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

the strange stain on the wall, one tiny closet, and no attached bathroom.  None of those features mattered to me tonight, because my attention was focused only on one piece of furniture: Ben’s big bed.

He walked me to it until the back of my knees bumped up against it, then he helped me remove my coat, and then clothes started flying.  I really hadn’t needed to put so much thought into what I wore, except that I should have picked something with fewer zippers and fasteners and more Velcro for easy removal.  But soon enough, we were both down to our undies and lying on the bed next to each other, our bodies pressed so tightly that there wasn’t a space between us.

Ben’s hands wandered down to my hip and he rubbed, and then to my butt which he also rubbed, and then to my thigh, which he pulled over his hip, opening me to him.  “Tell me what you like,” he whispered.

“I like…I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”  He picked up his head, a silhouette in the dark room.  “How do you like to be touched?”

“Um, I don’t…I haven’t given that much thought.  What you’re doing is great,” I encouraged him.  “I’ve really liked everything a lot so far.”

He laughed quietly.  “We haven’t even started.”

Maybe not, but I was already more primed and ready than I’d ever felt in the past.  “I don’t know what to say,” I told him.  “I can’t really do all that sexy talking because I don’t like to say most of those words.  It’s just not very nice language.”

Ben laughed again, this time as he kissed my neck.  It made a very, very pleasant vibrating sensation there, making me think of other areas where a little vibration…

“Let’s just try things out,” he suggested.  “You can show me, and I’ll show you.”

I nodded and he used that movement to adjust my chin and find more places on my neck that made me shiver.  And I looked for his, discovering a spot just above his collarbone that made him say, “Mmmm,” and grab my butt to pull me even closer.  When he did that, we rubbed together more in our private regions, which made me say, “Mmmm,” too.

“Like that, honey?”  Ben did it again, circling his hips against me.

“Yes, just like that,” I encouraged him, my voice choking.  “Just like that, please!”

He laughed more, and I did, too.  I hadn’t known that sleeping with someone could be so funny.  No, not funny—fun.  He touched my breast and I gasped and then leaned into his hand.  “Tell me,” he murmured.

“Yes, but—can you rub—”

Ben unhooked my bra with a very practiced move and it joined my clothes on the floor.  He swept his knuckles over my nipples and I nodded.  “Yes!  But also, more.”

“More,” he repeated, and used his fingers now to squeeze and softly pull.  “And more,” he added, and put his mouth there to suck and tease with his tongue.  He rolled us so that I lay on top, and he put my elbows over his shoulders so that everything was just dangling right there in his face.  Then he moved back and forth, flicking his tongue, using his hands to cup and massage.  “You like it when I touch your breasts,” he noted.

Was that all he’d been doing?  It felt like he’d been employing some kind of magic in that area.  “Yes, I really like that.  Do you?”

“Try me.”

So I moved down his body, rubbing my sensitive, needy breasts over his chest just to feel his skin against them, and then using my mouth in the same way over his nipples.  He liked it; not as much as I did, but it was good.  I thought I’d try lower, so I kept sliding down until I was settled in between his legs.

“That’s something I’ll like for sure,” he said.  He picked up his head to watch me touch him, to stroke my fingertips up and down.  “Hold me,” he urged, and I took him in both hands and stroked harder.  I bent my head, and as he watched, I licked.  Then sucked.

“Gaby…” he groaned.  “Gaby.  Do you know how long…”  He took my shoulders and he came out of my mouth with a pop as he pulled me back up his body.  But he put his hard shaft in between my legs and I had to rub against it, to massage myself against him.

“That’s so good,” I gasped.  “That feels so good.”  Ben watched me, holding my breasts and caressing them, an expression of stern concentration on his face.  “Doesn’t it for you?”

“I’m trying not to come,” he told me.  “I’m going through the Woodsmen playbook my mind so I won’t.  Passing routes.”

I started laughing so hard that I shook and my head collapsed on his chest.

“We’ll see about this,” he told me, and flipped us again so that I was under him.  And he repaid the favor, going down to lay between my legs and lick me right there.  “More?” he asked me, and twirled his tongue.

“Yes!  More!  A lot more,” I pleaded, and he laughed now.  I had been totally right about how that vibration would feel.  My hands slid to my breasts and I felt them like Ben had done.  He watched me, licking and sucking, driving inside me with his tongue, and I—

I came.  It flooded through me, a sudden, overwhelming sweep of pleasure, and then another wave, and then another.

“Honey, I…damn, I mean, gravy,  I need a…right now,” he muttered.  I watched lazily, sated, as Ben reached into his nightstand and yanked out a box of condoms which he tore open, making a confetti of birth control across the bed.  He tried to pull open one wrapper, then threw it to the ground when he was unsuccessful even with his teeth.  He went for another, and then said, “I already ripped it!”

“I can do this,” I said, and with my bones melted to butter, I pushed him onto his back