by Alam, Donna
Trading marks with the object of my fantasy. What the fuck is my life right now?
‘I’m not a murderer of fish, and you’re not my jailer.’
No, but I’d like to be your keeper. Or maybe just to keep you. Thankfully, I catch myself before I say any of those dumb things.
‘Keep this up and I’m going to drag you to the shower and make you pick up the soap.’
‘As if I’d let you,’ she retorts, and I suddenly realise she’s pissed off. Pissed off and struggling to get out from under my arm.
‘Come on, Nell. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
She sits up, but I’m quicker, lunging for her and pressing her down against the tangled sheets, her hands clamped on either side of her head by mine.
‘Stop smirking,’ she grunts, trying to wriggle out from under me, which is just fantastic.
‘Left a bit, sweetheart. Oh—yeah. Right there.’
‘Urgh! Get off me!’ she says, making the ride pretty interesting as she presses up into me. ‘And stop laughing. It might be all good fun to you, teasing and taunting, but did you ever stop to think what it did to me? You killed my fucking goldfish!’
‘I didn’t,’ I reply, stating down into her dark eyes. ‘If you don’t believe me, pick up your phone.’
‘How?’ She huffs, cocking her head to the side. ‘I seem to be a little tied up right now.’ I can tell by the flare in her gaze that she knows exactly what this little statement means to me. But I park it to one side. For now.
‘You can call Mel to confirm. You’d only picked up the fish that day, right?’
‘So?’
‘You added the chemicals to the bowl and dropped the little fishy in. And basically boiled it to death.’
Her mouth falls open, her eyes wide. ‘But-but it was alive when you flushed it.’
‘Nope, it was pretty much frying. I flushed it to save you the sight.’ And to earn Melody’s allowance. I’ll keep that to myself for now.
I’m not sure what response I expect, but her laughter isn’t one of them.
‘Okay, but that was just one battle in a very long campaign.’
‘Are you saying I waged guerrilla warfare?’
‘You were more like a monkey.’
‘I suppose that makes you my organ grinder?’ And yeah, that’s just what I do—grind my organ against her, desperate once again to be inside her.
‘Oh . . . that was cheesy,’ she says with a half-smile.
‘It was good for me. It would be even better if you open your legs.’
She falls quiet, her gaze falling to the space over my shoulder before finding my lips, eventually moving to inspect my eyes. The atmosphere ceased to be light-hearted before she even opens her mouth, her quiet words a little halting and a little sad.
‘We can’t do this more than just this once.’
‘Are we talking once last night because . . .’ We’ve already fucked several times since last night.
‘Just . . . just don’t break me, okay?’
‘Never.’ I want to kiss her—want to wrap her in my arms. But I don’t. Not as her eyes roam my face, dipping to my lips and this time staying there, and not as she whispers she’s sorry. About the fish or her timeline? I don’t ask.
‘Apology accepted,’ I manage, forcing the words passed the lump in my throat. ‘Though the pain is immense, I think I can manage,’ I add in a put-upon air, hoping to lighten the atmosphere between us. Make it less real.
‘Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?’ Her voice is barely a whisper, her eyes glittering up at me like stars in the night.
‘You could kiss me.’
‘In apology?’
‘Yeah.’ I lower my mouth, my lips hovering over hers. ‘Go on then,’ I whisper. ‘Kiss me.’
She raises her head, and I mirror her move, loving the dark, confused flare of her gaze.
‘Play fair,’ she says softly.
‘Never,’ I return, my heart beating out of my chest as I cover her mouth with mine, kissing her to compliance. But not quietness.
‘Oh, Ben . . . ’ As she slides open her thighs, I press myself more fully against her, rocking into her once, twice. ‘How did you get to be so good at that?’ she whispers as I kiss my way down her neck.
‘I practised on my pillow, thinking about the girl next door. Just don’t mention the year her breasts grew. The Year of the Boner. I think I’m still raw from the self-abuse.’
Her giggle is soft and girlish but draws off abruptly as I press my teeth to her shoulder, the noise taking on a much more carnal edge.
