by Daryl Banner
After the teen is long gone, Ben turns to me. There are about a million questions in his eyes, the first of which he asks: “Who in the hell are you, and what did you do with the shy, timid Trevor I left my home with?”
His words warm my heart. I’m still riding the rush all of that action gave me, but to be honest, I’m relieved as hell that I can be myself again. “I don’t even know where any of that came from,” I confess, laughing over my racing heart. “I just … got inspired, had an idea, and went with it.”
“You sure went with it alright,” Ben agrees with half a laugh himself. We start to head back to the car. He slips a hand into his pocket on the way, pulling out the phone. He gives it a little toss. “All that trouble over this hunk of metal and a pair of idiot teens.”
I bite my lip, then lean into Ben as we walk, my body up against his. “That would be two crotches you’ve grabbed tonight.”
Ben grins, amused. We arrive in front of his rental. At once, his face hardens suggestively. “Get in the car, intern.”
I tilt my head. “Intern? You really think you can still boss me around? It is not office hours,” I point out, crossing my arms, “and so therefore—”
Ben swings a hand around and swats my ass, hard, then cups it firmly and pulls me against him. In a low, deep voice, he growls, “Get in the car, Trevor. I am going to have my way with you, I am not going to hold back, and then we are going home.”
I try to respond defiantly, but all my resolve crumbles at the feel of his hand gripping my ass so powerfully. I can’t fight him.
And I don’t want to.
When we’re back in the car, Ben jerks it into drive, then burns rubber. He doesn’t even use his phone to direct him, knowing just where to go. I watch him half the time, the hard and needy look on his face turning me on so much. A week ago, I might have been terrified by his show of strength. It might have even scared me away for good.
Something inside me must be changing. Instead of fear, I feel security. Around Ben and his powerfulness, I feel safe. No one—especially no punk teenager in khaki shorts—can possibly mess with me when Benjamin Gage is around.
Just before we reach the airport, Ben pulls off onto the side of the road, startling me.
I turn to him, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
He slaps a hand onto my crotch, earning a grunt of surprise from me, before he turns my way. “I can’t wait a second longer.”
“But we’re on the side of the—”
He doesn’t care, clearly. His seatbelt pops off followed by my own, and he’s all over me. My pants fly open. His fingers work my shirt off with such animal determination, all I see half the time is the fabric of my own shirt trying to escape my body.
Just when I gasp for breath, his mouth covers mine, stealing away any chance I had of getting air.
My breath is his now.
In the next instant, my seat falls backwards—he’d gripped and pulled the reclining lever—and then he’s on top of me, drawing a line of kisses over my chin, down my neck, across my fast rising and falling chest, then slowly through the ridges of my abs. When his mouth arrives at the bulge he’s made of my tight black briefs, a determined scowl of desire spreads over his face.
There’s something in his scowl that is immeasurably hot.
It’s like he’s about to attack my cock, and I’m going to like it. His eyes assess me like a piece of meat. His hands, which slowly crawl down my sides and cause me to squirm, explore me with invasive, wall-stripping pleasure.
I am at his total mercy right now.
The old Trevor would never have let anyone tear him open like this on the side of the road in the middle of the night, exposed to the world, exposed to the night, exposed to a man he—in truth—still doesn’t know awfully well.
A stranger named Benjamin Gage.
A stranger who just whisked innocent Trevor away on a jet across two time zones.
This is totally not me. I don’t know who this new Trevor is, and I feel no semblance of the old one in me anymore. I am brave. I am reckless. I feel like I’m still wearing the skin of some other person I’m not.
And what the hell city are we in again?
When Ben slips his hands under the band of my underwear, I forget everything I’m thinking. I gasp under the cool touch of his fingertips. Ben grips my briefs with force and pulls them down my thighs, freeing my achingly hard cock.
Is this really happening? Are Ben and I really about to have ourselves some roadside hanky-panky?
