by Tyler, Q. B.
“You were always better at it than me.” I chuckle, remembering how I was usually goofing off in the class and imbibing far too much wine to be absorbing any information.
“You were a good assistant.” He smiles and I roll my eyes.
“Thank you for cooking.” I nibble on a piece of bacon and eye him nervously. He cocks his head to the side and shakes his head.
“You thank me like I’ve ever not wanted to take care of you.” He puts his hand up when I go to respond. “Yes, maybe not recently, but I have no recollection of that. All I know is…this.” He points at all the food and feelings of warmth flood my bones. I don’t respond, not knowing what to say when he speaks again. “So, what else have you been up to?” I look at him before looking around the room, wondering what I should say when he clarifies. “Maybe not in the last six months to avoid giving me a heart attack,” he jokes.
“I haven’t been…I mean…David was the only…” I snap my lips shut. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
His eyes darken and I can tell he’s gritting his teeth by how sharp his jaw looks. “No, but I’d prefer not to hear about whatever the fuck you’ve been doing with that asshole.” He leans forward and he smells like syrup and coffee and Bennett and it sparks a nostalgia I can’t ignore.
Me and Bennett fucking on this bar getting syrup…everywhere.
I hop on the island and watch as my sinfully delicious husband makes us breakfast. My eyes rove over his naked chest and my eyes slither down his body to where his sweats hang low on his hips. We’d already had sex this morning after spending the majority of the night making love and even still it wasn’t enough. I want more.
I would always want more with Bennett.
I bite my lip, my eyes still planted on where I know his cock is hidden.
“You’re biting your lip and staring at my dick. I’m taking that as an invitation.” I look up as Bennett makes his way towards me and stands between my legs. “Do you want my fat cock in your pretty little mouth?” He slides his hand up my body to cup my jaw, peppering kisses down the side of my face and I whimper when he squeezes harder. I love this island because his height allows him to grind his cock against my sex when I sit on top. It also allows us to have some of our hottest sex.
He presses his cock into my pussy, which is only covered by a tiny scrap of lace. He pulls away, and I instantly miss his lips on me. “I want to try something first.”
My eyes flutter open when he speaks and I nod my head, knowing that whatever he suggests, I’ll be up for.
“Strip.” His voice is dark and sinful and has a direct line to my clit which pulses in response to his command.
I slide my panties down my legs, tossing them to the floor, followed by his t-shirt leaving me completely nude.
“Lie back,” he says and I oblige, propping myself up on my elbows so I can see what he’s planning to do. It wouldn’t be the first time he ate my pussy on our island, but the look in his eyes lets me know this might be slightly different.
My eyes widen when he grabs the small bowl that he’d heated the syrup in and pours it on my skin from my chest down to the top of my mound. The feeling is warm and sexy and sticky as hell but I can’t escape the immediate flood between my legs at the idea of what he’s about to do.
Bennett has an obsession with tasting me. He’d told me once that my skin always tasted like vanilla and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with my sweetness on his tongue.
I melted.
His tongue sweeps out as he hovers over me, and rubs his tongue across my lips once. I open my mouth, and my tongue shoots out towards his preparing to welcome him but he shakes his head before pulling back. “Naughty girl.”
His lips find my chin and down my neck before I feel the wet muscle at the space between my breasts. I feel his beard rubbing against them as he sucks and licks the syrup from my skin and my body hums with pleasure. I try to press my legs together to relieve some of the ache when his hands find my thighs to hold them down. “I want to smell how wet I make you. I want them spread,” he growls.
“Fuck, Clarke.” I moan as he continues his trail down my body collecting the syrup but leaving a trail of his saliva in his wake. My body is on fire, desperate for any kind of relief from the pleasurable pain that burns from the outside in. “Please.”
