The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

to reassure myself that it was the same way with Ben.  He’d seen me right after practice, glowing a lot and with my hair not at its smoothest.  He’d seen me with a disgustingly swollen ankle that he’d treated with ice himself.  He’d seen me with my nose running like a faucet due to a sad commercial for the Humane Society.  I’d cried so hard watching it that I hadn’t been able to speak, and he hadn’t minded my puffy eyes, either.  He’d also promised that he would adopt one of those poor, unfortunate dogs.

I started humming the song from the commercial.  Whoops, here I went again.  I folded a tissue and caught the tears before they rolled out of my eyes.  As soon as I moved out of my condo where pets weren’t allowed, I was going to adopt five of those dogs myself.  No, I had to stop thinking about the dogs!

Ben.  I needed to think about him, because I was going over to his house, and he was going to see all of me.  I’d taken another shower and done a very, very careful shave of the areas that no one had been looking at for a long time, and I’d used a little more than a capful of the gardenia bodywash that he liked.  But Ben was the one who had just given me a big talk about how I was more than a collection of body parts, wasn’t he?  So I didn’t have to worry, I told myself firmly.  No reason to worry.

But still, the habits of twenty-four years of living were hard to break (I didn’t count my first year, when my mom had done my grooming for me).  I carefully studied my pores in the magnifying mirror and removed one extra hair from my left eyebrow.  I considered more blush, too, because I was very pale, but all I had to do was think about Ben kissing me and suddenly my face was flooded with color.  Way too much, in fact, so I added extra powder to tamp that down.

Maybe I was more than body parts, but my body was what he’d be seeing tonight, more of it than even my dance clothes showed off.  And I wanted this to be wonderful between us, for him to enjoy it so much that he would decide that dating and marriage could be in his future.  I wanted to make him look past my past, too.

Well, then my body parts and what I did with them were going have to be extra special.  Tonight was going to have to be so mind-blowing that he wouldn’t even care when I told him about Shep.  Maybe after tonight, Ben wouldn’t think twice when I explained that now I did want to get married and did want kids.  I’d have to get him out of his head with ecstasy, so that he’d be willing to go after those things with me, too.

Ok, so all I had to do was use my powers of sexual persuasion to change his mind about his future as a single guy and also alter his views on morality.  I watched my face get pale again in the mirror.  Sure, no pressure.  Not to mention that since he was a Woodsmen coach, I wasn’t supposed to…maybe that was a problem for another day, because the ones for tonight were big enough.

I wasn’t even that good at the sex stuff, I didn’t think.  I’d slept with a few of my boyfriends—not too many, because I always heard my mom’s voice telling me not to give away my precious gift since I’d never get it back, and also how no man wanted a well-used wife.  It had been fine when I’d done it.  Nothing earth-shattering like Hallie sometimes mentioned, but fine.  And “fine” wouldn’t be enough for tonight!  How would I ever pull this off?

I thought about the last time I’d been close to this particular act, but I then tried to forget it.  With Shep, it had always been very quick to finish, and then my exits from our motel rooms had come even quicker.  As in him telling me, “Ok, Gaby, it’s time to go.  You first and then I’ll follow in a while so no one sees us leave together.”

But our final episode had been really bad, because Shep hadn’t even been able to, well, perform, and he’d told me that I just wasn’t doing it for him.  That had actually been a problem a lot for us, which didn’t make me feel any better about my chances of swaying Ben tonight with my ultra-sexy moves.  Oh, good gravy.  What was I doing?

My phone lit up and I looked at the screen.

“Are you coming?”

I looked at the words and then typed, “Yes.”  Ok, yes.  I was.

Ben was waiting on the porch when I stopped in front of his house, and he came down the steps to my beautiful, Oscar-green car.  “Hi,” I said as I got out, but he just kissed me.  He backed me up against that green paint and kissed me, and kissed me, and picked me up so that my legs went around him and he held me under my butt to get me even closer.

“Hi,” he answered, but he was now moving his hips against mine, and it felt so good that I was already gasping.  “Let’s go inside.  Quietly,” he reminded me.  He slid me down slowly to stand next to the car.  “Can you walk?”

No, but not because of my ankle.  He had just kissed me breathless and we weren’t even in the house yet.  I was still wearing my coat.  “Yes, I’m fine!” I panted.  “Yes, let’s go!”

I hadn’t spent any time in Ben’s room beyond when I’d gone in looking for Tessa when we played hide and seek.  “Beautiful views from the master bedroom!” I had planned for the listing, but that was about as much as you could say for the low-ceilinged room with