by Daryl Banner
I spend half of my meal moaning, which is all too amusing to Ben, who’s enjoying my reactions almost as much as he’s enjoying his own meal. The sun begins to set as we eat, so by the time we’ve reached dessert, the ceiling light is traded for candlelight, and the gentle ambiance of families talking is now seasoned with a backdrop of romantic music courtesy of a live band.
But I’m too pent up to enjoy it. I’m too distracted by the man sitting across from me, the beauty in the grey dress shirt, the one who keeps tunneling through me with his deep, hungry eyes.
“Can we take our dessert to go?” I ask calmly, betraying my excited, jumpy insides.
Ben grins, knowing my mind all too well. “Anything for you, Prince Trevor.”
When we return to the cabana, Benjamin and I settle on the cushy swinging bench on the patio overlooking our private beach. Between us, we share tiny forkfuls of triple chocolate fudge cake swathed in the sweetest raspberry ganache. A single hole lives in its fudgy heart where a candle was lit, blown out, and plucked free. Only a tiny strip of sky is bruised dark gold by the sun, which has passed beyond the horizon, pulling its dark blue blanket of stars along with it.
And here we are, eating my birthday cake a bite at a time. He takes one, then I follow. It’s like a game, his eyes stabbing me fiercely as he watches me delight in the dessert.
“You are a fine looking twenty-one-year-old,” he tells me.
I smirk. “It isn’t midnight yet.”
“Nice observation.” He takes another forkful, cocky as ever. “But you weren’t born at exactly midnight, now were you?”
“One in the morning. Close enough.”
“So I’m sharing a cake with the world’s sexiest twenty-year-old for roughly four more hours.”
Shifting my legs under me, I’m reminded anew that Ben is even responsible for the underwear I have on right now: a pair of ass-cupping black boxer-briefs that feel like nothing. The crotch is shaped perfectly to accommodate my cock and balls, like a pouch perfectly contoured to fit my cock, with stitching on either side that runs right up the crease of my inner thighs. It could not be more fitting to my body if it were painted on.
Feeling sexy and in charge, I take the now empty plate and set it on the table next to us, then throw my legs over Benjamin’s lap, cuddling on the swinging bench. Ben takes to me right away, adjusting to put an arm around my back while resting his other arm along my legs, gently stroking up and down my calf as we slowly swing, enjoying the sights and the gentle sea breeze.
“It feels like we could just sit here for hours doing nothing,” I murmur, leaning my head against his shoulder.
“Second that,” mumbles Ben, breathing across my hair.
“Life can be so unnecessarily stressful, worrying about what my roommate thinks of me, worrying about the others and their opinions, worrying about my mom and dad and whether my education was worth the money we’d saved up for years … I wish I could bottle up the perspective I have right now and take it back home with me somehow.”
“I know that feeling.”
“Shouldn’t life just be about … love? It’s the only thing that matters when you take away stupid arguments you had … and bad moods, frustration, stresses, expectations … and money. In the end, all that’s left when you sift through the dirt is love.”
“Love, the golden nuggets in life’s big gold pan.”
I chuckle. “Thanks for carrying that metaphor full-term. You could have left it alone, but I’ll take it.”
He kisses the top of my head. Something about the slowness in which he kisses me is telling. He takes his time planting those lips on my hair, like his mind is full of deep, swirly thoughts.
Why am I the only one who gets to see this side of Benjamin Gage? Why does the world only know the hard-ass who beats the public images of celebrities like hot metals against an anvil until they’re perfectly shaped, strong and unbreakable when they cool?
Well, to be fair, I also get a far less gentle side of Ben, too—the side that wants to devour me whole every time he looks my way and undresses me with his smoldering stare.
“Would it be so wrong to … call you my boyfriend?” I ask.
His lips freeze atop my head. I clench shut my eyes, feeling like maybe I shouldn’t have pressed the matter. I don’t know why I need it to be stated that I’m his and he’s mine somehow, like the term is my staked claim of ownership. Benjamin is not the corner piece of brownie I’m jabbing my “mine!” fork into at a party; he is a human with willpower and a right to his emotional freedom.