He gets to the top of my mound, pressing a kiss there and spreading my lips open in preparation to devour me. “Livi.” I watch him stick his fingers in his mouth to wet them. He slides his tongue between his index and middle finger lasciviously as a sign of what I’m in for before shooting me a wink that takes all the air from my lungs.
My husband is walking sex.
“Clarke,” I whimper, dying for the feeling of his tongue or fingers or anything rubbing against my clit when I hear him call for me again.
“Livi.”
“Mmmm.” I let out a moan just as his two fingers make contact with my swollen bundle of nerves. The syrup and his spit and my natural wetness make for a slippery concoction, making my sex slicker than usual.
“Olivia, look at me, baby.” I can’t even force my eyes open in this moment, I’m too turned on and far gone, my body floating out of my body and hovering above us, watching this sinful display.
“Olivia…” I open my mouth in response, but nothing comes out.
“Olivia?” My eyes pop open but when I look down, he’s not there.
“Olivia?”
I blink several times, trying to clear my head of the sexy memory before turning to Bennett. “Sorry…what did you say?” I bite my lip, feeling embarrassed that he caught me having a fantasy about him. Fuck.
“Are you okay?” His hand finds my cheek as he turns my face to look at him. “You keep spacing out on me.”
“No…I…I was just thinking about something.” I clear my throat. “Something I need to do for work.” I pull away from his grasp and push my plate away instantly, suddenly not wanting to even think about pancakes or syrup or syrup dripping out of my pussy that Bennett caught with his fucking tongue.
I need to get away from this man.
I get up, deciding now is the best time to get that coffee. I keep my back turned as I make it, my shoulders feeling like they’re up around my ears with how tense I am when I feel him at my back. His hands dart out to either side of me, boxing me in and I wish he’d just give me some space because I feel like I can’t breathe.
“Were you thinking about the time I licked the whipped cream from the pancakes off of you? Because I was,” he growls in my ear before biting it gently. “That time I sprayed it down your body and licked up every bit. Especially between your legs.” He presses against me harder. “Although, whipped cream doesn’t have anything on the taste of your cunt.” Bennett Clarke is a notorious dirty talker. Phone sex with him is undeniably one of the most erotic experiences of my life, and the texts he used to send me when we were apart were some of the dirtiest things I’d ever read.
I spin in his arms. “It wasn’t whipped cream it was syrup and…” I bite my bottom lip at the cheeky look he’s giving me, having been caught fantasizing about exactly what he thought.
He leans forward and uses his thumb to pull my bottom lip from between my teeth causing a bolt of lightning to shoot through my body. “There was an instance with whipped cream too.” He winks before making his way back to the island. My shoulders sag and my heart, which was racing, begins to slow now that he’s no longer in my space, but nothing is lessening the dull roar between my legs. I clench, doing my best to stop the pulsing but it seems to only exacerbate the ache.
Holy fuck, I need to come.
I start towards my room when I realize that I can’t exactly dart to my room, masturbate, and emerge from my room like nothing happened. I need a reason to be alone in my room and I would have to be quiet. Which means no vibrator because even the quiet ones make some noise.
“I’m going to shower,” I blurt out.
“Okay…?” He cocks his
head to the side, probably confused at the immediate need to shower when I hadn’t even taken a sip of the coffee I’d just made.
“I can clean this up when I’m out…” I don’t even wait for his response before I’m bolting for the master bedroom, completely forgetting that he’d been staying there.
The second I close the door behind me I almost combust. His scent is everywhere. The bed he’d slept on is unmade, the sheets crumpled and possibly slightly warm with evidence that he’d been there. My eyes dart to the walk-in closet that still houses some of my clothes. I walk to it, peering inside to see that he’d hung his clothes in the space that he’d originally inhabited. Tears well in my eyes at my body being pulled under by this sensory overload.
Bennett is back.
In my house.
In my head.
And evidently, if the throb between my legs is any indication, in my fantasies.
