Uncommon Passion

by Anne Calhoun

  “Think you’ve got what it takes?”

  Ben just shrugged as he handed a bill to the man and hefted several of the guns, which were attached to the stand with extendable cords. Seemingly unaware that the crowd lingered to watch another showdown, he examined the sights, then chose his gun and nodded at the barker. Ducks fell backward but he missed as many as he hit.

  “Not bad, not bad,” the barker consoled as he offered Rachel a choice of key chains.

  “Let’s go again,” Ben said, extending another bill. The barker’s eyes widened ever so slightly at the shark smile, but he took Ben’s money and reset the game. Ben squared up, feet braced, and this time when the timer dinged, he snapped the gun to his shoulder. It was as if everything about him clicked together perfectly, muscle and bone and weapon and deadly intention. He methodically mowed down ducks, moving from the right hand side of the game to the left, eventually taking targets the moment they emerged from the protective screen. When the buzzer signaled the end of the game, Rachel laughed out loud.

  Ben lowered the gun in a slightly shocked silence. “You can keep the key chain,” he said casually to the barker. “Pick your bear, darlin’.”

  Rachel examined all the bears carefully, then pointed. “That one.” The bear she chose had mismatched fur and dark brown eyes. The barker hooked the bear and handed it across the counter to Rachel.

  “You were sneaky,” she commented as they made their way through the crowd to the end of the pier. “You let him think you were just like anyone else,” she said.

  “He knew what I was,” Ben said. “Games like that depend on the barker being able to read the players. I helped him, too. Other guys will throw down their money thinking they can do the same thing.”

  They finished the night on the Ferris wheel, Bear sitting on Rachel’s lap. When the wheel stopped with their car at the top, Rachel twisted around to look over her shoulder. Wave crests gleamed atop the shadowy water behind them, and the Pleasure Pier stretched out in front of them, the noise dampened by height and distance. She turned back to find Ben watching her take everything in.

  He kissed her, his mouth the only steady thing in the gently rocking car. “Come home with me,” he murmured against her lips. “Come home with me, Rachel.”

  The heat and promise in his voice sent her stomach into a slow roll, igniting a fire deep inside. “For more pleasure,” she said seriously.

  “Yes.” Something unreadable glinting in his blue eyes. “For more pleasure.”

  When the ride ended they wove through the crowds down the pier and caught the shuttle back to the parking lot. He paused by the truck’s passenger door and pressed her into the metal, his hard body pinning her to the equally hard metal for long, slow kisses. She climbed inside and fastened her seat belt, waiting until Ben navigated them out of the parking lot and onto the city streets before reaching across to flatten her hand against the bulge in his jeans. Rigid heat pulsed through the denim and she turned her wrist to cup him. He shifted under her hand and shot her a glance. When they pulled into his parking lot he killed the engine, then unfastened her seat belt and dragged her across the console to sprawl in his lap. As he undid the buttons on her blouse he lifted his chin, his mouth open, half invitation, half command to kiss him.

  That was her delight, her private, secret pleasure, the way heat and longing coursed through her when her mouth met his. She brushed her lips back and forth across his, the light touch striking sparks until he lifted his head just enough to sweep his tongue inside. A firm pinch to her nipples at the same time made her gasp and try to spread her legs, but she didn’t have room.

  With a muffled curse Ben fumbled for the door handle. Night air and sounds rushed in, crickets chirping, the rise and fall of canned laughter from someone’s television set, the salt-air scent permeating Galveston. “Out,” he said.

  She tumbled from the truck, her flat sandals skidding on the step, only Ben’s hand around her upper arm keeping her upright. The next thing she knew, her back was to the wall by the steps leading up to Ben’s apartment, the strain of his day, the night, and maybe something else in his rough kiss. His hand scudded up her thigh, lifting and opening her to accept the hard thrust of his shaft.

  “Ben,” she gasped.

