of bad endings, at least for Ben.

  It was his turn to leave her behind.

  His chin scratched against her lips because of his tendency to run out of the house in the morning without shaving, but she liked that he had things on his mind other than making his face even more gorgeous. She liked that the kiss stung her lips after it was over, liked that it marked her.

  She slipped out of his hands and swam to the boathouse, ducking under the bird netting hanging from the door and coming up in pitch blackness. The place stank of mold and animal. Her head whipped toward a rustle to her left, and she made out a catlike shape as it sprang up and out of a broken window. That eased her mind a bit about the other inhabitants scurrying around. The cat wouldn’t be hanging around if there weren’t things to eat, but between being eaten and fear thereof, the things wouldn’t be thick on the ground.

  The ambience wasn’t what it used to be, but neither was the boy breaking the surface of the water behind her.

  Before his eyes adjusted to the dark, she did the unflattering business of levering herself out of the water, flopping onto the wooden platform with the grace of a trained walrus. She twisted around to perch on the edge with her feet dangling in the water.

  Ben came up between her knees, startling a gasp out of her. She slapped a hand against his chest to stop any more surprise moves. “How can you see anything?”

  “You’re luminous.”

  “I’ve spent every daylight hour for the past two years in the bakery. Of course I’m the color of something that lives under a log. Calling me ‘luminous’ is dangerously close to tactful.”

  “Sorry. You look like a sexy grub.”

  She squeezed his ribs between her thighs. “That’s more like it.”

  “I aim to please.” His mouth explored the skin he could reach. Her ribs. Her belly. “You taste like chicken.”

  She needed that goofiness to make sure she didn’t take him too seriously. She urged him up with a tug on his dripping hair. Oh, that hair was a trap. Many, many times, she’d responded to its cries to be straightened, smoothed, tidied, only to find her fingers snared for hours — and she’d fallen for its trickery again.

  He heaved himself out of the water, flexing biceps and rippling pectorals selected for favor by the meager light leaking through the window. All that male upper body strength gave her the urge to lie back and let him cover her, but that wasn’t how the scene played out the last time they were here.

  She pushed him to the side, down onto his back, and straddled him.

  “It’s all coming back to me now. You wore a red one-piece swimsuit. Very Baywatch.” Her legs formed a comfy resting place for his hands. “You wouldn’t even slide down a strap.”

  At the time, she’d had an eggplant-colored bruise on one breast following a pinch from her mother as punishment for one of her infinite shortcomings. He couldn’t have overlooked it, and she didn’t want him thinking about that when he looked at her naked.

  That wasn’t among the flaws she worried about him seeing now. She twisted her arms behind her back, unhooked her bra, and pulled the straps down her arms. The soggy fabric fell to the planks with a wet slap.

  Too late, she remembered he knew she was a professional and would expect more of a performance. Dammit, was there a protocol for do-overs?

  “Do you want me to keep my hands behind my head this time?”

  The thumbs rubbing little circles on her inner thighs made a persuasive argument in favor of hands-on and distracted her from her lousy showmanship. The hard ridge of his cock was centered between her legs. She could grind her hips just like this until they both came, the same not-quite sex they’d made do with the last time they were here, when she’d forbidden him to touch her because she knew it would be too easy to convince her to say yes to anything, and she knew they were nearing the end.

  Marry me, Tally.

  Ben. No. You’re going to school, and I’m—

  Go to New York. I wouldn’t try to stop you from pursuing your dream. We’ll have a long engagement. I’ve loved you from afar my whole life. I can do it another four years.

  If he’d touched her, kissed her, made her soft before asking, she would have said yes and ruined his life, or the boy who never took longer than recess to move on would have forgotten all about his betrothed the minute he found himself surrounded by college girls who were going to be doctors and engineers and teachers and otherwise worthwhile human beings — the kind of girl he was meant to be with, not a stripper with a high-school education and no plan E.

  This time, she could soften. He was using her to kill time on a dull vacation, nothing more. He wouldn’t ask for anything but touching privileges, and her skin clamored for permission to be granted. “I don’t want to repeat history. I want you to touch me. I want you in me.”

  His hands slid around the outside of her thighs, curved around her hips. He used his firm grip on her ass to pull himself sitting and reduce the layers of fabric between them to molten atoms.

  Before he changed their positions further, she laid a stalling hand in the center of his chest, shielding the heart thudding beneath her fingers. “Like this.”

  If she couldn’t make it work this way, he could take a crack at it however he wanted, but she wasn’t going to think about failure right now with a beautiful man between her legs, frictionless fingers gliding over wet skin, lips and tongue and teeth taking turns drawing the fire smoldering deep within her to the surface.

 
She couldn’t put her mouth anywhere but his forehead in this position, though, which wasn’t going to work. She clutched at his arms. “Wait, I can—”

  “Relax. You can relax, Tal.” He guided her stiff hands behind her back. “I’ve had your hands all over me. Your mouth. I never had this. Let me have this. Please.”

  She braced her hands on his knees and tried to relax and enjoy the touching she’d said she wanted, but it was the same problem as last time, every time. If she wasn’t allowed to distract him from what she wanted to hide, what was he seeing? What was he thinking?

  His breath filled the hollow of her throat. “You need to be doing something, don’t you?”

  Her fingers tightened on wet denim-covered legs. Why did he have to see so damn much? He left her nowhere to hide but behind lies. “It’s fine.”

  “No bullshit.”

  She pressed her face into the top of his head, cooling her stinging eyelids against his wet hair. “Doing something would help.”

  “Then do something. Do whatever you want. I’m dying to have you do anything to me.”

  She tangled her fingers in his hair and tipped his face up so she could kiss his forehead, the crease arcing down from the corner of his nose, his perfect, soft lips.

  He took his time snacking on her like that cookie he’d taken an eternity to consume. When he was done, there would be nothing left of her but a trace of sugar on his lips.

  His fingers hooked in the crotch of her panties. One knuckle slid along her cleft, encountering no resistance. He sighed against her mouth. “If you’d let me touch you the last time we were here, would you have been this wet?”

  “Every time. I didn’t stop you because I didn’t want you.” She’d wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone else.

  She’d never wanted anyone else, period.

  “I would have taken care of you, no matter what happened.”

  Of course he would have taken care of her. Given up college. Worked some local dead-end job until it went extinct. He’d be looking at her now over a mountain of overdue bills and four screaming kids, thinking, You’re not worth the life I gave up.