I emerge from my bedroom freshly showered, feeling less hungover and more sated than I was forty minutes ago to find Bennett on the couch, the kitchen completely spotless. “I told you I would clean…” I trail off as I take note of his legs propped up on the ottoman. “You should be resting.”
He shrugs. “It’s fine. How was your shower?”
My mind reels, thinking maybe I wasn’t as quiet as I thought and perhaps the shower didn’t drown out the sound of me coming. No way, I wasn’t that loud.
“Fine.” I brush a hand down my body as if to brush off the question and look up at him when I see him staring at me.
“You going to come sit with me or…?” He asks as he points at my spacious couch. I swallow and move towards him like a deer fearful of falling into a trap. A very gorgeous trap that has the power to destroy me.
I sit on the opposite side of the L shaped couch and he gives me a sad smile. “Livi…”
“Bennett.”
“Tell me what happened between us.” He turns off the television. “Tell me why you can’t even look at me.”
I curse myself for putting on mascara knowing that this conversation would push me to tears when I feel the familiar prickle in my eyes. “Bennett, please.”
His eyes furrow. “Are we ever going to talk about it? Or are you just going to let me hate myself forever?” I pry my eyes away from him and his pleading gaze as he continues. “Do you know I didn’t sleep last night?”
My eyes shoot away from the spot on the floor I was fixating on and stare into his sad green eyes. “What?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for hours before I gave up and just stared at the ceiling, my brain coming up with all of these scenarios as to why we aren’t together. I tried Liv, I tried everything to try and remember. I tried to break into my phone again. I think I’m locked out for twenty-four hours.” He shakes his head. “What kind of shit is that by the way? Apple is fucked up.”
“It’s for security since we store so much of our lives in our phone.” I shrug.
He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Look, I know you don’t care about me now or the fact that I’m going out of my fucking mind trying to figure out what happened between us…but maybe you care about the old Bennett. I would think you’d care if he was hurting.”
My eyes well up with tears at the sentiment. He’s right. I do care about the Bennett he was before our lives changed forever. The man in front of me is the Bennett I fell in love with. He’s the man that had me coming all over my hand not twenty minutes ago. I hate that he is hurting.
I guess it’s time this Bennett knew the truth.
I shift nervously in my seat and before I can open my mouth, Bennett has moved closer to sit next to me. He opens his hand and rests it on my thigh, palm up, and I stare down at his offering.
“You look like you’re going to burst into tears at any second.” I grit my teeth, to try and stop my body from doing just that when his hand moves and laces with mine. I try to pull my hand from his grasp but he just holds it tighter. “Stop.”
“We…struggled with…” I clear my throat as I prepare myself for hours of questioning and talking and eventually disclosing what I’ve learned about myself that I’ve never told Bennett. “Getting pregnant.”
He squeezes my hand and nods solemnly. “I figured,” he says sadly. “When you said we didn’t have kids.”
I lick my lips and let out a slow shaky breath. “I’ve had two miscarriages…they were…difficult.”
Pause.
Take a breath.
“Livi…” My name falls from his lips like a plea as if he’s begging for this to not be true. As if somehow, he could change the past. “Baby, I’m sorry.” I look up, preparing to correct him for using the term of endearment he just can’t seem to shake, when I meet his watery green eyes. I’m not a stranger to Bennett’s tears, especially over this, but seeing him this way still guts me.
We’d mourned the loss of both children with more tears than I thought were possible. The second more so than the first.
“How…how far along were we?” he asks.
“I feel like I should back up a second and start from the beginning. It took us a while to get pregnant in the first place. I’m having some trouble placing exactly where your memory loss starts, but it was about two years ago that we started trying.” I narrow my eyes, trying to remember exactly when we decided we were going to try for a baby. “As you know, we were always a very sexual couple, so I don’t think we necessarily started having more sex, but I went off the pill and we just started trying. In the beginning, we didn’t think anything of it. It’s common for it to take a while when you’ve been on birth control for so long. But then the first few months turned to six and nine and every time I took a test, I saw so much disappointment on your face. I felt like such a failure…”
“You’re not. I never would have thought that,” he interrupts and I nod.