The answer: red and blue flickering lights flooding the car.
24
Trevor officially craps himself.
In my act of pulling my pants back up, I knee Ben in the face.
In Ben’s act of scrambling to get out of my lap, he head-butts the steering wheel and issues a loud honk.
“Fuck!” I hiss, slipping back into my plaid button-up so fast, I hear threads pop. “This is not happening.” My hand searches in the dark for the reclining lever. “I can’t have something on my record. I can’t go to jail. Ben!”
Ben’s back in his seat, upright, and completely composed. Of course he is; he isn’t the one who was just being royally objectified and stripped of his clothes for some roadside sex.
I find the lever and give it such a hard pull, I fly upwards fast, nearly folding myself in half.
The very next second, a cop appears at Ben’s window, giving it that all-familiar tap-tap-tap with his flashlight.
Ben rolls down the window. “Hey there, Louie.”
“Benjamin Gage! Well, I’ll be.” The cop laughs heartily. “The heck you doing in this part of town at this time of night? About to fly back home or something?”
“Client,” Ben answers simply, offering a smile. “They have you on the late shift now?”
Oh my God. He knows the cop??
“Yep. It’s pretty damned quiet tonight, to be honest. I didn’t recognize your rental. You pull over to take a call?”
Ben—his phone already out with impressive speed—gives it an innocent wiggle. “Don’t drive and text, they say.”
“Good, good. I’ll leave you to it.” The cop—Louie—leans down a foot more, his eyes meeting mine. I give him an anxious, tight, toothy smile and a wave. He acknowledges it with the tiniest of nods, an awkward twist of his expression, and then he nods at Ben. “Have a safe flight home, Mr. Gage.”
“And you, a safe night keeping this city clean,” returns Ben.
The cop saunters back to his car, and soon, the red-and-blue circus of lights vanishes, traded for the soft moonlight of before. The hum of the cop car races past us, and then we’re alone again.
But we’ve changed. The sexiness from just a moment ago is gone. My heart races for a different reason. Have I pushed myself too far tonight? What is going on in my head? We’ve taken a flight to a strange city. We have met with and threatened a pompous teenage kid and taken his phone. And we’ve almost been arrested for entertaining the idea of fellatio in a car near an airport.
I hear my mother’s scolding voice in my head. I see my dad’s disapproving eyes. I see Elijah hanging his head and wondering who the hell his best friend is. I’m wondering the same thing.
This isn’t me.
“You’re pretty freaked out,” Ben notes.
“No shit,” I retort snappily.
He studies me for a moment. I feel his eyes burning into the side of my face. It shouldn’t turn me on, not while I’m having this miniature existential crisis going on in my head, but I can’t help the draw I feel toward Ben’s strength. I need him to say the exact right thing to me right now, but I have no idea what it is, or if I’ll even know it when I hear it.
“I had a different vision for tonight,” Ben tells me.
I close my eyes, shutting out the world.
Ben goes on. “I just wanted you in my apartment sharing a hot meal with me. Then I was hoping we’d … just hang out in front of the TV, maybe relax on my couch, and get to know each oth
er some more. No pressure. No … chasing teens across California.”
For some reason, I was expecting his “different vision” to include bending me over the kitchen counter. I feel something stirring in me at the deliberate omission of any such raunchiness from his vision, to my surprise.
I think it’s my heart warming. Except it feels a bit like my stomach doing a proud somersault, turning over whatever little bit of that delicious Italian food we had hours ago before our dinner was interrupted by all this rousing celebrity drama.
“G-Get to know each other some more?” I prompt him, my eyes still closed.
“Yes, Trevor. I want to know everything about you.”
My eyes flap open at the soft, sincere tone in his words. I dare to turn to him, then melt at the sight of his shining eyes and fierce expression. It stabs me right where it counts, right in the chest, right where I’m feeling all that fear and anxiety and terror.