But dang it, so am I.
“I would be lying,” he finally murmurs back, “if I said that what I feel for you isn’t strong. It’s pretty strong, Trevor.”
Every time he says my name in that softer, more sensitive tone of his, my insides melt. Who knew that just uttering a name could be so damned sexy and intimate?
“We don’t really have to label it,” I blurt out, maybe to save him the sweat of tap dancing around an answer. “Whatever this is between us. I don’t know why I’m so caught up in the ‘boyfriend’ thing. Maybe I’m just trying to express my feelings to you, and the only way I know how is … to call you my boyfriend.”
He tightens his grip around my back, squeezing me against him. “Every time you say that word, you make me hard.”
I chuckle, noting the firmness swelling beneath my legs in his lap. “Is that right? … Boyfriend?”
“And you make something else inside me soft.” Ben pulls his head back to get a look into my eyes. The look in his is infinitely deep, almost unrecognizable. “You mean a lot to me, Trevor. I’ve had so many walls around me my whole life. Defensive walls. Reasons to keep guys away. To stay alone. Everyone in my life has always wanted something from me … but it’s never been my heart. It’s just been my clout. Or my wallet. Or my big dick.”
“To be fair,” I quickly add, “I am very interested in your dick, and if it weren’t for your wallet or clout, we wouldn’t be here.”
He chuckles and gives my calf a little smack. “You know what I mean, smart ass.”
“My smart ass is in a very tight pair of underwear right now, thanks to you.”
Ben stares down at me hungrily and growls at my words. “I look forward to getting you right out of those later.”
I feel a sudden surge of humility. “Thank you for them.”
He considers my face for a bit before reluctantly replying, “You’re welcome.”
“And thank you for being patient with me,” I go on. “I know you must go lightning speed with boys you meet at nightclubs. You have had so much more experience at this than I have. I don’t know if I’m going to measure up to what you’re likely used to.”
“Trevor …”
“I just want you to know that I know that. And I also realize this slow pace has to be … hard for you. All of this … waiting …”
“Stop.”
I meet his eyes. The look in them is hard and knowing.
“I don’t have any expectations of you,” he states to my silent, anxious face. “There isn’t any ‘waiting’ happening. Whatever this is between us, it’s already begun. Sex is just sex. It’ll come when you’re ready.”
“Pun intended?” I put in teasingly.
He doesn’t laugh; his eyes pour with sincerity as he speaks solidly into my own. “I’m enjoying myself, Trevor. I’m enjoying all of this. Relax.” That one word from his lips sounds as comforting as it does demanding, almost like an order. “Just enjoy the breeze, go with the flow, and let things happen.”
I melt into his eyes. “I know you meant all that,” I murmur to him openly, “and it really touches me, it does …”
“Yeah?”
“But your words also made me really, really hard.”
I kiss him right then before he can respond. Everything goes away—the waves crashing in the distance, the crisp and salty air, the motion of the swinging bench—and it’s just Benjamin and I.
And this k
iss.
So many things happen with his kiss, all at once. Boyfriends? Yes, we are, without a doubt, boyfriends. Lovers? There is so much passion bursting between us that we’d be fools to deny it, and it’s safe to say that neither of us are fools.
Walls?
I can hear them crashing down, one kiss at a time.
Benjamin is my lover and my boyfriend. He is everything I secretly wanted, filling the years of loneliness so completely that I forget I was ever lonely at all.
Maybe I was never truly alone. Maybe I can see the future and knew all this time that Benjamin Gage would come along to save me. It was only a matter of time.
“I don’t want to wait,” I breathe against his lips while we kiss. “I’ve waited long enough. I want it now. I want you now.”
“Trevor …” he growls like a warning.
“I’m giving myself to you totally. Please,” I nearly beg, “please give me what I really want. Give me you, Benjamin.”
