AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I cursed myself, but luckily, Bennett stepped in to pull us back from the quagmire of shit I’d just thrust us both into.
“You would have loved Legoland, Xander,” he said with a smile.
“Oh yeah, why?”
“All those tiny cities made out of Legos… you would have felt like Godzilla, short boy.”
I chuckled. Bennett had teased me mercilessly as kids when he’d had a growth spurt when he was twelve and had grown a couple of inches taller than me within a matter of months. I hadn’t caught up to him until we’d turned fourteen.
“What happened to Colin?” I asked, more to get us back on topic because the thought of our height difference now was reminding me how perfectly we’d fit together against that damn tree.
“I still talk to him every week and try to have dinner with him once a month. He’s studying architectural engineering at MIT.”
“Wow, that’s incredible.”
Bennett smiled and began playing with the stick again. “He’s an amazing kid.”
I wanted to tell Bennett he was amazing, but I managed to hold my tongue. “So is that why you’re working with these kids?” I asked, motioning to the tents behind me.
He nodded. “After I got my MBA, I began working for my dad’s company. They had a foundation that worked with certain charities, but I could tell it was originally only created to help the firm’s public image. The foundation basically just threw money at some of the big-name charities and that was it. After I met Lucky, I saw the potential for the foundation to do some real good… for it to help people in an everyday kind of way. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” I said. “You wanted to see the money doing good.”
“Yeah,” he responded. “And not just the money. But people helping other people. Hands-on stuff. Kids like Lucky don’t just need money handed to them… they need this,” he said as he motioned towards the lake with his stick. “Experiences, education— they need to know there’s more out there. That the lives they were born into aren’t the lives they’re stuck in.”
I studied him for a moment and said, “Like you?”
He jerked his head up. “What?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Benny,” I said softly.
He swallowed hard and then looked away. I moved closer to him and used my hand to force his chin around so he was looking at me. “People always thought I was the one trapped by my circumstances. A gardener’s son. The scholarship kid. But none of them really knew, did they, Benny?”
Bennett shook his head. I let my fingers trail along his jaw as I spoke. “You had every toy and gadget a kid could ever dream of having, but all you really wanted was what I had.”
He closed his eyes and carefully withdrew from my touch, but he didn’t move away from me. “I know we aren’t supposed to talk about him, but you weren’t the only one who lost him, Xander.”
I sighed. “I know.”
I saw Bennett wipe at his eyes, but before I could say anything, he bumped my shoulder with his and said, “So tell me more about this not liking Aiden touching me thing.”
I knew it was his attempt to both change the subject and lighten the mood, so I shook my head and laughed. “Pass.”
But Bennett was Bennett, and I knew he wasn’t going to let it go. And for some reason I didn’t want to examine too closely, I was okay with that.
Chapter 16
Bennett
Xander Reed is jealous. Xander Reed is jealous of another man touching me.
It was too good to be true, so I knew it had to be complete bullshit. But I was sure as hell going to tease him for it anyway.
“You like me,” I said in a slow singsong voice.
“Shut up. Never mind,” he muttered, and then took my stick and did what I’d done— started drawing shapes in the dirt with the tip of it and pretended like I’d ceased to exist.
“You really, really like me,” I persisted.
“Goddammit, I take it back. Let the fucker touch you all he wants. I don’t care,” Xander growled, but there was no real anger in his voice.
I couldn’t resist leaning over until my lips were almost against Xander’s ear. “Liar,” I purred. He was sitting close enough that I could feel his shudder. He glanced at me and then his gaze fell to my mouth, and I was instantly transported back to earlier in the night when he’d kissed me.
Right before he’d fucked me up against that tree.
Even the memory of his cock pushing deep inside of me had me growing hard and I had to tear my eyes from his. I searched out another stick and began to roll it back and forth between my fingers.
To say the sex had been incredible was the understatement of the decade. What Xander had done to me didn’t even qualify as sex. I’d been with a decent number of guys after I’d lost my virginity to Aiden at the age of nineteen. But not once had I felt so… needed. Not just wanted… needed. Aiden had been a great lover, but there’d always been this sense that he was holding a part of himself back from me. Even after dating for months, he’d kept a piece of himself separate from me, both in and out of bed. But with Xander, it had just seemed like so much… more. Like nothing else had existed in that moment for him but me. That if he could have chosen anywhere to be in that instant, and anyone to be with, he still would have picked me.
