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“Pun intended?” I put in teasingly.
He doesn’t laugh; his eyes pour with sincerity as he speaks solidly into my own. “I’m enjoying myself, Trevor. I’m enjoying all of this. Relax.” That one word from his lips sounds as comforting as it does demanding, almost like an order. “Just enjoy the breeze, go with the flow, and let things happen.”
I melt into his eyes. “I know you meant all that,” I murmur to him openly, “and it really touches me, it does …”
“Yeah?”
“But your words also made me really, really hard.”
I kiss him right then before he can respond. Everything goes away—the waves crashing in the distance, the crisp and salty air, the motion of the swinging bench—and it’s just Benjamin and I.
And this kiss.
So many things happen with his kiss, all at once. Boyfriends? Yes, we are, without a doubt, boyfriends. Lovers? There is so much passion bursting between us that we’d be fools to deny it, and it’s safe to say that neither of us are fools.
Walls?
I can hear them crashing down, one kiss at a time.
Benjamin is my lover and my boyfriend. He is everything I secretly wanted, filling the years of loneliness so completely that I forget I was ever lonely at all.
Maybe I was never truly alone. Maybe I can see the future and knew all this time that Benjamin Gage would come along to save me. It was only a matter of time.
“I don’t want to wait,” I breathe against his lips while we kiss. “I’ve waited long enough. I want it now. I want you now.”
“Trevor …” he growls like a warning.
“I’m giving myself to you totally. Please,” I nearly beg, “please give me what I really want. Give me you, Benjamin.”
He pulls away from me for one hard second. His eyes darken, all his features tightening with desire. “I swear, you’re going to ruin me, Trevor Woodard.”
Maybe I had it backwards. Maybe I’m the one saving him.
Maybe I’m smashing down all his walls.
The next instant, he sweeps me up into his arms and carries me toward our private beach, sand and wind and night swirling around us.
37
Trevor is ready.
The next thing I know, he sets me down on a soft pile of multicolored blankets in the white sand.
“What’s this?” I ask, glancing all around me.
“Just a little something I had the staff set up for us while we were busy at dinner.”
Plush, brightly-colored pillows rest on the blankets, and the whole area glows from the light of four shallow bowls with rocks that are afire, like four bright braziers.
Ben sits next to me and reaches for an iced bucket I didn’t notice, pulling from it a bottle of champagne. His other hand picks up two champagne glasses, which clink as he sets them on the blanket between us. I hold one while he pops the cork, then pours us each a bubbly glass.
“A toast,” he says after setting down the bottle. I lift my glass, a smile stretched from ear to ear. He lifts his as well, eyeing me importantly. “To being able to legally drink in America. To having the hottest ass on this beach.”
I roll my eyes.
“To good company,” he adds in a more sincere tone, which draws my softening eyes to him. “To knowing the gold you have when it’s sitting right in front of you. To taking our time, and in doing so, appreciating every precious minute we have.”
“I didn’t take you for such a sap.”
“I’m not done.” He reaches around me as fast as a whip and swats my ass, squeezing a laugh out of me that echoes over the sand and into the late evening beyond. “To knowing what’s truly, genuinely valuable in this world … and that it has nothing to do with the numbers … whether that number is an age, or a number in your bank account—”
“Or the number of likes you get on a Facebook post,” I finish.
Ben scowls at me. “Will you take any of this seriously? Or do I have to throw your sexy bare ass over my knee, right here on this beach, and teach you a lesson?”
I’m about to say something really sassy back to him, but then I feel a surge of emotion bubble up inside me out of nowhere. Is it the time we spent here that sobers me? Is it the honest look in his eyes and the way I see him come apart when he gazes at me? Is it the fact that I realize the only reason I enjoyed a second of this weekend was because Ben has been by my side the whole time?
I could be pampered a billion times like I was this morning. I would trade it all for a single kiss from Benjamin Gage.
I lift my glass a touch higher, all the humor in my face gone, replaced with hopeful compassion and gratitude. “To good times, good people, and happiness.”