And he replaces all that mess with a calm, rich, needed feeling. The feeling you get when you’re chosen for a team in gym class. Or when you see your name on that cast list for a play. Or when the boss singles out that one intern—you—and commends your good, hard work.
“I … felt a different impression from you,” I tell him. “Judging from the way you attacked me before your officer friend Louie interrupted us.”
Ben tilts his head, appraising me. “Well …”
“I mean, I know you want my nuts.” I try to smile. It comes off a little fake, even to me. “Maybe I’m worried that’s all you want.”
Ben throws an arm over the back of his seat, facing me better. “I’m not going to lie, Trevor. You make me crazy. I am attracted to you. Badly. I don’t even see you as …” He gestures at me with his hand and a slight nod. “… as a twenty-year-old. You have an old soul. You have a brain in that head of yours. I really like that about you. And while sometimes it’s hard to contain my desire when we are alone, I … also want to know who you are inside.”
I can’t pull my eyes away from his, caught under his spell. He doesn’t say anything more, so I take it as my chance to confess the same thing. “I want to know what’s inside you, too, Ben. Other than this … softer side that you don’t let anyone see.”
“Oh, I let a couple see it.”
I smirk playfully at him. “Your dog doesn’t count.”
Ben tilts his head. “But don’t you?”
The way he stares at me right now, a sharp pang of thrill and mystery surges through me—the same electric sensation I had the night his eyes caught mine across that smokey nightclub. Was I defeated then? Did he conquer me, slamming through all my walls that first night? And have I been helpless to his power ever since?
Ben’s fingers surprise me when they tease into my hair, his hand hanging off the back of my seat. It feels so good, sending chills down my neck. “Let’s get on my plane,” he suggests, “maybe join the mile-high club, then head back to my place to get to know each other some more. How does that sound?”
I bite my lip as he plays with my hair. Sounds like heaven.
25
Benjamin doesn’t smile this much.
Normally, when I walk into my office, I feel the cold rush of winter enter with me. Chatter dies a quick death. Ties straighten upon their masters’ necks. Keyboards click and clack a bit louder.
Today, I hear none of it. Today, I wear a smile.
“Morning, Dana,” I say to the front receptionist, whose wide-eyed stare of shock tells me I neither greet her nor refer to her by name enough.
Rebekah has ten reports to give me, but instead, I turn to her and ask, “When’s the last time you took a vacation with little Jax?”
She blinks. Maybe she’s shocked that I remembered her son’s name. “I … I’m, um …”
“That long?”
“I’m trying to remember the year,” she confesses.
The year?? I sigh. “That needs to be remedied posthaste. Get your calendar. Next report I want on my desk is when you’re taking your vacation. It better be before the end of the summer.”
She gapes. “B-But Hawk the Jersey boy … the interns … the—”
“It’ll all be covered. How’s Disneyworld sound? My treat. You work too damned much, and for as sheltered as that poor Jax is, he’ll probably think Mickey Mouse is a Pokémon.”
“He probably already does,” Rebekah agrees sadly.
Across the room, I catch sight of the interns gathered around their table. They all look the same to me except for the one bright-eyed exception with the dirty blond hair, perpetually flushed face, and determined look about him: Trevor. He seems to be in the middle of talking excitedly with three others. I can’t imagine what exactly he’s discussing, but a humored part of my brain pretends he’s bragging to the others about the amazing night he just had, how he got to ride on the boss’s private jet, soar across the country, and stop a client’s life from exploding. The thought is enough to make my smile deepen despite myself.
“I knew you’d like them,” murmurs Rebekah, giving me a tiny nudge of her elbow.
I’m pulled from my little dream. “Sorry?”
“The interns.” She gives a nod in their direction. “Best batch I’ve concocted in years. You don’t have to thank me,” she adds quickly, lifting a hand. “I know. I’m brilliant.”