‘You’re so fucking pretty,’ I rasp, moving down her body, dragging my hands to span her ribcage. Resting my weight on my forearms, I stretch my thumbs to brush her stiff nipples. They’re still tender from my mouth, but it doesn’t stop her from wrapping her legs around my thighs and pushing up into me.
I lean in and take the taut bud into my mouth as she lets out a gasp, digging her nails into my shoulders and making me hiss a short curse.
‘Your sheets are the same shade as your nipples,’ I whisper, licking each before blowing a cool breath over them. ‘Did you notice that?’ Her hands in my hair, Nell arches her back like a cat, the sheets rustling as she moves her head in answer, a hot flush crawling up her neck. ‘And the same colour as your pussy.’
At this, she laughs. ‘You mean, after I wax?’
‘I mean the inside where you’re all slick and rosy pink. Fuck, you feel like silk,’ I rasp, taking her tits into my hands. It’s called man-handling for a reason. ‘And so sweet that I want to lick every part of you. Lap you all up like a cat with a bowl of cream.’ The end comes out as a growl as, beneath me, Nell releases the sweetest of moans. ‘You like the sound of that. You’d like me to fuck you with my tongue again.’
‘Yes. Yes!’ Her hands in my hair, she pulls my face to hers, kissing me so sweetly, I’m stunned, and harder still, as she bites my bottom lip.
‘You’re a little minx.’
‘Ben,’ she whispers hotly. ‘Stop talking and put your mouth to better use.’
‘You want me to kiss you?’ She nods, shivering a little as though in anticipation. ‘Where should I kiss you?’ I ask, nipping the side of her breast, then lowering my mouth to her ribs to repeat.
‘You know where. The place the same colour as my sheets.’ Turning her head, she smiles into the mattress as though to hide it there.
‘Oh, here,’ I say, kissing each of her nipples in turn.
‘Yes, but no,’ she says—no, moans.
‘Then where, sweetheart? Use your words.’ As she bites her bottom lip, I add, ‘And not the ugly medical ones. Tell me where you want me to kiss you,’ I tease, working my way down her ribs, farther down the soft flesh of her stomach. ‘Use the filthiest, dirtiest words you can.’ As I reach where she needs me most, I part her slick flesh, blowing a soft breath across her clit.
‘You drive me insane,’ she moans, her legs stiffening. ‘Please, Ben, please, put your mouth on my cunt.’
Well, fuck. The word barrels down my spine like a quicksilver explosion that detonates as pure sensation. But never let it be said Captain Ben Monroe can’t follow orders . . .
‘Namaste, little lovely,’ I whisper, placing a chaste kiss on the top of her slit. If a kiss here can ever be classed as chaste, that was it.
‘Will you always greet parts of my body?’ she asks, her words tremulous with laughter. ‘They’re not independent of me.’
‘Oh, I know . . .’ With the point of my tongue, I press her clit, licking it a little before sucking it into my mouth. I’m drunk on the woman. Drunk on her taste and her earthy smell. Drunk on the reactions as she whimpers softly, her hands finding her breasts, her hard nipples peeking from her splayed fingers as she squeezes. ‘Those reactions, sweetheart? That’s a dead giveaway. And the sum of your parts is exquisite.’
‘So stop saying hello to only bits of me,’ she murmurs.
I lick her again with the
full flat of my tongue this time in one long swipe. ‘I wasn’t saying hello. Namaste is an acknowledgement. I’m recognising the divine in you.’ And with that, I pay my divinity some serious attention.
~*~
Later, we still haven’t moved from bed, though I’ve promised to feed Nell before she leaves. I’d eventually given in and gone to the supermarket. Man cannot live by pizza alone. Not if he wants to hang on to his six-pack. We have an hour, maybe a little less, and I won’t see her until Sunday. She’s meeting Melody straight from the hospital and says they might share a cab back to Tim’s place.