He pulls away from me for one hard second. His eyes darken, all his features tightening with desire. “I swear, you’re going to ruin me, Trevor Woodard.”
Maybe I had it backwards. Maybe I’m the one saving him.
Maybe I’m smashing down all his walls.
The next instant, he sweeps me up into his arms and carries me toward our private beach, sand and wind and night swirling around us.
37
Trevor is ready.
The next thing I know, he sets me down on a soft pile of multicolored blankets in the white sand.
“What’s this?” I ask, glancing all around me.
“Just a little something I had the staff set up for us while we were busy at dinner.”
Plush, brightly-colored pillows rest on the blankets, and the whole area glows from the light of four shallow bowls with rocks that are afire, like four bright braziers.
Ben sits next to me and reaches for an iced bucket I didn’t notice, pulling from it a bottle of champagne. His other hand picks up two champagne glasses, which clink as he sets them on the blanket between us. I hold one while he pops the cork, then pours us each a bubbly glass.
“A toast,” he says after setting down the bottle. I lift my glass, a smile stretched from ear to ear. He lifts his as well, eyeing me importantly. “To being able to legally drink in America. To having the hottest ass on this beach.”
I roll my eyes.
“To good company,” he adds in a more sincere tone, which draws my softening eyes to him. “To knowing the gold you have when it’s sitting right in front of you. To taking our time, and in doing so, appreciating every precious minute we have.”
“I didn’t take you for such a sap.”
“I’m not done.” He reaches around me as fast as a whip and swats my ass, squeezing a laugh out of me that echoes over the sand and into the late evening beyond. “To knowing what’s truly, genuinely valuable in this world … and that it has nothing to do with the numbers … whether that number is an age, or a number in your bank account—”
“Or the number of likes you get on a Facebook post,” I finish.
Ben scowls at me. “Will you take any of this seriously? Or do I have to throw your sexy bare ass over my knee, right here on this beach, and teach you a lesson?”
I’m about to say something really sassy back to him, but then I feel a surge of emotion bubble up inside me out of nowhere. Is it the time we spent here that sobers me? Is it the honest look in his eyes and the way I see him come apart when he gazes at me? Is it the fact that I realize the only reason I enjoyed a second of this weekend was because Ben has been by my side the whole time?
I could be pampered a billion times like I was this morning. I would trade it all for a single kiss from Benjamin Gage.
I lift my glass a touch higher, all the humor in my face gone, replaced with hopeful compassion and gratitude. “To good times, good people, and happiness.”
He gives me a gentle nod. “To good times, good people, and happiness,” he agrees, then taps my glass with his own.
We both drink.
I have felt like Prince Trevor all damned day, pampered until I’m putty, thanks to this man.
But now, I feel like a King.
The empty glasses touch the blanket, and then we are looking into one another’s eyes with the breeze blowing about us. Neither of us move, watching one another as the tiniest bit of light slowly seeps from the sky like a dark gold ink bleeding from a canvas. His eyes sparkle in the light of the four braziers encircling us.
I take my cue. Slowly, I lean into him for a kiss.
His hand grips my shoulder powerfully, stopping me.
I lift an eyebrow, confused. The subtlest of smiles teases the corner of his mouth, and then he gently pushes me back onto the blanket, laying me down. He straddles my waist, then slowly starts to unbutton his shirt—that sleek grey thing that grips his every rippling muscle. When the buttons are freed, he peels it off, and the wind takes it.
My heart pounds, watching his shirtless torso as it glows in the dancing light from the braziers. The last tendril of sunlight burning on the horizon behind him ignites his silhouette in a way that makes him look like a demigod. It’s almost like he reads my mind, knowing how utterly beautiful he looks right now, since he starts taking his sweet time to unbutton his pants.
Somewhere between the button and the zipper, I experience a very untimely jolt of fear.
Is it about to happen? Is it really about to happen?
I realize he’s stopped moving, studying me in my apparent panic. “Something wrong?” he asks, concerned.