  “Sometimes you want it right-the-fuck-now,” he growled into her ear. “Against the wall now.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  A rough chuckle, somehow both lazy and arrogant as his gaze searched hers, daring and taunting all at once. Something spurred her to duck under his confining arm but he caught her before she was halfway up the stairs. Arms outstretched, she went down hard on one knee, then he spun her onto her back and crawled up her body to pin her with mouth and hips.

  It was like pouring gasoline on flickering flames. Heat exploded inside her, pulsing out through her skin, eddying from her throat on a long, low moan. She braced both hands against his collarbone and shoved, popping open the top snaps on his western shirt, but he didn’t move, didn’t even pretend to ease up. The edges of the stairs bit into her shoulder blades, lower back, and thighs. Ben had one hand braced beside her head. With the other he tugged at her skirt again.

  It was wild. Insane. Thrilling.

  “Right the fuck now, Rachel,” he said.

  She heard the command in his low, dark tone, heard it, and decided not to obey. Maybe he was serious, maybe he wasn’t, but the heat of the chase, of being prey to his hunter, sent jagged lightning cracking deep in her belly. She knocked him off balance with a sharp jab to his braced elbow and a knee to the vicinity of his hip, and scrabbled backward. When she cleared the landing she got to her feet and dashed not down the hall to the other stairway that exited into the green space between buildings, but up again.

  He caught her again on the stairs. This time he didn’t drag her down to the floor but instead shoved her up against the wall. She expected him to try and trap her hands, but he let her struggle to move him while he worked his fingers into the thick knot of hair at her nape. Hairpins pinged to the steps as his fingers tightened, pulling her head back, back, until her throat was exposed and her jaw opened.

  “Shh,” he said, low and rough.

  Her scalp stung until she stopped struggling. When she went limp his grip loosened just enough to let her attention focus on the steady progress of his hand up her leg again, bringing with it an air of vulnerability she’d never felt before. Her breathing shallowed as so many sensations registered in her awareness. His bare chest against hers. The unusual angle of her neck, and his breath, hot and slow against the unprotected skin. He raked his teeth over her pulse, a pure animal move that sent a shudder through her body. She twisted her head but he released neither her hair nor her hip, where his hand slid under her panties, the fingers delicately stroking her soft folds.

  He could make her want to open to him, she realized. He could force her or he could seduce her. Or, he could do both. He could hold her, make her surrender to seduction.

  His shaft was an iron rod against her hip but his fingers were so, so gentle as he parted the folds. Rachel shuddered again, involuntarily opening to him, her clitoris awake and pulsing in anticipation of his touch. But he didn’t touch her there, simply circled his finger just inside her opening. The soft flesh pulsed and she shifted, trying to draw him in, increase the stimulation.

  A car door slammed, followed by two more. Rachel froze, eyes wide open and staring into Ben’s. Voices, raucous laughter underscored by giggles, and the footsteps sounded like an entire herd of people were making their way up the stairs.

  “Ben,” she gasped.

  He just looked at her, his smile glinting in the darkness, his gaze completely unsympathetic. She squirmed, and got his fist tightening in her hair for her trouble. But the voices and steps moved along the second floor hallway, not seeming to notice two sets of legs intimately entw
ined on the stairway above them.

  “Second-floor neighbors,” he said.

  “You should have . . . ,” she began, but that finger circled again and the words trailed off.

  “Should have what, Rachel? Should have fucked you on the steps while they stumbled around? Should have made you be quiet while you took my cock deep inside?”

  She shook her head, as much response to the tumultuous cascade of sensation his words set off as negating his interpretation.

  “Should have stopped?”

  The whisper was dark, taunting. She nodded, felt the tug when his fist remained locked in her hair.

  “Not gonna stop, Rachel.” Two fingers slid inside her when he spoke, and a breathless little cry escaped her lips. “I want it right now, right the fuck now, against this wall now.”

