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She was going to say something clever—once she thought of it—but he was smiling, and he kissed her for real with a little bump of teeth, their tongues stroking over each other. The moist intimacy of it was like mainlining sex straight into her veins, fogging up her head. His hand still cupped her breast, his thumb pressing, tweaking, sending one racing pulse after another to crash into her clit.
Perfect. Exactly enough. And then, suddenly, too much, because if he kept doing that and she kept rubbing the seam of her jeans against her clit, the pressure of his cock—God, even the word cock—would be enough to make her come.
She wasn’t quite out of it enough to think it was a good idea to ride Ben to climax in a fenced backyard in Brooklyn, half exposed to the elements, making God knew what kind of sounds.
She made a noise like “nuh,” denial mixed with pleasure, and pushed his hand away. But she couldn’t seem to stop kissing him, even as she yanked up on her bra and camisole to cover herself. She kissed his scratchy jaw. His chin. His mouth. The spot where his hairline almost met his ear.
Passion, she thought. This is passion. Stupid-looking from the outside, but awesome when it caught you and dragged you along for the ride.
Or maybe it was more than that. More than lust that made her feel so giddy about the shape of his ears and the faint line where his cheeks creased in those dimples so deep, they weren’t even dimples.
More than a primitive, instinct-driven sexual impulse that zinged down through her when their eyes met and he smiled at her, all lopsided.
When he looked at her that way, it was like his regard brought her alive, every time. She felt her body. The way the jeans hugged her calves almost all the way down to the ankle—a new sensation for her, since she was used to boot-cut jeans that flared below the knee.
Back home, she wore ordinary pants from Kohl’s and solid, practical tops that didn’t cling too tight or swoop too low on her chest. Ask anybody in the family what her favorite food was, and they’d tell you May loved mashed potatoes with salt and pepper and a lot of butter on top. She didn’t wear much makeup or take risks.
This isn’t me, a voice whispered in her head.
But of course it was.
These were the choices she got to make—not how Dan proposed or what kind of life they’d live together, but who she wanted to be. What clothes she wore. Whether or not to be the kind of woman who put on cowboy boots and felt sexy as she strode down the uneven sidewalks of New York.
Whether to tease Ben, to climb on top of his lap and kiss him, to sleep in his bed.
Whether to go after what she wanted, sex or authenticity or truth—even if it turned out to be both disgusting and amazing, scary and essential.
These were her decisions and nobody else’s.
Her heart beat hard, her chest aching with a tender elation.
“We better …”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “We better.”
She thought he’d push her off him and stand up, but he put his hands over her back pockets and his face against her neck, and he breathed there for a few seconds while she ached in the most marvelous, vital, wonderful way.
Ben exhaled—a painful sound. “I’m not going to be able to walk for an hour.” His teasing tone gave her permission to smile.
“If we weren’t, you know, in some random backyard …”
He put his hands at her hips and lifted her to her feet. “Yes?”
But she’d lost her nerve. She didn’t know where to look.
Ben stood, his body so perfectly aligned with hers that nothing separated them but a few inches of air charged with a magnetic pull. “Yes, May?”
She took a deep breath. “I’d try to … I could maybe take care of that for you.”
Perhaps there was an award for world’s least effective dirty talk. She could nominate herself.
The only thing worse than her incompetence was Ben’s complete lack of reaction. All he did was arch an eyebrow and say, “Oh?”
Which was cruel, really, because he had to see how terrible she was at this. She needed an out, and he was torturing her.
“I mean … You know what I mean. With my. With my hand. Or …”
The eyebrow rose another millimeter. “Or?”
