Kiss and Makeup (14 page)

It happened in a fraction of a second, the counter suddenly boring unyieldingly into her back and Ben's mouth ravaging hers without a hint of the sweetness she'd come to expect from him. This kiss was raw, hungry, and she found herself panting in her attempts to keep up.

Chloe clawed at his shoulders, climbing his body so she could feel him between her legs. His hands left her breasts just long enough to grab her by the backs of her thighs and hoist her onto the edge of the counter. They both groaned as their bodies aligned, his cock pressing against the damp crotch of her panties, and she rocked her hips, wanting more.

He tore his mouth from hers to divest her of her Vote Nixon T-shirt, then invaded her mouth again. Chloe whimpered. God, the man could kiss.

Then he lifted her from the counter, one arm clamped around her waist, the other raking up her spine until it was buried in her hair. Chloe ran her hands across his back, reveling in the flex of his muscles as he carried her out of the kitchen.

She kissed him with all the lust coursing through her veins, attacking his mouth with a desperation that made him stumble. With a growl, he shoved her up against the wall in the living room, and Chloe moaned as their bodies slammed together with the force that she craved. She tightened her legs around his hips and fisted her hands in his hair as he trailed his tongue behind her ear and down her neck.

Somehow they lurched their way down the hallway and into the bedroom. When they reached the bed, he set her on the mattress on her knees before joining her. Their eyes met.

Gently, he reached out and brushed the pad of his thumb across her lips. She stopped its progress with a flick of her tongue, and when Ben's eyes darkened she sucked his finger into her mouth.

With a curse Ben grabbed her, pushing her back toward the pillows. Suddenly he was on top of her, his weight a welcome burden because she craved the pressure of his erection between her thighs and his chest against her breasts.

She pushed his boxer briefs down as far as she could manage, watching unashamedly when he stood to divest himself of them. He leaned over her to kiss her stomach, yanking her panties down her thighs. Chloe thought she might orgasm from the sheer anticipation of his hot, wet kisses on her clit as they slid closer, closer...

When he pressed his mouth to her, she moaned, digging her fingers into the bed and lifting her hips, giving herself over to him. She writhed, desperate to prolong the sensation yet aching to hit the peak. The sweet pressure building in her body finally crested and broke over her in a warm rush of pleasure that stole her breath.

* * *

B
EN
KISSED
HIS
way up her body, loving the little sounds she made in the back of her throat. He nuzzled her breast, sucking her nipple into his mouth. She was so responsive, twisting with need all over again as he ran a palm over her ribs, the dip of her waist, her hip.

“Ben, I want you inside of me.” Her voice was low and throaty, and he couldn't resist the pleasure of giving her what she asked for.

Her breath caught as he pushed all the way in, and she moaned, her hand on his neck, the arch of her foot stroking up and down his calf. He rocked against her, and the sweet, sliding friction of their bodies turned sharp. He drove his hips harder, spurred on by the hitch in her breath and her nails biting into his shoulders.

“Ben, please,” she begged, nipping his earlobe and sending lust crashing through his body. Her hands were everywhere, his arms, his back, lower still.

She pulled him in tighter, trying to force him deeper. He knew she was close, so close, and he poured all his focus into making it good for her, into sending her over the edge.

Only after he felt her release did he let himself go, joining her in a blindingly pure orgasm.

12

S
TUPID
ARCTIC
MIST
.

Chloe was painting again, but all her positivity from yesterday was gone, replaced with pessimism and snarls.

She'd thought the mind-blowing makeup sex had set things right between them, but when she'd woken up twenty minutes ago, it was to find that Ben had snuck out of the condo this morning without a word.

Since she couldn't leave the wall half-finished, and Saturday was fast-approaching, she'd decided to funnel her anger into manual labor. Chloe had just poured some paint into her tray when the sound of the front door startled her.

She spun to face the entrance, and very few things in the world could have shocked her more than the sight of Ben, unshaven, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, double fisting to-go cups from Percolate, the coffee shop down the street.

Her heart gave a little kick before she remembered she was kind of mad at him just then. “I thought you'd gone to work.”

He shrugged. “I've got a day off owed to me from the business trip. Figured I might use it today to finish off some home renos.”

God, she was a sucker for stubble. She did her best to keep her stare haughty, but she could feel her anger slipping.

“You want some help?”

“Depends.” Chloe shrugged noncommittally. “You have any painting experience?”

“Nope. But I have coffee, and it's been brought to my attention recently that I'm very tall.”

Chloe decided conceding with grace had a certain merit. She grabbed the roller and exchanged it for the cup in his left hand. “You're hired.”

Then an amazing thing happened—as they painted, he started to tell her this really great story about the cabin in the picture she loved, how he and his dad used to make up stories about it while they fished.

Chloe dipped her roller back into the paint tray, deciding whether or not she should probe the subject. Ben had gone silent at the conclusion of his story, and she didn't want to pry. Especially not after yesterday's blow-up over the trunk.