I despair for my two favourite women’s taste in men. Well, apart from me. As both brother and lover. Big-headed? Yeah, maybe. But Tim is . . . an acquired taste? Maybe if you get fed shit often enough, you reach the point where you no longer register the taste. She’s my sister, and I love her, but her taste in men is terrible. And Tim is one of frogs she seems intent on kissing on her delusional quest to find her prince.
‘So we’re agreed,’ Nell says. Propped a little on the pink pillow, she pulls the sheet over her chest before tucking it under her arms. ‘We’ll keep this from Mel. At least, for a little bit. And I’ll feel her out—discover what her objections really are.’
‘Absolutely, whatever you think,’ I reply. Rolling onto my side, I prop my head on one hand, balling the other in the sheet by her thigh as I begin to tug it back down.
‘Would you stop that?’ she says, slapping my hand away to cover herself again.
‘But I haven’t seen boobs for months.’
‘You know, I heard there were women in the Army.’
‘Not who want to flash me, it seems.’ The women I normally come across in the course of my work are usually covered from head to toe in their black abayaat cloaks and often hiding their murderous husbands. I inhale sharply, erasing the images of black cloaks billowing in the desert breeze, of desert camo covered in blood.
‘Hey where’d you go?’
I look up into Nell’s concerned expression. ‘I was just thinking. You know, the only tits I’ve seen lately, other than your gorgeous, bountiful—’
‘Really?’ she says, giggling softly.
‘—breasts, belong to Private Smith’—not his real name—‘and while they are pretty magnificent,’ I continue, ‘I put their size down to steroid use. Sorry, but they just don’t do it for me. Not with his tattoos and stuff.’
‘Flattery will get you—nope. Flattery won’t get you there,’ she cautions, pulling the bedsheet up from her thighs again. ‘I imagine it’ll be a little awkward for Mel,’ she then says, picking up the previous thread, ‘but once she knows things aren’t going to get weird between us, I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
‘Things won’t get weird between us,’ I answer flatly. ‘I won’t be here more than a few weeks.’
‘Not weird between us—between me and Mel.’
‘Oh.’ A sudden stab of jealousy comes out of nowhere.
‘Things between us,’ she begins, her words hesitant, ‘won’t be weird because there wasn’t really an us to begin with, was there?’
I grunt in answer, unable to supply her with the answer she’s looking for. Fucking pierced again, this time by her opinions of our one-sided relationship. Of course, it’s one-sided because it’s all in my head and it’s not like I expected or wanted tears. But I also don’t want to think about the end. Not right now.
‘Hey.’ Nell brings a soft hand to my cheek. ‘What’s with the jaw flexing?’
‘Hunger. I think I might go make a sandwich,’ I say, stretching and rubbing my stomach for effect.
‘God, yes,’ she replies with a smile, and that brings back the piercing sensation again. Is it that easy to brush off her concerns?
‘What is it you want, Nell?’ My chest aches at the thought of this being enough for her—one night. A fleeting experience, over and done.
‘Other than a sandwich? I guess I’d prefer not to have to go to work today, or even out tomorrow,’ she answers, oblivious to the demands running through my head. ‘I love Mel, but I’m so tired. I could do with a night in of doing nothing.’
‘Would you settle for a night in doing me again?’ I’m a fucking coward. Why can’t I just ask her outright? Are. We. Going. To. Do. This. Again. See? Easy.
‘That’s not settling,’ she answers, all tender eyes and with a genuine smile. ‘It’s all pleasure, Ben.’
The fist holding my heart unfurls. ‘I don’t have a lot to offer you, Nell.’
‘I don’t know. Wild sex and naked kitchen shows,’ she replies, her smile widening, ‘seems like a good trade to me.’
‘A trade?’
‘You know, for staying with me. Are you—are you freaking out a little over there?’
‘It’s those boobs, I tell you. The thought of not conversing with them again almost brings me to tears.’
‘You’re crazy.’
Crazy for you, I don’t say. Because that would be madness. And potentially painful. Yet I still find myself asking.
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ she answers, drawing her body along the bed with a yawn, ‘but I’m going for a shower.’
Chapter 11
PENNY
‘Sickening. Truly sickening.’