“I know that now, and I probably knew it then, but it’s not something I could control. My mind was so messed up during that time. I knew you wanted a baby, and all I felt was self-loathing that I couldn’t give it to you. I was scared you’d eventually leave me if I couldn’t give you what you wanted.” My heart feels like it’s about to beat out of my chest as I speak the words I’ve never spoken to Bennett. I don’t know why I’m letting myself be so vulnerable with him. Maybe because this is Bennett pre-miscarriages. The Bennett that believes I walk on water. The one that believes I can do anything. He hasn’t seen me when I felt my weakest. When I wondered how it was possible that he still loved me.
“I would never have left you. I can’t live without you. I want—wanted a baby, yes, but I wanted your baby. We would have figured something else out. Did we even see anyone? A specialist?” His brows are furrowed and his lips are fixed into a hard line.
“No, because eventually…” I let out a breath. “Eventually, I got pregnant.” A smile ghosts over my lips despite this morbid trip down memory lane, because the memory of peeing on that stick and seeing those two pink lines for the first time in my life was something I’ll never forget. “We were so happy. It was like this dark cloud had been lifted and the sun was finally shining. A moment of light after some of my darkest months.” My smile fades and the tears rush to my eyes and before I can stop them, they’re sliding slowly down my cheeks. My left hand is still encased in Bennett’s, and I don’t see him letting me go, so I wipe my face with my right hand despite the fact that more tears are quickly forming. “I miscarried the first time at seven weeks.” I’m silent for a moment as I let the words settle between us. He doesn’t say anything in response so I continue. “They say it happens and there’s nothing to be necessarily concerned about and it’s common…but there is nothing natural about being pregnant and then just…not. It feels…fuck…inhumane.”
He moves closer to me and I fight the urge to move away. There’s still space between us, and I’m half expecting him to do what he always does and pull me into his lap, but he doesn’t.
I don’t know if the thought makes me
grateful or disappointed.
“The second time…was worse.” He stiffens next to me and his thumb drags slowly over my knuckles. The feeling makes me warm all over, and now I really want to be in his lap. I want comfort and I’m seeking it in what I know to be a warm embrace. I take a breath preparing myself for this part of the story. It’s like jumping into an unknown body of water. You’re not really sure how deep you’ll go, so you dive in. Praying you don’t go too deep, and that you reach the surface before you drown.
I don’t want to drown in these memories.
“The second time I got pregnant, we made it past the seven week mark. I swear we held our breaths for the entire first two months. We stayed in my OB’s office, just to make sure everything was fine. Once we hit eight weeks, and I heard our baby’s heartbeat, I allowed myself to get excited. We were excited. We started thinking of names and preparing to turn the guest room into a nursery. We told our families. We named Lys and Wren as Godparents.” I tuck a curl behind my ear and sigh, my shoulders sinking further down as the pressure of this conversation takes its toll on me. “At eleven weeks, we went back in for a check-up and there was just…no heartbeat.” My lip trembles and suddenly I feel a prickle against my hand and I look over to see Bennett dragging his lips across my skin.
“I’m sorry.” I’m not sure if he’s apologizing for the innocent kiss or what happened but my heart melts at the look he’s giving me. He places our hands that are still clasped back on the couch between us and I give him a sad smile.
“I needed to have a surgical procedure to remove…” I trail off. I don’t get into the gritty details because, quite frankly, I hate thinking about it or talking about it. The miscarriage is painful enough without thinking of that part.
“What did the doctor say after the second time?”
“She said it happens and that two wasn’t something to be too concerned about, yet.” I shrug. “It happens. Three miscarriages is when they’ll dive into testing. I could have done it after the second but…” I trail off and my lips form a straight line.