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She refused to let it hurt her. Especially since she knew he hadn’t said it to hurt her. He was merely stating what he thought was a fact.
She nodded.
“Fair enough.”
Her equable response seemed to surprise him and his head jerked up as if to verify with his eyes what he’d just heard.
“I want to be honest with you, Lilah. I don’t want to ever mislead you about anything again. I want to put the past behind us. Start fresh, from a place of honesty. And see where that takes us.”
She finished her wine and set the glass aside before asking, “Where would you like it to take us?”
He said nothing but his eyes spoke volumes and she sighed and rubbed her palms over her face, exhaustion weighing down her movements.
Her favorite playlist had been on shuffle in the background, and there was a brief silence as one song faded to an end, followed moments later by the achingly familiar introduction of Etta Jones’s At Last. Their gazes met as the violins throbbed poignantly in the background and Ben drained his glass, before pushing to his feet and holding a hand out to her.
Lilah stared at the big hand in blank astonishment, before his quiet voice asked, “May I have this dance, Lilah?”
She stared up at him, her eyes welling and she swallowed past the lump in her throat as she remembered how gut-wrenchingly painful their last dance to this song had been.
“Please.” The shake in his voice, combined with the slight tremor in his hand, was what prompted her to place her palm in his. His hand closed around hers and he tugged her into his arms, just as Etta’s incomparable voice crooned the eponymous opening line of her classic song.
Ben folded her close, one hand flattened against her back and the other held hers in a relaxed grip, close to their bodies. Lilah’s free hand crept up over his broad shoulder and around his neck, and she lay her head on his shoulder.
He slowly guided her around the room—his scent and heat enveloped her—and they swayed in time with the gentle, romantic strains of the beautiful song, feet barely moving.
His lips hovered close to hers and their breath mingled. Lilah’s eyes drifted shut as she found herself suspended in this moment with this man, who was creeping his way back beneath her defenses.
He let go of her hand to cup her cheek. Her now free hand slid beneath his shirt and came to rest on the silky, hot flesh of his chest, right above his racing heart.
“Lilah, mo chridhe,” he whispered, his lips brushing against hers. She’d never heard that phrase before and wondered what it meant. She was about to ask him, when his lips sipped at hers and her legs turned to butter. No person should have this amount of power over another human being. Yet Ben did over Lilah. All it took to fell her was the delicate, searching touch of his mouth on hers and she became a desperate wreck of a woman.
He lifted his head to stare at her, and his eyes said it all, roaming over her face with a hunger than bordered on starvation. The stark desire she saw in his expression robbed Lilah of her breath and suddenly all she could think of was that kiss they’d shared earlier.
The last note of the song lingered in the air like a benediction and even after the song ended and a new one began, they continued to sway together.
“Lilah.” Again that soft, prayerlike whisper, followed by another kiss. A little less restrained than the one they had shared earlier on the roof.
This was a fraught meeting of tongues and teeth and lips.
Lilah wasn’t sure how it happened, but when she came up for breath, he was sprawled on the couch and she was straddling his lap, riding the hard ridge of his cock. His hands were spread over her ass cheeks, head thrown back, eyes closed, lips red and swollen from their near violent kiss. He looked undone… and Lilah loved it. Loved having this much control over her usually implacable husband.
She kissed him again. A gentler, sweeter caress, and after one last grind against his hardness, regretfully lifted her weight off him.
His eyes opened and found hers. That usually astute gaze was bewildered, and lost.
She ran a lingering hand over his cheek and gave him a regretful smile.
“Goodnight, Ben.”
“Lilah…”
She ignored the pleading in his voice and clambered off his lap to stand in front of him on unsteady legs with weak knees.
She stared down at him, noting his messy hair, his unbuttoned shirt, his ragged breathing, that massive erection straining at the fly of his trousers and felt an immense sense of satisfaction that she was responsible for his hot disheveled mess of a state. She couldn’t affect him emotionally, but she damned well had an undeniable physical affect on him.