“No, no,” I assure him too quickly. “I’m fine.”
There’s a plate containing a hill of strawberries at my side, bright red and plump, accompanied by a small bowl of dipping chocolate. I’m not sure why my eye catches sight of them. I think suddenly I’m nervous and swallowing in my environment.
The waves of the Caribbean Sea still crash beyond us.
The breeze gently blows, tossing the strands of Ben’s hair.
Am I nervous? Am I really, actually nervous? Maybe I should eat a strawberry. Maybe we both should, even though we just devoured a small cake together.
“You look beautiful,” he volunteers suddenly.
I’m yanked from my thoughts. “Th-Thank you.”
He considers me for a moment, then lowers onto the blanket next to me, abandoning the task of taking off his pants. My eyes drift to them, which he’s left unbuttoned and half-unzipped, as he lies on his side with his head propped up by a palm and his elbow digging into the blanket. He can’t possibly know how sexy he looks right now, shirtless with his pants halfway open giving me a peek of his shiny blue boxer-briefs.
“Why’d you stop?” I ask him, forcing myself to sound brave despite my racing heart. “I was enjoying the show.”
“Oh, there’s plenty more show where that came from.” Ben’s face glows when he smiles at me, his eyes twinkling in the flames that are quickly becoming our only source of light. “What’s the rush? We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want. You’re the birthday boy. You’re in charge.”
I feel all the moisture escaping my throat. Cotton fills my mouth as I try to form the right words. “It’s just … I mean … I want to do something. I want to do everything,” I amend with a nervous chuckle. “I’m really … really turned on by you. I think that much is obvious. Someone would have to be blind not to be.” I reconsider. “But even that’s not true. A blind man would hear your kindness and your character and your … your heart. And if that man were deaf as well, then he’d …” I meet Ben’s eyes, worried I’m rambling. He’s perfectly attentive, listening. “Then he’d feel your care.”
“He’d feel my care?”
“The way you touch me … the way you make me feel safe and present and heard.”
“Yeah?” He lifts his free hand to my hair, brushing the short, messy bangs off my forehead. “Like this?”
“Like that.”
Ben
hooks a finger into the top of my shirt, somehow wiggling the first button free. My breathing deepens. Then the second button is freed, followed by the third, then the fourth, and then the last few.
He meets my eyes again. “Like … this?”
“Yes.”
He’s doing all of this one handed. It’s so sexy, how little effort he takes in pulling me right apart. It’s almost lazy, the way he now brings his hand to my sleeves, gently tugging them down my arms until I, like him, am freed from my shirt.
“Like that?” he continues. “Do you … feel my care?”
“I feel it.”
His eyes finally pull away from mine as they begin to explore my chest hungrily. He even licks his lips, but in the most natural, incidental way, like he doesn’t even notice he’s licked them. There isn’t a single bone of performance in him, or demonstrativeness, or fakeness. He isn’t acting or playing a role right now; he’s just Ben, a man with a need, like me, and his eyes are as curious as they are aware.
How can eyes as dark as his look so bright?
His hand comes up to my body. The moment his fingertips touch my skin, I close my eyes, overcome with sensitivity.
“Open them.”
My eyes flap open and reel onto his. “Sorry?”
“I want you to watch me watch you.”
I swallow hard. My heart beats so furiously right now. “I am.”
As he says the words, his hand slowly starts to slide up the side of my body. I’m about to close my eyes again, but then find myself desperate to obey him, keeping my hard gaze on him. His eyes are drinking in the sight of me as his hand softly explores.
The salty air dances over my skin. His fingertips cast waves of excitement through my body, goosebumps coming to life up and down my arms.
And I keep staring into his eyes, just like he ordered.
And he keeps running his hand along my skin, exploring me like he’s never touched another man before. Maybe in some way, this is his first time, too.
When his hand reaches my chest, his fingers play across my nipple gently. I groan and clench shut my eyes, terribly sensitive to his touch.