I turn my head to see what Melody is complaining about now. So much for a wild night on the town. She’s been in a funk since we arrived at the wine bar an hour ago. A few minutes ago, her complaints centred around the lack of lime in her vodka tonic, and before that, her complaints were about Tim and his anal-retentiveness and his need to keep everything spotlessly clean. Though my money is on the fact that she’s in a bad mood because of his not so heavily veiled comments encouraging her to check on the progress of the builder completing her house repairs. Or in other words, his reminder that she will be, at some point, moving out.
‘I think they’re cute,’ I say, watching the young couple read a cocktail menu, their bodies pressed tightly together. They’re a little younger than we are and clearly in the first stages of their relationship. You know, before you walk straight to the bar, knowing exactly what the other wants. I wonder what Ben’s favourite drink is? I push the feeling behind the thought away, telling myself he won’t be around long enough for us to fall into those patterns. Besides, if I really wanted him to know, I could just ask. I return to people watching, my smile feeling sort of foreign as the couple pass our table, and I notice he has his palm low on her back as he ushers her ahead.
‘He’s a gentleman,’ I say. See? They’re not all bad.
Mel harrumphs, turning her head over her shoulder to look at the disappearing pair. ‘You know he’s just trying to stare at her butt. It’s all pretend, isn’t it? Those early days are all hearts and flowers until they’ve got you where they want you.’ She stabs her straw into her drink. ‘Whether that’s on your knees or your back, and then it’s all downhill from there,’ she declares, making a ski slope motion with her hand, her expression twisting in distaste. ‘One minute, it’s darling, I can’t live without you, and the next, it’s but you know I need my space.’
She blows out an angry breath, lifting her blunt auburn bangs. Hers is a hairstyle that would look at home on a kid in grade school, but as always, she carries it off with a kind of effortless chic I don’t have time to cultivate. Especially after a thirteen-hour shift. And while thirteen might be unlucky for some, it wasn’t for baby boy Peterson, born four hours ago into my own waiting hands. With a little help of some salad tongs. Okay, forceps, but they’re really just the same implement.
‘Maybe you just need to be upfront with him, Mel. Tell him you want to take the next step.’
‘No offence, Pen, but that would just freak him the fuck out.’ She sighs heavily. ‘I just need to make him see that he needs me.’
For a bright woman, Melody can be so dumb about men. But then, who am I to speak? She’s not the one with a million-pound debt, rumbling aroun
d in a house by herself. Except I’m not anymore. Not while Ben’s here, at least. Ben, the man my mind seems to be fixated on. But it doesn’t have to be complicated. Not when it’s just sex.
God, if Mel could hear the thoughts whizzing through my head, she’d give me such a hard time after my whole “staying single” deal. Actually, if she could hear, she’d probably be pretty pissed. But I suppose I am single. Ben and I aren’t a thing. It’s just sex. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. So stop thinking about it!
‘Why don’t you’ —I clear my throat—‘ask Ben to take Tim out for a pint? Maybe speak to him man to man?’
She laughs. Actually, I think that was more a huff of air. ‘Ben would hate him. He’d probably end up punching him.’
‘What? No! He’s not the violent type.’ Mel arches an eyebrow in my direction. ‘The annoying type, sure, but not violent.’
‘Have you forgotten what he does for a living?’
‘No,’ I retort. ‘But we’re not at war. And soldiers aren’t all violent thugs.’
‘I didn’t say he was a thug, just that he has a temper. And I’m his sister. He just wants to protect me, I suppose.’
‘Oh, you told him. About the beginning, I mean.’ The beginning is the term Mel uses to refer to as the time early in her and Tim’s relationship—a period when Tim dicked her around by dating other girls. She forgave him, and they moved on. I can see Ben’s point of view, though I wouldn’t say so because it’s not something she likes to hear. Actually, it’s something she refuses to hear.
‘Unfortunately, yes.’ Elbows hook on the bar, and she lets her shoulders slump. ‘Anyway, we’re not here to talk about my relationship woes. We’re here to sort yours.’
‘Are we? I thought we were meeting for a drink and a little supper?’