  He did want that. She felt it in the rigid pressure of his shaft against her hip, the tension trembling in his muscles as he held her where he wanted her. “And you’re ready for it,” he continued. “No lie, you are hot and slick and ready. So no, we’re not stopping.”

  This time when she jerked her head away her hair streamed down over her shoulders and immediately slid into her face. With most of her peripheral vision gone she couldn’t see him as well, so his next move surprised her. He crouched and put his shoulder into her belly with just enough force to tip her forward, fanny in the air. The world spun crazily as he hoisted her without even a grunt and took the rest of the stairs two at a time. The door opened, closed, and the world spun once again when he set her down inside the door. In the split second it took her to recover from the momentary dizziness he shoved her blouse down her arms and stripped off her bra.

  And backed her into the wall. He used his broad shoulders and chest to hold her while he popped open his fly, then yanked up her skirt and shoved her panties down. The only sound in the dim room was her high-pitched gasps and his low inhales, faint and hard to hear over her pulse, pounding in her ears. Because she wanted this, oh God, did she want this. It was the slow, clunking ride up the steep incline of the Iron Shark, fear and excitement together in a whirlwind spinning with dread and desperate need.

  He left her hair alone this time, as if he knew the thick mass blinded and hampered her. Occupied with trying to get it out of her face, she was too distracted to think through what he’d be able to do with two hands. He wove the fingers of his left hand through hers and pinned the back to the wall just above her shoulder. With his right hand he lifted her skirt, then he stepped between her thighs and trapped her other hand. It took five seconds, maybe less, to completely subdue her. Half-blind, pinned, and with that hard, demanding shaft almost, almost inside.

  He began to thrust, and in that moment she knew true helplessness. There was nothing she could do to stop the inevitable now. When he found the right angle, the right pressure, and he would, he’d glide into her and . . .

  Moments slipped by, hot, elastic, saturated with lust. The world shrank to her hair in her face, his hard body pressed against hers. She gasped and spread her legs. He took his time working all the way inside, making her feel each and every inch as it stretched her swollen channel. He paused deep inside, then slowly withdrew.

  When he shoved back inside her it was like the Iron Shark drop. No more anticipation, no more dread, just a nerve-screaming, pulse-pounding thrill ride that flung her off the cliff and into the red-hot void faster than she’d ever thought possible. His mouth slammed over hers, trapping her helpless cries, as her sheath convulsed around him.

  He stepped back and pulled out in the same move. “What?” Rachel gasped just as he tossed her over his shoulder again and stalked down the hall to his bedroom. He dumped her on his bed.

  “No condom,” he said shortly.

  Her eyes widened. “I forgot.”

  “We both forgot, or at least I did until I was inside you,” he said as he sheathed himself. He came down hard on top of her. “Then it felt too fucking good.”

  Her reply was cut off by his take-no-prisoners thrust inside her. She clung to him, fingers digging into his shoulders, heels clamped to the backs of his thighs as he sought his own release. His entire body went rigid, from his jaw to his toes, as he ground himself inside her and shuddered in her arms.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, the rough sex, the forgotten condom, the world in general, so she stayed soft and pliable, hoping he’d relax into her for just a little while. “I’m not worried about it,” she said.

  Her relaxed response seemed to ease something within him, because as the tension ebbed from his muscles, he didn’t pull away. Shadows cast his face in planes and shadows as he loomed over her. Sweat dropped from his jaw to her collarbone.

  An uncomfortable awareness grew inside her. It would look like he was feeling so much. Big games as a football player, big chases, death, accidents, daily banal sordidness. It was the perfect cover. He was doing good, difficult, selfless work. Nothing wrong here. Move along. Nothing to see. At first glance all you saw was a good-looking, hard-drinking, harder-partying Texas hell-raiser.

  Until you scratched the surface, or slipped under his defenses. Then you got a second look at a dark emptiness, a shallowness that drove women away. Only a third glance revealed the pain in the darkness, the sure certainty, just as surely avoided, that sex and drinking didn’t work to defuse the pain. He was strung tight, and he couldn’t take much more.