But she craved knowledge about the man who stood beside her, and here, side by side, painting the living room a beautiful shade of pale gray-blue and freezing because the fumes required an open window, she was finally quenching some of that curiosity. “How come you don't have any personal stuff?” Her apartment wasn't great, but at least it was stamped with her style, her personality. “No pictures, no books, no knickknacks. I mean, it doesn't even look like you live here. How do you live your whole life without accumulating any junk?”

He glanced around the place like he was seeing it for the first time. “I never really thought about that.” He ran his hand over his face, and she could hear the faint rasp of his stubble beneath his palm. “My dad wasn't very sentimental, I guess. He was more about looking to the future. I'm kind of the same way, I suppose.”

“What about your mom?”

His muscles tensed. “She's the reason Dad wasn't very sentimental.”

“I'm sorry.”

Ben shrugged. “Not your fault.”

“She wasn't around much, then?”

“Left when I was eight. Haven't heard from her since.”

Chloe exhaled. “That's a really shitty thing to do to a kid.”

“Yeah, well, you can't change the past, right? And my dad, he was great.” Chloe could tell he'd been special, just by Ben's sad smile. “I mean, he really stepped up. Everything I have, everything I am, is because of him.”

“Sounds like you were close.”

He nodded.

“Can I ask what happened?”

Ben's roller stuttered on the wall, just the slightest pause and slip. When he spoke, his voice was dull. “He fell off a ladder at work.”

“Oh, my God. Ben. That's awful! I'm so sorry.”

“It was just a freak accident. The rung broke while he was standing on it.” Ben lowered the roller, bracing the pole on the floor beside him. “He was a janitor at a big high-rise downtown. He was washing windows, something he'd done a thousand times before. And then he was just gone.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“How old were you?” she asked.

He started at the sound of her voice, as if he'd just come back from somewhere else. “I was in my second year of college, heading toward a business degree so I could get into advertising. He was really proud that I was going to make something of myself.” Ben smiled, but it wobbled a bit. “That's what he always said, ‘Ben, you're gonna make something of yourself.'” Ben shoved his roller into the paint and set about erasing another section of beige. “He would've liked you, though,” he said without looking at her.

Chloe shook her head. The compliment was too big for her to fathom.

“He would have,” Ben insisted. “He prized confidence and speaking one's mind very highly. He always told it like it was. I think you two would have really hit it off.”

Now it was Chloe's turn to be silent. She needed a minute to take that in.

“I'm sorry I went into that trunk without your permission, Ben.”

He shrugged. “I was just surprised. I haven't seen that stuff in quite a while. I wasn't prepared.”

Chloe understood that now. But she wanted to explain. “It felt like a treasure chest, you know? I mean, I thought it was so cool that you had all this stuff, all these reminders of the people you love and the people who loved you. I never considered for a moment that you wouldn't want those memories.”

She'd finished the lower part of the wall, and she figured Ben would be done in a few more strokes of the roller. She stepped back to take in their handiwork.

“You must have the same.”

“No, actually,” she confessed, and Ben glanced over his shoulder at her.

“I don't have those kind of memories with my dad. He was always working. Still is. Sometimes I realize that I barely know him. I definitely don't have any pictures like these.” She ran a hand across the top of the frame that held the shot of the Masterson men fishing. “All of our family photos are stiff and formal and taken by very expensive photographers.”

Ben lowered his roller from the finished wall. “Different worlds, huh?”

“Completely.”

They both turned their attention to the wall. It looked even better than she'd imagined, but her current feeling of satisfaction had nothing to do with arctic mist. “Pretty good, huh?”

Ben nodded. “It's growing on me. Chloe?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you busy tonight?”

“No.”

“How would you like to go to a birthday party with me?”

* * *

“Y
OU
SURE
YOU
'
RE
OKAY
?” Ben was staring at her with concern, the apple pie he'd picked up at the amazing bakery near their place—his place, she corrected herself—balanced on one hand as they made their way up the sidewalk to Oz's house.

“I'm great,” she lied, motioning toward the jacked-up red Toyota Tundra parked at the curb. “I'm still hung up on the fact that's your vehicle, Masterson. A Lexus? Yes. A Beamer? Sure. But a pick-up? I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years.”

Ben glanced back at it. “What's wrong with my truck?”

“The truck is fine. You seem a little too city to be driving it, that's all.”

He scoffed at her summation, and she returned his eyeroll as she ran her hands down her stomach ostensibly smoothing a wrinkle in her coat. In truth, she was trying to calm the raging herd of butterflies in combat boots that had taken over her stomach.

Meeting the friends. It felt like a big deal. It
was
a big deal.

She'd agreed in a moment of extreme weakness. He'd just told her about his father, they'd had a nice day painting, and she'd been blinded by the intimacy of it all.

A party? Sure, I'll go to a party with you.

By the time she'd found out it was a party for a five-year-old and they'd be the only adults there save for his oldest and dearest friend and his wife, she'd been trapped.

She glanced down at her left hand—at Ben's grandmother's wedding ring, for God's sake!—its symbolic weight tethering her to a man she had nothing in common with.