I want to play off my staring and say something dismissive at once, but it occurs to me without question that, had Rebekah not hired Trevor, he likely would never have crossed my path. He’d be spending his whole summer filing papers in some tiny office somewhere else, or taking orders from a tired thirty-something retail store manager, or dunking baskets of fries in his hometown.
The outlook of my summer might be marginally different, too. I might have brought some tough, boring contact along last night, or gone totally alone, not following my own advice. I might have taken someone else home that Friday night at the club, probably some guy who, like, says “like” every other word and makes the porn face whenever I fuck him. You know the face—it’s when a guy can’t close his mouth because of the “unfathomable ecstasy” he’s supposedly feeling as he’s being fucked, appearing like he’s about to bite down on something, but never actually closes his mouth for a solid hour. The face intensifies when he nears orgasm, of course, and the sound he emits is what you hear in every porno ever: a cross between a ship horn and a donkey being inseminated.
Instead, Rebekah hired Trevor. And Trevor is in my life.
A twenty-year-old with an old soul.
Maybe I’m a thirty-three-year-old with a young soul. I give a considerable amount of thought to how out-of-the-loop I’ve been in the dating world since my early twenties. I’ve had a lot of ass and a number of hook-ups, even ones that didn’t go all the way, but nothing substantial and nothing that stuck. I always saw the men who go to clubs as slippery, like fish. You catch them, you delight in them briefly—snap a duck-lipped selfie—then watch as they slip right through your fingers, crash back into the lake, and vanish. You never seem to see them again either, no matter the clubs you frequent. It’s like gay magic, how they disappear.
Trevor might be the fish that sticks.
Assuming I can control myself and not eat him whole.
“That Trevor, though …”
Her mention of his name pitches an icicle through my gut. I face her sharply. “Sorry?”
“Trevor. The one I know you’re looking at.”
I’m defensive instantly, my smile crumpled up like a ball of misprinted copy room paper. “I was looking at all of them. I don’t play favorites.”
“Oh, I know. I didn’t mean—”
You’re reacting too much. Cool it down. “Trevor is outstanding,” I note casually, “but so is Jimmy, who’s showed great promise. And Ashlee, who is quick as a whip. And the tall one, Brady.”
Rebekah winces a bit. “Well, that Brady seems a bit inflated.”
“Sometimes we have to puff up to scare the smaller fish away. Or the bigger fis
h.” I glance at the interns again. Trevor’s back is facing me now, his tight tush perfectly in my line of sight.
Of course he’d unknowingly torture me with that ass when I’m in the middle of playing emotional hopscotch with my career.
Rebekah’s smile is tight. She lifts her pointy chin with a pinch of mustered dignity. “I didn’t mean to compare Brady to a blowfish, Mr. Gage. I just meant he comes off a bit strong, a bit … pushy.”
“We all do,” I point out, thinking about how I want to push into Trevor right about now.
“I’m just saying that Trevor, however—”
“He will have to prove himself, just like the others.”
“Of course. Right.”
I make my way toward my office, inwardly aghast with myself while keeping a perfectly straight face. I can’t even believe what I said to her. Am I that terrified of our little secret getting spilled to the office? Do I really have to show such staunch impartiality by acting like Trevor Woodard means as little to me as any of the other interns? If I wasn’t involved with him, I would be noting his good work ethic and teamwork, and then making light of his first impression to me: crashing to my feet with an explosion of copier toner down his front. Trevor is, above and beyond, my best.
And here I am, conveying to Rebekah that he still has yet to impress me.
I shut the door heavily at my back, flip on the lights, and drop into my office chair. Or, more accurately, I aim for my office chair, miss completely, and crash ass-first onto the ground.
Yes, the blinds are open, and the whole floor can see me on my ass through the floor-to-ceiling glass.
I climb to my feet, entirely unable to play off the act as some clever little dance. With a glance at the window, I see twenty faces quickly turn back to their work, pretending they totally didn’t just witness my … miscalculation.