  “Ben,” she said softly.

  He looked at her, emotion shifting behind his eyes, under his skin. For a long moment she waited, breathless. Then his whole demeanor changed, brow furrowing as he shook his head once, then again. He buckled his belt, then felt in the pocket, then cursed and went to his knees on the floor.

  “Ben?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Nothing. Then the phone rang, under the bed by the muffled sound, and Ben lunged for it. “What happened?”

  Indistinct babble resonated from the phone. Ben turned away from her, and her body chilled.

  “Chris,” Ben barked. “Hang up and call 911. Now.”

  More babble, this time at a higher panicked pitch. She caught the name Jonathan, then Ben glanced back at her. For a brief moment the light from the parking lot fell across his eyes. Her heart froze. They held an adult’s agony and an old, old bewildered terror, the emotion that lurked at the back of Ben Harris’s eyes. Sirens wailed faintly through the open connection, and Rachel struggled to piece the fragments together. An accident. Someone named Chris had called 911, then Ben, a trained first responder.

  Whoever was hurt meant so much to Ben that emotion actually showed in his eyes.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Rachel pushed her skirt down and hurried after Ben, into the living room, where she snatched her blouse and bra from the floor. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he waited for her to get decent before opening the door and taking the stairs two at a time. Rachel clattered after him, reaching for the door handle as the lock clicked open. She tossed the teddy bear into the back seat and clambered up. “What happened?”

  “I’ll drive over,” Ben said tersely. He jerked the truck through the parking lot, hitting the horn when a car backed up. Brake lights went on and Ben shot through the gap. “Take my truck back to the farm.”

  “Ben, what—”

  “My brother.”

  He flagrantly ignored the speed limit on the main drags, slowing down only when he entered the residential neighborhood, turning hard on the heels of a patrol car. Flashing lights from an ambulance, a fire truck, and two other police vehicles marked off one house. All the lights in the garage and along the driveway were lit. Ben braked to a halt angled into the street and hurled himself out of the truck, leaving the keys in the ignition. Rachel turned off the engine, palmed the keys, and followed more slowly, taking in the scene a
s she crossed the lawn.

  The EMTs had a body on a gurney and were wheeling it down the driveway at a good clip. A man wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out and paint-stained khakis ran alongside, a gangly, crying, dark-skinned boy jouncing on his hip, the other hand gripping the shoulder of the man on the gurney. When they passed Rachel, her heart lurched sickeningly in her chest.

  Ben’s mirror image lay on the gurney, blood staining his face and shoulder.

  Brother . . . twin brother . . . ?

  “Chris,” Ben said.

  When the man holding the child saw Ben, he turned to him, his face crumpled with agony, as if he could finally let go. “Oh my God, Ben. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t breathing for so long.” He drew a deep breath and added in a rising voice, “The sound his head made when it hit the cement—”

  “UTMB?” Ben demanded.

  “Yeah,” one of the EMTs said. “Move.”

  Ben visibly restrained Chris as the EMTs loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “Shh, Jon,” Chris said to the weeping child, but the tears streaming down his own face didn’t help. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. Sam’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

  Twin brother . . . and . . . ?

  Oh.

  Both arms wrapped around her torso, Rachel edged along the sidewalk. Her mental image of Ben’s family shattered and reassembled itself to form a completely different picture. The unconscious man on the gurney and child wheezing as he sobbed Sam . . . Sam . . . Sam.

  The crying echoes glinted like shards in Ben’s eyes. He saw her and stepped protectively between her and the ambulance. The set of his jaw and shoulders managed to be defensive, protective, and challenging all at once. Before she could say anything, the man turned to Ben as he pried the boy’s arms from around his neck. “I have to go with him. I have to. We have power of attorney for each other, but I better call your parents just in case—”

  Ben cut him off. “What about Katy?”