They ascended the front steps and before she knew it, Ben was knocking on the door. Chloe took a deep breath and pulled the ring off her left hand, transferring it to her right. An attempt to keep a little perspective before she went down the rabbit hole.

The door opened to reveal a lovely, fresh-faced redhead with the harried look of a mother—a look that said she'd just handled about twenty things before appearing before them. Her slightly frizzy curls were scraped back from her face in a ponytail, and she wore jeans, slippers and a purple sweatshirt with a big, gold W on the front. Obviously a proud University of Washington alum. Her face lit up when she recognized her guests—well, one of them—and she pushed open the screen.

“We brought grown-up dessert.” Ben raised the pie as proof.

“You are a saint, Ben.” She relieved him of his delicious burden. “You know how much I hate confetti cupcakes. How come I didn't marry you instead of Oz?”

“I'm pretty sure it's because I didn't ask you.”

“Right. How gallant of you to remind me. And why was that again?”

“Couldn't do it. My best friend was in love with you, and you remember the rule, Jilly: bros before hos.”

The woman's laughter was full-bodied and infectious; Chloe liked her immediately.

“Well, if that's the case then we hos need to stick together. You must be Chloe. I'm Jill, Seth's wife. Please come in. And watch out for beads. There was a necklace-making catastrophe earlier, and they keep rolling out of nowhere and attacking people's feet, no matter how much I vacuum.” She shut the door behind them. “I guess I should be thankful it was beads. The last calamity involved an ant farm.”

“Uncle Ben! You're here!”

Two of the cutest children Chloe had ever seen raced in out of nowhere, and Jill used the distraction to disappear into the kitchen with the pie.

“There they are! How're my girls?” Ben reached down to scoop the youngest into his arm. Her bright red curls, just like her mom's, glowed around a face full of freckles. The older girl had tucked herself against Ben's leg, and his hand rested protectively against her shoulder. Her brown hair was also curly, but the ringlets were far more subdued than her sister's—just like her personality.

“We missed you!”

“Aw, I missed you guys, too. Chloe, meet Laura and Ragamuffin.”

The girl in his arms giggled. “Uncle Beh-en. My
name
is
Amy
.”

“Oh, right.
Amy
. I keep forgetting that!”

Chloe couldn't help but smile. “It's nice to meet you, Amy. I'm Chloe.”

“I'm five today,” Amy announced, holding up the requisite number of fingers.

“That's right! I heard there was a birthday girl in the house,” Ben said. He looked down as Laura tugged on his pants.

“Uncle Ben,” Laura whispered, her green eyes large as she motioned for him to bend down. Cupping her hand to his ear, she leaned close to impart her secret.

Ben's resulting smile tugged at Chloe's heart. “So do I. Why don't you tell her so? I think she'd be happy to hear that.”

Shyly, Laura turned to Chloe. “I like your hair.”

Startled, Chloe's gaze bounced from Laura's to Ben's, then back to Laura's. “Oh. Thanks.” She recovered with a smile. “I... I like yours, too. I always wanted curly hair.” The little girl smiled, revealing that the tooth fairy must have visited her recently, before she hid her face against Ben's coat.

“All right, who wants to try to defeat me at Candyland?” he said.

“I do, I do!” and “Me, me, me!” got all jumbled up as Laura and Amy vied for his attention. He bent down and set Amy on the linoleum.

“Okay, you ladies go get the game set up and I will be in after I say hi to your mom and dad. Deal?”

“Deal!” they shouted, scampering off toward the living room. Ben reached into the front closet and grabbed a hanger, motioning for Chloe to hand him her coat, which she did.

“Smells good,” he called to Jill as he hung up her coat, then divested himself of his own and gave it the same treatment.

“Oz not back yet?”

“He texted after the game ended. I'm expecting him in about ten minutes.”

“Cool. Did you need any help?”

Jill shook her head. “I've got things under control. But thanks.”

“Then if you'll excuse me, I have a Candyland grudge-match to attend to. Winner takes all. Coming?” Ben asked her, and his smile was so inviting that Chloe thought she might follow him anywhere.

“Forget it.” Jill jumped in. “I need news of the outside world! No way am I letting you steal away my adult company. Chloe's staying in the kitchen with me.”

“Okay, but don't let her start on the pie.” Chloe made a face but he'd already headed into the other room.

“Ben's really great with your girls.”

Jill smiled and led Chloe deeper into the kitchen. “Yeah, they love him. You can put your purse here,” she offered as they passed a small table littered with spelling tests and mail. “But enough about Ben. I love my kids and all, but I can't tell you how excited I am by the prospect of a little adult conversation with someone who doesn't have children. Are bars still as fun as I remember? What's it like not to have to schedule sex? In my foggy memories, it seemed hot, but my practical mom brain is having a hard time with the logistics of shaving. I mean, do you have to do it every day? Just in case? Because I'm not sure if that's worth it.”

Chloe laughed, settling onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar.